The day they thought would never come arrived on Tuesday, March 19th, 2024, when the City of Port Townsend and the Olympic Peninsula YMCA received an unwelcome bit of news from a litigation team at the Center for American Liberty, representing longtime Port Townsend resident, Julie Jaman.
As reported by the national news website, the Daily Wire, the clock has run out on the YMCA’s and city’s dodging of responsibility for the debacle that ensued after Jaman was banned for life from the Mountain View Pool a year and a half ago.
Regular readers of the PT Free Press are familiar with the outrageous treatment Jaman (and eventually her supporters) faced in July and August of 2022. (Access our extensive reporting with the link following this article.)
According to the demand letter from the Center for American Liberty, “The City’s and the YMCA’s conduct violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution… and Washington law.” The letter was addressed to City Manager John Mauro, acting City Attorney Kendra Rosenberg, and Olympic Peninsula YMCA CEO, Wendy Bart.
“The Center for American Liberty sent a demand letter to the YMCA and the City of Port Townsend on Julie’s behalf threatening imminent litigation if Julie’s lifetime ban is not immediately lifted. The City of Port Townsend and the YMCA punished Julie because of the content of her speech—because she spoke out after seeing a man in the women’s locker room. Julie deserves justice for the violation of her First Amendment rights and the emotional distress she’s experienced because of this ordeal.”
Though a relatively young enterprise, in practice since 2018, the Center for American Liberty is blazing trails as it defends parental rights, constitutionally protected speech and religious liberties. They’ve emerged as a powerhouse in the woke arena of coercive “gender transitioning” of young children and teenagers, including the now nationally-recognized ‘detransitioner,’ Chloe Cole.
Page one of Center for American Liberty demand letter
Setting the stage
The 8-page letter accompanies over 200 pages of duplicative public records, many redacted — communications between city officials, the YMCA and the public relations firm contracted by the city to manage the mess they’d created by refusing to even consider Jaman’s version of the episode, devoted as they were to ideology rather than fairness and accuracy.
The demand letter references the unlawful ban of Jaman, provides a bit of factual background, and swiftly moves on to “The Locker-Room Incident.” (The following are excerpted quotes. For legal reasoning supporting them, please read the entire eight pages.)
On July 26, 2022, Jaman went for a swim at the Pool. After she finished, she entered the women’s locker room to shower and change. There were no signs warning patrons that the locker rooms were open to members of the opposite sex. In fact, the signage indicated that the locker rooms were sex segregated.
While in the shower, Jaman heard a male voice inside the locker room. When she pulled back the shower curtain to see who was there, she saw a biological male wearing a female swimsuit. The individual—later identified to Jaman as “Clementine Adams”—was watching two young girls who appeared to be about four to six years old as they were preparing to use the toilet. Adams was not wearing any form of identification indicating an affiliation with the YMCA.
Jaman was startled by Adams’s presence in the women’s locker room and believed that she might be witnessing a crime in progress. Jaman asked Adams, “Do you have a penis?” Adams responded, “None of your business,” after which Jaman said, “Get out of here!”
Within seconds, YMCA staff member Rowen DeLuna entered the women’s shower area and began berating Jaman. DeLuna did not inform Jaman that Adams was transgender, that Adams was an employee of the YMCA, or that the Pool had a policy allowing individuals to use the locker rooms that aligned with their gender identity. Instead, DeLuna informed Jaman that her speech toward Adams was “discriminatory,” that she was “banned for life” from the YMCA because of her speech, and that she could no longer set foot inside the facility.
In addition, DeLuna told Jaman to leave or she would call the police. Jaman told DeLuna that she too wanted the police involved so they could investigate potential misconduct. YMCA staff called 911 and asked for the police to escort Jaman from the premises. A recording of this call reveals that the YMCA staff told the police that Jaman was harassing YMCA employees and belligerently refusing to leave. None of this was true.
None of this was true. It’s important to reiterate this statement from the law firm, and to highlight the effort by several operators within the city administration to carefully craft the narrative before it went public.
Example of redacted communications between the city and the public relations firm hired to provide damage control (page 31, Exhibit C).
More from the Center for American Liberty’s demand letter:
On August 11, 2022—in the wake of significant local and national media attention—the City released an official Q&A discussing the July 26 incident... In the Q&A, the City said — falsely — that Jaman had engaged in a “documented previous pattern of disrespectful behavior.” … The YMCA made similar false statements to the media.See Exhibit B (quoting YMCA’s statement asserting that Jaman had “repeatedly violated the [YMCA’s] code of conduct”). Despite multiple requests, neither the City nor the YMCA has explained this alleged prior misconduct.
Emails and other documents obtained through public-records requests reveal that in the weeks following the July 26 incident, City officials were intimately involved in responding to concerns within the community regarding operation of the Pool. This included what appears to be a coordinated effort involving Mayor David Faber, City Manager John Mauro, and City Councilwoman Libby Wennstrom, among others, working with the YMCA and Feary [sic] Public Relations — a crisis communications firm hired by the City — to develop a public response to the incident.
This public relations campaign included statements to the media, social media posts, the above-mentioned Q&A, and other statements by members of the City Council.See, e.g., Exhibits C–F. These statements labeled Jaman as hateful and bigoted and indicated that she had engaged in a pattern of conduct that violated the YMCA’s policies. None of this is true.
While the above brief synopsis mentions the YMCA’s denial of evidence for its mendacious claims of Jaman’s prior “disrespectful behavior,” it bears repeating here — none of the supposed documentation was ever produced. Julie Jaman asked for it again and again. It does not exist. It was all a fabrication.
Jefferson County resident Crystal Cox requested a copy of the contract with Fearey. The $3,000 charged by the crisis communications firm to run interference for city hall is now just the start of what it will cost taxpayers to deal with the city’s gross mismanagement of a sensitive situation.
The City and the YMCA Violated the First Amendment
The First Amendment prohibits the government from retaliating against individuals forexercising their First Amendment rights... Moreover, the government may not discriminate against speech exercised on public property based on its viewpoint.
First, Jaman’s ban was in retaliation for her protected speech. When Jaman saw Adams accompanying two young girls in the women’s locker room and watching them while they undressed, she was concerned she was witnessing unlawful conduct.
To be sure, the government may, in appropriate cases, take action to protect its employees from harassing conduct of third parties. But Jaman’s comments did not come remotely close to the line of losing protection under the First Amendment or otherwise justifying the YMCA’s response.
By banning Jaman from the Pool based on her speech, the City and the YMCA retaliated against her for engaging in protected activity.
Second, the YMCA engaged in viewpoint discrimination on public property and acted unreasonably in banning Jaman. The government engages in viewpoint discrimination when it allows speech favoring one side of a debate but not the other.
The City and the YMCA Violated the Fourteenth Amendment
The City and the YMCA also violated Jaman’s due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Due Process Clause prohibits the government from depriving an individual of fundamental rights absent due process of law… Exercising First Amendment rights on public property is a protected liberty interest.
The YMCA banned Jaman for life immediately upon hearing her object to Adams’s presence in the locker room. It provided her no notice of its locker-room policy or that such objection would be deemed a violation of the YMCA’s conduct policies.
The City and the YMCA Violated Washington Law
The City and the YMCA also violated Washington common law. The statements that the City and the YMCA published about Jaman were false and defamatory per se, and the City and the YMCA acted in reckless disregard of the truth, at least.
