When the two sanitation districts protested these change orders and refused to pay the additional costs, lawyers from both sides got involved and negotiations were conducted behind closed doors in executive sessions…
— from a November 5, 2015 Pagosa Springs SUN article, “Perpetual problems plague pipeline project” by reporter Ed Fincher
When writing about the controversial sewer pipeline in 2015, SUN reporter Ed Fincher carefully quoted the conversation between Council member Kathie Lattin and Pagosa Springs Sanitation General Improvement District (PSSGID) manager Gene Tautges, and then proceeded to summarize the long series of historical missteps and questionable decisions that have led two local government entities into an unpleasant situation.
If he’d included a handful of opinions in his story, it would have qualified as a Daily Post editorial.
Fortunately for the taxpayers — the folks who ultimately pay the legal bills when two government boards carry their disagreements into court — PAWSD and PSSGID were able to come to a friendly agreement on the stated $2.85 million limit to the PAWSD contribution.
Fortunately. Because the meetings where that dollar amount had been discussed had been open, public meetings. So both boards had open, public access to official audio recordings of those meetings.
Mr. Fincher had included, in his 2015 article, one particular comment that is central to this editorial series.
“I’m sorry,” board member Kathy Lattin responded. “I wasn’t looking at this agenda and did not realize right off the bat that this item was on the consent agenda, because I’d like some discussion on this.”
Mayor (and PSSGID board president) Don Volger quickly asserted that the resolution had already been approved as part of the consent agenda, so it was too late to reverse the vote, but she could still ask questions.
A government board’s “Consent Agenda” normally includes items of minor importance, requiring an official vote but probably not worthy of an actual discussion. If you happened to look at the agenda for a November 3, 2015 PSSGID meeting, the Consent Agenda looked like this:
A “Resolution” is typically something of considerable importance, and often subject to lengthy debate at government board meetings. I can’t recall ever seeing a $618,000 “Resolution” included in a Consent Agenda, at any board meeting I had attended over the past decade. And Mr. Fincher’s article suggested that no public copy of the Resolution was published prior to the meeting.
So we can easily understand PSSGID board member (and Town Council member) Kathie Lattin’s confusion. She — and the rest of the PSSGID board — had voted to approve a $618,000 expenditure without understanding some important details about the project.
There may be times when a government board needs to discuss an issue in secret. But when a binding Resolution with a price tag of over a half million dollars is kept secret from the government board itself, until after the Resolution is approved, we have a real transparency issue on our hands. It’s a “perpetual problem” plaguing Pagosa: government secrecy.
Ed Fincher’s article went on to list a series of questionable and unfortunate events that infected the PAWSD-PSSGID sewer project — including, for example, staff turnover. Key staff, working for the Town and for PAWSD, had resigned (PAWSD project manager Gregg Mayo, PSSGID manager Phil Starks) or had been asked to resign (PAWSD manager Ed Winton, Town manager David Mitchem) since the beginning of the project. PAWSD’s engineering firm, Bartlett & West, had been given their walking papers.
But the project went on. And on.
And now, another $618,000 waits to be spent on an $8 million (?) project that PAWSD project manager Gregg Mayo originally assured us would cost no more than $4 million.
Now here’s another question that we never had a chance to consider, as a community.
“Resolution 2015‐04, Approval to Apply for a Small Communities Grant” — passed by Town Council on November 3, acting as the PSSGID board — will require the Town’s sewer customers to fork out about $185,000 to match a possible $432,000 grant from the state of Colorado (that is, from the state taxpayers.) This seems to be a bit of an emergency measure, because the engineers (PAWSD engineers Bartlett & West) incompetently designed a storage vault big enough to hold only about 3 hours worth of Town sewage in case of a sewer line break.
We can guess that it might take longer than three hours to fix a broken, pressurized sewer line? So, a much bigger “vault” is needed to catch several hours of sewage overflow in case of such an emergency… according to Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment (CDPHE, the same folks who originally approved the 3-hour vault.)
We might never actually need this $618,000 vault. Some construction company will definitely earn big bucks building it, however.
But, hey… wait a minute.
The Town already owns three very large sewer lagoons… large enough to hold the sewage output of the entire Town. And the Town was going to spend how many hundred thousand dollars filling them in?
And then, turn around and build a very expensive new vault… to hold sewage overflow, in an emergency?
We have a perpetual problem, here in Pagosa. Lack of transparency, too many secret meetings, and too many rushed decisions that open, public discussion could have greatly improved.
There’s an old adage that reminds us: men are reluctant to ask for directions. Our male leaders need to learn how to pull the bus over to the shoulder, stop, and really listen to the people.
We can help.