$10.5 Million Cost Overruns and Delays
Projected for PT Aquatic Center
— A PROFESSIONAL ANALYSIS —

by Mark Grant | Dec 9, 2023 | General

Gaping holes in the construction estimate for the proposed $37.1 million Port Townsend aquatic center translate into millions of dollars in future costs overruns, according to Mark Grant of Grant Steel Buildings and Concrete Systems, Inc. (see his bio below).

Mr. Grant grew concerned about the proposed Port Townsend aquatic center construction budget and did a deep dive as an act of public service. He discovered major omissions resulting in the project being seriously under-budgeted — meaning, additional costs and change orders down the road will result in significant cost overruns.

At the Brinnon public forum sponsored by the Port Townsend Free Press on November 21, 2023 he had the opportunity to brief County Commissioners Greg Brotherton and Heidi Eisenhour on his findings. Also in attendance at the meeting was Port Chairwoman Pam Petranek, Port Townsend City Council Member Ben Thomas and Quilcene Fire Commissioner Marcia Kelbon, as well as members of the public.

He later provided his analysis to County Commissioner Kate Dean in a separate letter.

Mr. Grant now shares his worrisome findings with the public. He begins by showing that the optimistic start and completion dates for the proposed aquatic center are years away from consultants’ estimates. This article is adapted from and expands upon his letter to Commissioner Dean.

— The Editors

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My budgetary concerns with the proposed new aquatic center project stem from my review of the current documentation available from both Opsis Architecture and DCW Cost Management (see report here). I am concerned that based on the current project site plans, floor plans, renderings and cost evaluation spreadsheets, this proposed project as currently estimated is significantly under-budgeted.

I have created an estimated schedule for this project based on my experience with projects that are municipally based, that require public and private funding, that require municipal bond acquisitions, and that are complex in nature. This schedule appears as the graphic at the top of this article.

A Realistic Construction Schedule

The DCW Cost Management Preferred Option – Cost Plan Update dated June 30th, 2023 doesn’t address the project schedule at all. On page 5 of this document, under the paragraph heading “Procurement,” there is a reference to “the start date is anticipated for Q1 2024,” with repeated references within the spreadsheet cost data of “Escalations to Start Date (Q2 2025).”

Their worst case scenario projects costs related to a delay in the start date to Q2 2025. The assumed start date information provided in the DCW report is not realistic given all the logistical steps needed to begin construction. It is my opinion that the political/voting, design, contractor procurement with contract negotiations, and permitting processes alone would push the potential start date out nearly two years.

For example, it is likely that the design approval process for the proposed Public Facility District (PFD) and the community approvals will take a full year. Likewise for the following phase which includes project bid solicitation with contractor selection, the submittal process, and contract negotiations.

The estimated schedule I show at top identifies that the realistic and likely start date for construction of the aquatic center as currently designed and proposed would not begin until late January to early February of 2027. This timeline is relative to my experiences with public works construction projects in general.

This would be followed by what I estimate to be a three-year construction process, moving the opening of the proposed facility out to early February of 2030. It may be possible to have an earlier completion date, but given the nature of public works projects in general, the complexity of the current design, as well as design elements that I feel are not represented appropriately with the current design information — i.e. site development — an estimated completion date in 2030 is justified and realistic.

The Budget

The current “for-construction” budget is listed as being $37.1 million. This amount includes both the soft costs at $9.2 million (for design, project management, permitting, third-party testing, etc.) and the hard costs at $27.9 million to construct the facility.

Underestimated Hard Costs

DCW’s $27.9 million includes contingency funds totaling $1.95 million (about $1.7 million for building-works line items plus $250K for sitework line items), leaving only $25.95 million in line-item construction hard costs. In reviewing the site plans, floor plans, and architectural renderings for the proposed facility, I found that the budgeted amount for hard costs was light. Based on my interpretation of the information provided by Opsis Architecture depicting a very complicated architectural design for the primary structure, with a complex clerestory multi-tiered timbered roofing design and elaborate finishes throughout, a difference of approximately $140 per square foot needed to be applied.

I also saw scope-of-work line-item omissions in the DCW cost analysis which I already assumed to be absorbed by the proposed contingency amount. These omissions should have been considered as line-item hard costs prior to any contingency money being applied.

The additional square footage costs and omissions in line-item hard costs effectively absorb the $1.95 million that had been included for contingency funds. That creates a $27.9 million base for hard costs before contingencies.

Inadequate Contingency Funding

The $1.95 million contingencies monies that DCW had allocated are significantly light; their 7.5% contingency is far below industry standards. With frequent material price escalations (now seemingly permanently embedded since Covid) as well as ongoing supply chain disruptions, the typical 10% contingency is becoming a thing of the past. It is being revised upwards to 12%-15% to manage the uncertainties and concerns of both owners and lenders.

Based on the project’s complexity and current design, I believe a contingency at a percentage basis of no less than 15% should be applied to the revised base construction costs of $27.9 million, which would be $4.185 million. This brings the project total estimated budget for hard costs to roughly $32.1 million.

Missing Hazardous Material Abatement Costs

To elaborate further, the demolition numbers are low in the DCW plan, especially in that no monies are allocated for hazardous materials abatement; the report states “No work anticipated” for this line item. This is a significant omission, as abatement will very likely apply given the age of the existing facility and the materials that were used back then for construction.

The hazardous materials abatement cost could be as much as $250,000 to $1 million, depending on the types and amounts of materials likely to be found. The higher amount added to the $32.1 million brings the hard costs up to $33.1 million.

No Stormwater Plan

Construction of the stormwater system needed to accommodate the large surface areas shown — for what would be considered to be impervious surface impacts for the parking, sidewalks, buildings, etc. — will require a substantial system design for stormwater management as required by the currently adopted Washington State Stormwater Manual. This system will require treatment/filtration, detention/retention, flow controls, and a design for overflows.

The existing soils at the Mountain View site are not conducive for infiltration, as glacial-till/hard-pan conditions are present below the thin layer of organic top-soil type material, which do not accommodate infiltration. The system designed could cost $1.25 million on the low side, and may even cost as much as $3.5 million.

The DCW plan shows a line item for storm sewer costs at $150,000 as an allowance. Note that any items in a cost analysis listed as an allowance imply there was not enough information/research done to determine the true costs, which makes these line items susceptible to huge change-order activity during construction, which would need to be paid for by the owner.

Therefore, a $3.5 million stormwater system added to $33.1 million brings the new total estimate for hard costs to $36.6 million.

Realistic Escalation Costs

The current budget also includes cost escalation funds (adjustments for future construction cost inflation) on materials and labor carried out only to 2025. As described above, that time frame is unrealistic.

The unrealistic 2025 start date indicates to me that the currently budgeted cost escalations are potentially significantly inaccurate and need to be revised to reflect a start date two years later than as proposed. There are too many issues that could significantly affect higher costs on materials and labor looking towards 2027, so it is reasonable to assume that costs will be higher.

Failure to adjust the cost escalations to match a realistic construction schedule means that likely construction cost increases are not included in the construction budget.

Escalation costs that are tied to the hard cost for construction are important to consider, but could/should be considered speculative. Although uncertain because the time the escalation occurs and economic factors are both unknowns, based on my experience it is reasonable to assess an additional $1.8 million for this project given a more realistic 2027 start date.

That makes the final total for hard costs $38.4 million.

Adding It Up: A $47.6 Million Pool

Adding the more realistic $38.4 million in hard costs and $9.2 million in soft costs brings the estimated total project cost to $47.6 million. That is a potential $10.5 million of extra costs to cover, which should be very concerning.

It is my opinion that the project feasibility should be based on this revised $47.6 million amount, not the $37.1 million as is currently proposed.

How does that amount figure into the proposed 0.2% increase in sales tax revenue needed to fund the facility construction, service the debt, and pay for some of the proposed operational expenses year over year?

Finally, money for contingencies in a project budget is not supposed to serve as a stop-gap for not performing thorough due diligence for the initial project design considerations. My concern is that this initial budget analysis (as provided to review project feasibility) has holes and does not present reliable project budget cost information for moving forward with a new capital facilities project/campaign, let alone the formation of a new taxing district to support it.

The best approach to complete this proposed project, or any project, is to ensure that there is enough money available without having to either make project cuts or go out for more funding resources, i.e. the taxpayers. If this project were to move forward based on the currently budgeted cost information, I am concerned that — with inevitable cost overruns and debt needing to be serviced — the only way out for the newly-formed Public Facilities District would be through a property tax increase, meaning the county-wide property taxpayers will have to serve as the guarantors for the initial debt secured.

