Rec center a taxing issue

PROVO — The senior citizens at the Provo Recreation Center pool bobbed back and forth in peace Thursday to the strains of classical music coming from the pool-side stereo.

Leila Ogden tilted back on her purple tube and closed her eyes. She looked relaxed.

"Ten seconds!" a swim coach yelled from the other side of the pool, as a group of teenagers below her adjusted their goggles and swim caps. "Ready? Go!"

Ogden opened her eyes and tried to hear the music, but the splashes of the swim team doing laps had drowned it out. If water aerobics didn't get her heart racing, this would.

Ogden is one reason Provo needs a new recreation center, Mayor Lewis Billings says, as are the children who learn to swim in a crowded pool.

"We have one swimming pool to accommodate two major high schools and the entire community. It's grossly inadequate," says Leroy Ogden, Provo's Parks and Recreation director from 1981 to 1996. "Other communities have kept up with the needs of their residents, and Provo has not."

Ogden said his requests for a new recreation center, like the one Orem has had for more than 20 years, were repeatedly rebuffed by past mayors. But Billings says it is one of his top priorities, and some close to him say he hopes to complete the project before he finishes his term in three years.

"There is tremendous support for this. It's not an item that has just a little bit of support, it's a hot item," Billings said.

The problem Billings faces is the same one mayors before him faced: convincing a conservative population that a recreation center merits a tax increase.

Gary Nielson, who owns Gold's Gyms in Ogden, Layton and Roy, says the private sector is already meeting the need. There are six Gold Gym's in Utah County, Nielson said, with a new gym going up every year.

Nielson said national studies show a small portion of the population — 13 percent — use fitness centers.

"You're taxing 100 percent of the population for something that will be used by 13 percent of the community," he said. "If they really want to help, like they say the do, why don't they build a convenience store and subsidize gas?"