Loyatlon Pool Fringe

More on the Loyalton Pool 022410

The discussion over the Loyalton City Pool has been growing since it closed several years ago. Echoing as though in the steel shelter of the pool, the voices had grown to a bedlam. The energy produced was too much to simply stop, or rather, to suddenly die out with the lack of a second to a motion at the Board. As a result, the talk continues.

There are many reasons to protest that the community has given up too soon. What about gate fees? What about recalculating the debt load? What if the voters would have approved it, we’d have a pool now.

Here is what we believe are the facts:

The Friends of the Loyalton City Pool have been amazing in their ability to ferret out funding and garner support. The heat and light they’ve generated has come from tireless work and unquenchable optimism. But, their mule is too small, and the load is too large.

The pool couldn’t stay open seven years ago, when the economy was better, and when there were more young people in the county. True, it closed because some traditional friends redirected support, but they did so because the economy was tanking and young families were moving away. Those are two facts, one economic and one social, which can be demonstrated empirically, meaning, with numbers. We call Loyalton a "city" but a city has more than 50,000 residents. Loyalton is a village, or at best, a town. There are "ghost towns" with more residents than Loyalton.

The Friends’ plan intended to broaden the community and increase the revenue by causing voters and swimmers in Sierraville, Calpine, and the scattered people between to invest yearly in the pool through taxes. If they paid a tax, they would be more likely to actually use the pool, driving up gate revenues.

There is a third thing that has happened since the pool closed, which increases the load on the donkey: regulation and liability. If the community could hire local contractors and use community labor, it would be possible to build a nice little outdoor pool for relative pennies. The truth is, with interest, insurance, and the fees and costs associated with doing anything today, the cost must certainly be double. The horrendous cost of regulation is reflected in dollars that add nothing to the project, not one tile nor dab of concrete, but that go to support the regulators and the experts they spawn to swarm over our projects. (Hi, Ray.) We aren’t angry and bitter at our government, though, because we know all this crap is for our own good.

Those concrete features, decreasing population, plummeting economy, and increasing parasitism by government and their various camp followers, doom the Loyalton City Pool.

But, wait, why not put it to the voters? Several reasons.

First, the other communities are very clearly not going to support the tax. We don’t need to ask, they won’t. People in Sierraville and Calpine already have nice pools available, which are tax free. Sierraville is about to be razed as a town by ground water regulators. If its existence depended on its ability to suddenly produce a sewer system, the little town would swiftly become a distal suburb of Truckee, peopled with well off newcomers who will be only vaguely aware Loyalton is even there. Truckee has a year round 45’X75’ pool heated to 83 degrees. See Here.

Calpine may, or may not, have a water crisis, depending what version you believe, but it is clear that money is going to be spent there. There is a dandy summer pool in Portola, twenty five minutes away, and it’s near a bank and three grocery stores and a health food store, ( and a lumber yard, a Les Schwab, several mechanics, a medical/dental clinic, full service auto parts, and more!).