PORT TOWNSEND — Regular users of the Mountain View Pool have expressed anger and frustration about its latest closure, which city officials have said could not be avoided.
The pool — the only public one in Port Townsend — at Mountain View Commons was closed
Nov. 14 for what was expected to be a one-month period. That was extended when a pump failed.
Both the pump and a boiler are now in place, and the pool is “conservatively” scheduled to open about the first of the year, according to City Manager David Timmons.
“There is no one who wants to see the pool open more than city staff,” Timmons said at a meeting of the City Council on Monday.
“When new systems are installed along with older systems, the older systems often fail, and we’ve been dealing with that situation,” he said.
Right before the meeting, Timmons received a letter from Earll Murman, president of the JeffCo Aquatic Coalition, a citizen advocacy group with 2,300 supporters.
In his letter, Murman expressed “strong dismay” about the pool closure and asked the city to reopen earlier.
He also asked the city to “perform a retrospective root cause analysis of what caused the 350 percent schedule overrun on the job, and then implement engineering and project management improvements so that similar schedule slippages do not occur on future Mountain View or other city repairs.”
“Closure of the pool is extremely disruptive to the users and staff,” Murman wrote.
“Users organize their daily lives around the service, which they expect will be reliable and predictable with occasional unforeseen emergency closures,” he said.
“Denial of service for seven weeks has major impact on the users.”
On Wednesday, Timmons said he was preparing an answer to Murman’s letter.
Timmons said the city had at one point proposed a comprehensive upgrade of the pool but was discouraged by Murman’s coalition because it would jeopardize the proposed construction of a new facility.
“The more comprehensive fixes we made they felt would be counterproductive to their goal, so they wanted us to do the minimum necessary,” Timmons said Wednesday.
“The problem with that approach is that if you don’t approach it as a system and manage it like a system, things are going to break down.”
Timmons said he warned Murman about taking the approach, that “things could start breaking” if the system wasn’t approached comprehensively.
Timmons said he followed the group’s recommendation to defer major repairs and scheduled the boiler replacement for a time when the swim team was not competing.
He also said he placed the money needed for the repairs into escrow should the need for them arise.
Murman said his group never said the city should not repair the pool but made a distinction between major changes, such as reconfiguring the pool “into something it’s not,” and minor ones such as pump repairs, which he said could have been anticipated and should have not taken so long.
“These parts aren’t available off of the shelf,” Timmons said of the pump.
“It can take weeks to order them.”
The meeting was attended by several supporters of the pool, including five young students.
“I am part of the swim team, and the pool means a lot to me,” said Lizzie Krajewski, 10.
“I want to be healthy and exercise and go to swim meets and challenge myself against other teams, but I can’t do that if the pool is closed,” she said.
Said Halie Jones, 9: “The pool has been closed a long time, and the swim team is trying as hard as they can.”
She also said she thought both sides have a point — prompting Mayor David King to say she had a future in politics.
There were some adult comments.
Patty Cogen of Port Townsend said the pool was essential to her health and added that her father’s daily swims extended his life for five years.
Quinn Bailey of Port Townsend said he swam in the pool as a child and spoke in favor of a city bond measure that will be on the Feb. 10 special election ballot.
The $3.6 million bond measure would fund repairs at Mountain View Commons.
“Thank you for saying that,” King said.
“If the bond passes, we can replace some of the components in the pool that were in use when you were swimming in it as a boy.”
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
