URBANA -- Voters in the Urbana Park District go to the polls next month to decide an issue they already decided once -- increasing the park tax rate to about 95 cents per $100 of assessed valuation to help pay for a pool at Crystal Lake Park.

Voters rejected a similar tax rate increase in February 2008 by just 62 votes.

In that instance, the tax rate would have increased 25 cents (to 95 cents) to pay for a host of districtwide improvements, from better neighborhood parks and playgrounds to improvements at Crystal Lake Pool.

A lot has happened in the intervening three years: Crystal Lake Pool has been permanently closed because of safety concerns; the park district passed a 15-cent property tax increase to pay for a new maintenance building, improvements to parks and for planning for a new outdoor pool; and a recession has battered the nation and Urbana.

It's not the best time to ask for a tax increase, park district officials admit, but they are fulfilling a promise.

"We're just waiting to hear," said park district executive director Vicki Mayes. "I think we've done everything we can to let people know how much it's going to cost, what it's going to look like and how it will meet the needs of the community. Now it's up to them to decide. The board promised to do this, and now we're following through."

This time the proposed tax rate increase is 11 cents per $100 of assessed valuation up from the current rate of about 84 cents and it will pay for an all-new aquatic center at the site of the old Crystal Lake Pool.

Here are the details:

The plan. A $7.725 million aquatic facility would include an eight-lane, 25-meter competitive lap pool with a one-meter diving board; a tot pool with a zero-depth beach-like entry; a leisure pool with a short current channel (smaller and narrower than the "lazy river" at Sholem Pool in Champaign); a deep plunge pool with a drop slide; and a "sprayground" in a separate area of the facility that could be opened on warm days in the spring and fall. In addition to the aquatic center, there would be a new bathhouse, parking lot, and water, sewer and electrical service to the site.

If approved by voters, design work would begin this spring and the facility would be opened sometime in 2013. "Just because you can't always control construction timelines, we're not promising it would be open on Memorial Day 2013," said park board president Michael Walker. "But we want to get this going so we can open this thing as early as possible in 2013."

Total water surface of the aquatic center would be about 14,600 square feet; the old pool was about 12,000 square feet.

"It's not much bigger than what we're replacing," said Walker. "But it's a lot more than just a pool. The honest reality is that outdoor aquatic facilities, at least in the Midwest, do not pay for themselves with gate receipts. I don't think there's a pool around here where the gate receipts pay for the annual costs.

"You've got to have enough attractions to bring people in the gate to minimize how much you run behind. We tried to aim this thing at the point where the maximum amount (about 80 percent with a $6 admission fee) would be covered with gate receipts. We were trying to hit the sweet spot where it's attractive enough to get people in the door but not so big that operating expenses eat everything up."

The facility should last at least 25 years, Mayes said.

"And there's enough money in the referendum rate to be able to do that with a maintenance set-aside," she said.

The cost. The 11-cent increase would cost the owner of a $100,000 house about $37 more a year in property taxes, or $55 more for a house assessed at $150,000. The tax would be levied beginning with property tax bills in the spring of 2012.

And the property tax increase would not phase out when the construction bonds are paid off in either 20 or 25 years, Walker and Mayes said.

"This is not a referendum just for issuing bonds so, no, it does not disappear," Walker said. "It will diminish because of tax caps over the years but it does not evaporate. It will go below 94 cents (per $100 of assessed valuation) but it will decrease gradually. It's not like you go out 25 years and there's a big drop-off. That won't happen."

Mayes said the tax increase is structured not only to build the aquatic center, but also to operate and maintain it.

"We could have asked two questions. That would mean two questions that each were four paragraphs long," she said. "One would have been for a bond to construct it. The other would have been for funds to operate it. The board chose to combine them."

The benefit, she said, "is that at the end of the bonding period there will be funds available to work on renewal or replacement of the pool."

But she acknowledged that a future park board could use the tax money "for any other park purpose."

The opponents. There is no organized opposition, says local developer Howard Wakeland, "but there are plenty of opponents out here."

"I am complimentary about the architecture, the way it was planned, the design, but I just think it's way too much money for us at this time."

Wakeland, an avid swimmer who uses Urbana's indoor pool and in the summer swims at Indian Acres in Champaign, said Crystal Lake Park where there has been a public pool since 1927 is now the wrong place.

"It's at the north end of Urbana, and Urbana is growing to the east and the south. The future of Urbana is in the south and east," he said. "This will not serve any of the new crop of people coming in to Urbana."

But the price is the biggest problem, Wakeland said.

The supporters. An advocacy group known as Friends of Urbana Parks had collected $506.26 as of Dec. 31 to promote the pool tax issue. They're now up to about $3,000, according to Steve Rugg, who is the finance chair of the group.

Rugg said there are 40 to 50 people in the group who have either donated money, are campaigning door to door "or have some other level of activity."

Most of the money raised is going into signs on the sides of MTD buses, Rugg said. The rest is going into yard signs, most of which have been recycled from an earlier tax vote but need a strip of paper indicating that Election Day is April 5.

Members of the park board and park district employees can't advocate for the tax increase; they can only say that the tax increase vote is coming up, he said.

If voters reject the tax increase for the pool, Walker said, there won't be another chance.

"My strong sense is that that would be a decision by the community to not do it," he said. "We move forward without a pool."

The park district has earmarked $300,000 to demolish the old pool facility and clear the site if the tax increase is defeated.

"If we lose this, I'd take that as a statement that maybe Urbana can't afford an outdoor pool," Walker said. "I can understand people who would feel that way. It's not a cheap thing to have a pool. But I also know there's a strong segment of the community that really does want it. I personally am in favor of it. But how many times can you go back and ask a question?

"This is democracy at its best. We're doing a referendum and it's very clear that this is what you get if it passes and if the community decides now is not the right time then we just move on with that."