stray rain

Henry Valz walked into Olympia City Council on March 17 with 3,800 signatures. Over 2,500 came from Olympia and Tumwater alone. He’s an assistant swim coach at Olympia High School. He wasn’t there to talk about coaching. He was there because six high school swim teams are about to lose the only facility that can hold them, and he couldn’t find anyone else to hand the petition to.

That’s the problem. Not the $60,000 in repairs. Not the enrollment paradox. Not the state budget reclassification. The problem is that 3,800 people organized, signed, showed up — and delivered their demand to the wrong institution.

The Governance Gap

The Evergreen State College is a state institution. The Olympia City Council has no jurisdiction over its budget, its facilities, or its operational decisions. When community members stood up at City Hall on March 3 and again on March 17, they were speaking to a body that literally cannot help them — except by making phone calls to a body that can.

That body is the Evergreen Board of Trustees. Eight members appointed by the governor. They approve the college’s budget. They oversee operational decisions. The pool closure is their call.

As of today, the Board of Trustees has not posted its next meeting date. There is no public comment Zoom link. There is no agenda. The public comment web form, according to Evergreen’s own website, becomes available one week before each regular meeting. Since no meeting is posted, no form exists.

Compare that to City Council: meetings every Tuesday at 6 PM, hybrid format, Zoom registration by 4:30, agendas posted Thursday prior, all archived at olympia.legistar.com. You can show up. You can speak. It’s two minutes, but it’s something.

The Board of Trustees offers none of this accessibility. And they’re the only body that can save the pool.

What the Pool Actually Is

The petition language focuses on swimming. But Henry Valz’s testimony on March 17 went further. He wasn’t just talking about the pool — he was talking about the entire Costantino Recreation Center: meeting spaces, gyms, mat rooms, locker rooms, racquetball courts, weight rooms, climbing walls. The pool is the visible crisis. The CRC is the infrastructure.

The facility serves six high school swim teams across four schools. It hosts roughly 200 student-athletes. Law enforcement and fire departments use it for physical testing. Senior programs run water aerobics. Community swim lessons serve families who can’t afford the YMCA.

The pool is the largest pool south of Federal Way. It represents one-third of the diving wells in Thurston County and more than 40% of publicly available lane space. If it closes, Olympia High School’s swim team would likely relocate to North Thurston High School, where capacity constraints could cut the team in half and eliminate the dive program entirely.

This isn’t a college amenity. It’s regional infrastructure that happens to sit on a college campus.

The $60,000 Question — and the $5.9 Million Answer

The college says it needs $60,000 in repairs to meet state health and safety standards. As we’ve documented, that works out to $24 per enrolled student. But the budget data tells a sharper story than the per-student math.

Evergreen’s own 2024 ad hoc report to its accreditor (the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities) shows the college’s projected year-end operating reserves for FY 2025 at $5.9 million — plus approximately $3 million in summer school reserves held separately. The $60,000 in pool repairs represents 1% of the operating reserves alone. Less than 0.7% if you include the summer fund.

The $3.6 million operating deficit that frames the closure decision has a specific cause: the college’s Professional and Continuing Education (PaCE) program exhausted its startup reserves, and those operating costs shifted onto the general budget in FY 2025. This is a temporary cost shift, not a structural collapse. According to the same accreditation report, PaCE revenue is expected to cover all program-related expenses by 2024-25 and contribute as much as $1 million annually to college reserves starting 2026-27.

Put differently: the pool is being closed during a one-year deficit window caused by a program that — if projections hold — will generate enough surplus within 18 months to fund 16 pool repairs per year.

The accreditor noticed the pattern too. NWCCU found Evergreen “substantially in compliance but in need of improvement” on enrollment planning and financial health, issuing a specific recommendation to continue monitoring the college’s enrollment plan for short-term and long-term financial stability. The next full accreditation cycle is 2026. The pool closure decision is being made in the gap between the accreditor’s warning and the accreditor’s next review.

Meanwhile: Thurston County just received a $489,000 grant for salmon recovery planning — more than eight times the pool repair cost. The state spent $880 million from its rainy day fund to balance the operating budget. The data center tax break that nearly broke the legislative session was worth more to its beneficiaries than 1,000 pool repairs.

The money exists. It always exists. The question is always where it’s directed, and by whom.

Not Just the Pool

The pool isn’t the only cut. Evergreen’s operational changes announcement also includes restructuring the campus bookstore — discontinuing physical textbook sales, shifting to a third-party provider, and eliminating multiple staff positions. The college’s framing is consistent: rising operational costs, limited revenue growth, prioritizing instruction.

But the accreditation report tells a different story about revenue. Enrollment grew 22% in two years (2,116 in Fall 2022 to 2,452 projected for Fall 2024). The initial operating deficit shrank from $7.3 million in FY 2022 to $1.2 million in FY 2024, and the college actually closed FY 2024 with a $251,491 surplus. The FY 2025 deficit reversal is almost entirely attributable to the PaCE cost shift — not to declining revenue or enrollment.

The pool and bookstore are being cut during what the college itself describes as a recovery. That’s worth understanding.

The Pattern

This is the same dynamic we’ve tracked across every thread on this site. Olympia declared sanctuary city status but cut the staff to implement it. Thurston County collects $652 million in property taxes but controls 16 cents of every dollar. The state legislature passes a $79.4 billion budget while reclassifying higher education funding to hide the cuts.

Now: 3,800 people sign a petition to save a pool, and there’s literally no public meeting where they can deliver it to the people who decide.

This is governance by inaccessibility. The more important the decision, the harder it is to find the room where it’s made.

What You Can Do

Find the Board of Trustees meeting. Check evergreen.edu/trustees daily. When the next meeting is posted, the public comment form goes live one week prior. Submit written comment. Show up in person. Bring the 3,800 signatures to the people who actually control the decision.

Contact the trustees directly. The Board members are public appointees of the governor. Their names and appointment information are on the governor’s boards and commissions page. Write to them. Ask: When is the next public meeting? Will the pool closure be on the agenda? What is the process for community input before June?

Contact the governor’s office. The governor appoints seven of eight trustees. If the Board isn’t holding public meetings about a decision that affects six high school swim programs and the county’s largest aquatic facility, that’s a governance failure the appointing authority should know about. governor.wa.gov.

March 24: Olympia City Council meets again at 6 PM. The pool may come up again in public comment. But more importantly: ask council members to formally request a Board of Trustees public hearing. The city can’t save the pool. But it can use its platform to force the question to the right room.

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