So what is summer time without a dip in the pool right? I know my family and I love to go swimming the summer nights we have around here. But this weekend I was surprised to find out how many visitors to Gonzales love to come here to go swimming too. The problem is, you and I are paying for their enjoyment. Let me explain.
We currently have a rodeo here in town. Now I've been telling people that these people come complete. They are not your typical convention that tours your town, eats at your restaurants, buying things throughout town, but never did I expect to see pools lining the trailers as I drove by. These pools range from 500 gallon pools to the couple that you see above that hold 3000+ gallons of water each. I could see 7 pools and well over 10,000 gallons of water being used by these visitors to our fine arena.
Now each of these people pay $20 for the nights stay. Nothing stops them from dumping their pool and filling it back up as needed like the one below that had been drained till later.
When I drove by to take some pictures there were 7 kids in one waving at us wanting us to take their pictures, so here we go.
Now the $20 a night is for the use of electricity and water for their stay, but there has to be a reasonable clause. The $20 a night is made for "normal" usage.
So a couple of things come to mind after seeing these pools (by the way I could only see the pools lined up on Hwy 183, not the ones inside the compound). Ten thousand gallons of water for just the pools I saw definitely does not help the city trying to get the cost losses of the arena under control. This is an added expense that goes beyond reasonable to expect us as local tax payers to pay for.
Second, we have a public pool that was open 2 blocks away. Not only would it not cost us anymore for these visitors to visit our pool, we'd actually make money if they visited. We'd be better off if we gave every slot rented 2 tickets to the pool instead of letting just those pools I saw being filled.
Third comes the fact that either we have a rule against this and it's not being enforce, or our city manager has allowed this to be overlooked. I'm sure Doc Graham is pleased to let it be overlooked but as a taxpayer in this community I'm pretty upset. This needs to be addressed immediately. This is a case that either a simple clause needs to be inserted into or rental agreement or enforced if it's already there.
If you live in a trailer park or an apartment complex where they pay the water, there are always clauses that exclude swimming pools, washing cars, and other water activities that would run up the water bill unfairly. Why would anyone visiting here expect anything less?
$200,000+ lost last year at the arena. I've already mentioned the commissary issue that needs to be gotten under control. Let's look at these couple of dollars here. Let's get our council to appoint a real committee that will put real world recommendations on how to control the losses, what to do to turn the arena profitable. Some of these issues that are plain as day to anyone that will look, others are going to take a deeper look. But maybe that's the problem. Maybe those who've been running the city don't really want the answers to be out in the public. They've gotten good at hiding the truth, is this just one more case of it?
God Bless,
Dennis Nesser
This was brought by a tip from another concerned tax payer! Thanks, you know who you are.