Further, the City’s and the YMCA’s coordinated public relations campaign against Jaman amounts to the intentional infliction of emotional distress… And both the City and the YMCA were negligent in various ways, including but not limited to failing to warn patrons that persons of the opposite biological sex may be in sex-segregated locker-rooms…
The City and YMCA Must Cease their Unlawful Conduct
The City’s and the YMCA’s actions against Jaman were not only unlawful but also shameful. When an 80-year-old woman reasonably believes she is witnessing a crime against minors in a women’s showering area, the government’s reaction should be to gather all of the facts and learn what happened, not take sides in an ideologically charged debate.
Moreover, the public records obtained since the incident show City officials and YMCA employees engaged in a sophisticated and coordinated public relations campaign to smear Jaman and make her appear to be bigoted and dangerous to transgender individuals. This couldn’t be further from the truth. It is true that Jaman supports keeping women’s spaces reserved for biological women. But she does not harbor hate towards anyone based on their gender identity, nor has she ever engaged in harassment at the Pool or elsewhere. Yet that is exactly what the City and the YMCA have led the public to believe through their false and misleading statements.
Lead attorney, Harmeet Dhillon, closes with this:
“To remedy the unlawful conduct against my client, I demand the following: (1) the City and the YMCA lift the ban against Jaman; (2) the City and the YMCA issue a formal apology to Jaman for their actions against her; and (3) the City and the YMCA pay Jaman the sum of $350,000 for her emotional distress arising out of the incident.”
City officials and the YMCA CEO have until 5pm on Wednesday, March 27, 2024 to respond, or they can expect to meet Jaman, her local counsel Rosemary Schurman, and the Center for American Liberty — in court.
Administrators and elected officials in Port Townsend’s city hall are painfully familiar with charges of subverted public processes, and rightfully so. Sims Way poplars, the golf course, streateries, the pool — each of these controversial projects followed trajectories reflecting desires and preferred outcomes of those in power at the expense of transparency and honest efforts at citizen engagement.
Yet another attempt by the city to avoid transparency and manipulate public process has come to light.
In the course of exploring options for Port Townsend’s aging Mountain View pool, City Manager John Mauro and the city’s Director of Parks and Recreation Strategy Carrie Hite have told us there were only two choices. We “do nothing” and wait for the pool’s inevitable closure. Or the City of Port Townsend plus all the county’s taxpayers take on the massive debt of a grandiose $37-50 million aquatic center that citizens are calling the Taj Mahal (see articles here, here, here, here, and here).
Citizens asked repeatedly, What about renovating the existing pool? Mauro and Hite insisted that repairing and upgrading the pool would be prohibitively expensive — that the only option is a full-scale redevelopment of the entire Mountain View complex.
More than half a million dollars later, it turns out that reports provided by experts hired to evaluate the options show their assertion is untrue. And that those reports were kept not only from taxpayers, but also from the city council.
It took two citizens’ requests for documents that are supposed to be publicly available to uncover these suppressed reports.
They revealed estimates to completely refurbish and modernize the pool for $4-$5 million.
First Consultant’s Report
Last summer, the city commissioned Water Technology, Inc. (WTI) to evaluate the condition of the Mountain View pool and estimate the costs of remedying any problems found. WTI provides designs for new pools and the “refreshing” of old pools. In their field, which is primarily traditional construction methodology, they are considered a global leader.
WTI conducted an on-site investigation of the Mountain View pool and provided its report to the city six months ago on September 8, 2023. They found plenty of signs reflecting the age of the facility, the same problems we have heard about from city and YMCA staff, namely:
leakage in the pool vessel;
rippling in the pool liner;
ineffective pool gutter;
clogged drains;
deteriorated pool deck;
corrosion;
lack of underwater lighting;
insufficient HVAC ventilation;
inefficient and problematic pump;
deteriorated heat exchanger;
absence of secondary disinfectant system;
less significant issues such as ceiling bulbs needing replacement.
Example from WTI report of photos and written assessments (from Page 4 of PDF).
WTI estimated that all the deficiencies it found could be repaired and remedied for $2.875 million. For $3.5 million the Mountain View facility could be fully modernized, with complete reconstruction of the pool vessel, pool deck, piping, deck drainage and mechanical systems. They stated:
The newly constructed pool vessel will be designed and engineered to modern standards of quality and compliance and be supported by today’s advanced mechanical, filtration and water treatment systems.
The $3.5 million reconstruction would include:
New lap pool of 3,400 square feet;
Water depth zero to ten feet;
Quartz aggregate finish with tile border and markings;
Four lap lanes with starting platforms;
Shallow water program area.
WTI did not intend to paint only a rosy picture. Their conclusion was clear, and certainly no surprise. New is better, if one can afford new…
There is a significant investment required to provide aquatic amenities to the community which are maintainable long-term. However, lower levels of capital inputs for repairs or renovations in the short-term often result in higher total expenditures in the long-term. This report finds the Port Townsend community would be best served, both programmatically and financially, with a new aquatic facility. A modern aquatic center can provide the durability and efficiencies to enable a more effective and sustainable facility over a lifespan measured in decades than the existing facility after repairs and renovations.
But do we have the resources for a Taj Mahal? With city finances currently falling off a “fiscal cliff”, essential services like water and sewer are at risk right now in Port Townsend. Does “living within our means” apply to governments in the least? Bureaucrats spending other people’s money without consequence for catastrophic failure has led many cities in this country to bankruptcy.
Second Consultant “Found Minimal Damage to the Existing Structure”
WTI’s report did not look into the condition of the building. For that the city retained the services of CG Engineering of Edmonds, Washington “to assist the City with determining the scope and cost of rehabilitating the pool building,” according to the firm’s October 30, 2023 Structural Assessment Report.
CG Engineering inspected the pool on October 10. Water staining was observed on the ceiling. But rotting damage was not found; the stains were superficial. “Roof decking appeared in good condition,” the engineers concluded. Rust and rust stains were also observed at locations around the building.
Dozens of photographs document CG Engineering’s assessment of the Mountain View Pool building’s structure. Page 10 of the 10/30/23 Structural Assessment Report.
Structural elements are in good condition. The concrete walls are in good condition. A pool equipment pad was corroded and deteriorated. A crack in the men’s locker room floor was a shrinkage crack and did not compromise structural integrity. The same conclusion was reached regarding observed hairline fractures in locker room walls.
Director of Parks and Recreation Strategy Hite (who holds neither an engineering degree nor a contractor’s license) has asserted that the pool is doomed and beyond repair partly because of the tunnel under the building.
Not so, concluded the engineers. Yes, the metal decking in the tunnel was severely corroded and had fallen away in several places. But “the decking appears to be non-structural and was likely formwork used during the original construction.” Cracking in the sidewalk slab directly above the tunnel was due to temperature differentials and did not compromise structural integrity, they said.
CG Engineering concluded:
Generally, we found minimal damage to the existing structure. Water staining and rust on the roof framing and steel connectors appeared superficial. The recently added vinyl roof coating appears to have been successful in temporarily preventing further water intrusion to the structural framing. Minor cracks in the concrete/CMU walls and concrete slabs appeared to be temperature and shrinkage related and should not affect the integrity of the structure.
CG Engineering’s recommended remedies came to an estimated cost of $536,643. There is only a partial cost of $300,000 estimated for a new roof which has been quoted elsewhere at $1.07 million. If the higher roofing estimate is accurate, that could bring the structural total to $1.3 million. And there is a to-be-determined line item for seismic retrofit. Seismic retrofits are not necessarily required and that appears to be the case for Mountain View since the city never asked any firm to estimate that cost.
