Some in Hot Springs Village think that we should spend  $2M on a swimming pool.  Big money figures are tossed around by the news media so easily that the populus has lost its sense of value. If we look at the $2M we can calculate the cost:  Assuming 100 children ages 6 to 16 use the pool daily for 100 days per year.  i.e. 3 and 1/3 months. Also  assume no additional pool expenses to operate for 5 years.  That means that we have 100 kids x 100 days x 5 years = 50,000 kid days.
If we divide the 2 million dollar cost by the 50,000 we get a cost of $40 per child for the 5 year period.
We are asking each dues payer in HSV to pay $40, or $8 for each of the 100 pool users most of whom are related to very few of the payers. I am using very "liberal" numbers of pool users, days of usage, and no additional costs incurred during the 5 years of operation.
This also ignores any other, potentially, better, use of the $2 million, and ignores the interest that the dues payers could realize if the money were not spent at all. The real cost is probably more like $10 per HSV dues payer per 100 day period each year. That is much to costly since it is equivalent to 3.7% of our total dues for the 100 days of swimming so that 100 kids can swim for 100 days.
Since I made this analysis the decision was made for a $700,000 pool -- thank you very much!  However this analysis can be applied to a town center, etc.

Chuck Hulbert
Hot Springs Village