Pool, Clubhouse Advocates Seek Funding
Carlsbad Budget Process Begins with Lobbying Effort
By Barbara Henry, North County Times
(May 19, 2005 -- Carlsbad, CA) As Carlsbad's annual budget-setting process kicked off, more than 150 supporters of a community pool complex and a new Boys & Girls clubhouse filled the City Council chambers Tuesday evening. Sporting t-shirts proclaiming their causes, they itemized reasons why they should get the full funding they sought.
Pool supporter Lisa Rodman, who has been campaigning nearly a decade for the community swim complex, carefully positioned a cardboard cutout of her then-4-year-old son beside her as she pleaded with the council not to back away from its commitment to build the $18 million complex. Her son, now 13, then came and stood by the small cardboard cutout. "This is Preston (now)," his mom said. "And, we still don't have a pool."
The proposed pool complex, planned for a site just east of El Camino Real in southern Carlsbad, is only one of many multimillion dollar projects with rapidly increasing price tags that the council is debating whether to sale back this year.
The list includes an 18-hole golf course that is estimated to cost upward of $37 million, and a training center for fire- fighters and police that could cost $8.5 million, among other items.
As of Tuesday, the council had one more request to consider.
The Carlsbad Boys & Girls Club asked for nearly $1 million in cash and in-kind donations to help it build a $5 million club- house in the Bressi Ranch development near El Camino Real.
The money will allow the club to build its second permanent facility in Carlsbad. The organization, which serves children ages 6 to 18, already has a 15,000-square-foot clubhouse on Roosevelt Street and a branch facility in a 1,440-square-foot mobile unit in La Costa.
Wearing club t-shirts, project supporters swarmed the steps of City Hall during Tuesday's meeting. With a backdrop of children holding posters, club leaders itemized why they should get the city contribution. Then they had the children and their parents speak.
Kimberly Mullen, the mother of a disabled boy, said she didn't know what she would have done without the low-cost club programs, which offered her child a place to play with other children. "When we first moved here, my son could barely talk -- he spoke in grunts and sign language," she said. Now, she added, he uses nearly complete sentences thanks to his regular exposure to other children.
Tuesday's review of the city's capital projects budget was the first in a series of meetings. The council will hear a presentation June 7 on the city's operating budget. A community budget workshop is planned for June 15. On June 21, the council is expected to adopt its budgets for the 2005-06 fiscal year, which begins July 1.
