HomeMy WebLinkAbout120423 email Aquatic Center needs more time for options and scrutinyALERT: BE CAUTIOUS This email originated outside the organization. Do not open attachments or click on links if you are not expecting them.
Dear Board of County Commissioners,
I appreciate BoCC's careful consideration of the pool issue, as
reflected in your thoughtful comments quoted in the Leader's Nov. 29
front-page article:
https://www.ptleader.com/stories/county-sinks-pool-funding,149414
You already kindly heard my previous comments on the subject, so I
was going to leave it at that.
But I saw today that the Jefferson Aquatic Coaltion board "feels it's
critical and urgent to communicate your support for the new aquatic
center to your county commissioner and encourage them to vote in
support of the committee recommendations. We have produced an
easy-to-use template for email correspondence to the county
commissioners. We hope you will take a moment and send a letter of
support to your elected commissioner at
<https://www.jeffcoaquaticcoalition.org/so/43OmhrPqS/c?w=FCC2DUMa7Ui2CEDHwvyNgrZJg1qS6lZU9Buqlgrmx2A.eyJ1IjoibWFpbHRvOmplZmZib2NjQGNvLmplZmZlcnNvbi53YS51cyIsInIiOiI3ZjJjMmQxZS02NTRmLTQyNDktODFkZi0wNj
VhYzM0OGUxMzAiLCJtIjoibWFpbCIsImMiOiI4NzQzZWQ3OC1kZmJhLTRhY2MtOGIyMC0wMWRlYWFkNjc5YzYifQ>jeffbocc@co.jefferson.wa.us"
To the contrary, I feel that fast-tracking the current
financially-unsound PT pool scheme would be very premature, so I'm
asking again for more time for options and scrutiny, to balance
against any flood of template-generated comments generated by JAC's
new letter-writing campaign.
I think the points I made in my oral public comment at the Nov. 21
BoCC meeting still stand, so here they are again in written form for
your reference:
=== BoCC Public Comment, November 21, 2023 ===
This is relating to the Aquatic Center which was originally a Port
Townsend project and was designed to be in Port Townsend by Port
Townsend people, but then the funding wasn't available.
So it looked to the county for the funding, but it still kind of
remains a Port Townsend oriented thing to serve Port Townsend and not
so much the county that would now be asked to pay for it.
At the Aquatic Center show-and-tell on Monday, Carrie Hite was
repeatedly asked why it couldn't be located more centralized
in the county. And her answers, I believe that she said that on the
one hand that the land was free at Mountain View so it's a big cost
savings to locate it there, and also infrastructure, sewers and
things wouldn't be available out in the county.
However, as far as I know, there are a number of excellent central
places to put it in the county HJ Carroll Park, Iclose to the sheriff
area. a number of locations that are already pre-owned just like
Mountain View.
Also, there will be sewers that should be done by mid 2025, and
that's a pretty realistic guess when the Aquatic Center could best
case be there.
So there really isn't any good reason not to put it in a more central area.
Hadlock is being argued as being in the service area of a Port
Townsend pool. In other words, for people in Hadlock, it's easy for
them to just go to Port Townsend to go to the pool if it were built there.
But contrariwise, that also means Port Townsend is in the service
area if you located the pool at Hadlock! And frankly, it's a lot
easier to get out into the county even for Port Townsend people
sometimes, especially given all its construction and road repair issues.
There's a lot more land there in the county The land is cheaper. You
wouldn't have to demolish the Mountain View pool. You could just
build on a clean area. It would probably be cheaper in a
lot of different ways.
Another factor is where is the new growth going to be? Probably there
will be more growth over the next 10, 20, 30 years out in that area.
And also what about growth for young people? There's multiple uses
for this pool. One of the uses is for swimming teams and things for
the young kids that are out there, not in Port Townsend.
There may well be therapeutic needs for older people. But there's
various ways to envision this.
You could build this Taj Mahal Center that's going to be all things
for all people. But if you do plant that in Port Townsend, it would
be kind of hard to access it parking-wise and otherwise.
But what if you build a less expensive, not Taj Mahal facility that
was out in Hadlock? That was more youth oriented? Right?
And then you've got the existing Mountain View pool which isn't going
anywhere anytime soon. Until it breaks, you could be using that or
build a smaller facility that's more older focused or more health
care focused in Port Townsend.
There's a lot of things that could be done, and now given this new
information that James Scarantino is presenting, affordability is
another issue.
Port Townsend can do its own thing in Port Townsend.
The county can do its own thing (or not) in the county.
Yours truly,
Stephen