There are some holes in the relationship between the city of Black Diamond and the nonprofit Black Diamond Community Center. The mayor says the two sides worked tirelessly to come to agreements on insurance and a discrepancy over the community gym. Keith Watson, the center’s Board of Directors President, said a lack of communication by the city has forced the board of directors’ hands.

Then there is the literal piece of missing information — the fifth page in a lease agreement that neither city staff nor community center officials can find.

“We searched papers in the community center and the city did the same thing, searching for that fifth page and it’s just not there,” Watson said. “The page had several lines on it that we really don’t know what it said… it kind of makes us look foolish and the city look foolish, doesn’t it? I would love to know where it went and what happened in the procedure that broke down.”

The Black Diamond community gym, located at 25511 Lawson St., will officially close until further notice on Dec. 1, after the BDCC decided not to sign a new lease with the city.

The BDCC had been operating the gym since 1992, paying for maintenance and upkeep and utilities, renewing its lease agreement with the city several times, and had hoped to move its after-school program to that location. During that process, city and BDCC officials realized that they were missing a page of the lease agreement. City Attorney Carol Morris deemed the agreement null and void. She wrote a new agreement, which Watson said “wasn’t agreeable” and “unfavorable” to the BDCC. He declined to go into specifics, other than to say the new proposed agreement made it sound “like we owned it.”

“We have to have funds to continue on, so we realize that maybe some of our projects will have to shut down,” Watson said. “We hope not, but the gym was the one the board decided to step away from.”

“It’s unfortunate, but we had to look at it from our viewpoint, basically, and had to make a decision what to do,” Watson added. “The communication broke down quite a bit.”

Mayor Dave Gordon said staff will gather information to find out how much it will cost the funding-strapped city to take over running the facility. He denied any claims that the city didn’t communicate with the BDCC, saying Black Diamond Community Development Director Aaron Nix worked with the BDCC daily on the issue and that Gordon himself was also in contact with Watson.

Gordon told The Reporter Nov. 20 that the BDCC’s decision came as a surprise and that the revised contract wouldn’t have changed anything.

“We wanted to update the agreement to make it legally enforceable,” Gordon said. “We weren’t changing anything, but did want to make it a legally binding contract.”

Longtime Jazzercise instructor Karen Watling spoke during public comment at the Nov. 20 meeting, saying she was “upset” and “extremely angry” that the city “dropped the ball” on the issue, forcing her to find a new space to rent without any notice. She said she would not be going back to the gym when it reopened.

“I’m extremely hurt that I was left out of the loop,” she said at the meeting.

Gordon made it clear that city staff was blind sided by the BDCC’s decision. He told Watling that staff will need to work on setting fee structures and getting the facility up to code. He said re-opening the gym is a priority, but warned that city government “works at glacial speeds” and that, realistically, the gym will be closed for at least several months.

Gordon assured her that the city worked “very hard” with the community center and that it was not “grid locked.”

“I can assure you no effort was spared,” he said at the meeting.

Besides the discrepancy on the level of communication between the entities, there also appears to be a conflict over the original paperwork.

Watson said the BDCC briefly owned the gym when it was donated as surplus by the Enumclaw School district. Watson said the district gave the BDCC a year to raise funds to move the building and that the city took ownership once it was placed on city property.

Watson believed that city staff and elected officials were unaware that city owned the gym.

“For all these years, we leased the building through an agreement and they didn’t realize they owned it,” Watson said. “Why would we lease something from ourselves?”

Gordon denied that assertion, saying city officials always knew the city owned the gym, it was simply a matter of being unable to find documentation proving it. He said the city had “difficulty interpreting” the contract and that the original paperwork donating the building to the city wasn’t properly filled out.

Morris asked the BDCC to write a quitclaim deed that denounced any rights to the property. Watson stated that the step seemed “rather unusual” since the BDCC doesn’t own the building and doesn’t claim to own it.

Gordon told The Reporter the quitclaim was simply to expedite the process and eliminate any points of contention.

Gordon expects the city will operate the gym through volunteers, though one of them will not be long-time volunteer and city councilwoman Tammie Deady, because of what Gordon called a “conflict of interest.” Deady told The Reporter that she wasn’t aware which entity owned the building and is also in the dark about the future of the gym.

Although the gym’s future is cloudy, Watson said the Black Diamond Community Center itself will not be closing. The Black Diamond Community Center Corporation provides public services at the building for area families and individuals, offering services such as an emergency food bank pantry, many senior programs and, possibly, the Before and After School Kids day care program, which is known as BASK.

Watson said it was “disappointing” that there wasn’t better communication, but that the BDCC doesn’t “have any problems with the city, exactly.”

Watson said the BDCC has taken steps to keep all its important papers in a safety deposit box from now on.

Insurance

Watson told The Reporter in September that if the city stopped paying the group insurance plan that the community center would probably need to close.

The center’s Board of Directors voted in September to pursue independent insurance coverage on the center and its vehicles.

Watson said he received word Nov. 17 that the city would extend paying the community center’s insurance for one year, through Dec. 31, 2015. After that, the BDCC will be responsible for paying its own insurance. Watson estimated a year of insurance for the organization would cost roughly $10,000. He expects the funding will primarily come through fundraising.

Because of the perceived lack of communication with the city since June, Watson said self-insuring is preferable.

“I think we spent an awful lot of time going back and forth trying to decide what to do,” Watson said. “This is an all volunteer group. We have better things to do with the center than to do this every year or every two years.”

Bask Program

Watson said the BASK program will be moving from Black Diamond Elementary to the community center building.

Extra enrollment at the school is pushing the program out, after spending a majority of its more than 20 years in one of the portable classrooms. The daycare is for elementary school aged children — kindergarten through fifth grade.

Watson said the program should be able to expand from 14 to 20 kids in the new location, assuming the BDCC receives all the city and state permits it needs to make necessary renovations to the building. Watson said a fence will be added to the back portion of the building for children recreation.

“I’m pretty sure this will happen and we don’t hold any hard feelings toward the city,” Watson said. “They are having a struggle right now. We need a big pot of gold or something for them.”

The program will continue at Black Diamond Elementary through June of next year.