$30 proposed tax threatens ‘coming of age’ ritual in remote California

For decades, the public pool has been the pride of tiny, unincorporated Hayfork, California. A ballot initiative will now determine whether it goes dry.

A one-road, no-stop-light town nestled between creeks and a national forest, Hayfork is far-flung even in remote Trinity County, a region so rugged that locals say if you shook it out like a blanket, it would be bigger than Texas.

To residents, the pool represents the best of Hayfork. It was dug out of the valley by townsfolk in the 1960s and, for decades, has served as something of a village square. Generations of Hayforkers (as they call themselves) have learned to swim at the little gleaming rectangle in the center of town.

“The pool is the jewel of our town,” said Nancy Jackson, a longtime Hayfork resident. “It’s a coming-of-age place, it’s a place where kids get their first jobs.”

But the 2,000-odd-person community is at risk of losing all that, thanks to a funding deficit that threatens to close the pool permanently. The region, long known for its booms and busts, is in another down-spell. Trinity County faces such a shortfall that it plans to shutter three libraries and close the only animal shelter. Although the pool and a surrounding park receive only minimal county funds, the same economic realities apply to Hayfork. A 2023 pool upgrade was funded by $100,000 in federal Community Development Block grant money, but operating costs total nearly that much each year.

Jackson has launched a last-ditch effort to save the pool and park through a special tax ballot initiative that would charge property owners $30 per parcel annually. (The current $10 tax per property owner, approved in 1989, provides about a quarter of the Hayfork Park District’s already bare-bones budget.) Jackson and her group Friends of the Hayfork Park chose to pursue a special tax, which requires a two-thirds supermajority to pass, because a general tax would have gone to the county’s coffers rather than the town’s park district.

Measure M faces an uphill battle. Although there is no organized opposition to the parcel tax, the two-thirds threshold represents a big hurdle in a Republican-leaning county where resistance to tax increases is endemic. Jackson’s group is using Facebook posts to cultivate nostalgia about the park, working to place letters to the editor in the weekly Trinity Journal, and planning an Oct. 5 gathering at the park.

Measure M has one overriding objective: to convince Hayforkers not to take their pool for granted. According to Jackson, the county has warned that, if the measure fails, it will likely drain and backfill the pool — or at least try to. (The county administrator did not respond to requests for comment by press time.)

“I'm pretty sure there would be a whole bunch of people surrounding that pool not allowing it to get filled in,” Jackson said. “We dug that hole ourselves.”

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