Thus, based on these two consultant’s reports, the combined cost of remedying the building’s deficiencies and completely modernizing and upgrading the aquatic components comes to less than $5 million ($3.5M + $1.3M). Not the tens of millions we have been told it would take to provide a place for children to learn to swim and elders to recreate.
Why did city employees keep this news from the city council and the taxpayers who paid for those reports?
Why was public digging necessary to reveal this information?
Enter the Third Consultant’s Report
The WTI and CG Engineering reports, only recently disclosed, were respectively received by the city six months and four months ago. Both firms have decades of experience in these kinds of analyses.
From minutes of the August 8, 2023 workshop of the Healthier Together Aquatic Center steering committee we learn that these two reports were anticipated by mid-September. The minutes noted:
From minutes of the August 8, 2023 Healthier Together Aquatic Center steering committee meeting with Carrie Hite and eight others in attendance. The meeting focused mostly on using the creation of a Public Facilities District (PFD) as a funding mechanism for the proposed new aquatic center, and strategies for winning approval of a new tax ballot measure brought to county voters.
But upon receipt of WTI’s September 8 Mountain View Pool Evaluation and CG Engineering’s October 30 Structural Assessment Report, neither report assessing the possibilities for upgrading the pool and building was disclosed by the city. When both of the above reports revealed less than a $5 million price tag likely for full repair and renovation, it appears Hite and Mauro took another approach.
A third consultant’s report was commissioned. The city contracted DCW Cost Management, a generalized cost-estimating firm in Seattle with no specific expertise in pools, to do a “Cost Study.”
Unlike the first two reports which present documenting photos and written analysis to remedy existing conditions, DCW’s Cost Study, obtained months later, shows no evidence that the firm assessed anything about the existing pool and structure. Other than saving and repairing some windows and exterior doors and repairing a roof drain, it appears that most if not all of the structure, and every system and all contents were to be replaced with new ones. We are told that “Cost [sic] are developed using existing as-built drawings.”
This cost study herein attempts to address the modernization of the existing facility to meet current code and for the pool to meet competition standards for Jefferson County students. The interior renovation includes new interior finishes, pool expansion and building extension, resurfacing of the pool deck, acoustic wall treatment to the natatorium, new plumbing where systems are broken, mechanical and electrical upgrades to current code.
No drawings or plans are shown, only costs. But reading through the 18 pages which include demolition, mass excavation, earthwork and other site preparation — even $153,000 in new landscaping — the impression is that they have taken a wrecking ball to the current building and used the existing as-built drawings to price out a complete rebuild.
Costs are delineated for components such as roofing ($1.07M), superstructure ($1.77M), plumbing systems ($2.67M), and heating, ventilation and cooling ($1.64M). Every pipe fitting, piece of tile and drain is itemized. There is a $1,530 line item for a 60 square foot “locker room graphic.”
We asked professional contractor Mark Grant of Grant Steel Buildings and Concrete Systems, Inc., who has scrutinized this study, for his impressions.
“Your interpretation is correct in that the DCW pool renovation cost study reflects nearly a complete tear down and rebuild of the entire facility. It is a stretch to refer to the scope of work shown in the DCW report as a renovation.”
He believes it’s prudent to add more for contingencies than is allowed for in the $4-$5 million total of the first two reports. But even another million or two will not come close to DCW’s $21 million rebuild price tag the city is claiming is an under-estimate.
Strategy: City Management Gaming the Public
In November 2023, as a member of the Healthier Together Aquatic Center steering committee, City Manager John Mauro acknowledged to the Jefferson County Commissioners that taxpayer funds in excess of half a million dollars had already been spent in pursuit of the “Taj Mahal” aquatic center project. Consultant fees and other trackable expenses have at this point amounted to over $721,000 — including more than $555,000 from the city, $105,000 from the county, and $50,000 from the Jefferson County Hospital District.
All has been spent in service of convincing the public that if we are to have a community pool in years to come, our only option is the fantastically expensive design presented in June of 2023.
In April of 2022 Mauro hired Carrie Hite to fill the city’s new Director of Parks and Recreation Strategy staff position. That role was created to direct the process and strategize the narrative to sell us on several large-scale city projects, including a lavish new aquatic center beyond our means.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on staff time and consultant fees, presenting the community with this grandiose vision that would require new taxation. Hite and Mauro repeatedly dismissed what should have been the first consideration — expert analysis of the cost to rehabilitate and upgrade the existing pool and building.
When the Healthier Together Aquatic Center plan was unveiled five months after the steering committee first met, there was tremendous community pushback. Homemade “NO PT POOL TAX” signs appeared around the county (see closing photos). Local professionals challenged the city’s assertion that there was no saving the existing pool.
Public pressure pushed the city to finally hire firms to assess the pool and structure and do long overdue cost analyses on a rehab. No doubt Mauro and Hite were looking to justify the supposed impossibility of bringing the Mountain View facility up to snuff. And one would expect that the outlay of yet more consultant money would drive the city to choose the best qualified firms in the field to do the job.
Both initial contractors WTI and CG Engineering appear to have those qualifications. Both have decades of experience. Both made thorough assessments that are well documented.
It appears that when the first two reports did not support the steering committee’s agenda for their flashy new aquatic center, those reports were kept under wraps. A third consultant was hired, a general “cost management” firm. The new kid on the block was given a vastly expanded “tear down and replace'” scope of work.
This interpretation of events is borne out by exchanges between Carrie Hite and Port Townsend resident Musa Jaman, who submitted a request for documents analyzing repairs needed to upgrade the existing pool. In response to a Facebook post from city council member Libby Wennstrom about the pool, Jaman asked where she could get accurate numbers. Wennstrom referred her to Carrie Hite.
Jaman’s email to Hite on November 22, 2023 titled “Public document request” asked “about getting access to the document analyzing the existing pool issues and associated costs to take care of repairs and upgrades along with operational and general maintenance costs.”
Hite responded on November 28, stalling:
“I have forwarded your public records request to our public records officer… The full cost analysis report that we commissioned will not be ready until next week sometime.”
While two reports that performed the analysis Jaman had asked for were already in the city’s possession, they were not disclosed.
On December 12, 2023, Carrie Hite again demonstrated her qualifications as Director of Strategy. She sent Jaman an email explaining the delay, again ignoring the first two reports, and emphasizing her contention that rehabilitation of the existing pool would be even more expensive than the new, expanded 21-million-dollar estimate from DCW that was now in hand.
Hite wrote, in part:
Hi Musa:
I held your PRR as a continued request so I could email you the cost study that was completed by DCW…
The $21M estimate is based on what is visible and given the age and unknowns around the current structure, as well as the rising costs for construction, this number is likely a conservative estimate.
Despite the existence of two credible reports received months earlier proving there were more affordable options, strategist Hite did not reveal the WTI and CG Engineering documents when they were requested. Instead, she waited until the city had obtained another report to support her “too expensive to fix” narrative.
When documents were finally sent to Jaman, the first report — commissioned from “global leaders” in aquatic planning, design and engineering, WTI — was omitted. Only CG Engineering and DCW files were in the attachments Jaman received.
The September 8, 2023 WTI pool evaluation was uncovered separately through a Public Records Request (PRR) by a member of a new group that had formed, the All County Citizens Alliance. He learned of the report’s existence from the minutes of the August 8 pool steering committee meeting, filed a PRR for it, and shared the document with the group.
We try to keep it at a high level:
Obfuscation, half-truths and outright falsehoods
Following receipt of WTI’s report through the PRR, Jim Scarantino, “on behalf of the All County Citizens Alliance,” attended the January 8, 2024 City Council workshop. He delivered “good news” in a public comment about the two studies that had been withheld from the council:
Unfortunately, somehow [the reports] didn’t make it into your packets on November 13th, and later on when you considered the pool.
