Message from the Mayor
Our friends in Greybull had a meeting to discuss a problem.
Their swimming pool is dying. Maybe the best word for it is condemned and the school district doesn’t have the funds to fix it up and maintain it.
Sounds similar, doesn’t it.
I suppose that this will be a reoccurring theme for many school districts now that the state says that swimming is not a part of education. Football, tennis, soccer, and even basketball are not part of education either. “There ain’t no learnin in them sports!” they say. ‘They’ would be the state school commission.
So in Greybull, they had a meeting on what to do in getting a new pool and their school superintendent, Roger Clark, ran the meeting. He explained that there was no money to run the pool after it was completed. I tried to explain that because of the cutback from the state and the downturn in sales tax, the town of Greybull would have a hard time running it too. Some of their county commissioners explained some funding options. Bonding issues, special tax districts, joint powers boards, and even the cap tax.
For the cap tax to be put on a ballot, two thirds of the entities need to approve. In Park County, we have just three municipalities and the county. In Big Horn County, you can’t swing a bad driver without hitting a community. Nine communities mean six of those would need to be in approval. Not all of them are interested in Greybull getting a swimming pool but every one of those communities can use a boost during these tough times.
Big Horn County doesn’t have the tax income like Park County does. We get the tourist dollars in Yellowstone and in Cody that help pay off a tax. Big Horn County already has a fifth penny to pay for their government and really isn’t a retail Mecca for shopping. So a large chunk of money would be hard to raise.
The main question that they had for me was how much is our pool costing us. I told them that we have endowments, rentals, walk-ins, concessions, and donations to help pay for the pool.
They asked me again. “How much?”
I told them, “I don’t know.” We are tracking daily figures, marking down the weather and activities in town and keeping a detailed log of those attending. We still won’t know for a while.
With so much gloom and grotesque money figures, they still want to pursue an aquatic center. That’s because Greybull is a swimming town just like Powell.
The meeting was very educational. Even though swimming is not part of an education.
Scott Mangold
Mayor
City of Powell
mayormangold@cityofpowell.com
MAYOR MANGOLD
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