HomeMy WebLinkAbout030325 email - PoolALERT: BE CAUTIOUS This email originated outside the organization. Do not open attachments or click on links if you are not expecting them.
Greetings
Below is a copy of an email I sent to Commissioner Dudley-Nollette.
I urge you, too, to drop your support for the pool for reasons listed below.
I know others have different opinions. Thank you for listening to mine.
David Neuenschwander
142 Old Lindsay Hill Rd.
Quilcene, WA 98376
360.765.3151
From: David Neuenschwander <dnneuen@sbcglobal.net>
Sent: March 02, 2025 18:18
To: 'Heather Dudley-Nollette' <HDudley-Nollette@co.jefferson.wa.us>
Subject: Pool
Commissioner Dudley-Nollette
Thank you for coming to Quilcene to engage regarding the proposed pool.
I urge you to drop your support for the pool. It will be a fiscal drain on the County’s fisc and has the potential to become another Fort Worden PDA fiasco.
I cannot support this project for the reasons outlined below.
* Ring Study
* I seriously doubt the assertion that there are seven thousand more potential users at the Hadlock site than exist at the Port Townsend site.
* Ring studies yield information on households, neighborhoods, infrastructure, and other key factors on a selected area within a specific radius.
* The most common ring sizes are 1 mile, 3 miles, and 5 miles. A sample is attached.
* I don’t have the data, but I suspect that within five miles of the Port Hadlock location there are fewer people who are less affluent and who have less leisure time than are within
five miles of the Port Townsend location.
* If true, that would make the Port Hadlock location even worse off financially than the Port Townsend location which is already in the red.
* Public Facilities District
* The governance of the Public Facilities District will be by appointed persons, not elected by the voters.
* The Fort Worden Public Development Agency was also governed by appointed persons.
* Clearly there was no effective oversight of that agency and there was very serious fiscal and reputational damage.
* I could see that happening again with a Public Facilities District.
* Lodging Tax Funds used for the pool
* I believe that in this case using Lodging Tax funds for a pool was a serious misallocation of funds.
* Lodging tax funds may be used for several things that promote tourism (see attached).
* I cannot imagine that a pool can be considered a “tourism related facility” in the same way a convention center or visitor center facility or a stadium is.
* Even if a pool were considered a “tourism related facility,” how many tourists from over 50 miles away would it draw?
* And how many tourists traveling over 50 miles will be reported as required by RCW 67.28.1816, paragraph 2(c)(i) (see attached)?
* Lodging Tax dollars should be used to promote tourism. Twenty thousand Lodging Tax dollars spent on a pool certainly won’t draw as many tourists as the same dollars granted to Centrum
or any of the other events or facilities that currently receive grants.
* Private versus public financing
* If the supporters of this pool want to finance, build, and run it with their own money, I’m all for it.
* Black Point apparently will build not one, but two pools with private money and will open theirs up to the public for fee based use.
* I see no reason to saddle the entire population of Jefferson County with the financial obligations of a pool that a very small segment of the population will ever use.
* And to be very clear, I absolutely will not support a sales tax to finance the pool.
Again, I urge you to drop your support for the pool.
Obviously others have different opinions. Thank you for reading mine.
David Neuenschwander
142 Old Lindsay Hill Rd.
Quilcene, WA 98376
360.765.3151