Wet Dreams? Part 4
05 Monday Feb 2018
Written by parry034 in Budget/Financial, Parry Sound, Reflections
It was about a month ago that a CBC article arrived in my news feed. It said that one third of Canadians live paycheck to paycheck. It stunned me, although I wasn’t surprised. I don’t think that Parry Sound has any reason to believe that its residents are any better off.
A Thought Experiment
Let’s take a family in Parry Sound with two children. Let’s assume that they rent and pay $1,000 per month not including utilities. That’s not an unreasonable estimate for an apartment big enough for two or three children. Rent represents a large portion of their disposable income. Let’s also assume that a pool is built in a multi-municipal partnership and as a result Parry Sound taxes go up by 2%, a best-case scenario. That means the landlord’s taxes will go up and be passed on to tenants. Let’s assume it’s a simple 1% rent increase to cover the cost of the tax increase. A landlord has more than taxes as part of expenses. This family now is paying another $10 per month or $120 per year to support a municipal pool. If they want to use the pool they need to find another $1,000, or a month’s rent, to pay for a family membership at the pool. Can they swing this? Not if they are living paycheck to paycheck.
A Pool for Exactly Who?
Exactly who is a municipal pool intended to serve? Well, it will obviously only serve those who want to swim and have the resources to get to the pool. That’s not everyone and it may not even be a majority of residents. A pool will also serve only those who can afford a pool membership. That further shrinks the ‘pool’ of users. Everyone else will be helping to subsidize the pool for those who want to swim recreationally or competitively, are able to access it, and can afford it.
Actually, it will be only a tiny minority of people who use the pool. Any pool will operate much like a commercial gym. Gyms price their memberships to entice people to buy in, realizing that it will only be a small percentage who actually use it regularly. Most gyms are unable to properly serve all of the people who have paid for a membership if they were to show up regularly. The net/net is that the gym owner makes a profit and the people who actually use the facility are paying less than they really should because of the effective subsidy of others. In this case of a pool all taxpayers are being asked to cover the cost for what will be used by only a few. According to StatCan there are 16,000 people living in the municipalities considering participating in a pool. How many of these can you fit into a pool at one time? Or in one week?
Don’t believe or like this line of thinking? Here is a link to an article in the Washington Post that discusses the business of gym memberships. They note that one gym has 6,000 total members but only capacity for 300. That sounds about right for a pool, but with a 16,000 to 300 ratio.
All-Star Game – Magic Johnson to Darryl Dawkins for a Dunk
There is the point being made that a pool would help with the recruitment of medical professionals to the West Parry Sound Health Centre (WPSHC). That opinion was made clear a couple of years ago when the CEO of the WPSHC made a presentation of Parry Sound Town Council. After the presentation the Parry Sound CAO soft lobbed a question to the CEO asking if a pool would assist with recruitment. Like a Magic Johnson pass to Darryl Dawkins at an All-Star game, the CEO grabbed the alley oop and not only slammed it home, he broke the backboard. Beautiful. And like any All-Star Game it really didn’t make any difference. A pool can make a difference in recruitment, but ….
Is it enough? Can a pool really make a difference? It’s an 11-million, or even 20-million-dollar bet.
Talking to others I have come to understand that perhaps the biggest reason recruitment is an issue may not be the lack of the pool, but the lack of good opportunity for two career families. Heck, it’s a problem for all families thinking of moving to the Parry Sound area, not just physicians. A physician may be married to a lawyer, or a chartered accountant, or an engineer, or a biologist, or a management consultant, or …. How easy is it for both adults to find good career advancing jobs in the Greater Parry Sound Area?
There is also the issue of educational resources. You have seen the local academic scores. Health professionals are presumably competitive academically, and probably want the best learning environment for their children. That means children learning in an environment where it is not only the teachers that challenge them, but also other students with similar goals and advantages. Do we have magnet schools for the musically or scientifically gifted? Rosseau Lake College is excellent, but as a private school has its own set of pros and cons for a parent to consider.
It’s perhaps better for physicians or top medical professionals to work in an urban centre and provide their families with all of the available benefits and cottage in the Greater Parry Sound Area. Win-win. Weekdays, a vibrant multicultural urban centre, access to educational resources, a local church, synagogue or mosque, and of course a pool and much, much more. Weekends, the relaxation and connection to nature on a lake or river in the West Parry Sound area.
Perhaps that too negative. It’s possible that a pool can help with medical professional and executive recruitment, but it needs to be part of a larger recruitment plan. Let’s see the plan.
It All About Access
How do we make a case for a pool recognizing that at this point it is largely the pet project of a relatively limited number of folks wealthy enough to take advantage of it?
The answer in my opinion is to make it accessible to children, through a school program. That doesn’t necessarily mean attaching it to the new ‘super school’. I understand that there is no room, and more importantly no budget. That’s okay. If we want the pool to be part of the community, we need to introduce children to it. Even if they only get a dozen dips in a school year it is an important experience that might have lifelong implications, and one they would not have been able to enjoy otherwise. There may be a future Olympian waiting to have their potential revealed.