Where else is the money for these potential construction cost overruns, debt servicing, and even operational expense shortfalls going to come from?

The Pursuit of Affordable Housing in Port Townsend

by John Barr | Dec 3, 2023 | General

“There are two ways of being happy:
We may either diminish our wants or augment our means — either will do — the result is the same; and it is for each man to decide for himself, and do that which happens to be the easiest.
If you are idle or sick or poor, however hard it may be to diminish your wants, it will be harder to augment your means.
If you are active and prosperous or young and in good health, it may be easier for you to augment your means than to diminish your wants.
But if you are wise, you will do both at the same time, young or old, rich or poor, sick or well; and if you are very wise you will do both in such a way as to augment the general happiness of society.”
— Benjamin Franklin

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Once Port Townsend was a City of Dreams, a place of great opportunity for resourceful and creative young folks with big dreams and lean wallets. Right next to the nicest house in town you might find a ramshackle tract house with an unmowed lawn and a junker car rusting in the blackberries. There were plenty of empty rooms, sheds, garages, and places to park a trailer or pitch a tent. There wasn’t a lot of cash circulating around town, so the owners of these nooks and crannies welcomed a little help with the rent, some fixing up, or maybe just the opportunity to have someone around to talk to.

Of course most of these low budget, do-it-yourself housing solutions did not meet all of the requirements of the Uniform Building Code, Health Department Standards or Fish and Wildlife Guidelines. Survival in these situations depended on the goodwill of neighbors and the willingness of local officials to sometimes look the other way.

These low-rent situations were a godsend to folks in need, whether temporary or terminal, and a refuge for artists, musicians, New Age visitors from the beyond, tree planters, driveway auto mechanics, writers, do-gooders, jugglers, back-to-the-land, off-the-grid, hippy libertarians, zen monks, single mothers, organic gardeners and many others with aspirations too numerous to list who chose to diminish their wants in order to live out their dreams.

In Ben Franklin’s America, the pursuit of happiness replaces property as a foundational value. The wealth of the nation is measured by the happiness of the people rather than by land values and the accumulation of possessions.

Hard Times Kept PT Real

One of the best economic indicators of the times was the Food Co-op. Even in the early eighties on a typical weekday the Co-op might only net sixty-five dollars in sales. On the weekends receipts were usually over one hundred dollars. All of the labor was done by volunteers so that the prices could be kept low. Lots of folks depended on the low prices, especially single moms who could get the Co-op worker’s discount by babysitting for another mother while she worked at the store.

The food selection was pretty basic, lots of bulk foods and so not much produce. The organic growers were still sussing things out, so some of the produce in the coolers was wilted and disfigured. Co-op shoppers who didn’t know better often assumed that was how organic produce was supposed to be. There were times when the store would be out of basics like milk or bread, but there was always rice and beans and folks made do.

The winter’s winds and rains kept Port Townsend real. Most of the Victorian houses were in various states of disrepair, hard to heat and rented by the room. In winter the kitchens were curtained off with blankets and the housemates gathered around the wood stoves until it was time to trip upstairs to cold rooms to sleep in long johns under piles of blankets. The sheds and garages could be damp places in which to camp on wet winter nights.

After a day’s work it could feel too much effort to start a fire and better to go visiting instead, especially around dinner time. When the arctic winds whipped through the Port tossing boats every which way, a boat jockey might head to the Town Tavern and nurse a cheap beer or two into the wee hours of the night.

The Boomers Come to Town

America lacks generational continuity — our young people tend to graduate and get out of dodge as quickly as possible. In the seventies and early eighties, swarms of young people wandered up and down the West Coast looking for a place to land. Port Townsend had all of the essential amenities: lots of young folks, a sufficient number of tolerant townspeople, cheap food at the local co-op, cheap places to sleep and sometimes someone warm to share the night with.

It was an easy place to visit, but a hard place to stay. The regional economy was hard hit by the decline in jobs as the logging and fishing industries slowly went bust. In the dark of winter when the tourist dollars quit rolling around town there was never quite enough money to keep everyone working. Folks made do, worked for less than prevailing wages, rented out rooms at less than market value, helped each other out when they could.

The sixties didn’t arrive in most of America until the seventies. Along with the peace, love and rock and roll came the drugs, sex and rock and roll. As long as the young folks kept things on the down low, the town’s live and let live attitude prevailed. If things got “too messy”, “too loud” or there were “too many comings and goings at all hours”, the police would get a call and come restore the peace — usually without hauling anyone off to jail.

Dens of Iniquity and Community

Danny Yesberger’s place is probably the most famous of the seventies’ party houses. Back in the day his house was considered out in the country even though it is off San Juan not far from the golf course. It was a funky, yet charming A-frame, with rustic outbuildings and a natural amphitheater out back where local musicians played.

Danny’s house was also one of the early group houses. He shared the rooms in his house and his outbuildings with other young folks, some of whom had nowhere else to go. One of the most beautiful sights in his neighborhood was when Danny’s horses would break loose from their pasture, and five or six of them would race down San Juan Avenue as if there was no tomorrow.

The Town Tavern was more than just the den of iniquity it was sometimes made out to be. A group of psychology students from Oregon State founded the Tavern as a place to experiment in communal living. Community members worked twenty hours a week tending the bar and serving food in the deli in exchange for beer and room and board.

It was a sometimes dysfunctional family with a commitment to serving the community at large. The Tavern’s deli served an Everything Sandwich and a bowl of soup that made a substantial meal at an affordable price. The Tavern Co-op members tended to their share of the town’s drunks and had a couch upstairs for people with nowhere left to go. They kept the big old stoves in the tavern and deli cranking hot. They kept the beer flowing and the good times rolling, especially when the region’s best bands came to town.

In hindsight, free beer and rock & roll were not the healthiest long-term lifestyle choice, so it is not surprising that the Town Tavern experiment eventually ended.

Local Low-Rent Entrepreneurs

At best, Port Townsend’s low-rent entrepreneurs operated in a quasi-legal gray zone. Their lives were cluttered with midnight water heater floods, backed-up sewer pipes, leaky roofs, late rent checks, truckloads of left-behinds to haul away, doors coming unhinged… as they struggled to maintain the balance between things falling apart and things getting fixed up. There was always a fine line between the benevolent low-rent entrepreneur and the slum lord. In a matter of months renting to the wrong person could quickly turn a tolerably nice rental situation into a slum.

Fred “The Head” Epstein became a master of the art of dumpster diving. He distributed his ill gotten hoard of past-the-pull-date foods to friends and neighbors. Anyone who has never peeked into a dumpster would be surprised and appalled at the treasure trove of goods consigned to the local landfill.

There’s a magic to diving beneath the floor sweepings and rotting lettuce down to where the good stuff lies. It’s not enough to lean into the dumpster to fish things out — true dumpster divers go all in. Fred would surface from the dumpster with the most wonderful assortment of food that was perfectly good once you wiped away the sour milk and floor sweepings.

His friends and neighbors might be gifted with two dented cans of tuna, a loaf of bread, six quarts of yogurt and twenty pounds of mint-flavored chocolate where someone got careless with the mint extract. Fred’s friends would eat the tuna and find five other yogurt-eating friends. The mint-flavored chocolate would pass from house to house until it ended up in a two-gallon bucket on the other side of town where it sat for five years.

Fred’s dumpster diving career was cut short when the Port Townsend Safeway decided to protect Fred from himself by asserting its right to throw away perfectly good food. The mint-flavored chocolate finally went to the chickens who turned up their beaks at it.

Besides being a predecessor to the local Food Bank, Fred went on to become a Port Commissioner and one of the innovators in the low rent, do-it-yourself housing solutions. His two-story houseboat was one of the area’s most famous land yachts. He openly bragged about how he got around the building codes by planting his house on top of an old boat hull. It’s no wonder he got caught dumpster diving — Fred had his own ideas about how things should be and never hesitated to tell anyone what he thought.

Jan Anderson was a little man with a big heart. With his little trailer he moved big boats and put them in places where no one else could go. Whenever he got stuck in an impossible situation he would unhitch his trailer, go home, have a drink of wine and think his way through the next move. As for insurance, he would tell you, “The day I drop a boat that’s the last day I work. That’s your insurance.” He was the boat mover that working people could afford. Without Jan many boats would never have made into the water or to their final resting place.

