The refusal of the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners to explore the renovation and expansion of the existing County Detention Center seems, at this point, firmly established. Three and a half years after a roof leak in the west wing of the County Courthouse, we have no estimate of the cost to renovate and upgrade that (once useful and well-used) facility. Nor do any of our three County commissioners want the taxpayers to have such an estimate. (See Part Six yesterday.)
The BOCC seems bound and determined to spend millions of dollars, instead, on a shiny new facility — whether the taxpayers approve of a tax increase, or not. That much was made pretty clear during the final discussion at the Tuesday, July 31, BOCC work session, when the commissioners invited County Finance Director Larry Walton to explain how they could build a new jail anyway… even if the voters, once again, reject their proposed one-percent sales tax increase, like they did last year.
Last summer, we heard County Commissioner Steve Wadley repeatedly state, “There is no Plan B.” The only plan discussed last year involved a one-percent sales tax costing nearly $27 million. On Tuesday, we got to hear Plan B — as described by Finance Director Larry Walton.
We did not, however, hear a discussion of “Plan C.” More about Plan C in a moment.
Here’s Plan B, as laid out by Mr. Walton and County Administrator Bentley Henderson.
If the voters reject the one-percent sales tax in November, then the BOCC could, conceivably, go ahead and build a new jail anyway. It would be a “significantly reduced project,” however — the facility would be a “jail only” and would not include a new Sheriff’s Office. The cost might be around $14 million… instead of the currently proposed $19.7 million. Combined with some possible state grants, the cost to the Archuleta County taxpayers might be on the hook for as little as $12 million.
(We’ve been quoted $6 million to rehabilitate the current jail, but the BOCC has no interest in exploring that option, as we’ve reported.)
A 54-bed jail — with no Sheriff’s Office — priced at $14 million. Maybe $12 million, with the help of grants?
Why is the BOCC not putting this ‘jail only’ proposal before the voters? Common sense tells me that many voters who are unwilling to fund a $20 million Sheriff’s facility, might very well vote ‘Yes’ on a proposal costing only $12 million. But if the BOCC goes ahead with its proposed one-percent sales tax nonsense, and loses at the polls, then the BOCC will find itself with no revenue stream to build even a “significantly reduced project.”
Following a defeat at the polls, the money needed for a smaller, ‘jail only’ project, Mr. Walton told the commissioners, would come out of current County revenues.
The Road Capital Improvement funds would be slashed, for example. According to Mr. Walton, the County “moved 10 percent of the total property tax mill levy out of the General Fund, and into the Road and Bridge Fund” some years back, to help with investments in road projects and maintenance, which, he said, “got us up to what looked like a sustainable level of about $2 million dollars a year — which is still way short of what we should be investing, to maintain just the paved roads alone… We would have to dial half of that back into the General Fund.”
In other words, the BOCC is already scrimping on roads maintenance, and we’d cut further into that budget item. (The Daily Post published a three-part article about the County’s unsustainable paved roads back in 2011, which you can read here. I don’t think the situation has changed much since then. Maybe it’s gotten worse?)
Mr. Walton thought, with additional cuts to other departments, the General Fund could possibly pay for the debt on a $14 million jail project, “but the margins are thin. Razor thin comes to mind.”
Razor thin is not ideal, as we all know, in a county that has seen wild swings in government revenues streams over the past decade.
Walton summed up the fragility of the County revenues. “Not to be too gloomy. Our sales tax revenue continues to be strong, our property tax revenues … are strong, our revenue picture is very positive right now.”
But, lest we get too optimistic, Mr. Walton noted that he’d “done a lot of looking back at County revenue… and while it would be true that, in 2019, the sheer dollar volume of what we’re projecting would probably be the highest revenue the county’s ever had, by a small margin… we are still under what we were at in 2010. So in terms of recovery, 2019 — with all the growth we keep talking about, year after year after year — we might get back to where we were in 2010. Which is food for thought.”
I’ve spoken with Mr. Walton on numerous occasions, and listened to many of his staff reports at public meetings. In my humble opinion, you can generally take Mr. Walton’s comments to the bank. He’s not prone to exaggeration.
So, judging from Mr. Walton’s comments on Tuesday morning, Plan B sounds like a pretty poor plan.
But what about Plan C?
I did a short interview with local activist Mark Weiler yesterday. Some of our readers may be familiar with Mr. Weiler — former President of Parelli Natural Horsemanship, former Town Council member, current board member for Pagosa Peak Open School. Mr. Weiler has been meeting with our County Commissioners and their staff over the past several weeks promoting “Plan C.” (“Plan C” is my own designation, not Mr. Weiler’s.)
Mark Weiler:
“As I’ve looked at the County Commissioners’ struggle with, ‘How do we comply with the state mandate that requires Archuleta County to have a jail — how do we do that within the scope of the revenue that the County already has?’ And here’s what I’ve presented to [Finance Director] Larry Walton, [Commissioner] Steve Wadley and [County Attorney] Todd Starr.
“I told them. ‘You guys, over the past seven years, have gone from negative reserve balances to positive reserve balances that are very substantial.’ Larry would not tell me the exact numbers, but I believe the balances, of all the accounts, are in the $7 million range.
“And I said, ‘One of the things you’ve done is, you’ve appropriated $2 million in this fiscal year for justice facilities. How about, we build this jail — not the jail with the attached Sheriff’s Palace — we build just the jail?’ Make it 50 percent of the size proposed by [architect consultants Brad Ash and Robert Johnson] last year…
“So I engaged Brad Ash, professionally, and I told him, ‘Give me the right math, so when I talk about this, I can quote you to the Board of County Commissioners.’ And Brad said to me, ‘A 54-bed jail, you can build that for $10 or $11 million. You couldn’t build the office part, but you could build the jail…'”
Is Mr. Weiler presenting an affordable, sensible option… an option that could be built without any need for a tax increase, and without cutting funding for roads and other County services?
An option that our three County Commissioners are refusing to consider?