PORT ANGELES — In 2006, when city of Port Angeles voters rejected a $13.8 million bond to build an aquatic center with multiple pools and a field house to replace the William Shore Memorial Pool, Public Works Director Glenn Cutler estimated the public pool had three to five more years left before it would have to be closed.
“We’re still within that [three- to five-year] window,” he said last week, adding that “sooner or later” the pool will need major repairs.
“We don’t know the condition in specific detail, other than in general terms,” Cutler said. “It’s an old pool with a significant amount of work that needs to be done.”
When built in 1962, its expected lifespan was 40 years. Seven years more have elapsed.
Cutler said the city never followed through on a planned $25,000 facility study, placing it on hold after the bond failed.
“It did not make sense to go forward with it when we could potentially close it,” he said, suggesting that the feasibility study be conducted if a proposal to form a metropolitan park district is approved.
Voters will decide May 19 whether its worth saving the pool by approving Proposition 1 to form the district.
Ballots will be mailed out in nine days, on April 28.
The pool eventually will be in such bad shape — whether in three, five, 10 or 20 years — that its pool’s fate will be up to voters once again, and the community may have come full circle on William Shore Memorial Pool, predicted Save the Pool member Gary Holmquist.
“I feel reasonably confident the residents of this community will have to face that decision,” he said last week.
“We feel that it’s very important for the community to be involved in decisions that affect the level of taxation that we are all paying.”
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
