Aquatic Center Beats Out Streets and Core Services for Increased Tax Dollars in Task Force Report
Unsustainable. Higher taxes lie ahead for Port Townsend residents and businesses. But it won’t be basic, critical city services that get the biggest chunk of increased revenues if the recommendations of the City’s Financial Sustainability Task Force are followed.
The proposed aquatic/fitness center could get seven times as much in new tax revenues as would go to fix the city’s failing streets. Parks and forays into becoming a major housing provider would also see huge increases.
Public safety and emergency services would see little change. As for the the city’s aged, failing water and sewer lines, the task force chose to ignore the problem.
A water and sewer system is a core service of every city. “Simply put, without core services, all other initiatives and services suddenly or eventually fail.” That is the definition from the glossary of terms in the task force’s final report. But through a verbal sleight-of-hand, the task force declared it would not consider water and sewer to be core services and, therefore, they were excluded from evaluation of the city’s financial challenges.
Replacing the thirty-mile long, century-old system that brings water to the city from Quilcene will cost more than $114 million, according to the city’s 2019 water plan. Higher utility rates, increased borrowing and other measures will be necessary to cover the costs. Some sewer sections are at the end of their lifespan and require replacement now. A single failed pipe under Water Street is beyond repair and must be completely rebuilt, at the cost of nearly $3 million — which the city must borrow or pull out of its reserves.
It would be a lot harder to persuade taxpayers to approve high taxes for a new pool if they knew they were also facing staggering increased utility rates and other charges to repair and replace the sewer and water lines under the city’s crumbling streets. The price tag for that proposed new aquatic center, by the way, starts at $37 million and tops out above $52 million, along with an annual operating subsidy of about $900,000.
Rendering of the Mountain View complex to house proposed new aquatic center, from the consultants’ PowerPoint presentation. Multiple pools — a swimming pool, activities pool and therapy pool — are illustrated in the image at the top of the article.
Skewed priorities don’t stop there. The city’s pool consultants are enjoying a $175,000 contract, which is more than the city budgeted in recent years for road maintenance. It is more than the city has allocated to study the seismic stability of the Lord’s Lake dam, the principal source of the city’s drinking water. State authorities have warned that the dam is in very poor condition and could require $4 million in repairs — money the city doesn’t have. Not a word in the task force report about that.
Water for swimming got a lot of ink; drinking water got none.
But heavily taxing city residents to pay for a new pool — running up their property taxes by hundreds of dollars per year, on top of other recommended tax increases — isn’t enough. The Task Force, echoing the city manager and Port Townsend’s pool consultants, want to tax county residents to fund PT’s aquatic center. A project that cannot be sustained by city taxpayers has been proclaimed possibly sustainable if maybe county residents can also be taxed to pay for a new pool to replace one they don’t use now.
Fewer than 34 Jefferson County residents outside city limits use the existing Mountain View pool on a monthly average. That data was gleaned from the 2022 annual report from the YMCA, which manages the pool for the city. The same data shows that only 174 city residents use the pool on an average monthly basis.
Window Dressing for Higher Taxes, Expanding City Government
Council created the task force in November 2022 to address the city’s impending financial crisis. It carries an impressive title, but was little more than a handful of citizens hearing from and reading materials provided by City Manager John Mauro and his staff.
Five citizens were appointed but only four served. Troy Surber, PT’s former acting police chief, resigned his appointment before the first meeting. The other members were former city councilor and mayor Catharine Jackson, John Nowak, Rick Jahnke and Earll Murman. Earll Murman is married to Rena Murman, Treasurer of Jeffco Aquatic Coalition, the group spearheading the campaign to build a new aquatic center (more on that apparent conflict of interest below).
The task force had no chairperson. City manager Mauro ran its meetings. He and his staff set the agenda. The city manager determined what the group would talk about, who the speakers would be, and what materials would be considered. As far as I can tell, the city manager and his staff were responsible for writing the task force’s final report and recommendations.
