The future of Lafayette’s only public outdoor swimming pool appeared sunk early Tuesday night as Lafayette Ballot Issue 2B — a property tax to pay for $5.52 million in bonds to finance mass upgrades at LaMont Does Park — seemed headed for failure.
But as the night progressed, voters threw the park a life preserver.
With 98 percent of Boulder County ballots counted by Wednesday evening, Lafayette voters ed 2B by 248 votes, according to unofficial results from the Clerk and Recorder’s Office.
“We thought it might start slow. The first mail ballots to be counted are usually some of our older residents who might not want this facility as much,” said Lafayette Recreation Director Curt Cheesman.
The funding approved by the age of 2B will allow the city to bring the aquatics facilities at 43-year-old LaMont Does outdoor pool into Americans with Disabilities Act compliance.
Planned upgrades include a 30-foot tower with two water slides, a zero-depth-entry splash pool with an interactive play area and a new 3,800-square-foot entrance and bath house building. Park renovations also will include a new synthetic turf athletic field, two handball courts and a 154-space parking lot on the east end of the park.
Cheesman, who noted that without the age of 2B, the outdoor pool would have been forced to close by 2016, said the upgrades will not only extend the life of the park, but give the city a regional attraction.
“We’ve kept up our facilities at the rec center and the boathouse obviously has been renovated. This is the last piece of the puzzle. It balances things out,” Cheesman said. “Louisville and Erie have similar sports fields, but none of our surrounding communities, other than Broomfield with Broomfield Bay, will have an outdoor aquatics facility like this.”
Issue 2B’s slim margin of victory could be contributed at least partially to competition from three other tax issues on the city’s ballot.
Lafayette voters on Tuesday also approved Issue 2A —- a mill levy increase of 2 mills to supplement the city’s ambulance service, fire and police department budgets. Currently, the public safety departments operate largely off Lafayette’s general fund.
Funds from the 2A mill levy increase will go toward investments in new technology, but also to keep up with the growing demands on each department.
The third issue to Tuesday was 2C— a 5 percent tax on the sale or transfer of unprocessed retail marijuana by a cultivation facility, and the sale of marijuana and marijuana products within the city — which cruised to approval with 73 percent of the vote.
Estimates show the pot tax generating $240,000 in the first year.
Issue 2D — which would have imposed an excise tax on business and residential energy consumption and established a menu of clean energy incentives and discounts — was the lone Lafayette issue to fail Tuesday after receiving only 45 percent approval.
“It felt like all these issues were ripe to have on the ballot,” Mayor Christine Berg said. “But when there are four on the ballot, people probably weigh them all equally and say, ‘Which one impacts me the most?'”
Despite the defeat of 2B, Berg said the clean energy movement in Lafayette still has traction.
“I think that issue won’t go away. I don’t know about the next election cycle, but I think it will be something that people will be interested in bringing up again,” Berg said. “I thought it was a very progressive thing for Lafayette to do.”
Doug Pike: 720-648-5022, [email protected]
