Just by showing up, the nearly 100 local residents who crowded into the Powell Senior Center last week underscored the case for a new facility.

Inside, nearly every table was full while outside, a senior hunted for an open parking spot before giving up and leaving.

However, the facility’s limitations took a backseat during the Nov. 5 celebration: Just two days earlier, Park County voters had agreed to provide $7.9 million to build a bigger, better center.

“Knowing it’s on the way, I think I can deal with what we got to deal with in this building, because I know it’s going to end soon,” center director Linda Dalton said after helping serve up a round of root beer floats.

New building will take some time

Dalton and Powell’s seniors still have some waiting to do. The $19.3 million sales tax that voters approved — it also includes funding to renovate the Cody Auditorium and for several Meeteetse projects — won’t even start being collected until April.

City Administrator Zack Thorington said he’s meeting with the center’s architect, the city engineer and the city finance director next week to discuss the project — including a potential timeline for breaking ground.

“Fortunately, much of the architectural and engineering design work has already been completed and paid for, which puts us in a good position to move forward sooner than later when the city is ready,” Thorington said in a Tuesday email.

The city will need to seek bids and follow a public process as the construction work gets underway. Though the new facility will be operated by the nonprofit organization that runs the current center, Powell Senior Citizens Ago-Go, Inc., the building will be owned by the city.

Thorington said he plans to bring information and recommendations to a future council meeting, where the council members can review the options and decide how they want to move forward.

“We’ll still be moving a little bit slower than you and I would like, because it all has to go through the city,” Wes Vining told a group of seniors last week, but “we’re going to be plugging as hard as we can.”

Strong support for tax

Vining chaired the committee that led the push for a new center. After years of generally fruitless searches for money, securing the tax funding last week resulted from a “team effort,” Vining said.

Beyond the efforts of the center’s board and staff, he highlighted the support provided by the City of Powell; that included a unanimous endorsement from the Powell City Council early in the year.

Heading into the election, “we knew we [had] put in the work,” Vining told the Tribune. “We knew we had some opposition, we knew we had a lot of support and so we just went with it.”

The county-wide tax ultimately found its strongest support in Powell — including yes votes from 74.3% of residents on the city’s western side.

Though thousands of area residents did vote against the tax, there was no organized opposition. Even the conservative Park County Patriots group encouraged residents to back the tax in its “Good Guys List” voting guide.

Overall, 56.2% of county voters were “for” the tax. 

It outperformed the last specific purpose tax — a $13.68 million measure that funded road, bridge and sewer improvements; that one passed in 2016 with 52.9% of the vote. However, this set of projects weren’t quite as popular as a $13.2 million package that passed in 2006. That temporary sales tax hike — which built the Powell Aquatic Center, revamped the Meeteetse pool and moved the Cody library into the Park County Complex — passed with 58% of the vote.

Tax will likely last two years

Speaking on the sidelines of the root beer float celebration, Powell City Councilman Tim Sapp said he was pleased with the tax’s passage. Sapp called the temporary sales tax hike not only the best way to fund the new senior center, but “the only way to raise that much money in as short a time …”

The county’s sales tax rate will rise from 4% to 5% on April 1. The extra 1% will remain in place until the full $19,278,000 is collected — or, put another way, until there are roughly $1.9 billion worth of taxable sales in the county or made by county residents and businesses.

Park County Treasurer Barb Poley has projected the sum will be collected in roughly two years. Once the money has been amassed — potentially in the first half of 2029 — the county’s sales tax rate will return to 4%.