Nearly three years after Camas voters in the November 2019 general election overwhelmingly shot down a city proposal to build a $78 million aquatics-community center, Camas officials are considering bringing a public pool conversation back to the table.
Having heard from several constituents who may not have supported the city’s bond proposal but still longed for Camas’ public outdoor swimming pool, Camas City Council members in 2021 asked the city’s parks and recreation director, Trang Lam, to gather information about what it might take to have a public pool in Camas once again.
Lam, who came to Camas more than one year after the failed 2019 “pool bond,” researched the history of the city’s historic Crown Park swimming pool, delved into the city’s 2019 bid to build a two-pool aquatics-community center, reached out to possible partners — including the YMCA, which will soon break ground on a Ridgefield aquatics-community center facility — and pulled cost estimates from other jurisdictions that have built public pools in recent years.
Though voters did not support the city’s 2019 “pool bond” proposal to increase property taxes to fund a public aquatics-community center on city-owned land near Camas’ Heritage Park and renovate sports fields throughout the city, Camas officials said many of their constituents were still asking why the city couldn’t build a much less costly public swimming pool.