On Monday, Nov. 13, the City of Port Townsend plans to conduct a tour and workshop at the Mountain View Campus for the Healthier Together pool initiative.

In the meantime, Carrie Hite, director of parks and recreation strategy for the City of Port Townsend, wants the public to know key facts about the proposed Aquatic and Wellness Center.

According to Hite, the total project costs should add up to $37.1 million, with a projected millage increase of 0.2 percent and an estimated bond interest rate of 5.5 percent, after initially considering a 4.5 percent rate, on what would be a 30-year bond.

While the City of Port Townsend has committed a subsidy of $400,000, Hite noted that the city’s Healthier Together partners — including the Port Townsend School District, Jefferson County, the Jefferson County Port, Jefferson Healthcare, the JeffCo Aquatic Coalition and the YMCA — are each applying for grant funds of their own to contribute to the overall project.

The Aquatic and Wellness Center is planned to be built at the Port Townsend School District’s Mountain View Commons, facing Blaine Street, allowing the existing pool to remain open during construction, and according to Hite, the YMCA is considering operating the new facility.

The existing 19-yard pool is not sufficient for swimming competitions nor compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The proposed facility of nearly 30,000 square feet would include an ADA-compliant cold-water lap and competition pool, with six lanes and 25 yards, plus a warm-water recreation pool with a lazy river.

Hite also noted the insufficient circulations of air and water in the existing pool, which was constructed in 1963 as an outdoor pool, before a roof was added.

“The combination of warm air and moisture has been destructive to the current facility,” Hite said. “It cost $1 million just to patch its roof. There are no vapor barriers, and its rust and corrosion could break something we won’t be able to fix.”

Hite additionally warned that the soil condition underneath the current facility could be compromised by leakage, which is another reason Healthier Together aims to replace the existing 60-year-old pool with a new facility whose projected lifespan should be at least 50 years, if not longer with diligent maintenance.

Hite has heard the public ask why the Aquatic and Wellness Center — which is planned to include 96 parking spaces, ostensibly to serve Jefferson County as a whole — is sited in Port Townsend, rather than being located further out into the county.

“We did evaluate other sites in the county, outside of Port Townsend,” Hite said. “But between the lack of sewer systems or drain fields that could handle the needed water circulation, they simply didn’t have the infrastructure. I’ve seen the signs about not paying for a Port Townsend pool, but it would be open to everyone in Jefferson County, and it’d be closer than the pools they drive to in Sequim, Port Angeles and Bainbridge Island.”

On Oct. 24, the Port Townsend Free Press published an article, written by Jim Scarantino, which claimed in its title that “The $108,941,000 Pool Could Default Its First Year.”

While Scarantino’s article ran figures for the pro forma — the debt service versus the tax revenue projections — Hite noted that the pro forma Scarantino is using employs the original pro forma the steering committee had explored, at 4.5 percent.

“The bond rate, at 5.5 percent, is not in the negative,” Hite said. “In addition, his comments about the operational costs have been analyzed by the Olympic Peninsula YMCA. They are using experience from Sequim and Silverdale, and are confident in the numbers.”

Hite further critiqued Scarantino’s comparisons of the Aquatic and Wellness Center to the Shore Aquatic Center in Port Angeles, whose pool has four tanks.

“We are proposing two tanks, so that’s not an apples-to-apples comparison,” Hite said. “When the steering committee looked at the service area for a pool, Jefferson County doesn’t have an adequate pool for swim competitions, or a warm-water rehab body of water, so we defined the service area as the full county.”

Of the project’s presumed sales tax revenues, Scarantino’s article asked, “Is it realistic to assume this steady, constant growth rate, no slowing economy, no bumps, no recession for 25 years?”

Hite responded: “The growth rate we built into the 5.5 percent model is 2 percent a year, which right now is far exceeding this.”

The Nov. 13 tour and workshop of the Mountain View Commons will be part of a special business meeting of the Port Townsend City Council, with the tour starting at 5:30 p.m. and the workshop starting at 6:30 p.m.