Ok. It’s time to jump into the indoor pool debate.
It seems like a great idea. Scratch that. It is a great idea. Anything that helps people be healthier is great. It would be good for seniors with mobility issues. It would give the very successful swim team a home pool to practice at all year-round. And it would make our student swimmers at SESS unstoppable. (Remember, the girls won gold and the boys won bronze this year!)
It would give year-round employment to a few people from life guards to cleaners.
When looking at the benefits it’s a no brainer. It would be great.
But get ready for the backsplash.
How are residents in Area B, Area G and Keremeos going to pay for it?
Communities all around the Lower Similkameen are showing interest in building an indoor pool. Princeton has talked about it for years and they’re finally getting close to maybe, sometime soon actually starting to build it, maybe.
Princeton has a mine, and a mill, and several off-shoot forestry businesses that pay taxes to the municipality.
Oliver and Osoyoos have thrown the idea around for awhile about building a pool in one of the two communities with residents in both areas paying for it, so it would be more manageable financially.
Combined the two communities have almost 10,000 residents and then there are those that live in the rural areas that could be taxed.
And then there’s the Lower Similkameen, who pun intended, appears to be the last the one in the pool and probably for good reason.
Operating estimates are pegged at about $250,000 which could be low or could be spot on - who knows.
And the build is estimated at $5.7 million. For sure, grants would be secured before anything moved forward but for how much? And how much do local taxpayers have to put in to get those grants. Often it’s a third so that would be $1.9 million. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes you can leverage other grants or in-kind so it’s all very up in the air.
But not in the air is that an indoor pool is going to have a significant impact on taxes.
Without any grants and with an operating budget of $250,000 a person who owned a home worth $200,000 would be looking at around a $260 a year increase in property taxes for a pool that they might or might not use.
-T.B.