Cash crunch in King County puts pools behind the 8-ball

BOTHELL — A tape measure stretches the length of the double glass doors leading into Northshore Pool, a gauge of the trouble that is swirling around King County swimming pools.

King County could close its 16 pools, including Northshore, because of an estimated $50 million general revenue shortfall in the 2003 budget and an additional $30 million in 2004.

The county measured the windows and glass doors at all of its pools and set a budget in case it has to board them up late next fall. The county also sent e-mails to employees encouraging them to look for other employment within the organization, according to a county worker who asked not to be identified.

Talk of pool closures coincides with King County finding itself short of funds to maintain services at current levels. As required by law, the general fund must pay for jails, courts and prosecutors, among other divisions. The law does not mandate parks, pools and recreation facilities, however.

King County was already forced to close 20 parks in February and could shut down the entire system — 176 parks, 16 swimming pools and more than 100 miles of trails — in the fall if no funding solutions are identified and approved.

That would affect youth soccer, baseball, lacrosse, football, water polo, synchronized swimming, scuba diving and high-school swimming — a sport that depends heavily on county pools.

"This would devastate swimming in this area," said Jefri Donovan, athletic director at Eastlake High School and coordinator of KingCo 4A swimming. "We don't have enough pools to begin with."

King County Executive Ron Sims formed a 17-member Metropolitan Parks Task Force in March to look into ways to save the parks and pools. The independent task force has scheduled its first public meeting tonight from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Redmond High School Little Theater to gather input from the community.

The task force is scheduled to report its findings to King County by mid-June.

"The county will have to make some hard choices, perhaps sacrificing some assets in order to preserve those of highest priority," said Bob Wallace, task force co-chair and CEO of Wallace Properties, Inc. "I am hopeful that there will be no sacred cows."

The county also hired temporary consultant Karen Reed, a finance attorney, to design a plan on how to cut $15 million from the park system's $25 million annual budget.

Money drain

It's no secret that pools aren't moneymakers, especially the area's indoor pools, which cost more because of heating and ventilation.

Built after the voter-approved Forward Thrust bond measure in 1968, the county's pools make up 24 percent of the park system's budget or about $6 million, according to Reed.

All of the pools operate at a deficit and need mammoth subsidies from the county.

The Northshore Pool has an annual operating budget of about $650,000. Its revenues are around $210,000, primarily from swim lessons, meaning a deficit of $440,000, according to Reed. The Redmond Pool is similar with a $610,000 annual operating budget and $250,000 in revenues for a $360,000 deficit.

"Yes, pools are basically money drains," said David Coddington, general chair of Pacific Northwest Swimming, which has about 5,600 swimmers. "But King County isn't in the moneymaking business. It is the responsibility of our society to provide certain regional services including law enforcement, libraries, parks, and pools. These are facilities needed to ensure a certain quality of life that no individual or neighborhood can provide on their own."

Reed, former Bellevue city manager, estimated the county could save $7.5 million simply by transferring all of its parks and pools to the cities where they currently reside. She reportedly is working with Tukwila to potentially take over the South Central Pool, which costs county taxpayers $487,000 a year.

The county has transferred its Forward Thrust pools in Issaquah and Bellevue. Bellevue took over the county pool mainly because it had the funding to build a therapy pool but needed a location.

It renovated the lap pool built in 1973 into popular, two 25-yard pools under one roof with a warm water therapy pool that opened in September 1997. But now the city of Bellevue has to deal with a $900,000 budget for a pool that is on pace to generate $500,000 in revenue this year, according to Mike Koenig, Bellevue city aquatic manager.

The same goes for the city of Seattle, which had eight indoor and two outdoor Forward Thrust pools built in the 1970s. Only the outdoor Mounger Pool in Magnolia, which opens Saturday, is self-sufficient The other pools' revenues barely average 51 percent of their expenses, partly because the Seattle School District uses the pools for swim teams and classes at no cost.

The popular Ballard Pool has an income of $261,000 and expenses of $517,000. One of the least profitable pools, Rainier Beach Pool, brings in $155,000 and has $450,000 in expenses.

Those staggering numbers are why cities such as Bothell don't want to take over pools.

"We absolutely recognize the importance of the (Northshore) pool and strongly encourage the county not to close those pools," said Manny Ocampo, assistant city manager of Bothell. "But at this point we don't have the resources to cover that kind of expense."

A pool story

The morning air is chilly. Marlene Holl, a 64-year-old Woodinville resident bundled up in sweatpants, a down jacket and a skullcap, is headed to the Northshore Pool with Eunice Frank, her 89-year-old mother.

Both nearly lost their legs in a 1971 Monorail crash and have been swimming at the pool since — first as rehabilitation and now as recreation, five days a week at 6 a.m.

"The same muck is on the walls," Holl says with a gentle laugh. "Swimming, it's what keeps us going."

Holl said that every few years she hears talk about closing the pool. But there hasn't been a task force in the past or a pool-closure budget.

"I'm afraid this time," Holl said. "It's time to rally the troops, which isn't always easy to do because people figure someone else will do the work."

When the University of Washington moved to cut the Huskies' swim program last summer, an outcry from the swimming community drove AD Barbara Hedges to reinstate the program. That same community is affected again.

Three high schools, dozens of senior citizens, and hundreds of families use the Northshore pool. Closing the 25-yard, six-lane pool would mean the end to swimming lessons, popular family swims, and the boys and girls high-school swim programs.

The projected timeline has county pools closing in November, after the girls swim season and canceling the boys 2002-2003 season for schools outside Seattle city limits.

"People may look at this and think because they don't swim they don't need to care," Eastlake's Donovan said. "I don't skateboard, but my tax dollars pay for skate parks, which is fine because a community should offer diverse activities for its people to do. People need to start thinking, 'It's not about me. It's about the community.' "

The area's club teams already are squeezed for pool time and also will suffer from closures. Wave Aquatics, one of the biggest teams in the area, has 300 swimmers that would be impacted. They use the Juanita School District pool for training along with at-risk Northshore and Redmond county pools.

And traveling to another pool really isn't an option. Seattle's Ballard Pool has to turn away families interested in taking swim lessons. Three high schools and two club teams use the city-owned Bellevue Aquatic Center. That pool has 200,000 visitors a year and often is at full capacity on the weekends.

Because of the county pools' popularity, the task force is scrambling to figure out ways to salvage the system. They're looking into the possibility of increasing fees, corporate sponsorship, such Weyerhaeuser, which donated $2 million in land and money for the King County Aquatic Center in Federal Way. Then there is the potential to sell naming rights and advertising space or partner with nonprofit organizations, cities and school districts.

"I know no one wants to close a pool," said Bret Williams, longtime Wave Aquatics coach. "I think they're trying to scare people into some type of action, like getting the cities to take over the pools, but I wish they would just tell us where to put our energy to help.

"It would be embarrassing to live around all of this water and not have any public pools."

Jayda Evans can be reached at 206-464-2067 or jevans@seattletimes.com.

INFORMATION

Asking for input

The Metropolitan Parks Task Force has scheduled two public meetings this week to gather input from the community on ways to save King County parks, pools and recreational facilities from the budget crisis. The first meeting is tonight, 6 to 7:30 p.m., at Redmond High School's Little Theater, 17272 NE 104th Street in Redmond. The second meeting is Wednesday, 6 to 7:30 p.m., at the Lake Wilderness Community Center, 22500 SE 248th Street in Maple Valley.