Issues: All-Season Rec Center

The citizens of Fairmont voted in 2016 for a one-half of one cent sales tax, to generate up to $15 million "for the purpose of funding recreational amenities, trails and/or a Fairmont Community Center”. Over the next few years, plans were formulated for a community center, with a field house, meeting rooms, fitness center, and an indoor pool, to be operated by the YMCA.

 

The final plan, as worked out by the city and the Fairmont Area Community Center foundation, would have had a building built for $26 million and operated by the YMCA. The entirety of the CIty's contribution would have been $12.4 million of the local option sales tax (LOST) funds. Not a penny more. Any way you cut it, that's a smoking deal for the citizens of Fairmont and the surrounding area.

 

Over the next several years, an out of state businessman with deep pockets and a grudge against the YMCA, Mark Ossenfort, worked hard to torpedo the center. First, he tried to dictate its design in such a way as to render it unacceptable to the YMCA, and then when his demands were met, he moved the goalposts to object to the revised design. When his demands were finally rejected, he filed a frivolous lawsuit in federal court to stop the project. When it finally came up for a hearing, the judge threw it out because it was filed far too late. That wasn't good enough. He then filed an appeal, which was thrown out when he refused to provide a bond to offset the city's additional expenses should the appeal fail.

 

The effect of all that was to delay the project such that there was a $3 million hole in the financing. That hole couldn't be filled, and the project died.

 

So here we are in 2026, with $12.4 million in LOST money. Council has voted to allocate $2 million of that to improving our lakes. There are many opinions about what to do with the other $10.4 million.

 

I believe we should first start with the problem we are trying to solve, and to me, the problem is simple and one nearly all of Council will agree on: What do our kids do in the winter? Right now, there aren't a lot of options. That we have that sum available affords us an opportunity to make a much more substantial contribution to the lives of our citizens than if we simply depended on incoming property tax revenue or bond money our perpetually gridlocked state legislature seems unable to agree on.

 

I think we need to spend that money on an all-season recreational center. Not just an athletic field house, as some have proposed -- not all kids are interested in athletics -- but a genuine recreational center for all to use. There are lots of questions that would need to be answered about what goes in it and who would run it. The school district has expressed interest in helping to operate it, which would greatly reduce the ongiong expenses to the city. We should explore such a partnership, with a goal of ensuring that the citizens of Fairmont are not squeezed out of access by the demands of the school district.