What those two engineering firms found was that there was minimal damage to the Mountain View pool. And that the building can be repaired for $536,000… And that the pool can be completely replaced and modernized with the latest modern equipment, including a new pool with a shallow entry for parents and children, for $3.5 million, for a total of $4.1 million.…
I don’t know why city staff didn’t notify you of that, but we’re happy to do so.
The responses from Carrie Hite and John Mauro that followed are a master class in verbal ju jitsu, misrepresenting, and false statements.
Hite explained that the WTI assessment is just a “partial report”:
It doesn’t include seismic or ADA or building structures, roof or anything that has to do with the building at all. And so we, the city, contracted out with CGI [conflated with DCW], which is a construction management firm and cost estimator.
And they came back with a $21 million number for the full meal deal. And that was a very high risk number in which to rehab the pool…
There was an additional report that Jim referenced, the CG Engineering in October.
It was just up [sic] the roof…
“Just up the roof” is not only garbled — if, as it appears from context, she meant their report was “just about (or for) the roof” — that statement is flat-out false.
As we have shown, CG Engineering supplemented WTI’s report on the aquatic component of the equation with a full “assessment of the Mountain View Pool building’s structure.” Along with roof replacement, their Structural Assessment Report includes concrete walls, steel pipe columns, concrete slabs, pool room structural elements, and mechanical access tunnels.
Seismic wasn’t requested, nor is it included in any line items in the $21 million “full meal deal” from DCW. It is true that ADA was not addressed, but according to DCWs cost study those add-ons would amount to just $9,990 for an ADA-compliant shower, ramp & detectors, and parking signs.
The “full meal” from DCW offered the easy out — $21 million! By changing the scope of work to a “tear down and replace,” the full meal became a smorgasbord. Far from the rehab option that the community had been requesting which the first two reports looked at, it was an all-you-can-eat buffet with $1,500 locker room graphics and $153,000 of new outdoor landscaping for our indoor swim.
“And that 21 million might be 26, might be 27,” Hite told council.
She then said that “the steering committee saw that [DCW] report,” but made “the recommendation not to put a dollar into the old pool, because we can’t get any state and federal money or grants or philanthropy for that old pool.”
She concluded:
So those reports are operational in nature. We try to keep it at a high level.
If you want the details, I’d be happy to send it to you. But we really tried to go through the steering committee first and keep it at a very high level and make some decisions based on the full report, not a partial report.
John Mauro jumped in:
Can I also add to that, that report has been available online for some time?…
And not to mince words too much, because I know this is a game.
But it’s easy to cherry pick numbers and manufacture a different truth.
A game it is. City Manager Mauro did not create the position of Director of Parks and Recreation Strategy to oversee a practical renovation of “that old pool.” Carrie Hite was hired to sell us a “very high level” new aquatic center.
And her “happy to send you the details” was for just one report, DCW’s full meal deal.
When the reports were requested, that $21 million “tear down and replace” cost study was the only one made available to council members. That is the one Mauro references that was online. To this day, it remains the only one of the three posted by the city.
The initial WTI and CG Engineering reports, totaling less than $5 million, are not disclosed on the city’s website. On the “Healthier Together” aquatic center web page under “Materials Available for Review,” there is no mention of the two firms’ analyses and findings that support sensible renovation and modernization of the existing pool.
Insufficient revenues. Increasing expenditures. Stagnant economy. Port Townsend is heading over its financial cliff fast.
Don a green eye shade and take a flinty-eyed look at the city budget just approved for 2024. There’s red ink everywhere. The vapid verbiage of John Mauro’s City Manager’s Report can’t cancel it. It is only erased by burning reserves unlikely to be replenished in the foreseeable future. At a time when significant growth is needed, city projections for next year see a contraction in business activity and tax revenue.
What is celebrated as growth over the years since the city emerged from pandemic restrictions owes much to recent high inflation. It is not real growth.
Since those restrictions ended, the city has lost 10% of its commercial utility accounts. Businesses are closing up and leaving town. I recently counted 18 shuttered businesses from upper Sims Way, down Water Street and along lower Washington Street.
The Public Works Director has stated that strong, steady growth and a “radical change” are needed. Instead we are seeing denial, business as usual and City Hall chasing grandiose projects it cannot afford, like an expensive new aquatic center.
The words “save money” and “austerity” are foreign to City Hall’s vocabulary. Instead, the city seeks to expand outlays and staffing. That means a more rapid depletion of reserves and an accelerated march over that financial cliff the city acknowledges is its future.
The Fiscal Cliff
The City’s Financial Sustainability Task Force predicts that city finances will launch over a “fiscal cliff” in a few short years. We reported on the city’s grim financial future here and here. The graphic from the Task Force’s final report shows the city eating reserves at a quickening rate beginning in 2025 and descending into municipal failure in 2028.
The city’s 2024 budget — just approved on December 4, 2023 — shows that the cliff is closer than the Financial Sustainability Task Force predicted. After less than two years of employment, the city’s finance director bid farewell with the last budget she would submit to city council.
The city has seen a number of resignations of other key personnel — including the city clerk, HR director, and other financial staff — a subject worthy of another report. In terms of fiscal impact, departures of critical employees translates into losses as money and time must be expended in recruiting and hiring replacements. Inefficiencies abound until replacement hires get up to speed and fit in.
The work of the outgoing finance director shows that the city currently lacks income sufficient to pay all its bills. To make the budget balance, it must take money out of reserves. A lot of money. The Financial Sustainability graphic projected very little change from 2023 to 2024. But the reality reflected in the approved 2024 budget shows the city has already begun its dive off that fiscal cliff.
Look at all the red ink in the following table from the city’s budget for the coming year.
The city had to reduce its General Fund reserve by 35% to produce a budget on paper that appears balanced. Its General Fund reserve is now just barely $4 million. That is down from $6.9 million at the start of 2023. That huge drop of more than a third of its reserves is due to the fact that the city overshot its projected 2023 expenses by almost $2.4 million. And more of its General Fund reserve will need to be withdrawn in the coming year.
Nearly $2.4 million, more than one third of the city’s reserves, were drained to meet expenses in 2023.
Where did all the money go?
Consultants got a huge chunk. And expenses related to the golf course “envisioning” and indulging expensive fantasies for a new aquatic center contributed heavily to a $4.7 million supplemental budget passed earlier in 2023.
The city has also been spending down its $2.755 million in federal Covid gift money (American Rescue Plan Act – “ARPA”). According to federal law, these funds were to be spent on water, sewer and other infrastructure, revenue replacement for the hit municipal finances took from Covid lock-down, assistance to small businesses, households and industries negatively impacted by Covid-related losses, or premium pay for essential workers. All of that money will be spent by the end of 2024; none will be left for 2025.
Judge for yourself whether these federal funds were spent properly. The largest single use of federal Covid funds — $741,500 — will, by the end of 2024, be spent on enhancing City Hall and council chambers, paying for such items as a new door, chairs and tables, carpet, and remodeling staff offices. (See page 12 of the 2024 budget report.) In his year-end message for 2023, City Manager Mauro elevated remodeling Council chambers to the level of a “core” municipal service.
The next largest use of Covid funds — $505,958 — went not to fixing sewers, water lines and other infrastructure, but to re-imagining the golf course and the pool. On top of that, another $255,000 went to parks.
