Ice Age Park bid rejected

People in Electric City spoke for and against building a new park last week, with most agreeing that a new park would be good, but with little agreement on how far over budget an offered bid was or on where the money should come from.

The Ice Age Park project in Electric City is delayed further but is still possible, following a rejection of the bid at the Feb. 11 city council meeting in which community members discussed the merits of the park, and confusion over costs cropped up.

Community members, council members, and park committee members spoke, their comments tending to focus on two key topics: the merits of having the park, and the merits of paying for it with hotel/motel funds, collected via a tax intended to boost tourism.

Bob Boll said during the public comment period that with other parks in the area, one wasn’t needed in Electric City. He worried it would be a money pit, and that it wasn’t an easy area to drive to, especially if a driver were towing something.

Wayne Fowler, a builder who had bid on the project, said that he felt the bid under consideration, from Terrabella, Inc., was a good, competitive bid, and that having a park with a theme (the Ice Age) would be good for the area.

“We bring tourists in for the dam, but they don’t stay,” Fowler said. “They pull in here, they go to the laser light show, they get in their car and leave. … I think the park would be really used well to hold people here, and if you hold people here, then they spend money. You go to Leavenworth and go to Winthrop — those stores don’t have anything more than what we’ve got; they just have a theme going and people like walking around and looking. And I think that’s what this community needs to do: get together and work as a community and get a theme, get something going to hold the people here.”

Ian Turner spoke next.

“I’m here to passionately support the park,” he said. “It’s one of those things where we have far more children in this town than people realize, and it’s getting younger all the time. … I know for our family, we go to Coulee Dam; that’s the best park in town right now. When we go to another town, we seek out splash pads [a feature of the proposed park]. My kids love them, they’re a big attractant. You would see kids from Coulee City coming and having their birthday parties at our park, you’d see kids coming down from Wilbur, from all over the area. It would be a big attraction and that’s coming from a parent with little kids who look for that stuff. … Our town does not have good assets for young families. … Simply throwing some grass out and a slide and a set of swings, we’ve got that. Let’s build something special. Let’s build something nice for our town.”

Following the public comments, Councilmember Cate Slater spoke.

“I think this town needs to go more modern,” she said. “There’s really not a lot of stuff here.”

Slater said people who work here choose to commute, from Spokane for instance, rather than live here because of a lack of such features in the area.

“There’s nothing here for families, for the wives and kids to stick around for,” she said. “I think if we start to bring some cool stuff in, people will stay, and it will have a domino effect. We’ll build nicer houses. I just think it would be really great.”

“We all at this table agree we could use a park,” Councilmember Brian Buche said. “But it has to be something that’s manageable.”

Buche read letters from Patrick Welton, a managing partner at Sunbanks Resort, and from Hal Rauch, of Coulee Playland, both addressing the use of “hotel/motel” or “lodging tax” money for funding for the park.

“Over the years Sunbanks Resort and other members of the community, that directly rely on tourism have been 100% against the use of lodging tax to be spent within the City limits,” Welton’s letter reads, stating that Sunbanks “represents approximately 62% of all the revenue for lodging tax that is generated by all three Cities in the area.”

When he asked Sunbanks customers what the city could do to entice them to stay more nights or come in the off season, they responded, “we come for the lake and warm sunshine during the summer season,” he wrote.

“Using lodging funds for the City of Electric is just plain wrong,” Welton said. “If you want to build a park or a structure that all the residents of the City would enjoy, then put it on the ballot and request the funds. Do not use funds from the lodging tax for your own self interests. Operators that contribute to the lodging tax deserve better than that.”

Rauch’s letter expressed a similar sentiment.

“While a decent idea for families who live here, I am concerned that use by visitors would be low,” Rauch’s letter reads. “Use of those funds is supposed to promote visitation by those who do not live here.”

Buche moved to reject the bid, and the council voted 3-1 to reject it, with Slater wanting to approve it.

Mayor Diane Kohout said that, “rejecting the bids does not mean we have to give the money back. We have until the end of this year to start construction on the Ice Age Park.”

Numbers in dispute

There was some confusion over budget numbers for the park, in particular the numbers for how over budget a roughly $465,000 bid from Spokane-based Terrabella, Inc is.

The Star reported in January, when that bid was first rejected, that with “a target total cost of $515,000,” and that “with the city supplying, separate from the bid, a restroom for about $36,000, playground equipment for about $47,000, the sewer and water hookups, plus decorative basalt and more, a desired target for the bid is somewhere around $380,000.”

Those numbers were provided by former city administrator Russ Powers.

That $515,000 target for the total cost is based on the $257,500 in grant money from the Washington State Recreation & Conservation Office that is matched by the city out of its hotel/motel tax money.

The city’s park fund has about $116,000 in it, and the hotel/motel tax fund, Powers said, should have $104,000 in it at the end of 2020. Powers had presented drawing money from those as options, but the council in January chose not to use $85,000 of that money toward the high bid.

Also back in January, Mayor Diane Kohout explained to The Star that money in the parks fund is reserved for maintaining the park after it’s built, and that they don’t want to deplete that fund.

At the February meeting, park committee members, including Councilmember Cate Slater, argued that since the low bid of $465,000 is lower than the amount of grant money/match, that the leftover grant/match money of $31,000, estimated in a document from park committee member Brad Parish, could go toward an estimated $42,000 in the additional city expenses, including the bathroom. That, plus a donation of $5,000 from Faith Community Church, would cut the over-budget amount down to $6,000.

That document, provided to The Star, however, doesn’t list the expense of $47,000 in playground equipment that Powers had listed in January.

It also lists the state contribution of the grant as totaling $239,650, less than the $257,650 match from the city.

Parish said later that the city had put in more than the state for the project so that there would be some extra money “in case there was overrun” on the advice of the architects, and that the playground equipment is included in the bid.

But based on the numbers provided to The Star from Powers in January, with a target of a $380,000 bid, and a $515,000 target total cost, the city’s expenses, separate from the bid, could total around $135,000.

With Powers now having left the city, and a replacement only named at the Feb. 11 meeting, clarification on the numbers is hard to come by.

Buche, before moving to reject the park bid, asserted that the bid is $80,000 over budget, not just $6,000, and that the $80,000 figure is not counting a $22,000 annual estimated cost for maintenance and operations of the park, a figure he said is low.