The Snoqualmie community center has been in the planning stages for at least five years. I served on the first committee to study the issue, and now another committee is being formed to study similar options. It’s time to put the committees to bed and get down to business.

Many members of the community have spent many hours working on various options for the project. A grandiose proposal was put before voters in 2002, but was soundly defeated. That proposal missed one important aspect of a capital bond: affordability.

Several community centers around the area do quite well, recouping better than half of their annual costs. One such example is the community center in Tukwila, which was toured by the committee on which I served. It had all the elements of a good community center and seemed to thrive.

OK, we’ve got a prime example as a model, but now we need a person to lead us in the development of our own center. Luckily for the city of Snoqualmie, that person is already on staff in parks director Al Frank.

Rather than creating another exploratory group, let’s use the data that Mr. Frank has put together, decide on options and move the process forward. Someone once told me that incremental improvement is always better than waiting for the final solution, so it seems that moving a group of people toward a proposal based on Mr. Frank’s information is the smartest move.

The next step is to recognize that affordability is the key to acceptance. We saw the “Cadillac” approach fail, now it’s time to recognize that the phased approach is the best option. Let’s get a facility that can recoup some of its operating expenses up and running and postpone the aquatics element until its affordable. Ask anyone who is running a community center what the biggest cost element is with the lowest chances of recouping operational costs and they will tell you a pool. That isn’t to say that a pool isn’t needed and could be a future part of the community center, but taxes are taxes. Regardless of where you live, it was obvious that the 76 cents per $1,000 of assessed value proposed the first time around was not an affordable option.

So, I urge the council and city staff to move forward and minimize exploring options. Use some of the expertise that has been gained by those who served on previous community center committees and let’s get this thing launched. I honestly believe that if an affordable option that could recoup at least 60 percent of its operational costs were put to the voters, it could pass.

On a relevant note, I was covering a soccer game the other day at Snoqualmie Community Park, the site of the future community center. The Mount Si varsity team was playing Liberty, the sun was out and fans from both sides were standing along the field. But the neat thing about the game was the homeowners along the field who stood along their fences to watch the game. A benefit of this new athletic field building process is the integration of some high-school sports with residents of Snoqualmie Ridge. Now, if we could only get some fan seating.