That family who saw their rent go up $120 per year because of a new pool might be okay with the increase if their children we able to use the pool without any additional charge.
Lessons of the Bobby Orr Community Centre
Let’s not use the Bobby Orr Community Centre model as a template for a municipal pool. At this point the taxpayers of Parry Sounds subsidize the BOCC to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars per year. Beyond its use for meetings as well as community and private events the BOCC is primarily used as an ice rink. But as an ice rink its use is pretty much limited to organizations who pay for ice time. The organizations who pay for ice time play an important role in subsidizing the BOCC expenses and are given top priority in terms of ice time assignment. This results in other taxpayers, casual skaters, having very limited use of the facility, sometimes depending on the Mayor or Tim Hortons to cover the cost of a free skating period. People do have access to free skating at the Kinsmen Park, but that depends on the weather and the contribution of volunteers. Let’s not hope that a municipal pool would, like the Bobby Orr Community Centre, be limited to those who pay a premium or participate in programmed content while all others are relegated to Waubuno Beach, and subject to season and weather.
If a pool is a municipal resource that is subsidized by the taxpayer, the taxpayer needs to have access. A pool cannot become a resource that is reserved for those who can afford to pay more or are willing to participate in structured programs. Structured programs, swimming lessons and swim club, will be necessary, but shouldn’t preclude regular casual public access.
Concluding Comments and Suggestion
Building a pool for the right reasons and with the financial involvement of the neighbouring municipalities can make sense if it is done for the right reasons with a plan that encourages use by all. Or at the very least doesn’t create any artificial barriers.
How about we forgo any basic user fees and make it free to all municipal residents? Add in another $300,000 to the annual expense line that might come from user fees and spread the cost among the communities. You pay just a very little bit more in your taxes but that’s all it costs to access the pool unless you use the programming. That family with two kids could then afford to go for a Saturday morning swim in the middle of January.
There is an election coming up, let’s put it to the voters to decide. Let’s not leave the decision up to a few dozen individuals who raise enough fuss that they get their way. That has worked too well in the past, perhaps not to the benefit of the larger community. In Parry Sound the squeaky wheels, as long as there are enough of them, get the budget. Let’s remember the many folks who live paycheck to paycheck when we look at how tax money should be spent.
That’s it for me on this topic. I may chip in with some comments at some future point. I will be interested in watching how this initiative progresses. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
(Disclosure: I can afford my portion of any tax increase that is part of a joint municipal pool initiative. I can also afford a $1,000 per year pool membership.)
No comments
February 5, 2018 at 6:22 pm
Excellent summary Jo. Sure, let us have a Community Pool, but let us extend the greater Community to include Parry Sound Muskoka which includes Bracebridge, The funding of the NEEDS in Parry Sound leaves little room for the funding of any more expensive WANTS like the Stockey Center, but as I have previously remarked, I will not be paying the extra cost if they do decide to build one.
February 5, 2018 at 9:36 pm
Thanks Jo.
Continuing from my last response, I said there were two mistakes I was hoping they would avoid, and I thought I saw the second hiding behind some of your analysis.
People tend to think that certain things are more properly done by a central government, while other things are best left in private or individual hands. The military, for example, is usually something that most people agree should be on the government’s payroll. The fire department is another. On the other side, most people would think that restaurants should be handled privately. Same thing with, say, movie theaters, pizza shops, department stores, law offices, or even biopharmaceutical consulting.
What makes us put one business in the one category while putting other businesses in the other category? Sometimes there’s an obvious practical reason for it – like how no one person or company should be in charge of the military, or how fire departments should respond to all people not just customers – but other times it’s the result of little more than cultural ethos. Canada tends to have a strong cultural ethos towards putting things into the government category. If you think that’s not true, then quick! Ask yourself: which category should gas stations be in????
You probably said “private”. I mean, who on earth would imagine that the government should operate all the gas stations? And yet even if that was your answer, that just shows how far canada has come: petro canada was a government corporation until 1990. I mean, yes, it’s great that they did privatize it, but why on earth was it ever under the government’s charge to begin with? My answer: that’s canada for you.
I say all of that to make the point that we still have a tendency to think that anything that’s supposed to be “official” or “proper” – anything that is supposed to serve the community – is more legitimately run by the government. If the corporation of the town of parry sound ran the community pool, then most of us would think “yes, that sounds about right: it truly is a real *community* pool.” If, on the other hand, the pool was run by the hilton corporation or the clublink corporation, then a great many people would somehow find that to be less legitimate: it wouldn’t really be a “community” pool anymore, we would think of it as “the hilton pool” or whatever.
