Following last month’s 4-3 vote by the Centralia City Council to create a ballot initiative allowing residents to decide the fate of the Veterans Memorial Pearl Street Pool, the council tabled consideration of pool design options during Tuesday night’s regular meeting.
It did so in favor of scheduling a joint public workshop to discuss design options with the Parks and Recreation Department.
The workshop will begin at 6 p.m. on Feb. 13 in the council chambers at Centralia City Hall, located at 118 W. Maple St. The workshop will be open to the public.
Before this decision was made, Centralia Community Development Director Emil Pierson gave the council two options to put on the August ballot.
The first was keeping what was salvageable from the original pool and bathhouse and restoring it to its original state. The second was tearing everything down and building an entirely new pool and bathhouse with the same design as the old one.
According to Pierson, the options were chosen after discussions with local group Save The Outdoor Pool (STOP) on Jan. 12.
“Their goal was, with either option, to keep the cost as low as possible but meet all the Washington state and local building codes. That’s one of the biggest things we needed to do,” Pierson said.
He stated that after the council chose an option the city would hire a consultant to conduct a new cost analysis for construction costs to give voters exact numbers when deciding on the ballot initiative.
Pierson estimated it would cost between $50,000 and $60,000 for the analysis and then another $10,000 to $15,000 to actually create the ballot initiative.
City council members then began a discussion among themselves focused on whether they wanted to risk spending that much money with the possibility of the ballot measure failing.
Then they began to discuss setting up a workshop with the parks department to get input as the pool would be maintained and controlled by the department. Following that, public comment on the issue was accepted.
STOP group member and former Centralia City Council member Joyce Barnes offered to personally pay the cost for the ballot initiative itself, an offer she made at last month’s special meeting as well.
“We want to get that pool opened. We want to repair anything, equipment, filters, whatever replacement needs to be done. A new deck, it does need a new deck. That’s what we’re looking at, but we want to keep it simple, not make it into a Taj Mahal,” said Barnes. “We don’t want to have people afraid to have that pool open for the benefit of our people. I have tried to save the city some money by saying I will pay for filing for the ballot, and I will pay that cost. That will not cost the city anything.”
She added that even if residents ended up voting against the measure to get the pool reopened, it would still be a worthwhile investment to her. Other residents spoke out not only in favor but also in opposition to the pool’s repair.
“An outdoor pool in Western Washington seems like sort of a foolish thing. With the short season and the weather, it seems hard to justify the cost of that and what it’s going to cost the taxpayers,” said Port of Centralia Commissioner Kyle Markstrom.
He added he opposed the idea of a ballot initiative in the first place and asked the council to rescind the decision they made last month to create the initiative and decide the pool’s fate themselves.
Following the conclusion of public comments, Councilor Elizabeth Cameron maintained the position she took last month and stated she still believes the decision should be left up to the voters.
“I still believe firmly in what’s fair and just and in my book, (that is) putting it out there for the taxpayer to make the decision. It is them who ultimately pay the taxes and I still think it is their decision whether (the pool) goes ahead or not,” Cameron said.
Councilor Max Vogt proposed asking the STOP group to use donation money to pay for the new construction cost analysis.
Councilor Mark Westley favored tabling the issue and waiting for information following the parks department workshop. Councilor Leah Daarud, who voted against the ballot initiative last month, maintained she is worried about the city losing money.
“We do need to be fiscally responsible and I would like to ask the city council to rethink this option going forward, spending upwards of $70,000 on a maybe,” Daarud said.
As for Vogt’s proposal of having STOP pay for the cost analysis, STOP group president Phoebe Slusher stated she would take the idea back to the group for discussion.
Ultimately, the council decided to wait until it has the chance to talk to the parks department at the public joint workshop on the issue before choosing a ballot initiative option.
For more than 10 years now, the Veterans Memorial Pearl Street Pool has been closed due to maintenance issues and budget constraints. During that time, the STOP group was formed in an effort to reopen the pool.
Originally built in the 1950s as a war memorial, the pool was owned and operated by the city until the early 1980s when it was first closed. In 1984, it was reopened due to the efforts of Friends in Need, a local nonprofit that operated the pool until 2008 when the city resumed ownership until 2011 when it closed again.
The Veterans Memorial Pearl Street Pool is located one block north of Centralia City Hall on Pearl Street.