Jan was also the founder of the Funky Boatyard. He rented property from the Port and sublet it to small businesses which otherwise would not have had access to space at the Port. He also had property with affordable rentals. In his later years he had the misfortune to attract meth addicts to his property. These were good people until they became afflicted with meth. Their souls turned black and they were no longer safe to have around. As the drugs have become more toxic, the risks of sharing your good fortune with others have become greater.

Bird on a Wire

There was no one quite like Niels Holm. He managed his brother’s property, which included the Ace of Cups, the old Food Co-op and Puffin Shoe Repair. Along with Aldrich’s and the library, these businesses formed the heart of the Uptown District. In the pre-internet days a lot of business and socialization took place in these establishments or out on the street where folks loitered drinking coffee.

Niels’ Zendo House was probably the most famous and sometimes infamous of the group households. In the front of the house was an austere meditation room with an adjoining tea room. The walls were lined with straw mat-covered benches with a narrow aisle in between. The meditators sat on extra-firm zafu pillows. With Niels, meditation was a serious business — not some groovy, lackadaisical, New Age experience. He had genuine Buddhist credentials. He was a personal assistant to Suzuki Roshi at Green Gulch Meditation Center.

When he was young, Niels traveled across India in a loin cloth with a begging bowl. He had a fabulous time. Everywhere he went people wanted to take him home and feed him. They had never seen a white sadhu before.

The hardest part of his trip was that he got fat from all the food. “When I got the other side of India I went to the port to ship out. The guys on the ship didn’t know what to think when they saw some long haired guy in a loin cloth come walking up the plank.”

Niels felt that houses built to code lacked character. He used to say to anyone who would listen, “I can’t build that way. Those houses are all the same, they have no soul. You know soul like the black musicians say, when someone has put everything they have into a song.”

He had a pet crow named Woody. Niels would get into his truck and drive the three blocks from his house to Lawrence Street, where he would wait on the street for Woody to “appear out of nowhere” and land on his shoulder. He loved to impress the innocent bystanders loitering on the street.

Woody’s devotion to Niels became a problem when the jealous crow started attacking Niels’ wife every time she tried to get close him. One day Woody would no longer put up with Niels’ attention to his wife and flew away.

Now and then, even years later, Niels would see a crow up in a tree or on a telephone wire and wonder if it was Woody.

Today’s Stories Are Not Yet Told

It is fine to reminisce about the times when Port Townsend was a place of greater opportunity, but what about now?

Housing costs have soared out of reach, rentals are nearly nonexistent, the sheds have been converted to bed and breakfasts, more requirements have been added to the building codes and city ordinances, and we seem to be plagued with a rash of emergency pandemic restrictions that never quite go away. Has happiness become as hard to catch and hold as the crow up in the tree?

It may seem that way because of the quasi-legal nature of do-it-yourself affordable housing. No one who cares will talk about it lest their friends or neighbors lose their right to a place to live.

Someday, the people who are out there catching happiness for themselves will tell their stories about today.

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“The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness.
You have to catch it for yourself. ”
— Benjamin Franklin

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Top Photos:
Niels Holm in foreground at left works on one of his unconventional and soulful creations.
At right is the finished structure.

Aquatic Center Looms as Far Worse Fiasco
than Cherry Street Project

by Jim Scarantino | Nov 10, 2023 | General

What a mess. The $108 million Port Townsend Aquatic Center as proposed to City Council would default in its first year. To calm skeptical taxpayers, numbers are being juggled, massaged and manipulated. Millions of dollars magically disappear from cost entries in order to turn red ink black. Looking closely, one can see there is no money to pay for administration and management during and after construction, thus making the project appear less costly to taxpayers.

But under the pixie dust, above the smoke and mirrors, behind the curtain, the hard, cold reality remains unchanged: economically distressed Jefferson County simply cannot afford something so costly.

Red Ink Turned to Black Ink (Not Quite)

At the same time they were seeking City Council’s endorsement for their proposal, promoters of the aquatic project did not disclose that their calculations showed the aquatic center could default in its first year of operation.

On October 16, 2023, City Council was asked to endorse the proposal from the aquatic center Steering Committee for a $37.1 million aquatic center and county-wide sales tax to pay for it. $22.1 million would be borrowed through a bond supported by sales tax receipts. $5 million, council was told, would be raised by the Jeffco Aquatic Coalition, $5 million from state grants and $5 million from federal grants.

The impressive 30,000 square foot facility being proposed would greet visitors with a high-ceiling, gleaming atrium with expansive glass walls, leading to the natatorium.

Rendering of double-height lobby looking into natatorium and other spaces, from June 16, 2023 Opsis PowerPoint — “Healthier Together Center Feasibility Study” (slide 13)

There swimmers could choose from the cool water 25-yard, 6-lane competition pool (where their form and speed could be judged by those in bleachers built to hold 100 spectators), or they could dip in the warm water of the 3,000 square foot recreation pool, where they could also walk against the artificial current of a “lazy river” feature. Afterwards, they could kick back in the $106,000 whirlpool/spa.

On other occasions, they could rent out the “birthday room” or knock around a ball on the new pickleball courts outside. There would be very nice universal locker rooms, showers, offices, storage space and parking for about 130 vehicles.

“Building Form” from “Healthier Together Center Feasibility Study” (slide 8)

Of course, neither the city nor the county has the money on hand to build this facility. Money must be borrowed — $22.1 million, according to the “final” report.

In our previous reporting, we examined the pro forma upon which the Steering Committee was operating. A pro forma is a projection of annual debt service payments (principal and interest) versus expected revenues from the new county-wide sales tax the committee is proposing. Its purpose is to determine if the bond can be repaid.

The city’s own analysis showed that the project would default its first year. Sales tax revenues would not be adequate to pay the project’s debt. The specter of default loomed even though the pro forma assumed a pollyannish interest rate of 4.5% — something we won’t likely see again for years.

The Steering Committee, City Manager and its Parks and Recreation Strategy Director knew this when they sought City Council’s endorsement of their proposal on October 16. I noticed that in the 316 pages of the Report and its appendices in council’s “packet,” there was no pro forma to show if the project could shoulder the debt load they were proposing. In all those pages not even a cumulative interest amount was stated.  That is an important number.

In calculating the actual cost of the project, there’s more to it than just the construction costs. The cost of borrowing money must also be considered.  That simple calculation was omitted from the material presented to City Council.

So I asked for it. Carrie Hite (Director of Parks & Recreation Strategy) sent the pro forma to me, accompanied by an email in which she wrote: “You ask some great questions and the pool’s financial viability is something we continue to explore.”

This was October 18, two days after the “Final Report” had been submitted to City Council with a request for their endorsement. I then wrote the article reporting that the city’s own internal analysis showed the aquatic center unable to pay its debts and going into default its very first year.

After that report, city staff and the Steering Committee got to work to come up with a more attractive financial picture.

They made stuff up.

What they did was run several new pro formas at 5.5% interest, since their unrealistic 4.5% rate was so obviously invalid. 5.5% is still a very favorable interest rate for a project like this. As of this writing, investment grade 30-year municipal bonds might merit that rate.

But the bond for the aquatic center could very well not enjoy that coveted rating and would have to offer a higher interest rate. How much higher is difficult to say as each bond would be priced according to its individual risk characteristics, and would not enjoy the benefit of a bond agency’s screening and rating.

Consider this: the bond would be floated by a brand-new Public Facilities District (PFD), with no track record, no assets, no money in the bank, nothing in the way of collateral.

The cost of the proposed aquatic center is so large and squeezed so tightly into the limitations of the county’s tax base there are no reserves. If there is a year when the economy hiccups, if costs shoot up unexpectedly, if something big breaks, if the aquatic center does not see the very optimistic 800% increase in use required the first year of operation — there is no cushion, no way to pay bills and no way to meet debt obligations.

This would be a risky bond for investors.

It would be a revenue bond, which would carry a higher interest rate than a general obligation, levy-guaranteed bond paid with property taxes. As the Municipal Research and Service Center explains, “Revenue bonds are not backed by the full faith and credit of the city, and therefore investors consider them somewhat less secure than general obligation bonds. As a result, the interest rate that bond buyers demand may be higher than those on general obligation bonds.”

It will also likely have to be guaranteed by the city or county. It is highly unlikely that anyone will hand over $22.1 million to an untested group of people with no security for the loan other than a guess at future sales tax receipts. Without the city or county putting their assets behind it, this bond could well be rated as below investment grade. That means creditors would demand to be paid a higher interest rate in exchange for accepting more risk.

