by Phillip Will
Camas Resident/Taxpayer
Do you feel heard Camas?
The neighbors I’ve spoken to don’t. They saw the Crown Park pool, a Camas landmark donated to this city by the Camas Lions back in 1954 at a cost of $90,000, demolished and replaced by a patch of grass and an empty promise of a $78 million dollar pool. The Crown Park pool was a generous gift and a legacy for that generation that the city has since reduced to rubble to further an agenda. A small recent poll of your neighbors (more detail below) saw a clear majority proclaiming that the city should have spent/raised the small amount needed to fix the Crown Park Pool.
An article in The Columbian explains how before the Crown Park pool you’d be left to learn to swim in the “Sandy Swimming Hole”. After it’s construction, generations of Camas families saw the Crown Park pool as the highlight of every summer. They learned to swim there before eventually seeing their own children swim in that same water, surrounded by the same beautiful trees - just a little bit taller. Then, in January 2018, Camas city councilors voted to not open the pool that summer and as time would show, never open it again. City Administrator Pete Capell was quoted, “Bringing the pool into compliance with health and safety codes would have cost somewhere in the range of $481,000 to $710,000”. Renovation estimates were between $1.69 to $2.19 million. $2 million to update the legacy the Lion’s left Camas into a beautiful living monument to the history of this town and it’s people.
An informal poll conducted on the neighborhood social media app, Nextdoor* showed that our neighbors have two things to say to the city regarding the Crown Park Pool:
At the time of this article’s posting, 86% of those surveyed say that YES, the city should have spent/raised $2 million dollars to fix the Crown Park Pool.
At the time of this article’s posting, 92% said they DID NOT support the proposed $78 million dollar pool complex proposed near Lacamas lake, but 78% of that same group said that they DO support the idea of some type of community pool in Camas.
So why did this survey need to be done by one of your neighbors? Why didn’t the city ask these simple questions themselves and act accordingly? The city did actually spend your tax dollars to hire a “survey consultant firm” to conduct a survey at one point. It makes you wonder, what does a survey consultant do and why would you need one with a small town like Camas? Does a survey consultant ask the questions that get the answers needed to support a political agenda? Why did we pay, taxpayer funds, for a company to do this work? Sometimes a person that is hesitant to ask the honest question, doesn’t want to hear the honest answer. Does Camas want to hear it’s citizens - there’s a patch of grass in Crown park that used to be a pool that can answer that question for you.
The survey consultants the city hired deployed two rounds of surveys, the results of which are unavailable at this link on the city’s website at the time of writing. The Columbian referenced the results at the time, “When faced with replacing the pool or getting rid of it… Sixty-seven percent of responders wanted to replace the pool with a new pool, which would cost an estimated $1.9 million to $2.2 million according to the survey.”
From $2 million to $78 million for a blank check plan without a locked location, building plan or amenities list in about a year. If you’re a property owner, think about how much your home is worth - would you give that amount to a builder with a history of not listening to their clients if they said, “we’ll figure it out after you give us the check”. Voting NO on the $78 million dollar pool bond is the first step to getting control of Camas back from a city government that is willfully ignoring the voice of its people.
* Nextdoor.com is an app that strictly verifies a user’s address through phone billing information or through a postcard sent directly to their reported address with a verification code through the mail. This limits fraud and results in you speaking with your actual neighbors unlike with apps like Facebook and Twitter.
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