EDITORIAL: Renewing the Town’s ‘Urban Renewal’ Plans? Part Six

Read Part One

At the beginning of the November 5 Town Council meeting, held at the Ross Aragon Community Center to accommodate a public hearing on a proposed Urban Renewal Authority resolution, Mayor Don Volger led the public audience of about 100 people in the Pledge of Allegiance. Facing the American flag, the audience recited, “…and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Not exactly a statement of fact, but perhaps a statement of intention? The nation is sharply divided, at the moment, along ideological lines. According to a recent Pew Research Center study of 35,000 people, about 63 percent of Americans “absolutely” believe in God, but fewer than half of those believers attend church regularly.

We’re all in the same boat together, but we’re having a hard time seeing the other guy’s point of view.

“Liberty and justice for all?” That might be worth talking about.

Mayor Don Volger leads the audience in a Pledge of Allegiance at the start of the November 5 ‘URA approval’ Council meeting.

I’m sure we all have slightly different feelings and thoughts about the term, “liberty.” In its most basic sense, liberty means the freedom to move about — the opposite of incarceration. But we also understand it to imply freedom of speech, freedom to worship as we please, freedom to petition our governments, and freedom to make financial decisions.

In the interests of a civil society, Americans are blessed with certain types of liberty, but are denied other types. Compromises are sometimes required. For example, we are legally denied the freedom to choose whether we wish to pay taxes.

We have numerous entities here in Pagosa Springs to whom we pay taxes. Those of us who own real estate must submit property taxes, annually, on behalf of perhaps ten tax-funded entities, depending upon where exactly we live in the county and what services we have access to. Each of the tax-funded entities has an elected or appointed governing board. The Town Council. The Board of County Commissioners. The School Board. The Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District Board of Directors. And so on.

I happen to serve on the San Juan Water Conservancy board, but I am not speaking here on behalf of that board; these are my own opinions.

Each of our government boards exercises a certain level of control over their tax revenues, and that control could also be seen as a form of ‘financial liberty.’ But like the financial liberty available to individuals, governments don’t have the right to spend taxpayer contributions haphazardly or capriciously. We have rules to follow.

The San Juan Water Conservancy District Board of Directors recently met for a regular meeting, and discussed the new Urban Renewal Authority (URA) established by the Town Council on November 5. Our seven-member board agreed, by a unanimous vote, to send a letter to the Town Council asking that the six special districts in the county be granted “full representation” on the URA Board, given that the Authority might someday want to extract future tax revenues from said districts to support development projects within the Town limits.

Yesterday evening at 6pm, the Archuleta School District Board of Education held their regular monthly meeting at Pagosa Springs High School and were scheduled to discuss the possible appointment of a Board member to serve on the Town’s URA board. I didn’t attend that meeting, so I can’t report on the outcome… yet.

The Pagosa Fire Protection District likewise held their regular Board meeting last night, and once again I was not able to attend. Their agenda also included a discussion of the Town’s Urban Renewal Authority.

Tonight, Wednesday, December 11, the Upper San Juan Library District will be holding their regular board meeting at the Sisson Memorial Library at 4pm, and I expect they will likewise discuss the Town’s URA plans, although I was not able to locate their agenda online.

And tomorrow, Thursday December 12, the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District will hold their regular meeting. I have been told that a discussion about the Town URA will be on the agenda.

I don’t necessarily expect that the term “financial liberty” will be used at these several meetings, but the general concept — that a municipal government with plans to extract future tax money from eight local tax entities, over a 25 year period, while giving those districts very limited representation on the Authority board — could certainly be defined as a challenge to the “financial liberty” of those same entities.

To say nothing about “justice for all.” To pick another meaningful term from the Pledge of Allegiance.

We might consider the situation from the Town’s point of view. As Council member Nicole DeMarco stated just before she voted “Yes” on the November 5 resolution that created an Urban Renewal Authority, “And I feel — particularly when we talk about affordable housing — I feel really limited on what it is we can do to move forward with that. I think this Authority will give us the ability to push a project, that might consider only market-rate housing, into the ability to have affordable housing.”

I cannot say whom Ms. DeMarco was referencing to, when she used the word “we.” When I heard her speak the word in context, I understood her to mean, “we, the Town government.” But it appears to me, talking with friends and acquaintances, that the entire community is aware of our current housing crisis, and wants to help solve the problem, so long as the solution fits within certain ideological parameters.

For example. Some taxpayer would react negatively if “we” provided a struggling, working class family with a subsidy on their monthly rent for the next 25 years, using future growth in community-wide taxes.

Presumably, those same taxpayers would react negatively if “we” provided the Springs Resort owners with a subsidy over the next 25 years, to help them create more low-paying jobs and high-end town homes in downtown Pagosa Springs, using future growth in community-wide taxes. But that’s merely an assumption.

As far as I can tell, it’s perfectly feasible for the Town Council to reconsider the composition of their new Urban Renewal Authority board, even if Town Manager Andrea Phillips assumes that a change would be problematic. She had clarified her concerns in an emailed summary of the November 25 meeting between the Town and the community’s special districts, and we shared her comments yesterday in Part Five.

“The Town adopted Resolution 2019-18, which formed the Authority and the Board according to state statute. There is another model of organization provided in the statute, but it is not typical — especially with those formed since the law changed in 2015/2016. It was discussed that the top 3-4 affected districts should have seats in order to get more buy in. This will need to be discussed further with the Town attorney, Council, and the URA Board (which currently includes Council and the County Assessor). In order to change the representation on the Board, there will need to be some legislative changes made by the Town Council. The process for that is unclear at this time…”

We might note that “legislative changes” is exactly what the Town Council considers at every one of their meetings. That’s one of the three main jobs of a government board. Legislative changes. Quasi-judicial rulings. Budget approvals and amendments. That’s what our elected or appointed government boards grapple with, at every regular meeting.

“Legislative changes” is exactly what happened on the evening of November 5 at the Ross Aragon Community Center, following the Pledge of Allegiance.

Why the process for providing full and effective representation to the special districts, on the URA board, would be “unclear” to our Town Manager, is… well, unclear.

Bill Hudson

Bill Hudson

Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.