Leadership needed on city pool

Leadership doesn’t throw up its hands when confronted with a challenge.
It gets to work, struggles to find creative solutions, keeps its eye on the goal, and stays persistent until the job is done.
It should be clear to everyone by now that the days of the current Portland Pool are numbered.
It’s more than 50 years old. It leaks more than a million gallons of water a year. And ongoing maintenance costs keep mounting.
Clearly, the time is coming soon for a replacement.
That’s the challenge, and it’s a big one.
A new municipal pool is estimated to cost something like $2 million to $2.5 million. That’s not the sort of money you raise with bake sales and charity auctions.
Even the most optimistic estimate of private fund-raising would top out about $500,000.
The bulk of the money is obviously going to have to come from public funds, local tax dollars.
Mayor Randy Geesaman insists that the city isn’t in a position to take on another bond issue, and he may be right.
But it’s also true that there are ways around the 2-percent-of-assessed-valuation limit when it comes to bond issues.
Given the pool’s estimated remaining lifespan of less than 10 years, it should also be possible to begin setting aside capital improvement funds in the city budget so that a “savings account” is accumulated. Those funds and private donations could reduce the size of any eventual bond issue.
We don’t pretend to know the solution, but we know that the challenge is real.
And leadership from city government — the mayor, the park board, and the city council — is what’s needed.
This isn’t someone else’s problem. It’s city government’s problem.
The pool deserves a spot at the top of the agenda.
There’s no point in getting bogged down in discussions about whether a new pool is in Hudson Family Park or at the current pool site.
That’s about as useful as arguing about how many diving boards it has.
The challenge is figuring out how we’re going to do this. It’s time to get to work, find creative solutions, keep our eyes on the prize, and keep at it until the job is done. — J.R.[[In-content Ad]]