Enough for a lightning primer in public finance. Let’s look at how $2.1 million has to disappear to turn red ink black.

In response to another request, Carrie Hite provided the latest pro formas they have been considering. You can open the PDF here.

The first 6 years of red ink from the Aquatic Center’s latest pro forma. Note “$20M Bond” is a typo in the city’s pro forma, which should read “$22.1M Bond, 30 YR, 5.5%”.

Now you see it, now you don’t.

There is no way the proposal submitted to City Council can work. Not at 4.5% interest over 25 years, as we have reported. And definitely not at 5.5% interest, when the deficit would swell to more than $246,000 in the first year!

The Steering Committee looked at stretching out the term of the bond to 30 years in the hope periodic payments would be affordable. That won’t work, either. The first year shortfall would still be more than $120,000, as shown in the image above.

So what they did was reduce the amount of money to be borrowed by $2.1 million, stretch out the term of the loan to 30 years and cross their fingers as they sat back and waited for Excel to do its thing. Voila! There’s enough money to make it work — just barely.

They’ve also played with cutting the amount financed to $17 million so the numbers look better.

But this project will still cost $37.1 million to build. It has not been redesigned. Nothing’s been cut. Where will that $2.1 million or $5.1 million in savings come from?

Manna from Heaven

In the “Final Report” (now you understand why we have put that between quotation marks) the Steering Committee told City Council they hoped to raise $15 million, with $5 million each coming from gifts, state grants and federal grants. Maybe now they will tell officials and taxpayers they are going to raise even more in order to have to borrow less. So where are those extra millions going to come from?

Regarding those state and federal grants, the minutes of Steering Committee meetings, found at the end of the appendices to the Final Report, are vague at best on this subject. “Maybe,” “could,” and “perhaps” are used a lot. The only state grants discussed are for work outside of the pool, like for a gym. But there is no gym in the proposed design. There is no state grant for building a pool mentioned in the minutes.

The federal grants discussed would only be for seismic resiliency, that is, covering the additional cost of building stronger for earthquakes. But minutes also reveal that the cost of adding seismic resiliency has been shown to exceed the extra money grants contributed in previous projects.

So much for the certainty of state and federal grants.

So maybe wealthy, generous people will give not only $5 million, but go as high as $7.1 million, maybe $10.1 million.

You Go First

The Jeffco Aquatic Coalition has shown no evidence it has raised $10,000, let alone $10.1 million for the aquatic center. According to minutes of the steering committee, they want a tax measure on the ballot before they start their capital campaign. So far, not enough money to buy some faucets has been raised from private giving or state and federal grants.

There is definitely a rush to get this on an April 2024 ballot.

They want taxpayers to go first. Raise taxes, start making most things more expensive in Jefferson County — from Amazon purchases to socks to home construction and improvement — and then they will start trying to get the rest of the money.

So what happens if taxpayers across the county agree to pay higher taxes, the taxes kick in, but the rest of the money needed doesn’t come through?

Seriously, what happens?

Umm, Didn’t You Forget Something?

The budget in the Final Report maxes out all possible sales tax revenue. The numbers are so tight there is no debt or operating reserve. As we have reported, we are being told that the operating costs for the proposed PT Aquatic Center will be about 40% lower than the comparable experience of the Shore Aquatic Center in Port Angeles, which sees about $2 million a year in operating expenses.

Hite suggested in The Leader that the difference in operating costs can be explained by the Shore Aquatic Center having four “tanks” or pools — a competition pool with diving area, a spa/whirlpool, a wellness pool and an activity pool with a “lazy river.” Port Townsend’s aquatic center would have only two, she said.

Actually, PT would have three pools: competitive, warm water with the “lazy river” and whirlpool. Both facilities have almost exactly the same square footage. The PT Aquatic Center would have a sauna, as does the Shore facility. One could predict that the design of the PT facility would be more expensive, with its higher roof line and graded slope, than that of the Shore center.

Regardless, having an additional small pool, the wellness pool, is only a difference in construction costs, not operating costs, and certainly does not explain how the PT Aquatic Center could operate on $742,000 less than the Shore center. Most operating costs are labor. As discussed below, the fact that there is no provision for administration and supervision of the PT Aquatic Center may go a long way to explaining why its projected operating costs are so low. If operating costs inch up just a bit, the PT Aquatic Center ship capsizes.

A closer inspection of the feasibility study provides some answers. We can see what’s been carved out so the PT facility will have lower operating costs than its counterpart not far away.

For one thing, the Shore facility has an executive director. He interacts with the board, manages the tax revenues and grants, oversees state-mandated audits and reporting, responds to public records requests, etc. He oversaw the $20 million upgrade and expansion in 2020. He supervises the facilities manager, head lifeguard, maintenance crew — everything from physical plant to hiring and firing to dealing with the public and government agencies. He has support staff to help him in this essential work.

The budget for the proposed “base” PT aquatics center, on the other hand, not only does not provide for an executive director, bookkeeper and other support staff, it does not even provide funding for a facility manager. (See p. 55 of Ballard*King feasibility study).

• Shore’s 2023 financial reports shows $158,500 in salaries for administrative staff. The PT Aquatic Center budget is zero.
• Shore spends $112,000 on its Front Desk supervisor and crew; the PT Aquatic Center is budgeted for only $66,378, with no supervisor.
• Shore’s budget also includes salaries totaling $118,700 for janitorial and maintenance versus the PT Aquatic Center’s budget of only $71,868.
• Shore sees janitorial and maintenance expenses for its new facility at the annual rate of $33,200; the PT Aquatic Center budgets only $18,000.
• Shore has learned its insurance costs $93,900 annually; the PT Aquatic Center budget is only $20,000.
• Shore spends $71,100 on childcare; the PT Aquatic Center budgets nothing for childcare.
• Shore has learned from experience to budget $190,000 for materials needed to maintain and repair its 3-year old facility; the PT Aquatic Center budget is only $18,000.

The unexplained discrepancies go on and on until the PT Aquatic Center is budgeted to operate at about $742,000 less annually than the comparable Shore Aquatic Center.

How can such a large facility be run without anyone in charge?

Answer: local government would provide management and administration and bear the cost.

That is an explicitly stated assumption in the Ballard*King budget. (See p. 46). Accordingly, no costs associated with administration are entered into the aquatic center budget; these costs would be off the books in a local government budget. But neither the city nor county governments are going to manage the aquatic center.  The city that is heading over a “fiscal cliff” certainly doesn’t have the money.

It is being suggested that the YMCA will manage the facility. But there is no money anywhere in the budget to pay the YMCA.

And who, pray tell, is going to build the new aquatic center?

Not the city. Not the county. It will be a brand new agency called a Public Facilities District (PFD).

This new agency will have to complete the design, engage architects, engineers, put together bid packages, solicit and analyze bids, negotiate contracts, hire and pay construction costs, inspect and approve work and change orders, seek and manage grants, meet state auditing and reporting requirements, comply with public records and open meetings law, serve the appointed board of the PFD, etc. They will need an office, telephones, copiers and lighting so they can see while they work.

The Port Hadlock sewer project needs a crew of about a dozen people to oversee construction.

There is no money in the budget for anyone to get the new aquatic center built and opened!

Even after construction, the PFD will have legal obligations and work that must be done as a governmental entity. But there’s no money to fund a PFD. None.

As If More Consultants Were Needed — Actually, They Are

The Final Report recognizes the work of seven consultants, including a “public engagement consultant.” Missing from the list is a much more critical consultant: the bond, or financial consultant. It is a wise and common practice for public agencies that will be seeking bond financing to engage the services of a bond consultant, such as Northwest Municipal Advisors, who have worked with local governments and public entities in Jefferson County.

They create pro formas using realistic market rates because they work in the bond market every day. They understand that bond financing is very different from, say, mortgage financing. An amortization schedule for a municipal bond will be quite different than the simple pro formas being considered by the Steering Committee. When it comes time, the bond consultant would be the debtor’s negotiator with lenders.

The bond consultant may arrange the short-term bond anticipation note — the equivalent of a line of credit to be used to keep the project going before the funds from the long-term revenue bond are available. That also has been overlooked in the Steering Committee’s calculations.

The interest that would start being due at the beginning of the project will likely be capitalized and rolled into the principal of the long-term revenue bond, raising the dollar value of the amount financed — another omission from the Steering Committee’s calculations, but something a bond consultant would catch.

Then there will be the bond underwriter who raises the capital for the bond.

State law and IRS regulations require engagement of bond counsel. They provide a professional opinion that everything is legal (to oversimplify matters) and that the bond would qualify as tax-exempt.

