If approved by voters Saturday, the new $15 million fire hall will be built on the southern corner of Massey Drive and Carney Street, taking up part of Carrie Jane Gray Park. The expanded facility will be able to properly house modern fire trucks, which can't fit in the current building downtown. Moving it out of downtown will also increase response times in much of the Bowl, particularly to homes along Ospika and Foothills.
There has been little opposition to this plan because most people recognize fire halls are necessities and the reasons to build a new hall at a different location are easy to understand. It would be a huge shock if the fire hall referendum isn't overwhelmingly approved.
The pool, however, is a different matter.
For starters, few people see a $35 million swimming pool as a necessity, despite its obvious contributions to community health and safety.
The fact that city manager Kathleen Soltis devoted her entire guest editorial in last Friday's Citizen to promoting the new pool, while only mentioning the fire hall in passing, suggests she, the mayor and city councillors realize residents need convincing to support this project.
A core detail - the location - is problematic, because it involves the added cost of buying an existing property (the Days Inn) and demolishing that building to make way for the pool. Soltis cites last year's Aquatic Needs Assessment, which found that most people want the pool to stay downtown.
She neglected to mention, however, that this report actually recommends spending more than $62 million for both a new downtown pool and Aquatic Centre upgrades, an option that is clearly not being considered at this time.
She also didn't discuss the viability of simply upgrading the Aquatic Centre and permanently closing Four Seasons, as the report did.
"While (this option) can reduce the annual operating cost from current annual cost of $2,500,780 to $1,771,890, the consulting team does not recommend (this option) due to the need and desire of the community to have multiple locations and facility types," the report states.
That statement points to the report's central flaw, because it equates wants and needs as essentially the same thing. Ask people if they want less of anything and they will always say no. Ask them if they want more and they will always say yes, especially if they are not asked to prioritize or put a price tag on it.
Residents don't need the new pool downtown but they want it to be.
Two simple questions: if they are going to drive to the pool anyway, why does it have to be downtown and if they could have most or all of the pool features you want, does it really matter where it is built?
Soltis missed one very good reason to keep the pool downtown identified in the report. Operating costs would be significantly reduced by hooking up the facility to the downtown district energy system.
She correctly pointed out that even if residents reject borrowing $35 million to build a new pool, Four Seasons will require an estimated $10 million in work just to keep it open in the short term. She used the analogy of plowing money into an old truck or just buying a new truck to make it sound like a simple choice.
To stick with her comparison, the first question an owner of an old and failing truck asks is "do I need a truck at all?" and even if the answer is yes, maybe a smaller truck with basic options will do. And if the truck owners can't afford either new or the cost to maintain the old one, maybe it's time for a serious look at becoming a one-vehicle family.
There are plenty of merits to building a new pool and building it downtown but there are numerous valid reasons to either building it elsewhere or closing Four Seasons and not building a replacement at this time. None of those details are part of the referendum question, which is simply whether to borrow $35 million and pay it back over 20 years to build a new pool.
The real question, however, is whether voters see a new pool as a need or as a want. The answer will come Saturday night, after the polls close.