Not a dime of these Federal funds was spent on fixing sewers and water lines or other infrastructure, with the possible exception of $59,000 for a mini-excavator.
The city expanded its payroll by adding a “Long Range Planner” for $240,000. Another $50,000 was spent on something called an “Engagement Survey.”
Rapid Growth and Expansion As More Red Ink Flows
Critical infrastructure — streets, water and sewers — show deficits in their capital and operating accounts. At the same time City Hall expenditures have been growing dramatically in other areas.
Comparing the city payroll in 2021 to the 2024 budget shows huge growth. Government, of course, is expanding after pulling back during the pandemic. But this robust ballooning comes in the face of that impending dive off the precipice just up ahead. City staffing is, thus, returning to and exceeding previously unsustainable levels.
Expenditures for the mayor and council have more than doubled.
The city attorney has seen a 32% increase.
Communications, a new PR department, has been created.
Human resources has grown by 260%.
Planning and Development Services has grown 250%.
Police administration — not to be confused with patrol officers — has more than doubled.
Police operations has also grown — by 45%.
The City Clerk has enjoyed a budgetary increase of 53%.
The city hopes to add six more employees in 2024.
The city manager budget has remained relatively constant, but Mauro has been hiring and expanding other departments that serve him, putting those numbers onto other budget lines. Positions like the new Communications & Marketing Manager make his office look good.
Let’s not forget that in November 2022 Mauro got a $12,500 retention bonus, a 10% raise and a car allowance large enough to cover driving 10,000 miles annually. His severance pay was doubled from 6 months to one year’s salary, and then he went on a 5 week vacation. This came at a time when he was boasting of implementing “lean thinking” at City Hall.
Feeble Economy, Diminished Revenues
The city’s utility account suggests a significant loss of businesses and commercial activity since 2021, with commercial accounts shrinking from 454 to 408.
To make matters worse, the city is forecasting a downturn in revenues for 2024 — even though it continues to increase its expenditures.
Business & Occupation tax receipts, a reflection of economic activity, have on average since 2021, been flat at $927,000, and are predicted to decrease in 2024. The Real Estate Excise Tax, which is generated by real estate sales, has declined steadily from 2022 and continues its downward trajectory in 2024.
The Lodging Tax, a proxy measurement for tourist activity, shows revenues pulling back to 2021 levels.
Sales tax receipts account for 40% of the city’s general fund tax revenues. They bounced back following the lifting of Covid restrictions but have stalled out.
Adjusted (decreased) for inflation, the picture grows more somber. The annual rate of All Items Consumer Price Index inflation in 2021 was 7%, in 2022 reached 9.1%, and in 2023 is estimated to be 3.1%. The columns in the graph immediately below would be, cumulatively, that much lower when inflated revenues are adjusted to show real dollar values.
Note that sales tax receipts are projected to decline for 2024, not a good omen when there’s already red ink in the budget.
Next Up: 2025
Where are desperately needed, steadily increasing revenues going to come from?
The lodging and sales tax graphs show that the tourist economy is effectively maxed out. THING, the music and arts festival which has been a big boost to the city’s tourist economy, will not be returning. Fort Worden, once a dynamic job creator, continues to struggle. An inadequate stock of hotel rooms — both in numbers and quality — is a serious bottleneck preventing expansion of the tourist economy and disqualifying PT as a convention or business meeting destination.
New businesses are not sprouting up in PT, nor are established businesses relocating here. As mentioned earlier, I recently counted 18 shuttered or darkened storefronts and offices from upper Sims Way through downtown on Water and Washington Streets.
There are always tax and utility rate increases to feed city coffers. But making Port Townsend an even more expensive place to live and do business is the opposite of what is needed.
The Tri-Area, by comparison, seems to be doing better economically. The office parks and retail centers appear to be fully occupied. A new Dollar Store is going into Port Hadlock and Henery’s has acquired and invested heavily in the old Hadlock Hardware. Carl’s Building Supply is expanding and adding a showroom. These are signs of confidence in what is emerging as a competitive, lower-cost economic hub slated to enjoy significant population growth in future decades. It was recently disclosed at a County Commission meeting that Jefferson County outside Port Townsend city limits already generates over 70% of the county’s total sales taxes.
Port Townsend depends heavily on retail sales. But it continues to lose out to Kitsap and Clallam Counties where many residents travel regularly to do much of their shopping. PT currently has a 9.4% sales tax. City leaders are pushing to raise it to 9.6% to fund a new aquatic center. Clallam County, in contrast, has an 8.6% rate in its unincorporated areas, and Sequim, where the big box stores patronized by PT households are located, has an 8.9% rate.
The Aquatic Center Fantasy
Cash-strapped Port Townsend already allocates $386,000 to subsidize the Mountain View pool. In an effort to persuade the rest of the county to accept higher sales taxes to pay for construction of a new $37-$48 million aquatic center, PT is promising to up its contribution to $430,000 annually for the next 30 years, and threatening to withhold its largesse unless the new pool is built at Mountain View Commons.
Baloney.
Port Townsend does not have the money to back up its words. When it falls off that fiscal cliff in a few years, will the city terminate police officers, engineers, sewage plant workers or city hall administrative staff in order to throw $430,000 at pool operations? And how can the current city council bind the hands of future city councils struggling to provide core municipal services? This city council cannot make the pool subsidy an untouchable sacred cow for the next three decades.
Spending on amenities, particularly recreation, is the first thing axed by struggling municipalities. Pools are money drains. When municipal budgets are pinched, recreation expenditures get cut. Every community that has a public pool faces this dilemma, and many have closed their aquatic facilities because they had no other choice.
Without the luxury of fat reserves and a booming economy, Port Townsend also will have no choice but to jettison its discretionary commitment to a recreational amenity. State law requires that municipalities fund core services; it does not mandate funding pools.
Water, Sewers and Streets
The city needs to spend $56 million keep its sewer system functioning by lining all asbestos, concrete and vitrified clay pipes. That is a conservative estimate. Plus, the sewage treatment plant is at capacity and showing its age. To accommodate future growth, it must be modernized and expanded. That cost has not been nailed down.
The city needs to spend, according to a 2019 analysis, $119 million to repair and sustain its sole water line from the Quilcene River. So far, the city has banked about $8 million towards this goal.
The Lords Lake dam above Quilcene that retains city drinking water requires seismic upgrades that could cost $4-5 million.
The city needs at least $30 million to get a grip on its rapidly failing city streets. Voters approved a .3% sales tax for streets, but that may not be enough. Completely and properly fixing the city’s streets is estimated to require the next thirty years and more money.
Leadership Deficit
Not only on financial ledgers does Port Townsend show a deficit. It suffers from a paucity of competent, responsible leadership. Those who exhibit and strive for financial sensibility are in a small minority on City Council. The city is mostly governed by seriously unserious people.
In their own words:
From City Manager John Mauro’s 2024 Budget Message:
Drawing together a responsible, disciplined, and strategic budget is somewhat like assembling a three-dimensional puzzle. There are many pieces, and each piece doesn’t really make sense on its own. It takes time to understand the shape and scale of the pieces and how they relate to each other. Once the pieces start clicking together, it takes the form of something more cohesive, stable, and sensible. It becomes something that keeps our community running and guides us.
We’ve put our heads together to puzzle over the 2024 budget, working out a series of inter-related puzzles at the same time – all while the pieces themselves actually morph and change. For instance, we’ve been working toward a more comprehensive vision for our streets and transportation that serves all of us. We’ve been working to increase the availability of attainable workforce housing. We’ve been envisioning the future of the golf course, and a regional aquatic center. And much more. While each of these things is, itself, substantive and complex, focusing only on one of them at a time misses a more honest discussion of tradeoffs and balance, as well as the strategic power of the whole.
