Whether we are talking about housing, pools or consensus, building things is really hard. Not building things is easy.

Today, I’m going to set aside housing and focus on building a community consensus on where we build a new aquatic facility and how we approach it.

The Mountain View Pool has served this community for decades, but is nearing its end of life. Community groups have been working on a viable plan to build a pool since at least 2014, without much success. In 2023, Jefferson County joined Port Townsend (PT), the Port of Port Townsend, Jefferson Healthcare, the non-profit JeffCo Aquatic Coalition (JAC), and the Port Townsend School District to develop a plan for a new public pool in East Jefferson County.

This Healthier Together Steering Committee ultimately recommended a new pool be built at the Mountain View site with a sales-tax funded Public Facilities District as the funding mechanism. Many objected to this plan including, ultimately, the County Commission. And so, I was tasked with bringing a new Task Force together to evaluate mid-county sites and other options to keep pool planning moving forward with momentum.

We all hope that you will join us at a public meeting at 6 p.m. Monday, Sept. 16 at City Hall and online to see the results. 

The County Commissioners will join the City Council to hear the presentation, findings and recommendations from the Healthier Together Task Force, which I have been facilitating since April. It has been my honor to support this exceptional and representative Task Force along with other County, City, YMCA, and JAC members to help us as a community find the path to a new pool. This Task Force was chosen from volunteers in all three Commissioner Districts, along with two JAC members.

All came with the vision that our community needs a new pool. Other than that, there were many differences.

We had swim instructors, pool operators and lifeguards; professionals from the construction trades, project management and construction law; journalists and community development professionals. We had parents and grandparents, swimmers and non-swimmers.

We traveled around the Olympic Peninsula and flew to Boise to look at pools and alternative construction methods and operations. We had many pool operators and builders join our meetings to share their experiences.

The Task Force presented to the Healthier Together Steering Committee on Aug. 27 and their Findings and Recommendations, all of their research documents, and recordings of the meetings are published on the County website: www.co.jefferson.wa.us/1723/Healthier-Together-Task-Force.

Here is the TL;DR: If we can’t agree on what general location and potential funding source we pursue, it will not get built.

The takeaway, while seemingly obvious, bears repeating: without community consensus about “where” and “how,” we will not be able to build a new pool, and any ask of the voters will fail. The Task Force learned clearly at its Aug. 27 presentation to the Steering Committee that the Port Townsend School District prefers a sales tax-based Public Facilities District (PFD) and are supportive of a location in the Tri-Area (Port Hadlock, Irondale and Chimacum).

The Task Force also presented a potential path toward a PT pool with a Metropolitan Parks District (MPD), but after the presentation to the Steering Committee, it is clear that the best path to consensus on “where” and “how” is Tri-Area with a PFD. Additionally, drive time analysis shows a Tri-Area site to be more equitable than locating a new pool in Port Townsend, with more adults and more children within a 12 or 20 minute drive than a pool in PT.

Another prime understanding the Task Force gained was that programming precedes design. We can’t tell you how much a pool in the Tri-Area will cost because we don’t really know what we should build, yet. We are a long way from a ballot measure or potential tax. Cost recovery while operating pools is very challenging, so we need to continue the conversation with people all over our county to figure out what will our community use in a pool and how can we fill it to the brim with programming to recover as many costs as we can. A PFD can work with JAC to take on that task of surveying and re-surveying the people of Jefferson County. We hope that everyone will take the time to envision what would make this pool your pool? How can we fill it up?

I look forward to seeing people online or in person on Sept. 16 as the Task Force presents. Help us find solutions and raise the social fabric for all Jefferson County residents and visitors, kids and adults alike. Greg Brotherton is District 3 County Commissioner and a lake swimmer.