Mayor Sue Hakes, along with city councilors Jan Sivertson and Tim Kennedy and city employees Mike Roth, Kim Dunsmoor, and Dave Tersteeg, went before the county board Tuesday, August 24, 2009 to request funding for the Grand Marais Municipal Pool.
Hakes reminded commissioners that they had told the city council March 4 they would consider helping with the pool’s annual operating deficit, which is expected to be about $210,000 this year.
Commissioner Fritz Sobanja referred to minutes from a county board meeting many years ago in which the county agreed to pay one-third of the pool’s annual operating deficit, up to $5,000. One-third of the operating deficit today would cost the county about $70,000.
The pool’s 2009 revenue is down about 4%, or $3,000, from last year, according to Park Director Dave Tersteeg, but so are expenses, he said.
Use of the pool is split evenly by city residents, county residents outside Grand Marais city limits, and visitors.
Commissioner Bob Fenwick said he would be comfortable finding money to pay for 2009 operating losses and putting funding for one-third of the pool’s operating deficit into the 2010 budget. Hakes responded by saying she thought commissioners had talked about contributing half the amount of the operating deficit, but a third was better than nothing.
The commissioners were not sure how they would fit pool funding into their 2010 budget, with department requests already calling for $659,129 more than the county’s levy limit of $5,678,614.
The 2010 pool budget projects revenues of $62,500 and expenditures of $336,177. The expenditure projections include about $35,000 of capital improvements that are likely to be postponed in hopes that the proposed 1% sales tax will pass a referendum that would help fund a new community center with a pool.
When the pool was built in 1977, Commissioner Fenwick said, the county, and the school, and the city all agreed to pay one-third the cost of operating the pool. Following through on that commitment is appropriate, he said.
The board unanimously passed a motion to contribute funding in the amount of one-third of the pool’s 2009 operating deficit. Commissioner Jan Hall was absent. They passed another motion to budget for one-third of the 2010 operating deficit, not to exceed $75,000. Their funding should not pay for expenditures that would only benefit the city, Fenwick said, although neither he nor City Administrator Mike Roth could imagine what those might be.
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