Destin YMCA members benefit from city loan

Paying $1.4 million is a fair deal for giving Destin swim teams and lifeguards a pool to practice in for the next decade, City Councilor Sam Seevers says.

That’s how much Destin City Council gave the Destin Family YMCA three years ago to discount memberships for Destin residents during the first 10 years the Y’s pool and eventually it’s fitness facility are open. Seevers said that even if the discounts don’t add up to what the city spent, the deal is good for Destin.

“Having a swimming pool in the community is vital,” Seevers said. “The middle school and Emerald Coast Swimming Team can take advantage of a local swimming pool — we’ve never had that before.”

All members, Destin residents or not, pay a $75 fee to join the YMCA, but monthly and annual fees are reduced for people who live inside Destin city limits:
•Family membership: Residents pay $52 monthly, non residents pay $80
•Single-parent family membership: Resident, $42, non-resident, $60.
•Adult: Resident, $38.50, non-resident, $55.
•Senior: Resident, $32.50, non-resident $50.
•Youth: Resident, $21, non-resident, $30.

A city report listed the Destin memberships as of March:
•54 adult memberships. Their discounts total $891.
•108 families, discounted $3,024.
•Nine single-parent families, saving $162.
•Four youth memberships, saving $36.

Council came up with the discount proposal as a way to subsidize a public swimming pool — something the council had wanted for several years — without the cost and liability of owning and maintaining a city pool.

The city’s original proposal had been to pay the Y $55,000 a year for discounted memberships. After the YMCA failed to meet the deadlines for groundbreaking on the pool, it told the council that fund-raising had run short. Rather than an annual fee, the Y’s directors proposed the city pay $1.4 million upfront, which would make it possible to start construction.

The council agreed to give the Y the money, taking out a loan to do it. The interest on the loan will add another $175,000 to the cost.

Some residents objected that at the end of the decade, the city would have spent $1.575 million with nothing permanent to show for it. Destin resident Jim Bagby, now a city councilor, said there was no chance the discounts would total anything near $1.4 million.

Bagby told The Log that although he wouldn’t have supported the partnership if he’d been on the council, he wasn’t going to object now.

“I’m not Don Quixote, I don’t go back and try to fight past battles,” Bagby said. “I stated my opinion, my opinion lost; now we’ve got lemons, so we’re making lemonade. People are using the YMCA and that’s good.”

Seevers said memberships would increase once the Y built its fitness facility to go along with the pool. She added that the benefits to the community justified the deal: Younger children receiving swimming lessons; Beach Safety Patrols practicing life saving; and school swim teams can practice at the Y at a reasonable hour.

When her son was on a team, Seevers said, she had to leave Destin at 4 a.m. to drive him to a pool at Hurlburt Field for practice.

“You can’t look at this moneywise,” Seevers said.