Aquatic Center advocate dead at 71
Aquatic Center advocate dead at 71
City manager remembers Biallas as 'one of the most unselfish'
MOSES LAKE — One of the chief supporters of Moses Lake's celebrated aquatic center died on Saturday.
Roger Biallas died in his home, with his family by his side, after a brief battle with cancer. He was 71.
Owner and operator of The A&H Printers for 41 years, Biallas also served on the Moses Lake City Council, where he never wavered from the movement to bring the Moses Lake Family Aquatic Center to town 12 years ago.
Biallas also worked as intertype operator for the Columbia Basin Herald for a short time, and was included in a feature celebrating the newspaper's third anniversary as a daily paper.
"Roger was one of the most sincere advocates of the aquatic center being built in the city of Moses Lake," remembered City Manager Joe Gavinski. "When the subject came up about the city's old facilities and the option was out there to either refurbish the facility as it was, remodel it into an aquatic center or build something new, Roger's opinion was that we needed to do it properly, and the aquatic center concept was the way to go, and to build it as a new facility rather than remodeling the old facility."
That was a controversial project at the time, Gavinski noted. The city council decided that the center needed to be built new and would try to fund it with a bond issue. When the bond issue failed, Biallas was one of the city council members who insisted the center had to be done and the city had to find a way to finance it internally.
Moses Lake businessman David Skaug only knew Biallas as a businessman, but said he would like to see the center named after Biallas.
"I think he spearheaded the action to get that thing done," Skaug said. "He took a lot of flak for it, I think he probably lost some business personally for it (and) he was not elected to the city council after that."
Biallas was criticized for advocating his position on supporting the center, Gavinski said, as some people believed that by voting against the bond issue they were voting against the aquatic center. In reality, the city was asking its citizens to finance it with the bond issue. It was not a vote on whether or not to build the aquatic center. But Biallas never wavered in his advocacy for the facilities, Gavinski said.
"He believed that it was going to be something that would put the city on the map, and it has," he said. "He was right."
Gavinski believes Biallas' advocacy for the aquatic center project and for increasing the gambling tax in order to support recreational facilities cost him his seat on the city council.
"It was a very bitter campaign and there were lots of personal attacks that were directed at Roger," he said.
The city financed the center with new sales taxes coming to town, and issued several bonds paid by using those taxes. Maintenance of the facility, on a year-to-year basis, was paid by admissions and additional income. Gavinski said maintenance paid for the operation, and sales tax paid for the construction.
The city council could have paid for construction by upping the admissions fees, but deliberately kept the fees as low as possible in order to allow affordable access for everyone, he noted.
Gavinski believes Biallas knew that the ultimate success of the facility validated his support.
"Roger was one of the most unselfish council members that I have worked for, since he was willing to sacrifice some of his own financial well being in order to support projects and programs that he sincerely believed in," Gavinski said.
Skaug feels someone who has done as much for the community as Biallas should not "go off into the sunset unremarked, or unnoticed."
"I know there was some kind of brouhaha about how that got going, but he single-handedly kind of pushed it through, and now we get to reap the benefits of it," he said. "So we owe him a debt of appreciation … I think a lot of his efforts went unappreciated, and today you hear everybody talk about the swimming pool. It's been a smashing success."
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