All those words and not one mention of the fact the city is being forced to burn reserves again.
And then there’s this, when explaining “sensible streamlining”:
[W]e are sensibly streamlining policies to best optimize necessary checks and balances with desired efficiency and productivity.
What, if anything, did he just say?
There was hardly any discussion by city council when adopting the 2024 budget at their December 4, 2023 meeting. For clearer insights into the irresponsibility and lack of common sense of those in charge of the city’s troubled affairs, we can go to their more in-depth, more detailed and more thorough discussion of building a new pool.
The price tag, as we’ve reported here repeatedly, is huge, $37-$48 million. That $11 million spread represents the foreseeable cost overruns. We have reported on the worrisome problems with the aquatic center’s feasibility study that bode ill for the project’s long-term financial success. An expensive municipal pool can empty public coffers in a hurry and saddle taxpayers with a hungry beast that must be fed for decades to come.
How seriously have members of the ruling clique on City Council addressed this huge challenge?
Here’s City Councilor Aislinn Palmer, in her comments at the November 21, 2024 meeting where Council voted to express support for the aquatic center proposal:
The operating costs just don’t add up for me. But I think we just have to build it. We’re at the point where we have to build something, and some of that will just have to get figured out as that’s just how you get things done anywhere. (@2:19:43 of the video recording)
Councilor Libby Wennstrom got City Council chuckling. Here’s her response to concerns that problems with the aquatic center’s finances could spell trouble:
If we’re over our head in ten years, at least we’ll have a pool to dip in. (@2:31:55 of video recording)
Recently City Council devoted an entire meeting to working with a group therapist. They were told to write down things they felt they did correctly, then share how reflecting on a memory of a past success made them feel. Taxpayers were billed $1,300 for the ninety-minute session.
The closer you look, the more problematic a new Port Townsend aquatic center appears. Operating costs would greatly exceed initial projections, according to the feasibility study prepared to boost the city’s promotion of a new aquatic/fitness center. The estimated annual operating expenditure of almost $2.1 million is more than twice the cost once projected by the city’s Sustainability Task Force and more than six times current operating costs for Mountain View pool.
To have any hope of avoiding financial failure, the new aquatic center would have to generate revenues as much asseventeen times greater than current operations, and hit that mark as soon the second year of operation.
And still a new P.T. aquatic center would run annual deficits of around $400,000.
Its projected operating costs would be greater than those of the Sequim YMCA and the Shore Aquatic Center in Port Angeles, and yet its revenue would be less.
These are just a few of the red flags that abound in the feasibility study for a new $38-$53 million aquatic/fitness center for Port Townsend. I discussed some of the problems with this document in “Drowning in Red Ink: Mountain View Pool and Proposed Aquatic Center.” Here I will delve deeper into why this “feasibility study” is a clanging alarm bell that should stop any responsible and prudent decision maker in her tracks.
A View of Port Townsend from the Rocky Mountains
The feasibility study was prepared for the city and its aquatic center steering committee by Ballard King & Associates of Highland Park, Colorado. They did not conduct any market research in and around Port Townsend or the rest of the county. Based on their report, it’s easy to conclude that they’ve never even been here. Their 69-page analysis exclusively uses census data and other exogenous statistical information, then extrapolates those statistics to our area.
They required pages of data, charts and graphs to reach the conclusion that we are an unusually old, childless and poor community, something we already know too well. Yet, despite heavy doses of data on demographics and economic conditions, they manage to say not one word about what is recognized here as our number one problem: our affordable housing crisis.
Anybody who had spent a little time on the ground here would know that our affordable housing crisis is driving demographics and economic challenges. It pushes young people and families away, and deprives employers of workers, depressing economic activity and stifling growth. Yet, not a peep about our biggest problem from these consultants in the picture they paint of Port Townsend’s population, economy and culture. Addressing that towering problem would push the pool way down the priority list of our immediate needs, and leave little money for the costly amenity of a new aquatic/fitness center.
Some of Ballard King’s statistical extrapolation produced manifestly absurd results, such as concluding that in 2022 the Port Townsend area likely had 1,305 people engaged in basketball, 173 adults participating in cheerleading, and 313 adults doing gymnastics. Other absurdities riddle their computations.
At the same time that they were crunching numbers to tell us how our community recreates and exercises, they ignored bicycling completely. Notice there is no entry for biking in the above table. Yet, we have one of the premier biking trails in the nation in the Olympic Discovery Trail and the gem of the Larry Scott Trail running from the Boat Haven to Four Corners. Those trails see heavy bicycle use every day, as do our roads and streets. But, again, not a peep from consultants sitting at their desks in Colorado trying to guess how we spend our time and stay fit.
They purported to exhaustively survey existing swimming pools in the area. But somehow they missed the fact that Cape George has its own pool and they placed the Mountain View Pool at Kala Point. Then they put the Kala Point pool in Port Ludlow. The Port Ludlow pools they relocated to Silverdale. This map also indicates two pools in Port Angeles, when there is only one, the William Shore Aquatic Center.
Map of area pools from page 41 of Ballard King feasibility study.
So detached are they from reality in Port Townsend, that on page 13 the Colorado consultants compared us to the State of Pennsylvania. One has to wonder if their report mixed us up with work they were doing for a community in the Keystone State instead of on the Quimper Peninsula, and where else in their report they confused us with other communities. This following graph, by the way, was used to make the case that our community is capable of spending quite a bit more money on recreational activities because the level of our expenditures for necessities — such as our very affordable housing — is below the national level and below that of… Pennsylvania(?)
The “primary service area” in this graph is Port Townsend, Cape George, Discovery Bay, the Tri-Area, Kala Point and Marrowstone; the “secondary service area” is everything in Jefferson County to the south of Chimacum.
Ballard King & Associates of Highland Park, Colorado, also concluded that over a thousand residents around Port Townsend and from the south county go to Planet Fitness and LA Fitness.
Table from page 30 of Ballard King report showing percentage of population they claim belong to fitness clubs.
The percentages in this table apply to the “primary service area” around Port Townsend. Ballard King estimated the population of that area at 21,551, meaning they believe that in and around Port Townsend, 884 people (4.1% of the population) patronize Planet Fitness and 280 (1.3% of the population) go to LA Fitness. There is, of course, neither a Planet Fitness nor an LA Fitness in Jefferson County. The nearest Planet Fitness would require a ferry ride to Oak Harbor or a drive to Bremerton. There are no LA Fitness outlets on this side of Puget Sound.
But there are two fine full-service gyms, Port Townsend Athletic Club and Evergreen Fitness. Ballard King didn’t bother to inquire as to the membership and usage of those facilities.
How much were they paid to churn this stuff out?
Risky Business
Several versions of a future aquatic center have been proposed: the “basic” model (pool only); the “basic plus gym”; and the Full Monty, a large swimming facility with several pools, gym, exercise rooms, meeting rooms, etc. — something on the scale of a large urban YMCA. Ballard King projected that the annual operating costs of the Full Monty would be nearly $2.1 million, with revenues of about $1.7 million and a deficit requiring public subsidy of about $350,000.
The subsidy for any aquatic/fitness short of a Full Monty would be somewhat higher because it would have fewer profit centers, e.g., weight room, yoga studio, etc. As I reported in my first article on this feasibility study, Ballard King recognizes that the many private gym and exercise studios existing in our community already, from full service gyms, to yoga and pilates studios, pose a “challenge” for the financial success of an aquatic/fitness competitor.
