After House Bill 2296 failed to make it out of the state Senate during the recent legislative session, the Lewis County Public Facilities District is focused on making sure the bill is approved when lawmakers reconvene next year.
The bill would have allowed public facilities districts to use local sales and use tax proceeds to repay bonds issued for construction, as well as for expansion, rehabilitation and improvement of regional centers.
If approved, it would have extended the authorization for two local sales and use taxes for regional centers from up to 25 years to up to 40 years, assuming the bonds had not yet been retired.
It’s a bill important for the local PFD because it would allow the district to finish projects they have not been able to fund.
“Without a new bond or a grant or anything else, we don’t have the funds to do any of this,” board member Bonnie Young said at a Tuesday meeting, referring to a list of projects needed to be completed at the Northwest Sports Hub. “We can’t move forward to keep the PFD a viable source of revenue to compete, so this is really important.”
The list, submitted at a previous PFD meeting by Dale Pullin and Lyle Overbay, operators of the Northwest Sports Hub, included 12 items as priority one projects, six priority two projects, and six priority three items.
Some of the priority one projects included bleachers, an elevator, scoreboards and shot clocks.
Todd Chaput, board chairman of the PFD, will attend the 2016 Association of Washington State Public Facilities Districts membership meeting on May 16 in Spokane. He said the bill will be on the agenda. Much of the meeting will be focused on the legislative agenda for this year, he said.
Also on the PFD’s radar is the creation of a sports commission and a tourism promotion area to help fund it.
The creation of a TPA would add a $2 tax to occupied rooms of each lodging facility in Centralia and Chehalis. The flat fee would bring in about $200,000 annually between the two cities.
Those funds would be allocated by the cities to the sports commission, which would give guidance and market the area’s sports facility while attracting and promoting sporting events.
Chaput said both Centralia and Chehalis city councils were addressed on the issue. Now the documentation needs to be finalized and turned in to create the TPA.
“Hopefully it will be running this year,” he said.
In order to form a TPA, 60 percent of local motels and hotels would have to be in favor of the measure.
Pullin said the creation of a sports commission would be valuable to the Northwest Sports Hub. While competing with other regional sports commissions in the area when attempting to bring an event to the facility, he said, the commissions are his biggest competitor.
By creating a local one, Pullin said, it would make the Northwest Sports Hub more viable.