All of these people have to get paid. Their compensation will come out of a percentage of bond proceeds, which is accomplished by increasing the principal amount of the bond. Thus, a $22.1 million bond would be increased to, say, $22.5 million or maybe more to cover these fees.  Taxpayers effectively borrow money to pay these people, as well as borrowing money to pay capitalized interest. That raises the periodic payments and increases the cumulative interest paid over the term of the bond.

None of this is factored into the calculations underlying the “Final Report” and Recommendation — most likely because the Steering Committee spent money on a “public engagement consultant” instead of a bond consultant. The operating and financing costs are thus seriously understated, as PR to sell this to the public was prioritized over crucial bond expertise

The work is hugely incomplete. There are holes in the budget, with necessary items not budgeted, and hopes and prayers plugging the gaping holes. Taxpayers are being rushed into taking the first leap into the murky waters with city councilors being herded into endorsements without getting a complete picture of how bad this thing is.

Cherry Street Project on Steroids

This really is a mess. It is much, much worse than what we saw with the Cherry Street Project. There are so many parallels with what went wrong with what was also a well-intentioned, but fatally flawed undertaking.

Faulty financials:

The Cherry Street Project was created with “bogus” numbers. The feasibility study for the aquatic center, on which everything must stand, is, frankly, garbage. The community is supposed to bet $108 million on the judgment of a consultant who thinks that Mountain View Pool is in Kala Point and Port Ludlow’s pools are on Bainbridge Island. That consultant, as we just discussed, wrote a budget for the aquatic center that has no one in charge.

Like the “bogus” numbers underlying the Cherry Street Project, the bogus numbers underlying the aquatic center are being ignored in a rush to get this on an April ballot.

No unbiased, non-vested confirmation of feasibility:

The Cherry Street Project was pitched and defended by consultants hoping to land a nice contract to execute the project. The same thing is happening here.

Only those who stand to gain a piece of the action — be it Opsis, the architect, or the YMCA — are presenting this project to the public and decision makers. There has been no independent double-checking of the (shoddy) work of the consultants — except by the volunteer citizen journalists of Port Townsend Free Press.

Rush to approve despite warning signs:

There is a rush to just get the money from taxpayers and figure it all out later. We saw this with the Cherry Street Project when hard, cold numbers spoke failure, but city councilors charged ahead out of a sense of haste and not wanting to get bogged down with details or appear to be a dissenter and nit-picker.

If Cherry Street taught a lesson it is this: it is a lot easier to avoid sliding into a project than it is to get out of one.

We were a voice crying in the wilderness when no one wanted to hear of any problems with the Cherry Street Project. Our analysis — which was always based on the very documents and data available to city council and city staff — proved correct. It was a tragedy that the Cherry Street Project ended in such a costly failure and that it dragged out so long.

City officials say they learned their lesson from that fiasco — but have they really?

Seven years later, chalking up a loss of $2 million, the City of Port Townsend has accepted a bid to tear down the never-rehabbed, asbestos-ridden Cherry Street “demonstration project”. That loss pales in comparison to the $100+ million gamble of the proposed aquatic center.

————————————–

For reports on the many other red flags and alarms in the critical feasibility study upon which this shaky edifice is built see:

Drowning in Red Ink: Mountain View Pool and the Proposed Aquatic Center.

Aquatic Center Feasibility Study: It Gets Worse.

The $108,941 Pool Could Default Its First Year.

Related articles:

Mountainview Pool–By the Numbers.

Aquatic Center Beats Out Streets and Core Services in Task Force Report.

Would 0.3% TBD Tax Be Used Just to Fix Roads?
To Be Determined

by Stephen Schumacher | Oct 28, 2023 | General

Like many, I was surprised to learn on July 26 from a brief front-page Leader blurb that city council was stepping up to fix Port Townsend’s crumbling roads by forming its own Transportation Benefit District (TBD) and meeting August 1 to fast-track funding by placing a new 0.3% sales tax on the ballot.

I was further surprised to receive a considerate email the next day from public works director Steve King letting me know “there is an opening for a committee that would be against the ballot measure. Alternatively, if you are supportive, I can also connect you with the committee for the ballot measure. Either way, we wanted to reach out to you and see if this sparks an interest one way or the other.”

Though I’d written and commented to council about transportation issues in the past, TBD was new to me, so I emailed this back per King’s gracious offer “if you have questions or want to discuss”:

King responded by phoning July 28 to educate me with a cornucopia of details and background about the city’s road morass and TBD tax plans. I jotted down this summary (as corrected and approved by King):

Concern about Austerity versus Enabling

So I attended council’s inaugural TBD board meeting on August 1 to learn more and offer up my concerns in this Public Comment:

Curiously, when I asked my core question “Would this tax be part of an overall austerity perspective, or would it be enabling the problems that got us into this in the first place?” — I felt the vibe that council was visibly recoiling at my word “austerity” as a vampire would to garlic or holy water.

Perhaps I was imagining things, but three subsequent council responses picked up on the “austerity” word, starting with Mayor David Faber making the point that:

And as to whether or not this is going to be part of an austerity mindset, or that this is brought about by city deciding to do things differently than pay for road repairs — sure, there have been steps that the city has taken historically that each of us on council wishes we hadn’t, including myself, including some of the decisions we made, such as the Cherry Street building. But that’s in the past.

Through the Financial Sustainability Task Force and our budgeting process for years, I think we have a budget that’s pretty lean overall. There really just isn’t resources to pay for road repair and maintenance.

The city has a bunch of different priorities as well, things that we have to do as a city.

So suggesting that there is at all money to be moved from elsewhere to pay for road repair and maintenance is just completely out of step with reality.

Councilor Libby Wennstrom expanded on how the city found itself without resources to maintain roads:

One of the things to understand about street funding and why things fell apart so badly is that more or less simultaneously as part of a series of statewide ballots, state funding for municipal street repair went away with the car tabs, but at the same time, city governments also got restricted to a 1% annual cap.

And if you’re running inflation (right now we’re running about 5%), and if you have a 1% raise every year, the question doesn’t become, what new projects can we do? It’s like, what do we cut this year?

And over a 20 year period, that’s a 20% shortfall, 25% shortfall, 27% shortfall, etc., so you’re getting farther and farther and farther behind. And the net result of that is having to use debt, just to do grant match to meet those basic needs.

So this is an attempt to kind of re-balance that and I get, “Oh, it would be great if we could actually have a tax base that met our basic requirement needs.” But the reality is that the tax base doesn’t literally meet some of the needs for state mandated things that we have to do. And so street funding keeps coming on to “Oh, we wanna do this, but this has to be on the back burner.”

And over a 20 year period, that gap between that 1% raise, if inflation’s running 3%, 4%, 5% — you’re just gonna keep getting farther and farther and farther behind.

These are all good points, and I appreciate how council is trying to do better and finally take seriously the critical road repair that has been put on the back burner for 20 years. So if Faber and Wennstrom are right that “there really just isn’t resources to pay for road repair,” then that’s a compelling argument for a TBD tax to finally repair roads, because the city is financially strapped and poised to “fall off a cliff.”

But I find that hard to square with council’s longstanding and current practice of always finding money or borrowing against the future for discretionary projects and pricey consultants — from Cherry Street ($2-3 million) to Evans Vista ($10-15 million) to Hybrid Golf Course ($4.4 million) to Aquatic Center ($109 million) — always prioritizing these and other things over basic road maintenance for 20 years.

And I don’t see how council has fundamentally changed its tune so long as it continues to prioritize pet projects over road repair. All that’s really changed is that outcry over roads has gotten so bad that council is proposing a new tax to pay for repairs, without tamping down on its current and future pet projects — that is, without “austerity.”

The Long Road to Catching up on Neglected Repairs

Even worse, the TBD tax risks enabling future councils to reduce even its current patchwork spending on road repair from general funds, because that could now be sloughed off onto the TBD to pay. Councilor Ben Thomas spoke out at the August 1 meeting asking council to commit to doing the opposite:

I just want to reiterate what I said the last time we talked about this topic.  I do think that austerity (I’d rather not word it that way, but I think it’s kind of what’s going on here) as much as we can from the rest of the budget to hopefully match this or something like that is very much in my interest.

I know that it’s a lot of numbers to crunch and they don’t seem to add up, but it does seem like just doing this alone would not be enough to satisfy us. I know we talked about trying to commit something, it’s hard to commit a certain number, but I still have an interest in that.

