The City of Centralia is filling in the Veterans’ Memorial Pearl Street Pool.
This is a sad end to a 70-year era for the community. The campaign to get the city to reopen the pool kept the city council in the hot seat, and in December they decided 4-3 to let the citizens vote on funding the pool.
However, after seeing the community reject a property tax for the school levy in February, the city council decided to rescind the swimming pool ballot measure.
I have seen photos of the glory days of the pool and heard the stories of those who spent quality time at the pool. I pondered the changes of the last 70 years that have made the operation of a pool unworkable.
Why are so many things that we accomplished as a society in the past out of reach today? We seem to struggle with major infrastructure, community-building events, world-changing charities and effective education. Even simple matters like self-sufficiency and home ownership are more of a struggle these days.
I see several public policy and cultural causes for the shift. The main reasons a pool worked in the 1950s and not today is due to many new cost-drivers built into today’s society.
Our standards, regulations and inflation have driven up the cost of building pool facilities. Gone are the days when “good enough” and volunteer work parties would be tolerated for a public project.
Regulations on who may work, what materials may be used and the standards for quality, safety and excellence in a public project are all way beyond what would be required in the 50s.
Likewise, the minimum expectations for the equipment and systems required for water quality, temperature and energy management of pools are much higher. The newer technology also demands higher expertise for installation, operation and troubleshooting.
Many policies add to the cost of energy, which is one of the key expenses in operating a pool. Labor policies and payroll taxes for at least five social programs also increase the cost of employees. Work at a value of under $15.74 per hour is illegal, and skilled labor is regulated and scarce compared to earlier decades.
Another change is that society’s tolerance for risk has decreased, and eliminating the risk of a pool has a series of new costs. How many employees, safety features, warning signs, water purity measures, security elements, expert advisors and training sessions does it take for a public entity to make people perfectly safe in a pool? Public standards about water quality add more costs.
Our legal system also affects the cost of operating a pool. Unlike years ago, the nature of tolerated lawsuits, awards for damages and the cost of insurance to survive legal liability are much different.
The culture matters, too. I’m not sure how one measures it, but I believe the number of those who are helpful and willing to cooperate is smaller these days. Many social opportunities require participants to follow rules, to think of the impact of their actions on others and to lend a hand. Overcoming selfishness in a social activity adds to the cost in areas like cleaning, maintenance, repairs and enforcing rules of courtesy. A self-governing society is less expensive.
Another 21st century development is that governments have taken on a growing range of responsibilities to taxpayers. A city expense like a pool is competing with many more government undertakings than in the 50s. Most governments not only have a wider range of services, but they also have inflating costs for all the reasons above plus employee union contracts.
Even the most benevolent city leaders may find a pool expenditure competes unfavorably to other priorities today.
As government grows in reach and cost, taxpayers are feeling the pinch of escalating property taxes for services, which appear to be diminishing. As simply maintaining public safety and keeping roads operating is much more expensive, taxpayers are likely to object to taking on any new expenses.
I think a pool is a valuable community service, and I’d like to see our society keep these kinds of community-building priorities. If we want to return to the days of the 50s, the culture needs to shift away from government managed perfection and back to a model of understanding, cooperation and personal responsibility. Until then, the hidden cost of so many modern public policies does limit opportunity and a historic pool in Centralia is the latest casualty.
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Jami Lund lives in the Big Hanaford Valley where he keeps bees, talks on the radio and generally works to move the world from what it is to what it should be. Contact him at Jami@JamiLund.com.
