At their regular meeting last night, Tuesday January 3, the Pagosa Springs Town Council started off the new year with a unanimous vote to keep the community’s taxpayers out of debt.
Well, not completely out of debt… but at least, free of an additional obligation to build a $7 million bridge and connecting road, onto and across 27 acres of vacant property owned by the Springs Partners LLC, with money that we don’t currently have.
Almost all the members of the audience, who spoke during the public comment portion of the discussion, praised the Council for their sensible vote — the likely outcome of which had been telegraphed to the public by Mayor Don Volger prior to the meeting.
Evidently, the three Springs Partners — who did not attend the meeting — were likewise aware of how the vote was going to go, according on their statement which we will quote below.
A taxpayer-funded bridge had been essentially promised to the developers back in 2012 by a previous Town Council, in a Vested Rights Agreement which suggested commencement of construction on the bridge in 2017. Last month, the current Town Council approved a 2017 budget that did not mention the bridge project, so in a sense, last night’s unanimous vote was merely a confirmation of the decision that had been made a few months earlier during the Council’s budget discussions.
Back in 2012, the Town Council discussion about the South 5th Street Bridge proposal had made it clear that the bridge would be built only if state or federal grants could fund the lion’s share of the project. Over the past 18 months, it’s become obvious that the free flow of highway grants, once prolific, have been reduced to a tiny trickle following the Great Recession.
The 2012 agreement grants the Springs Partners the right to proceed with an alternate development plan — notoriously known as “Sketch Plan B” — should the municipal government decide not to fund the bridge-and-connecting-road project out of taxpayer revenues.
Both the audience and the Council made it clear that the primary objection to the proposed bridge was not its location, but rather the idea that the taxpayers would totally fund a project that would benefit — at least initially — only one group of private developers. Several of the speakers spoke in support of a future bridge if it could be jointly funded by the developers and the municipal government. A $24,000 traffic study had suggested that a South 5th Street bridge might be one useful part of a traffic mitigation effort, should the southern portion of downtown develop at some point in the future.
Following the vote, Town Manager Greg Schulte read the following statement, provided to the Town by the Springs Partners, who had obviously been advised, in advance, as to the likely outcome of last night’s vote. The statement was rather brief.
“The Springs Partners LLC accepts the decision by the Town Council, not to proceed with the approval of construction of the 5th Street Bridge and connection road. The Springs Partners considers this matter final, and plans to modify and implement Sketch Plan B. This original land plan did not include a bridge, yet it provides a substantial economic benefit to the community, and will result in major benefit and economic activity to the historic downtown area.
“We look forward to working with the Town on this project, and we thank the Mayor, the Town Council, and the Town staff for their efforts to make a correct decision on behalf of all concerned.”
During the past 16 months, while the Town Council and staff have been negotiating possible changes to the 2012 Vested Rights Agreement, we’ve heard on numerous occasions that the Springs Partners never wanted the bridge — that the bridge idea originated with the Town Council, and that the Springs Partners, in their generosity, were merely accommodating the wishes of the municipal government.
BUt if you read the transcript of a September 17, 2015 executive session, where the Springs Partners met behind closed doors with the Town Council and their attorney Bob Cole, you might get the feeling that it was, in fact, the Springs Partners who were most eager to see a taxpayer funded bridge constructed.
You can read my transcription of that closed door meeting here. (Warning: it’s an eight=part article.) But here is a short excerpt, which might lead the listener to believe that Springs Partner Matt Mees was in no way opposed to the idea of a bridge, but was in fact actively trying to sell the idea to the Council.
“Overall, we feel like there are many options to look at. The whole reason for the bridge, in the first place, is to make downtown more viable. We have only the one block downtown, and all during the 12 years we owned the Springs, we heard the tourists ask, what is there to do? And we told them, you can go downtown. So that’s one block up and then one block back. So we feel like the bridge will provide a connection to downtown.
“So people will be able to cross at [South 5th Street] and walk around and come back by the [Hot Springs Boulevard bridge] and walk past the water park and to the downtown retail and a riverfront restaurant. [inaudible… something about the Post Office and circulation.] It just seems like the one chance for our community, beyond… [inaudible]…
“I mean, our goal in doing the development thing to begin with is, we want downtown to work. It will take a lot for us to do either Sketch Plan A or Sketch Plan B. It’s a big plan and it’s going to take a while, and a lot of involvement from a number of people to make it happen. But it’s more of a ‘village approach’ to downtown; we will have a number of new residents coming in, but it will also be a place where local people will come to shop, to make it feel like a completed downtown. During the 40 years I’ve lived here, we’ve seen Pagosa get strung out from Highway 84 all the way out Highway 160, and we just missed doing something downtown. And that’s what we think we really need to make this thing feel complete…”
It now appears that Mr. Mees and his partners no longer want to make this thing feel complete.