Mayor Faber disagreed, saying:

We cannot bind future councils. There’s no commitment to doing anything in the future beyond what funds are specifically directed, certain specific buckets. This pot of money is going to be dedicated to these specific purposes listed in the ballot measure and we wouldn’t be able to change what those funds are spent on. General funds are spent at the discretion of the council as a whole. We can decide where those funds are spent.

And to argue for austerity or committing certain dollars in the future to certain specific goals or projects — I think it’s dangerous, selling the future short.

We don’t know what the future priorities of the community are going to be. If the community come demanding certain things, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to necessarily just say we’re going to ignore them.

So I think it’s important to note that while this Council as a whole — all seven of us and the staff have evidenced an intent to do exactly as you’re stating — we’ve all been pushing for repairing our roads. And this very vote that we’re putting on the ballot here is clear evidence of that, along with what we’ve dedicated our banked capacity revenues to.

What the future holds is an open question. I hate the idea of constraining future action based on future need. We don’t know what those needs are going to be.

So even if we could dedicate and guarantee that we’re going to continue putting all the banked capacity funds towards road repair and maintenance, I would be an adamant no on that.

I appreciate where both of these councilors are coming from on this arguable point, as well as the evidenced intent “pushing for repairing our roads” that Mayor Faber speaks of.

But how long can an uncommitted and unconstrained council be counted on to continue this intent? For 20 years past councils put road repair “on the back burner” while prioritizing everything else.  And now a new tax-funded TBD might just make it even easier for future councils to deprioritize road spending completely out of the general fund.

And without general fund contributions, the idea that passing the 0.3% TBD tax would repair all the city’s dangerously defective roads any time soon is illusory, since (according to King) it would still take about 40 years to catch up on all the neglected road repairs!

Since it costs $750,000 just to keep things going as they are now, the $800,000 raised by the TBD tax would mostly just stop the bleeding if not further supplemented.

Fortunately King hopes “maybe $200,000 to $300,000 of its $800,000 per year total could be leveraged with grants,” but even so, we’re still talking maybe 30 years to catch up on repairs — hence Thomas’ misgivings that “just doing this alone would not be enough to satisfy us.”

Concern about TBD Tax Short-Changing Road Repair

Even such slow progress assumes that most all of the TBD tax funds would be used for road repairs, but that’s just a hope which Mayor Faber is “adamant” not to “guarantee.”

My earlier quoted public comment expressed appreciation that “only $50,000 out of $800,000 at this point looks to be used” for purposes other than road repair, but I’m not sure where I got that figure, since King told me “about 80% of funds would go to essential street repair, and maybe 20% to ADA upgrades, sidewalks, and speed-calming type improvement projects” with “no way to tie the hands of future TBD councils to focus on repair.” So that leaves only $640,000 from the tax for roads, less than the $750,000 needed just to keep all the potholes from getting worse.

The Summary Statement for Ordinance 3319 establishing the TBD outlines $100,000 per year needed for “citywide sidewalk/ADA construction, upgrades, and repairs” plus $30,000 for “citywide traffic calming” totaling $130,000, which is in line with King’s 20% estimate.

But it also includes “$300,000 per year investment leverages approximately $1.5 million in grant funds for streets” to pay for projects listed in the current Six-Year Transportation Improvement Plan. Such leverage is great, but how much of these funds would come back to be used for repairing roads, since that’s the focus of only 12 of these 54 listed projects?

Only 12 of 54 projects in the city’s Six Year Transportation Improvement Plan involve repairing roads. Of the top five priorities shown here, only one includes road repair.

Despite some overlap, the primary focus of the city’s 54 transportation priorities may be categorized as follows:

• Road repair (12 projects);
• Sidewalks and pavement preservation (11 projects);
• Intersection improvements (6 projects);
• New trails (5 projects);
• Shoulder improvements (5 projects);
• ADA improvements (4 projects);
• Non-motorized improvements for pedestrians and bikes (4 projects);
• Traffic calming (4 projects);
• Boatyard expansion and tree replacement (1 project);
• Downtown parking plan (1 project);
• New street extension through water treatment facility (1 project).

This priority list contains a lot of very worthy projects, but prioritizing them all together and paying for them out of the same “pot of money” with “no commitment” risks putting road repair on the back burner again — even when it comes to the 0.3% TBD tax for which road repair is the poster child!

Among these very worthy projects are other projects that are less worthy and even controversial, but would get smuggled in and subsidized by the new TBD tax instead of paying for road repairs.

In particular, quite a few of these priority projects are dedicated to so-called “traffic calming” — especially when considered together with “pavement preservation” projects involving Edge Lane Roads (ELRs), which force down speed limits to accommodate dangerously combining two-way traffic into a single lane.  This is especially unfortunate when speeds are reduced on previously safe arterials like Fir Street.

Recently striped Edge Lane Road on Fir Street, with vehicles now directed to reduce speed on the arterial to 20 mph. Two-way traffic is supposed to use a single center lane but not all do, dangerously risking collisions with oncoming traffic at blind hills or curves.

Additionally, the TBD ordinance earmarks about $30,000 per year for this traffic calming, claiming it is “one of the most highly requested items for improving roadway safety for bicyclists and motorists.”

Rather than improving roadway safety, many traffic calming initiatives paradoxically do precisely the opposite — planting hazards in the middle of roads, forcing traffic to swerve around “mini-roundabouts” and other obstacles, making vehicles drive too close to each other or in the same lane as oncoming traffic, creating confusion with poorly-understood symbolic street signs explained in tiny print on placards by the side of the road.

The theory seems to be that if you make conditions dangerous enough, maybe drivers will slow down!

The most infamous of these are the much-derided “traffic calming island” hazards in the middle of Washington Street, which Councilor Thomas ruefully called “one of those gifts we’ve given to the public to unite everybody, unfortunately, against us.” The one saving grace of these monstrosities is that they were funded by neighborhood nimbies, but taxpayers are still on the hook for ongoing maintenance.

As I said at a second Public Comment on August 1st:

My concern with the way the 0.3% TBD tax was structured is that it lumps everything transportation-related into one big “pot of money … spent at the discretion of the council.”

That allows future bad ideas like the Washington Street hazards and other discretionary or controversial projects to be paid for by this new tax money — instead of funding the long-neglected road repairs that everyone agrees must be done and were the advertised justification for the tax.

Port Townsend’s TBD should not stand for “To Be Determined,” risking road repairs returning to the back burner.

The $108,941,000 Pool
Could Default Its First Year

by Jim Scarantino | Oct 24, 2023 | General

Eye popping numbers. Red ink from the start. The city’s financial analysis shows that the proposed aquatic center would not be able to pay its debt service for its first four years. That analysis is built upon a fantasy of low interest rates and a Jefferson County that would grow at a steady, uniformly repeated annual increase, uninterrupted and with no downturns, for the next quarter century. Even with these favorable assumptions, default looms.

And where did we get that huge number in the headline? $108,941,000?  Are we not being told that the new PT aquatic center would cost “only” $37.1 million?

Read on. Let’s start with the city’s own financial analysis.

Mortgaging the Future

That modest $37.1 million construction project for a new aquatic center will be mostly financed, requiring at least a $22.1 million bond. A bond is the way a government borrows money from investors and financial institutions. Like a mortgage it has a term — the number of years in which it must be paid back — an interest rate, and set periodic payments.

Before a bond is “floated,” that is, sold to investors, an analysis is conducted to determine if the bond will work: will the debtor be able to pay and will creditors get their money on time in the amounts promised? That analysis is called a “pro forma.”

City staff has prepared this analysis on the proposed new pool’s debt. It was provided to us by Carrie Hite, Parks and Recreation Strategy Director. She provided this information without hesitation in response to our request. She has been open and forthcoming throughout this process, it should be noted.

The pro forma — the debt service vs. tax revenue projections — shows this for the critical first eight years:

These figures reflect the annual debt service on a 25-year bond for $22.1 million at 4.5% interest.  The “County Wide PFD Sales Tax” shows the estimated revenues from a proposed 0.2% county-wide sales tax that is being considered as the vehicle to pay for a proposed $37.1 million pool. The difference — $15 million — would, it is hoped, come from $5 million each in gifts, federal grants and state grants. “PFD” stands for “Public Facilities District,” a new governmental taxing authority that would own and have control over the pool and which would receive its funding from a new county-wide sales tax.

Sure, this seems slow going. But hang in there. It will soon be clear how the finances for the proposed aquatic center don’t inspire confidence.

