At the Planning Commission hearing, project proponents -- and the Commissioners -- gave no reason why the proposed pool facilities -- per City Hall's very design -- could not be built cheaper elsewhere (even after accounting for costs of enabling use of the alternative site) -- and to boot more accessibly serve more folks: whether as general swimmers, or as participants or attendees at special aquatic events. At least one attractive alternative tidelands site exists, near the Convention Center. The project EIR dismisses this site, but the pretext seems quite spurious, especially as it has not been cited against proposals for other kinds of facilities at the site.

In fact, at the hearing the Commissioners and staff and city management all avoided heed to comparison of potential sites in regards either expense or access.

Project expense at any site depends on structural challenges -- notably from quake and sea-level-rise. These challenges were dismissed as being always solvable by advanced structural engineering (i.e. by spending more money.) In turn these folk absolved themselves from having to heed any questions of costs at all. They also ducked the issue of relative ease of access by pretending that it suffices that you can (with sufficient patience) eventually bus yourself to near Belmont Plaza (as arguably is true for anywhere whatever in town!).

In this hearing -- much as occurs in other hearings on big-spending proposals -- some supporters confusedly equated the project goals with just the specifics advocated by City Hall. Some tossed about epithets like "obstructionist" and "waste-monger" and "playing the race card." Their targets were not only opponents of the project concept but also agnostic non-opponent third parties who simply are trying to ensure due deliberations to heed environmental law and financial responsibility and demographic realities. The epithets arguably apply more to the project supporters themselves: a scofflaw "time-saving" approach to environmental law and financial responsibility can be "penny wise" but dollar foolish in terms of risk of lengthy court involvement and needless project expense.

Project supporters' testimony intimated that their own past pleasures in the former facility somehow validate or even require use of the same site for a new facility. However they gave no objective reason why a facility built in the 20-teens need be in the same spot as an earlier facility built in the 19-sixties. Over the past fifty years the context has changed in big ways: the proposed new facility is larger, knowledge of the site geology is much increased (with notably more daunting findings), previously nonexistent sea-level-rise has begun and is accelerating, and potential of other sites has changed too.

City Hall's preference for Belmont Plaza as new pool site, despite millions of dollars of required extra expense to meet the structural challenges, reflects at best a fixation on recent history. The obsession seems weird when you consider that the city's earlier Natatorium -- arguably even more historic -- was elsewhere, near downtown! What makes the pool-site obsession even more bizarre is that City Hall often takes a very different approach toward other historic facilities and sites, whether in or out of the tidelands. For various landmarks -- roller coasters, naval buildings, gasworks, cinemas, book stores -- City Hall does not require a new similar facility (or even a preserved remnant of the old) anywhere, let alone at the same site, let alone aim to spend millions of extra dollars just to enable re-birth at the same rather than a different site. At most a minimum amount is spent for on-site recall of the bare existence of the old facility.

On this project, one hopes a City Council majority will be less obsessed with a few individuals' past and more thoughtful about our city's future.

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