Yreka Pool Project Moving Forward; But a Long Road Ahead Remains
A proposed public swimming project in Yreka could be a decade away.
The planning and design for a new public swimming pool in Yreka is moving forward. But don’t rush out and buy that new swimsuit just yet.
“This plan really relies on grant funding, and it could take five to 10 years, just to be honest with you,” said City Manager Jason Ledbetter in some of his comments at the March 4 City Council meeting, where the new pool proposal was presented and discussed.
“The city will be seeking grant-funding as the primary source of revenue to bring this project to fruition,” Ledbetter added, all but closing the door to the city using its own general fund revenues toward its construction.
“Certainly, we’re going to move faster and attempt to make something happen substantially sooner than that. But I really want to be realistic with the community,” he added.
The pool project will occur on the site of the abandoned Ringe Pool on Knapp Street. The $12.8 million project calls for the demolition of the existing facility, and replacing it with a modern 25-yard, eight-lane lap pool and adjoining wading pool. The project will also include a new parking lot, individual changing rooms, lockers, showers and covered area.
“We really wanted to make sure it was an open plan, it was safe, and designed for families and children,” Deven Carter, architect at Nichols, Melburg and Rossetto, in Redding, told the council in his presentation.
The council recommended a slight design change which would separate the wading pool from the lap pool as a means of isolating incidents of what Councilman Drake Davis described, somewhat indelicately, as “accidental defecation,” with the thinking this could be more of an issue for a pool serving children.
“Maybe we should separate those, the little guy pool, and the lap pool,” Davis offered.
State law requires a pool to be drained and cleaned, and remain empty for 48 hours, in the event of a contamination, said Ledbetter.
Most of the conversation around the project, however, revolved around funding. Aside from no identified funding source for construction, the proposed pool also has no dedicated funding source for its operation and maintenance. Dawnmarie Autry, a Yreka resident and recent candidate for City Council, reiterated an operations funding concept she presented during the campaign season which would involve allowing cannabis dispensaries in Yreka, with the tax revenue dedicated to a parks and recreation budget to serve the pool’s operation.
A recent survey exploring support for cannabis dispensaries showed Some 75 percent of 315 survey respondents in favor of allowing the kinds of storefront cannabis retailers seen in numerous other surrounding communities like Mt. Shasta, Dunsmuir, Weed and Ashland, Ore. However, the City Council has been steadfast in its opposition to dispensaries. The survey results were largely dismissed by the council, saying the response rate was too low to draw any meaningful conclusions, and there was no way to know if the respondents are even Yreka residents.
Ledbetter seemed to make an effort to stress that the pool is not the city’s No. 1 capital project priority, saying the development of a new $20 million fire station would “take precedence, financially, over any other project in the city.”
That fire station project is being funded with a new 1 percent sales tax. And Ledbetter’s gentle reminder of the fire station’s priority was clearly a response to no shortage of social media chatter among the tax measure’s opponents who speculated the tax revenue would be siphoned off to any number of projects other than the fire station.