There was good reason to create a task force, one that could investigate why Port Townsend’s finances have turned negative. The city is heading over a fiscal cliff. It has recently started to eat into reserves. We examined this impending dive into red ink in our May 25, 2023 report, “City Finances ‘Falling Off Cliff’ as Cherry Street Project Enters Seventh Year.”
But the task force did not dig. It did not inquire into waste in City Hall, ways current spending and staffing could be cut, or which programs and services could be scaled back. In fairness, such an undertaking would be an unreasonable expectation of citizen volunteers with no independent staff of their own. They met only a few times for about 2-2.5 hours each session.
The meeting videos reveal that the citizen volunteers were fed materials drafted by City Manager Mauro and his staff. None of those materials offered an austerity option, ways to shrink city government to fit the city’s limited financial resources. It was the city manager who labelled any course of action that did not include raising taxes to fund a new pool and other ambitious amenity projects as the “do nothing” solution. This derisive label was incorporated into the task force’s working materials.
Only those courses of action for continuing to expand city government made the cut in the final recommendations to city council.
Instead of meaningful inquiry into cutting waste and fat at city hall, the task force report tossed around vapid verbiage. It never got beyond bland statements like, “Finding efficiencies is a critical element for any pathway forward,” and “The need for efficiencies is eternal.” Rest assured, dear taxpayers, city hall has already engaged in “lean thinking” (page 19 of the report).
Repeatedly, task force discussions turned to how to sell higher taxes to a skeptical, tax-weary public.
Yes, plans to fix the streets are in there. New taxes have been recommended, anywhere from $0.10/$1000 to $0.20/$1000 of assessed value to start a thirty-year effort to keep Port Townsend from continuing to have the worst streets in the state. But the tax increase recommended for the aquatic center is seven times higher, $0.70/$1000 if the tax is imposed only on city properties. If county properties are “captured” (the city’s pool consultant’s term) and share the burden, the recommended tax hike would be $0.42/$1000.
No course of action was advanced that would increase funding to complete street repairs in under three decades.
No options allocated all revenue from higher taxes to critical, core municipal services only — streets, water and sewer, public safety.
No course of action was discussed that did not include the aquatic center. From the task force’s initial meeting onward the aquatic center was considered a “priority initiative.”
Conflict of Interest?
As mentioned, Earll Murman, one of the four task force members, is married to Rena Murman, Treasurer of Jeffco Aqautic Coaliton (JAC), the advocacy group spearheading the push for the new pool. Rena Murman is also the registered agent for JAC. That group originated in 2007 under the name “Make Waves in PT.” In 2012 Earll Murman became the group’s president and chairman of the board. In that year it changed its name to “Jeffco Aquatic Coalition.” Annual reports filed with the Washington Secretary of State show him as the JAC President from 2012-2017. In the 2018 amended annual report he was listed as one of four JAC governors. In 2022, just a few months before Earll Murman was appointed to the city’s Financial Sustainability Task Force, Rena Murman filed and signed the annual report for JAC, identifying herself as one of three governors and the group’s treasurer. A quick search of public filings with the Washington Secretary of State revealed this information.
More and More Taxes
The task force recommended other tax increases and ways to bring more money into the city. Annexing Glen Cove and grabbing its property and sales tax base from the county is central to long range plans. The drop in the city’s utility tax scheduled for the end of this year would be reversed and further increased by about 9%. Property tax rates would be raised across the board. And the task force is recommending another hike in the local sales tax.
To generate tax revenue for the proposed aquatic center, the task force recommends creating a Metropolitan Park District to tax city properties or a Regional Park District to capture county properties. This would require formal action by council and a public vote. If the borders of the taxing district extend beyond city limits, the county commissioners would also have to be on board. A park district can impose a property tax of up to $0.75/$1000 assessed value. An effort to create a park district to fund the Sequim pool was defeated in 2015.
There is also a lot in the report about funding the city’s foray into becoming a major housing provider and remaking the golf course, and how the city’s budget must increase accordingly. We will take a closer look at the these issues in future reports.
City Council is scheduled to act on the task force’s recommendations in coming months. The task force’s 53-page final report may be read at this link.
