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While voting locations were preparing to close for the Feb. 14 special election, Centralia City Council convened for its regular meeting.
Among the agenda items at the Tuesday meeting was a decision on whether to move forward with a ballot measure for the August 2023 special election that would have given voters the opportunity to decide the fate of the Veterans Memorial Pearl Street Pool.
While the motion to create the ballot initiative passed with a 4-3 vote in December, during public comments at the Feb. 14 regular meeting, preliminary special election results were released showing that the Centralia School District levy had narrowly failed.
The results came in right when the council was taking public comment on whether to move forward with the ballot measure.
Once the results were known, even the city councilors who initially supported creating the ballot measure voted to rescind it, as they feared if both the pool’s tax levy and the school district’s tax levy were on the ballot again together, both would be doomed to fail.
Since the Centralia School District’s levy appeared to have failed, the council expected the school district to attempt to pass it during the next special election in the county in August. That’s the same election the council was planning to put the pool’s ballot measure before voters.
“I still maintain my stance that I had before and hearing now that the levy for the schools is failing currently, it doesn’t feel right to challenge the school levy by putting these things (together) on there,” said Mayor Pro-Tem Cameron McGee.
With rising property values and in turn rising taxes, the council wanted to ensure the school district’s levy had the best possible chance to pass again in the next election.
Councilor Mark Westley, who initially was in favor of the ballot initiative for the pool, agreed with McGee, especially considering this isn’t the first time in recent years a Centralia School District levy has failed to pass.
“Hearing the current results that we have on the school levy, which now brings us to the third failed levy in the last four attempts, it seems pretty evident to me that the empirical evidence says the community does not want nor are they interested in supporting any kind of levy,” Westley said, adding later, “Even though it passed the last time, the school district is still reeling in a lot of different ways from those two previous (levy) failures.”
Members of the Save The Outdoor Pool (STOP) group attended the meeting to continue voicing their wishes to have the pool reopened. STOP has been working to get the pool reopened after it closed in 2011 due to maintenance issues and budget constraints.
The group has had proposals and secured grants in the past to reopen it, but wasn’t able to complete the process and lost the grants.
STOP member Joyce Hoerling stated during public comments that a retired veteran had even stepped up and offered to donate “a substantial amount” of money toward getting the pool reopened.
“He wants to see the kids safe. He’s tired of seeing kids just hooked onto their phones. They need to be outside, enjoying the summer,” Hoerling said.
The veteran’s offer seemed to be too little, too late. Hoerling was also adamant she still wanted a vote even with a chance of failure.
“I really would like to see the citizens of this town be able to vote, because they’re the ones paying the bill. If they say no, we’re good. If they say yes, then there’s lots of grant money out there and there’s a lot of ways to get money if we get help,” Hoerling said.
Even with former city council member Joyce Barnes still offering to personally pay the $10,000 to $15,000 estimated cost it would have taken to get the pool’s tax levy option on the ballot, the council still voted unanimously to rescind their December decision creating the ballot initiative.
“I understand the desire to put it to the voters. Let’s be real, we’re seeing inflation that’s the highest levels since 1981,” said Centralia Mayor Kelly Smith Johnston.
She added that the bond created by the tax levy would last 20 years, a debt she feels is unfair to put on people who right now can’t even vote.
“We would be asking the voters today to vote on a 20-year bond and a 20-year operating levy that folks who are entering the economy right now in a very uncertain time would be saddled with paying,” Smith Johnston said. “If you know youth that are in that 16 to 25 year age (range), I guarantee you know youth that are scared about their future. They don’t know if they’ll get a job. They don’t know how they’ll pay for college. They don’t know if they can get a car. They don’t know if they’ll be able to buy a house, here or anywhere else.”
The Vote to Close the Pool
A discussion started as to what should finally be done with the pool.
Centralia resident and U.S. Air Force veteran Chris Brewer shared his thoughts, maintaining a position he stated during public comment in previous city council meetings that the space should be repurposed into something that can be used year-round.
“We’ve spent 12, 13 years in what I feel is a never ending hamster wheel. We’re still in the design phase right now, 12 to 13 years after the pool initially closed. Every winter it rains and the Pacific Northwest does its thing and it fills the pool. I think we need to figure out a way to make the property attractive,” Brewer said.
He added the splash pad, playground and the Hub City Bike Shop that currently occupy the pool’s old bathhouse have already begun the repurposing.
“That’s a critical need in our community and that’s already helping people if you think about homeless veterans and homeless people who need transportation because they don’t have cars. They’re getting bikes fixed there. Kids are getting bikes fixed there. People are interacting in that space,” Brewer said.
Hoerling expressed her wish to at least have something kids could use put in place of the pool that wasn’t just a park, which she feared could become another place where vagrants might loiter.
“I don’t want to just watch (the pool) get bulldozed down there. I know from walking around town in the morning that there are things that you don’t want to have an empty park sitting down there. There needs to be something in town for the kids. Maybe you have the option to go after a Boys & Girls Club. Maybe you have the option to get a YMCA down here. We need to have something (secure) for kids,” Hoerling said.
Other ideas were proposed, including a STEM or art-oriented playground, as well as STOP group members still advocating to simply reopen the pool as it was originally designed.
Ultimately, the council voted to permanently close the pool and considered forming a committee made up of both council members and Centralia residents to decide how to repurpose the property at a future date.
The motion passed with a vote of 6-1, with Councilor Max Vogt being the lone vote against it.
When asked for the reasoning for his vote after the meeting, he explained that even though he voted to rescind the ballot measure that was proposed for this year, he still wants to see the STOP group’s efforts at least come to fruition in a ballot measure at a later date.
“That group has been doing this for 10 years. There hasn’t really been any organized opposition to this group. They’ve raised over $100,000. They’ve been to countless meetings and tried so hard, so I really still wanted it to go to the ballot for the people to decide. But with the news of the school (levy) not passing, that devastated me, because I realized the writing was on the wall,” Vogt said.
While they were disappointed with how the meeting went, members of the STOP group were planning to convene to decide what to do next.
“It didn’t hurt to try, but it’s just sad to see. That pool, for 60 years, was full of kids every summer, just packed. So we don’t have any real plans yet. We’ll have to talk it over. We’ll have to tell that veteran he doesn’t need to spend his money. He was very adamant he wanted kids to learn to swim,” Hoerling said. “It’s unfortunate, but sometimes good comes from bad. Maybe somebody in the periphery will say we need that pool and buy it (from the city) and fix it up.”
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 just north of Centralia City Hall on Pearl Street.
Feb. 14 special election results for Lewis County can be found online at https://results.vote.wa.gov/results/20230214/lewis/.