To some extent I agree that’s true, but only to a small extent. Barring constitutional rights, the municipal government has vast freedom to pass bylaws and regulate the pool to a tremendous extent regardless of which corporation owns it, so I don’t think it’s really a matter of who’s in control. Given that, I’m not sure there’s really much of an essential difference whether one corporation owns it or another does. I think the perceived difference is more a result of that canadian ethos.
That ethos is what would lead us to assume, as your analysis seems to, that the entire cost – or at least the bulk of the cost – should or will be borne by the town of parry sound (with possible participation by other local governments).
But that plan would place – I think your analysis does rightly show – far too great a burden on the local rate payers, and I just don’t see why it’s necessary.
I’m not saying the community pool should be completely private; theoretically, that would be a possibility: the incentives, grants and tax breaks that it would take to lure a private developer in to build and run the complex entirely on their own would probably, in the end, cost less than building and running it ourselves.
I am saying though that I think it’s worth exploring some sort of private/public partnership.
Maybe I’m naive, but I imagine a model where the town builds, owns and operates the pool proper, but builds into the complex spaces suitable for lease to private companies to run related ancillary businesses. These could include:
* fitness club: There are several established gyms in town, several of which currently have worse locations/facilities than they could have in this complex. Let’s have one of them move their operation into the new complex.
*daycare/early years centre. Parents will pay to drop off their kids to be cared for while they use the facilities. This is a business opportunity for a new or established daycare.
*Massage Therapy: Many RMT’s in town, one of them would love to set up their studio in the new complex I’m sure.
*Physio: proximity to the gym, pool and hottub (sorry, “therapy pool”!) would make the new complex a great opportunity for one of the local physio clinics. How about the one that has just moved out of the old medical associates building?
*spa/salon: a place to get your hair, nails or make-up done. Not my cup of tea, but important to at least half the population.
*cafe/restaurant. Bistro fare, a cup of coffee while watching your kids’ swimming lesson, a midday meal while taking a day to pamper yourself, etc. With a bit of planning, this could be built with a separate entrance as well to allow the restaurant to maintain its own hours after the complex has closed.
*swimming school. Is there any reason why the town has to be the one to run all the swimming lessons? Is there a law regulating who can do this? That’s a real question. I’m not aware of one, so why couldn’t the swimming lessons be privatized? Lease out pool time and an office to store equipment and do clerical work, and that’s all an enterprising person would need to make a decent business out of a swimming school. They could call it “Swim Parry Sound” maybe.
That’s just what I could think of off the top of my head. Each one of those businesses could make a great contribution to making the complex a prime recreation destination, and other than managing the leases and collecting the rent, they would generate little work for the staff of the town of parry sound. For the town, it would primarily be a revenue stream which could, I think, go a long way towards offsetting the yearly operational costs.
And that’s not even getting into other possibilities for private business involvement. What about selling off the naming rights? Granted, it’s not quite the level of exposure you’d get from having your name on an NHL arena, but if they can sell off the naming rights for subway stops, surely a pool complex has got to be worth something!
February 6, 2018 at 7:45 am
Please review the information posted at http://www.pscomplex.com
February 20, 2018 at 7:09 pm
I’ll just leave this here…
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/physician-recruitment-goderich-ontario-success-1.4538925
“…Now the doctors are two in a new crop of physicians who have rejuvenated health-care coverage in Goderich and the surrounding region. In all, the town of 8,000 is home to 18 family doctors.
The town’s ability to recruit family doctors is one of the success stories CBC Nova Scotia is examining as part of an in-depth look this month at Nova Scotia’s doctor shortage. The tactics Goderich has used may hold valuable lessons for other jurisdictions in Canada struggling with the problem.
Desperate for doctors
Eighteen family physicians may seem like an impossible accomplishment. But those in the southwestern Ontario town say it is the result of a tremendous community effort.
Flashback to the early 2000s, when Goderich was down to just five doctors after a number of retirements….
“It was a tragedy,” said Deb Shewfelt, the mayor at the time. “We had 5,000 orphan patients, I hate the term, but 5,000 people in the area without a doctor. Nobody seemed to be doing anything about it. It had become a great issue.”
…
Goderich and its neighbouring communities had one asset: Gwen Devereaux, a former nurse, had been hired as a physician recruiter.
This was long before most regions considered it a job.
Everywhere she went — the grocery store, out for a meal — people would ask her for help.
Devereaux pushed the town council to take action.
The first hurdle Goderich had to address was the limited services in the small town.
They set a seemingly impossible goal: raising $6 million to build a YMCA, complete with indoor pool and ice rink, and to renovate the library.
“Young doctors are not going to come to rural Ontario — not unless they’re going to be able to have the same amenities as they would in the city for their young families. That was a real turning point,” said Grace, who led the campaign.
Local schools, unions and businesses all started small grassroots fundraisers to help out. There were also private donations from residents, many bigger than the town council expected.
“I think there’s money in a community; you have to sell the fact that we have to do this together,” said Shewfelt of the town’s success.
When they hit their goal, the community leveraged money from the provincial and federal governments, and both projects were completed in just a few years.”