HomeMy WebLinkAbout121523 email Thank you!December 15, 2023
Dear Ms. Eisenhour,
I have addressed this email to the other two commissioners as well, but I am writing to thank you in particular for having the wisdom not to be swept up in the current “pool mania.”
I agree that the pool project, as currently fantasized, would be nice. I can think of a lot of other things which would be nice too. The idea that we absolutely have to have a swimming
pool, at all, is nonsense. I know that there are those who benefit from hydrotherapy, but that is not the kind or scale of facility about which we are talking. A discretionary project
of this size serving a town of just over 10,000 people is grandiose. The contention that it would serve the whole county is just plain dishonest. Nobody is going to drive from Clearwater,
WA to use any facility in Port Townsend.
We are deeply in debt. All the good things we are being told the proposed facility will provide are rationalizations, the sum total of which do not even remotely justify the proposed
expenditure. We have more pressing needs: caring for and housing those in need; more mental health professionals in our police department; paving our roads and, most important, making
this town affordable for young families and for those who work here.
I understand that having a fancy recreational facility is more glamorous than paying down some of our debt or funding mental health programs, but I would prefer that we distinguish ourselves
by running in the black, without fancy math. The kinds of arguments we are hearing about the proposed health and wellness center are disturbingly similar to the ones we heard about
the Cherry Street Apartments. I have a large file of emails from David Timmons about that project, including spread sheets, profit and loss statements and many graphs, all of which,
it turned out, were baloney – and it was obvious from day one, at least to some, that the Cherry Street Apartments project would be a bad investment. It seems that people believe what
they want to believe and then manipulate the data to support their points of view. I’m hoping we can see this project for what it is, unnecessary overspending. When our elected officials
start taking about “separate funding streams,” as if this project could be done without significant long-term cost to us, it becomes obvious that we are being finessed.
To make the whole county, much less just the citizens of Port Townsend, pay for a fanciful project which will serve a relatively small number of people seems like financial mismanagement.
The way to draw people to Port Townsend, and keep them here, is to have a town which is affordable, not fancy. If however, our goal is to make Port Townsend into an enclave for the
well-to-do, with its service labor brought in from poorer areas out of town, as is done in Palm Springs and Carmel for example, then let’s just admit that’s who we are and stop all
this talk about making Port Townsend affordable to young families and the employees of our local businesses.
Thanks again.
Niles Powell
2508 Holcomb Street
Port Townsend, WA 98368
(360) 379-1282