POULSBO — As both sides of the city hall issue pled their cases to the public Monday night at Christ Memorial Church, one of the major issues was numbers.

More specifically, the statistics compiled by BLRB Architects of Tacoma versus those stated by Parametrix comparing the costs of a downtown city hall to one on 10th Avenue.

The consultants looked at the costs for building the same building on both the 10th Avenue site and the existing city hall site, the economic impacts of both locations and compared all aspects of the two sites.

The breakdown from the downtown city hall analysis prepared by Parametrix comes with the following qualifier: “There is uncertainty associated with the preliminary cost assessment due to the lack of information on actual development costs, and other cost considerations such as parking and the inclusion of a future police station.”

Even with the estimated costs for both sites, the report states that “based upon a purely qualitative, versus quantitative analysis of the alternatives using the above criteria, it is not possible to arrive at any definitive recommendation…”

In its six conclusions, the report states that the costs are roughly equivalent, the downtown site is more pedestrian friendly and centrally located, the 10th Avenue site will have greater environmental impacts, but has more potential for expansion, and city hall would fit well in either site.

Its final conclusion states, “…the decision about where to locate a new City Hall will markedly shape the future character of the community — and cannot be reached through detached, rational analysis alone.”

That decision will likely be made Nov. 7 when voters cast their ballots in a non-binding advisory vote about the city hall issue.