Regarding that pro forma — you can put anything into it to make it work, but you should try to be at least a little bit realistic for it to be of any use. This pro forma adds the exact same amount to each subsequent year’s sales tax revenues: $27,865. It is not unfair to say that is an arbitrary number. In the real world, that amount of sales tax revenue would require $13,932,500 in growth in the county’s retail, service and construction sectors every year for the next quarter century, without exception. The sales tax would be 0.2% or 1/500th.  Simple math: $27,865, the number added to each year’s projected sales tax revenue total, times 500 equals $13,932,500, the amount the county’s taxable economic activity would have to grow each year.

Is it realistic to assume this steady, constant growth rate, no slowing economy, no bumps, no recession for 25 years? That is what is being done here.

Notice the negative numbers. Right out of the box, in year one, the PFD cannot make its loan payments. It falls $90,401 short. That is considered default. The state of default would continue until year five when, based on those hoped-for constantly rising sale tax revenues, the PFD would finally be able to pay its debt, on account of that arbitrary growth rate we just discussed. But by then, a $194,439 deficit has accumulated. That deficit continues until year eight.

Revenue from user fees at the new pool are not included and do not belong on this pro forma. For one thing, they are wholly speculative. Nobody knows with any certainty how much people will pay to use the new aquatic center.

The consultant’s financial model (that we have critically examined here, here and here) requires the new aquatic center’s revenues to increase by 800% over the Mountain View pool’s revenues starting the first year. But even those hoped-for soaring revenues won’t be enough to cover operating expenses and thus could not contribute anything to meeting debt service obligations. Further, the pool won’t have any revenue its first two years, when the project is being finalized, bid, and constructed.

This pro forma properly analyzes whether a PFD could meet its loan payments from sales tax revenues. It can’t, at least not until five years out.  By then — indeed, by the first year — bond investors will be demanding the money they are owed that the PFD can’t repay. Default looms right up front as soon as the project gets going.

This is not the picture of a sensible public undertaking. It brings to mind the Cherry Street Project pro forma which showed that project going into default early on. What should have been a deal-breaker was disregarded by City Council back in 2018.

Will the current City Council — and a Board of County Commissioners, which will have final say on creating the PFD and pursuing a bond measure — fail to heed this recent object lesson in fiscal irresponsibility? Will they charge ahead and ignore the red ink on the wall?

So Much Worse in the Real World

This pro forma used an interest rate we are not likely to see again for years. It arbitrarily employs a 4.5% rate. As of this writing, investment grade municipal bond rates are bouncing between 5.5 and 6%.  Some have reached 6.3%.

A bond for a brand-new, untested public facilities district running a pool complex, funded by a variable tax rate, may or may not earn an investment grade rating. It could be viewed as more risky than bonds secured by property taxes or utility rates, charges that must be paid to keep a municipality going. A financially failing pool is expendable in the larger scheme of things.  Any lower rating than investment grade means the PFD would have to offer a higher interest rate to attract bond buyers.

If the PFD has to pay higher interest, as anyone who has bought a car or home would understand, its monthly payments will be higher.

Prudence requires considering the worst case, which would be a bond rated below investment grade. But let’s grant investment grade status for this exercise, yet (in compromise) apply one of the highest rates seen the past week. That was 6.3% for a big-city hospital bond, something a lot more solid than a pool bond. (Similarly, Overlake Hospital in Bellevue had to offer 5.85% on its bond that recently went to market.) We will use 6.3% interest over 25 years, the same term being considered now. What does that do to the financial picture?

The red ink gets much worse. Monthly payments would be $146,471 for an annual amount of $1,757,652 compared to the unrealistically low $1,483,659 in the table above. The red ink the first year at a realistic interest rate would amount to $364,401. The cumulative deficit would explode and stretch out until year 14!

Bondholders want to be paid every year. They won’t wait five years for promised payments, and they certainly won’t wait more than a decade.

The $108,941,000 Pool

The 316-page Final Report, Recommendation and Appendices released by the steering committee pushing the aquatic center proposal nowhere states any cumulative total cost for the project. The cumulative interest is never calculated. Nor are operating costs and subsidies ever totaled.

Using the unrealistic 4.5% interest incorporated in the working hypothesis, the total interest over 25 years would come to about $15 million.

Using a more realistic and current interest rate, the total interest paid by taxpayers would be $21,841,000. That is money that would be sent out of this county to institutional investors and wealthy individuals desiring tax-free municipal bond income.

The proposed PT aquatic center would be an almost mirror image of the William A. Shore Aquatic Center in Port Angeles, which reopened in 2020 after a remodeling and expansion. The Shore center has demonstrated it costs about $2 million annually to run such a facility. Over the 25-year term of the PT pool bond — until it is paid off — operating costs, not adjusted upward for annual inflation, would be $50 million.

Let’s add all those certain costs together in order to see the size of the commitment this county would have to make to this pool get the bond paid off and keep the pool’s doors open:

$37,100,000 construction cost +

$21,841,000 in interest payments +

$50,000,000 in operating costs

______________________

$108,941,000 total.

That is a huge number for this small, poorer-than-average county with a housing crisis and negligible income and job growth. No wonder the financial analysis shows this project going into default and failing financially in its first years. The picture gets even worse when real-world financial considerations — not rosy hypothetical assumptions — are applied.

“Speculative” 

The steering committee’s fundraising consultant says the last piece in the financial picture is “speculative.”

ECONorthwest of Portland, Oregon, was hired to determine if the county’s economy is strong enough to support this huge project. They determined that the city’s economy could not generate the sales tax revenue to make it come close to working. So the entire county would have to be taxed to find enough money. The ECONorthwest report can be found starting at page 116 of the Final Report, Recommendation and Appendices.

“Capture areas” outside city limits would have to be tapped for tax dollars. The description “capture areas” comes from Jim Kalvelage, the founding principal of Opsis Architecture, the lead consultant on the project. He used that phrase in presentations explaining where the money for the pool would come from since the city’s own resources are inadequate. His included areas such as Chimacum, Port Hadlock, Marrowstone Island, Irondale, Kala Point, Cape George, Gardiner and Discovery Bay. For purposes of the city getting the money it needs, these are the “capture areas.”

At the time, Kalvelage was talking about hitting those areas with a property tax to pay for the pool. Now he and the steering committee are talking about a county-wide sales tax to pay for the pool. In the steering committee notes, they have also discussed going for both a sales tax and property tax. Washington state law allows a PFD to seek a property tax.

The promoters realized that “capture areas” isn’t exactly an endearing phrase for selling this project to county taxpayers, so it has been cynically converted to “service areas.” Kalvelage and the steering committee know the pool will serve very, very few people outside the city, maybe as few as 34 on a monthly average according to YMCA’s 2022 report on the Mountain View pool.

ECONorthwest concluded that, yes, the proposed pool is too big and expensive for the city to afford and a county-wide sales tax would be necessary. But it also concluded that even a county-wide sales tax would not suffice to pay for this size aquatic center. That is because Jefferson County’s service, retail and construction sectors are not robust enough to generate the necessary sales tax revenue.

A lodging tax would also be required to close the gap, according to ECONorthwest.

The kicker is that a PFD lodging tax can only target those lodging businesses with more than 40 units. In Jefferson County there are just three: Kalaloch Lodge far to the west on the Pacific Coast, and Harborside Inn and Manresa Castle in Port Townsend. Manresa has but 41 units, so it could avoid the tax by mothballing one of them.

ECONorthwest hypothesized an annual lodging tax payment of $500,000 from these three businesses to plug the hole in the pool’s financial picture. But it cautions that large number is “speculative.”

Indeed, it is. To generate $500,000 out of a 2% lodging tax, those three facilities would have to enjoy $25 million in revenue every year from renting rooms and cabins.

That’s $25 million from just three relatively modest lodging businesses. We are not talking Las Vegas-sized hotels here.

Prudent people cautioned by their own consultant that their plans are “speculative” would return to the drawing board. Whether our city council members and county commissioners have the sense to do so remains to be seen.

Vulnerable People Need Protection –
The Opposite Is Happening

by Stephen Schumacher | Oct 17, 2023 | General

Recently uncovered public records include a draft September 2022 City of Port Townsend Newsletter article, where Mayor David Faber wrote about his emotions while hearing elder people at the August 1 city council meeting “repeatedly call trans persons ‘pedophiles’ and ‘rapists’.”

Mayor David Faber’s draft article for the city newsletter following the August 1, 2022 City Council meeting, disclosed through a public records request.