Herb Cook, a current Director and Past President of the Olympic YMCA, weighed in on the financial feasibility of aquatic centers in a Nextdoor comment on this issue. He wrote that the Sequim YMCA in 2019 (the last year before the pandemic lockdowns) had “more than 3,000 membership units (family and single) and 6,000 total members. Total revenue was slightly less than $2.2 million, total expenses slightly more than $1.8 million, net operating surplus more than $300,000.”
The Sequim YMCA is a Full Monty and then some. It offers a “six lane lap pool, a shallow family pool, hot tub, dry sauna, gymnasium, racquetball courts and wellness area.” It also offers basketball and volleyball and personal training and a steam room.
6,000 total members, 3,000 “membership units” make the Sequim YMCA feasible, according to Cook. Ballard King’s projections for the number of individual “membership units” for a Port Townsend aquatic/fitness center don’t come close. They project only 1,435 purchases of monthly and annual passes, 485 ten-visit pass sales, 55 daily passes per month.
The Sequim YMCA’s financial picture is the opposite of what Ballard King projects for a potential full-scale PT aquatic/fitness center. Where the Sequim YMCA brought in $2.2 million in revenue, PT’s top model is projected to bring in $1.7 million. On the expense side, PT’s projected operating costs would be almost $2.1 million versus just over $1.8 million for the Sequim YMCA. The amount of the projected PT aquatic/fitness center’s loss would be almost what the Sequim YMCA has seen as an operating surplus.
Proponents of a new PT aquatic center like to point to the William Shore Aquatic Center in Port Angeles. In my prior report, I showed that the projected admission fees for a new PT facility would be almost twice those charged at Shore. The Shore center relies heavily on property taxes to cover the difference between its operating costs and earned revenues.
Shore was built in the same era as the Mountain View pool and has undergone much maintenance, renovations, upgrades and expansions. It is now a very modern, attractive facility with several aquatic recreation offerings and a few “dry land” programs like yoga and personal fitness classes. It is situated in a younger community with a population more than twice the size of Port Townsend’s.
Yet it still requires a public subsidy of about $1.7 million annually, according to its 2022 budget. Those funds are collected through property taxes imposed by a metropolitan park district.
The Shore center’s 2022 budgeted operating costs were $1,622,715. This is a number generated with years of learning from actually operating the facility. The Ballard King projections for the comparable PT facility are $1,268,557, significantly below what the Shore center has found it needs to operate.
But we are supposed to believe that a PT aquatic/fitness center with higher operating costs, in a smaller community, with a very old and poor population, will need a subsidy only a quarter of the size of Shore’s? To hit that target, Ballard King assumes the aquatic/fitness center will enjoy a geometric jump in revenue that requires our old and poor population to pay admission fees about twice as high as those charged at the Shore Aquatic Center.
At least Ballard King, on page 50, near the end of their study, tells us not to take their projections to the bank. They disclaim any guarantee that their numbers may be relied upon fully. Do so at your own risk.
We Can Do That
No engineering analysis of what it would cost to upgrade and/or keep the Mountain View pool going as it is currently built was conducted before the push for a new aquatic/fitness center became public. Carrie Hite, the city’s Director of Parks and Recreation Strategy, stated in an email that, “We have opted not to spend close to $100K on a current full systems and structural analysis.” I have seen nothing to suggest that the city sought competitive bids for such an analysis. Hite could be pulling that number out of the air.
A full systems analysis was done for the city in 2001 by The ORB Organization, architects-planners-engineers, of Redmond, Washington. That analysis concluded, “The existing pool is quite adequate for basic instruction, training and aerobics,” but was not suitable for competitive swimming or diving. ORB examined all aspects of the pool and concluded it could be upgraded to meet current code requirements for $167,714 and its life extended for another 30 years–to 2031–for $355,113.
The roof does require replacement. Hope Roofing of Port Townsend conducted an inspection that found significant leakage and structural issues, such as soft spots where it would be unsafe to stand. City council recently had the option of fixing the roof properly, with a long-lasting, multi-decade solution, at the cost of $1 million. It opted for a temporary membrane fix that will last only a few years.
Hite wrote in her email that, “Parts for the pool are not manufactured anymore, so the pool is one breakdown away from closure.” We have also heard this at the town halls from Opsis, the Portland, Oregon architectural firm responsible for the conceptual illustration at the top of this article. They claim that parts for Mountain View’s pumps and filters cannot be purchased, so the pool only has a few years left before it must be scrapped.
But that is not necessarily true.
Workers at the Port Townsend Foundry
“We can fabricate anything for the pool,” Pete Langley, owner of the Port Townsend Foundry told me. His business is a custom and production nonferrous foundry in operation since 1983. They fabricate products from architectural castings to industrial castings to maritime hardware to antique replacements.
“I can build a pump from scratch. The equipment for a pool is not complicated. We can make anything the pool needs right here. We are a maker’s community,” Langley said. I was standing with him outside his operation in Glen Cove. He waved at other businesses that design and build sophisticated equipment and machinery. His “we” referred to his neighbors as well as his own highly skilled workers.
Langley is a current board member and the 2022 chairperson of the city’s Maritime Trades Association. “Look, we build boats. Some of the machinery in the mill is a hundred years old. The people in this town can fix a pool.”
Port Townsend’s annual Wooden Boat Festival is around the corner. The Port Townsend Foundry and other businesses here keep those magnificent classic boats going. They fabricate the hardware and parts “that are not manufactured anymore.” A pool’s simple filter and pumps are a lot less complicated and demanding than anything that heads out to the open ocean.
I have written Hite to ask if the city has consulted with Langley about fabricating locally any parts needed for the Mountain View pool. I am still awaiting a reply.
A Rigged Game
A decision was made by someone that a completely new aquatic center is going to be built. Opsis was brought in from Portland not to critically evaluate whether the existing pool could be renovated and upgraded, as the Shore Aquatic Center has been, but to promote a new pool through highly orchestrated “town halls.”
Opsis stands to land a lucrative architectural contract if the city gets the funding to build one of the versions of a new aquatic/fitness center.
At these “town halls” Opsis handed out colored circles with adhesive backing. Audience members were instructed to vote their preferences by sticking the dots on the artist conception of a new facility and selected features they liked (see our January 2023 article). Opsis did not make available any “No new aquatic center” option.
When questions were raised about the feasibility of addressing Mountain View’s needs, Opsis dismissed them out of hand. It was either go with one of the Opsis renderings of a new aquatic/fitness center or go without a pool — a stark choice that alarmed many of the frequent, elderly users of the pool who attended these “town halls.”
In the latest on-line survey people could vote only for which taxing method they like to raise the funds to pay for a new aquatic/fitness center. A “no new tax” option was not offered. At the last town hall held at Fort Worden on July 13, 2023, in response to a question from the audience Hite revealed that only about 150 people had been participating in the survey that was providing direction to the process.
“The Mountain View pool is nearing the end of its life,” has been the drum beat from Opsis and city manager John Mauro. That is an urban myth unproven by any engineering analysis. It is a talking point, and a talking point only, to drive people towards approving taxes to build a completely new, and vastly more expensive facility with implausible financial viability.
A responsible approach would have been to do a full engineering systems analysis at the beginning of this process. Instead, someone in City Hall launched a campaign to go after $38-53 million in new taxes to build a new aquatic/fitness center on a scale seen in larger urban areas.
