BALLOT QUESTION
City of Boulder City Shall the City of Boulder City expend a total amount not to exceed Nine Million Dollars ($9,000,000.00) of currently available funds in the Capital Improvement Fund which is funded from the proceeds of the sale and lease of City lands in addition to the Seven Million Dollars ($7,000,000.00) previously approved by the voters in 2021 for a swimming pool recreational project?
Arguement In Opposition
Boulder City needs a single, multi-purpose municipal pool replacement after decades of ignored maintenance drastically reduced the current pool’s useful life compared to many other U.S. communities with robust pools of up to 100-plus years old.
The current proposal calls for constructing three pools, not one.
Recent Parks and Recreation statistics indicate an average of just 128 people per day used the current pool during the July and August 2024 high season summer months out of 14,800 Boulderites.
Boulder City has over 900 private swimming pools, Lake Mead and the Black Mountain Pool Complex just 15 minutes away in Henderson for competitive swimming events and team training.
The most current cost guesstimates of $37 million are now almost a year and a half out of date. The guesstimates, done by a city-contracted design firm, are not the same as a general contractor providing a specific bid to do the fully-designed work from detailed specifications. Since detailed pool complex specifications don’t exist, this necessary step will likely take the better part of another year to complete, adding to the rampant inflationary pressures and pushing the actual costs to build this concept to $50-plus million, or $3,378 per resident. Even after a design is complete, more months will be lost in the request-for-proposal process.
Spending $50 million-plus to benefit 128 Boulderites can only be described as excessive and completely unnecessary.
It is especially tone deaf and callous to pursue this overblown pool complex when many of our residents are struggling to survive on inflation-riddled limited incomes from month-to-month.
When it is claimed there will be “no tax increases,” that deceptive statement defies an undeniable reality. Our city has many unfunded and unscheduled capital improvement needs, with widespread street repairs and a replacement police station two critical ones.
Monies siphoned for an excessive swimming pool complex are unavailable for major infrastructure repairs and replacement. Taxes must be increased to make up the siphoned pool funding or we beg for federal taxpayer money. Otherwise, the other, higher-priority projects are further deferred, or they are not done at all.
City officials have not been forthright about funding availability and timelines. Even with 2021 voter approval to switch $7 million from the chronically underfunded Capital Improvement Fund, plus another $8.1 million shifted from other city accounts and a $1.4 million private donation, the total current cash-on-hand for this project is just under $16.5 million.
If voters were to approve shifting another $9 million from the underfunded Capital Improvement Fund, not only would it leave little money in the fund, but it still won’t allow pool design work to begin. Why?
Despite almost $19 million directed to this project from the sale of Tract 350 to Toll Brothers, the $19 million won’t be paid upfront. It is to be paid out over several years, per the May 14, 2024 city council-approved sales contract, in three separate installments dependent upon periodic city approvals for house development and more importantly, the sale of the houses in each phase before proceeding to another phase. Add in growing job losses from a slowing economy, increasing building material costs, high interest rates and high asking prices, and the selling process could easily be delayed, thus deferring the city’s receipt of subsequent installment payments, jeopardizing the project and prospectively creating a funding emergency.
Boulder City needs all pool project money in the bank before proceeding.
Short of floating municipal bond debt, Boulder City will still lack cash-on-hand to prudently begin this project whether you choose to believe the $37 million or $50-plus million number. Going into debt for a discretionary amenity defies standard Boulder City finance practice of pay-as-we-go city operations.
If voters wisely reject the shift of another $9 million on top of the $7 million, we were incorrectly told in 2021 would build a replacement municipal pool complex, city officials would need to temper their zeal toward cavalierly spending other people’s money on excessive projects (a serious addiction public officials across the political spectrum are unable to control).
The better alternative, scaling back the municipal pool project to one modest, multi-purpose pool, can immediately advance by using up to $10 million of the current $16.5 million in the bank. The surplus $6.5 million belongs back in the Capital Improvement Fund and applied to the backlog of other unfunded projects. The same applies to future Tract 350 sales proceeds.
Let’s teach our children by example that responsible, value-centered spending is a virtue worth pursuing and vote ‘No’ on Boulder City Question #1.