City staff prudently advised Faber to scuttle his article, concerned that “it might do more harm than help” as part of “a shame spiral.” Police Chief Thomas Olson admirably expressed that “Everyone should be encouraged to engage with city council without getting ridiculed, no matter what their opinion is on a specific topic.”

Though Faber’s accusation was never published in the newsletter, this incident does speak to the frame of mind and knowledge base of council and staff that elder women were being demonized at this critical time period preceding the coordinated physical assaults on elder women outside the August 15 council meeting while police looked on but were directed not to help. And this mindset continues today.

A review of the August 1 meeting video and transcript remarkably reveals that Faber’s accusation was provably untrue: NO public commenter at the meeting ever called “trans persons ‘pedophiles’ and ‘rapists’.”  So how did this false and prejudicial narrative arise and continue to haunt the mindscape of our town?

Public Comments to Protect Vulnerable People

Julie Jaman started her August 1, 2022 public comment by summarizing her July 26 “experience while showering after my swim was hearing a man’s voice in the women’s dressing area and seeing a man in a women’s swimsuit watching little girls pull down their bathing suits in order to use the toilets in the dressing room. I reacted by telling him to leave, and the consequence is that I had been banned from the pool.”

She warned council that “women and children are being put at risk” and YMCA “staff seems to have received little professional training on how to handle reactions to such a radical cultural change, particularly for the most vulnerable, older female patrons and children who may be exposed to inappropriate behavior, the dignity and safety of unsuspecting women who have trusted to use these facilities for many years.”

Contrary to Faber’s claim, Jaman maligned no trans person in her comment to council, instead recounted her personal experience of YMCA management neglecting to protect vulnerable people (including herself). YMCA staff are supposed to enforce strict Child Protection Policies and Procedures, but no such policies appear among the Olympic Peninsula YMCA Pool Rules nor were in evidence during Jaman’s experience.

Searching the meeting transcript finds just this one use by any Jaman supporter of the words “pedophiles” and “rapists” quoted by Faber:

We have seen what can happen when pedophiles and rapists can and do populate careers and locations where they have easy access to women and children.

This was in the context of a nuanced, well-articulated call for protection from predators, which was NOT saying that trans people are predators as Faber claimed.  Instead, it said the opposite: that predators can pretend to be trans just like they can lie in other ways, so vulnerable people (including trans) need protection:

Do men transitioning to be women understand that discrimination and violence are part of being a woman, and that we do need protection from predators? Do women transitioning to being men understand that they are also vulnerable to male harassment and violence?

All that this commenter urged were common-sense protections against predators and that “women’s concerns about our safety and privacy are and always have been legitimate.”  The meeting video and transcript show that neither this commenter nor any other Jaman supporter called trans persons predators as Faber claimed to hear “repeatedly.”

Public Comments Hallucinating Words Never Said

In fact, the only people at the August 1, 2022 council meeting repeatedly talking about trans persons being “pedophiles” and “rapists” were Jaman opponents — falsely putting those words in the mouths of Jaman supporters while stirring up hatred against them:

1. “When they label trans people as pedophiles and predators, that’s a problem. Thank you. I think you all should be ashamed of yourself.”
2. “Comparing transgender people to pedophiles is absolutely disgusting. As somebody who has been a victim of sexual abuse myself, it is horrible to go that low to call a group of people who are just trying to live their lives these horrible things that aren’t even true. Pedophiles exist in the world and not every transgender person is a pedophile.”
3. From a former mayor: “The people who are standing at the podium this evening expressing fear need to really think about the terminology and get ‘pedophiles’ out of their language.”
4. “Do you know what trans people are? They are not pedophiles. They are teachers and they are leaders and they are the bravest people I know. And so I just encourage all of you who have such a short-sighted vision as to what trans people are and have the absolute hurtful audacity to call them these terrible names: Please stop.”
5. “But I would just like to reiterate the fact that a lot of people have also been calling trans people pedophiles, which is also a statement of calling people things that they aren’t. … As has been stated many times today, trans people are not pedophiles.”
6. Major Faber’s response to comments: “LGBTQ people, trans people in particular in this case are entitled to basic respect and they have not been receiving that in much of the commentary tonight on the pedophiles and rapists and predators.”

These speakers fell into a feeding frenzy of confabulations and repeated self-reinforcing misstatements, confusing primary evidence with one’s own side’s overheated false claims about words never said just minutes earlier.  The end result was group hypnosis leading to the hallucination expressed in Mayor Faber’s draft city newsletter article about being “appalled and disgusted to hear people — all of them my elders, to shame — repeatedly call trans people ‘pedophiles’ and ‘rapists’ … with utter contempt.”

Nothing of that kind took place.

The Psychology of Totalitarianism

It’s hard to understand how this could have happened in less than an hour of real time, but some insight may perhaps be gleaned from clinical psychology professor Mattias Desmet’s 2022 book The Psychology of Totalitarianism, whose thesis is summarized in a physician’s review as follows:

Desmet’s central thesis is that when the correct conditions are present within society, a collective or crowd consciousness emerges which causes unspeakable atrocities to be permitted by, and in many cases directly conducted by large masses of the population (this process is termed “mass formation”).

This is a critical point because the majority of the individuals who commit the worst crimes of totalitarian regimes are not evil or psychopathic, but rather simply had a level of consciousness that allowed them to be swept into a mass formation. Similarly, this provides an explanation of why so many political zealots throughout the ages will feel it is justified to distort the facts in whatever way is necessary to promote their ideology. …

The final component necessary for mass formation is to have an “enemy“ to attach all of these negative feelings (that largely arise from disconnection) onto.

It is very disturbing and dangerous for Mayor Faber and others in Port Townsend’s power structure to mishear the words of vulnerable elder women asking for protection, dehumanize these women as appalling/disgusting/shameful/horrible/hurtful/etc., and project their own negative feelings onto these women as if they were an enemy.  The end result was the city’s incitement and collaboration with the hooligans who physically assaulted vulnerable elder women outside city hall just two weeks later.

Such demonization continues to be leveled against vulnerable people in our community. By falsely accusing them of attacking trans people with “utter contempt,” labeling them “transphobes” and “bigots,” valid concerns are dismissed and hatred is fomented towards them.

And the hits just keep on coming. Continuing its run of censorship and tendentious misreporting about these events, The Leader‘s lead op-ed for October 4, 2023 was ironically titled “A Golf Course For All Must Transcend Division” by new columnist Jason Victor Serinus, which trotted out these false narratives to smear and demonize:

…championship of Julie Jaman, whose outrage at a trans employee of the Port Townsend YMCA made it all the way to Fox News, attracted Proud Boys to our community, and got her permanently banned from the pool.

Talk about blaming the victim for how mismanagement of a whistleblower situation blew up into a nationwide disgrace! First zealots beat up on Jaman and those who championed her verbally in the council chambers. Then they beat up on these women physically in the streets. Now they continue to beat up on them in the press and social media.

Stop the madness! If ever there can be accountability and reconciliation to transcend division, maybe it can begin by understanding the truth of this pivotal meeting where council listened but did not hear, decided to protect only selected vulnerable persons, and enabled events to spiral out of control.

Can YMCA Be Trusted to Protect the Vulnerable in a New Aquatic Center?

The proposed new Aquatic Center is planned to be managed by the same YMCA that mismanaged the Jaman incident and never resolved questions raised at the August 1, 2022 council meeting.  This effectively excludes not only Jaman but also other potential pool users who no longer trust nor feel welcomed by YMCA management, raising another major red flag (alongside financial red ink) for the Aquatic Center.

Circling back to Jaman’s original concern about protection of vulnerable children, the Silicon Valley YMCA’s restroom policy requires that “Children must always be sent in threes (known as the rule of three) with a staff member.” Accounts differ about how many little girls were present during the July 26, 2022 incident, so it’s unclear whether Olympic YMCA violated the rule of three that day, or bothers to honor it on days when only one or two children are present.

But local staff seems to have been violating other YMCA rules such as “staff will stand in the open doorway of the restroom while children are using the restroom.” Much of the uncertainty about local YMCA child protection policies and procedures is because there is nothing on their website or Pool Rules about them.

Given Olympic Peninsula YMCA’s stonewalling, duplicity, and “attack the messenger” behavior in the Jaman case, there is lack of trust that vulnerable people would be protected under its management.

The Aquatic Center project should not ignore the elephant in the pool: its non-inclusive, untrustworthy YMCA management who responded to earnest child protection concerns by banning and bullying a vulnerable whistleblower with no due process.