The first installment was the $175,000 paid to Opsis for its drawings and “town halls” and whatever was paid to Ballard King for their “feasibility study.” Throw in the six-figure salary being paid to contract employee Hite whose job as “Strategy Director” is promoting the new pool (and a remake of the golf course), and all the time spent by city employees and others on the town halls and behind-the-scenes meetings to secure taxes for a new pool. We will never know what could have been accomplished with those funds if instead they had been invested in addressing Mountain View’s needs and finding a way to keep what we’ve got as they did in Port Angeles… and also Anacortes, by the way.
Opsis presents its final recommendation to City Council on September 5, 2023. Hite has said the goal is to get a proposed tax measure on a special election ballot in February 2024. The two tax measures under consideration are a property tax hike that would hit properties in Cape George, Discovery Bay, Irondale, Port Hadlock and Chimacum (and areas to the south), Marrowstone Island, and Kala Point, as well as Port Townsend. The other tax measure being considered is a county-wide sales tax.
How many people use the Mountain View pool and who are they? With numbers like $53 million being batted around — the projected cost of building a brand new aquatic center — more than anecdotal information is called for. To answer those questions we now have 18 months of post-pandemic data from the Olympic Peninsula YMCA, which manages the pool under contract with the City of Port Townsend, provided by the 2022 annual report and a just-completed report for the first 6 months of 2023.
In 2022, according to the annual report from the Y, Mountain View pool saw an average of 212 individual users each month. That number is calculated by adding together all individual users reported for each month of the year and dividing by 12.
Quite a few of these individuals use the pool a lot. For instance, in January 2022, 182 individuals were responsible for 1,287 total visits to the pool, or an average of just over seven visits per individual. Some of those 182 people may have used the pool only once. The Y reported 85 “drop-in” uses for January 2022. It is thus possible that fewer than 100 people (182 minus the number of drop-in visits) generated over 1,200 visits.
The Y tracked visitors by age and geographic area: 53% of users were older than 55; the largest single category of users was those over age 65 (40%). Less than a quarter of the users were under age 17.
Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of users live relatively close to the pool, within Port Townsend city limits. 82% of users in 2022 lived in Port Townsend; 16% in Jefferson County outside the city; and 2% traveled from Port Angeles to use the Mountain View pool. Applying these percentages to the average monthly usage, we can see that only 174 Port Townsend residents used the pool each month. Only 34 county residents outside city limits used the pool.
The data shows considerable use of Sequim and Port Angeles Y pools by people who also use the Mountain View pool. Those other cities reported 399 visits over the year from Mountain View swimmers.
The Y reported a total of 696 individual visits to the Mountain View pool in all of 2022. Clearly, some of those were one-time-only visits, as the monthly average of individuals using the pool is less than a third of that number. Mountain View saw a total of 15,815 visits for all of 2022. By comparison, the Fidalgo Pool in Anacortes, which is almost as old as the Mountain View pool, nearly matches Mountain View’s entire annual usage in just over two months. Anacortes has a population of just under 18,000; Port Townsend has just under 11,000.
The 212 average monthly users of the pool represent about 0.6% of the 33,000 people who live in Jefferson County. The 174 average monthly users who live in Port Townsend represent less than 2% of the city’s population. The 696 individuals who visited the pool at least once over the course of 12 months in 2022 represent 2.1% of Jefferson County’s population. The 571 individuals who live in Port Townsend who used the pool at least once over the course of 2022 represent a little more than 5% of the city’s population.
The graphs show that usage rose in the first half of the year, peaking in July. October usage was only 51% of July’s usage. December 2022 usage was 58% of July’s usage.
2023 Visits Up Somewhat
The Y provided a semi-annual report to the city on July 31, 2023, covering the first six months. It was not as detailed as the 2022 annual report. Significantly, it did not break out individual users by age and geographical area. The monthly average for individual users for the first six months of 2023 was 280. The monthly average for the first 6 months of 2022 was 220.
This number cannot be extrapolated for all of the 2023. Usage in 2022 dropped off significantly after July. This pattern may repeat in 2023. Data shows that usage peaked earlier, in April 2023 versus July 2022.
The total number of visits, on the other hand, remain fairly steady regardless of monthly differences in the number of individual users, suggesting that as in 2022 a smaller group of users account for most of the pool’s usage. But even their level of usage dropped as the year wore on.
A City Pool, Not Truly a Regional Pool
The steering committee behind the push to build a new aquatic center talks about Mountain View as a “regional pool.” A geographical area that includes all of Marrowstone Island, Cape George, Kala Point, Irondale, Port Hadlock and Chimacum, as well as areas to the south, is described as the pool’s “primary service area.”
The consultant from OPSIS Architecture of Portland, Oregon, who is working for the steering committee and who has led the town hall discussions and presentations to City Council and the Board of County Commissioners, has used the phrase “capture areas” to describe these areas of the county. He has done so in the context of reaching beyond city limits in order to find more money for the pool’s construction and operation. He and City Manager John Mauro have made it clear that taxing those “capture areas” is necessary to raise the tens of millions of dollars the city needs to build a new aquatic center.
But the Y’s report clearly shows that Mountain View is a city pool, not a regional pool. Only 25 monthly pool users live in the “capture areas,” according to the percentages shown in the 2022 pie chart pictured above. I asked Wendy Bart, CEO of Olympic Peninsula YMCA, if the same percentages of city versus county users has held into 2023. She has not responded.
Carrie Hite, the city’s contract worker who carries the title of “Director of Parks and Recreation Strategy,” and who is charged with driving the city’s quest for a new aquatic center as well as a reworking of the golf course, has expressed disappointment at how very few people attended the aquatic center town hall in the Chimacum High School Auditorium on April 27, 2023. That may be due to the fact that virtually no one in the “capture areas” uses the pool. It is considered the city’s pool — not Chimacum residents’ issue and none of their business.
Chimacum High School groups, according to the Y’s two pool reports discussed here, have not been using the pool, though classes from Salish Coast and Blue Heron in Port Townsend do. And until recently, when “No P.T. Pool Tax” signs started appearing along streets and roads, few in the “capture areas” had any idea that city leaders were eyeing their homes, farms and businesses, as well as their purchases at stores, for significant tax increases to fund the city’s dreams of a brand new, enormously expensive aquatic center.
The steering committee is led principally by city of Port Townsend employees but includes representatives from the PT school district, the port, the Y and county government. It is considering two taxing options:
One would be creation of a “regional recreational district” that could lead to a property tax hike of up to $0.75/$1,0000 of assessed value. This tax would be imposed on the “primary service area” shown within the red-shaded area on an image displayed at the last town hall and reproduced below.
The other option being floated by the steering committee is a county-wide sales tax increase.
Both options require public votes. The consultants and steering committee will present their final recommendation to the Port Townsend City Council on September 5, 2023.
Service Areas to create a “regional recreational district” for new taxation to fund the proposed aquatic center, as displayed at the last town hall. Red (Primary) delineates Port Townsend and county “capture areas” — Marrowstone Island, Cape George, Kala Point, Irondale, Port Hadlock and Chimacum. The blue line (Secondary) delineates boundaries for a potential county-wide sales tax increase.
WTI’s report did not look into the condition of the building. For that the city retained the services of 
The WTI and CG Engineering reports, only recently disclosed, were respectively received by the city six months and four months ago. Both firms have decades of experience in these kinds of analyses.
New businesses are not sprouting up in PT, nor are established businesses relocating here. As mentioned earlier, I recently counted 18 shuttered or darkened storefronts and offices from upper Sims Way through downtown on Water and Washington Streets.
