FORKS – The Quillayute Valley Park and Recreation District Board members will answer questions about a proposed new taxing district to fund the Forks Aquatic Center on Wednesday.
The special meeting will be at 7 p.m. at the Department of Natural Resources Conference Center, 411 Tillicum Lane.
If all deadlines are met, the new district could be on the November general election ballot.
Forming a district would mean the pool – which opened in July 2005 at the corner of Division Street and Maple Avenue in Forks – would be supported by a taxing district separate from the Quillayute Valley Parks and Recreation District.
The meeting will review the costs of running the pool, which were estimated in a committee study to run about $363,992 annually in addition to the $81,236 start up costs.
“The committee, made up of a group of citizens, agreed that we should put this issue before the voters, and the board supported that report,” said Sandra Carter, chair of the Quillayute Valley Parks and Recreation District.
“We have asked local governments to take the steps they need to take to get it on the ballot.”
In June, the Forks City Council approved a request to the Clallam County Boundary Review Board to set the boundaries for the proposed district.
The council’s action started a process that would put the district idea through several steps – including city and county cooperation on the measure – before it reaches the November ballot
If any of the deadlines by any of the agencies involved are missed, most probably the tax could not be collected – and thus the pool would remain closed – until 2009, said Rod Fleck, Forks city attorney.
Council members held a hearing on the issue on Monday.
“We had several people who came and everyone was very supportive,” Forks Mayor Nedra Reed said.
One of the main questions, she said, was how the current park and recreation district would work with the new taxing district.
Ultimately, the idea would be for the Quillayute Valley Park and Recreation District to fade to the background and let the new district take over the aquatics center.
However, the park and recreation district cannot simply close up shop because the 20-year bond for building the pool is still indebted to the current district, so it would remain active until the bond was paid off.
The advantage of the new structure would be that it would allow a continuous income instead of needing to have levies passed – such as the current district which has two failed maintenance and operations levies behind it – Carter said.
In a metropolitan district, the maximum tax that it could collect is 75 cents per $1,000 of assessed value – generating about $215,677.
The rest of the funds would come from taxes on the harvest of private timber and tax on Department of Natural Resource land managed for Clallam County, as well as about $87,660 in revenue from operating the pool.
For more information, phone Carter at 360-374-7533.
