Creating & Funding the District
When voters approved Proposition #1 in 2018, they did two important things at once:
Created the White Salmon Pool Metropolitan Park District, and
Approved a levy to fund the District’s ongoing operations.
The District’s mission is to build, operate, and maintain a new community pool. While the levy provides steady funding for operations—such as staffing, maintenance, and keeping the pool running—it was not designed to cover the one-time cost of constructing the facility itself.
To raise these operating funds, the District can collect a small property tax from homes and businesses within its boundaries (which generally follow the White Salmon Valley School District, except for the portion in Skamania County).
When the District started in 2020, the levy rate was about 25 cents for every $1,000 of assessed property value. Today, that rate is about 16.7 cents for every $1,000. The rate has gone down not because the District is collecting less, but because Washington State law only allows property tax collections to grow by 1% each year (unless voters specifically approve more). As property values have risen, the levy rate has adjusted downward to stay within that cap.
The District ensures public funds are spent in a responsible manner to construct, operate, and maintain a new pool for the White Salmon Valley community.
Click here to read the exact proposition language.