The debate surrounding a proposed aquatic center in Franklin has come to an end as a lack of support for the taxes that would have funded the center’s operations, a perception of the cost of building the center as being too high and a lack of public support factored into the Franklin City Commission’s unanimous decision against moving forward with the center.

Since March, the suggestion of building an aquatic center has been controversial in Franklin and Simpson County due to implementation of what has been widely called a “restaurant tax” as a funding method.

The ordinance called for all Franklin restaurants to send a tax equal to 3 percent of gross retail sales to the city treasury each month and for all hotels to pay a monthly transient room tax of 3 percent.

The measure also called for the establishment of a seven-member Tourism and Convention Commission “for the purpose of promoting and developing convention and tourist activities and facilities.”

City Commissioner Jamie Powell said he wasn’t surprised that the city commission voted the measure down Monday.

“I think everybody on the commission and the mayor was smart enough to realize this would require a tax increase and none of us was willing to do that,” he said.

Though Powell said he likes the idea of the city having an aquatic center, he doesn’t think funding it with a new tax is the way to go.

“It would be nice if we had a pool, but we need to be able to pay for it without burdening the taxpayer,” he said.

Powell noted that the idea of funding an aquatic center with a restaurant tax was unpopular among the city and county voters, something that numerous conversations with constituents since March has made obvious to him.

“The more I talked to people, the more I saw that the support was not there,” he said.

City Commissioner Mason Barnes said he was against plans to construct an aquatic center as presented because he thought the cost was too high.

According to Barnes, the model the city commission initially looked at would have cost $20 million to construct and the last version would have cost about $13 million, though he said he’d consider a $5 million center to be reasonable.

“If we could have gotten this thing down to a price where we could do it with our current budget, then it would have been a lot more appealing,” he said.

At a public meeting in July, Younger Associates, a market research firm the city commission hired to conduct a survey about the proposed center, showed that 40.1 percent of respondents said an aquatic center in the community was “important” or “very important” while 38.4 percent said it was “not important.”

The data also showed that 34.2 percent were in favor of the restaurant tax as a way to finance the center and its operations, 42.8 percent opposed it and the rest were unsure.

City Manager Kenton Powell said the fear of future financial uncertainty may have motivated the unanimous no vote.

“There has been a ton of discussion and I think, at the end of the day, they were looking at upcoming uncertainty with the pension system and how that’s going to affect the city,” he said.

Kenton Powell said the commission did the right thing by thoroughly researching the possibility of funding an aquatic center and consulting the community.

“The commission did do their research and they were thorough,” he said.