Primary measures of economic activity for the Town of Pagosa Springs (Town) are sales tax, lodgers tax, the unemployment rate, and the number of building permits issued. All items are on track to be record amounts, or at least equal to or better than numbers from prior years…
— from the Town of Pagosa Springs draft budget for 2019.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Here’s a picture of the title page, from the proposed Town budget for 2019:
I try to write about a thousand words each morning, as a Daily Post editorial, so I can appreciate the value of a picture. You will notice, above, that the authors of the proposed Town budget placed a colorful, composite image on their title page, showing some of the activities and sights you might run across in the town.
Here’s a better view of that composite image:
The image at the top left shows a directional sign erected at the corner of Highway 160 (Pagosa Street) and Hot Springs Boulevard, The signage was funded by the Town Tourism Committee (now known as the Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board) using Lodgers Tax dollars. The sign was intended to spark interest in downtown features, among our many summertime tourists.
The picture on the top right shows a hot air balloon. We can probably assume that the folks enjoying the exciting flight are tourists.
The photo in the bottom right shows some kids who’ve rented inner tubes from a local vendor and who are floating down the downtown stretch of the San Juan River. We can’t be sure, but it’s possible that these, too, are tourists.
The picture in the bottom left shows the view of the San Juan River as a tourist might see it from the new Overlook feature, also funded by the Tourism Board.
The first 14 pages of the draft budget (which you can download here) consist of a written narrative that explains, in a clear and concise manner, the Town government’s past accomplishments and future priorities. Those initial 14 pages are illustrated with photos rather similar to the ones displayed on the title page. A guy in a kayak, for example…
…people walking past the Springs Resort, kids playing Little League baseball, a view of the wetlands from the River Walk trail, the entrance to the Visitors Center, colorful willows at River Center Park, several shots showing the San Juan Mountains with snow cover, some musicians performing at the Four Corners Folk Festival.
A dozen sights that a tourist might see, for example, if they came for a week-long visit, or pictures of people ‘recreating.’ Truly, this is a recreational wonderland.
For the life of you, however, you will not see, anywhere in the 2019 budget document, a picture of an actual Pagosa Springs resident working at a job. You will not see a rancher, or a nurse, or a teacher, or a bartender, or a car mechanic, or a sales person, or a carpenter, or a policeman, or a clerk, or a member of the Town streets department. Not even a new reporter.
The people who actually keep Pagosa’s economy functioning are completely missing from the illustrations in the Town budget document.
You will not see a photo of a family living in a broken-down travel trailer in Aspen Springs.
I had a pleasant morning yesterday at the KWUF studios, where radio DJ Nicole DeMarco and I conversed, on the air, about affordable housing, new jails, school district mill levies, and the Town budget. Ms. DeMarco hosts ‘Good Morning Pagosa’ each morning from 8:05-8:30am — and also serves on the Town Council, so she will be one of the people charged with setting the financial priorities for our municipal government for 2019. As Ms. DeMarco noted, a government budget for any given year generally reflects the priorities established by previous government budgets. There’s a certain inertia built into the setting of priorities — in government, in private life. What we did last year, we tend to continue doing.
Ms. DeMarco and I didn’t talk, yesterday, about the appearance of the proposed 2019 budget document… about how the document might give someone the impression that the Town government exists mainly to serve visitors and recreationalists — and not the folks who actually work here.
Try as I might, to write a thousand words — explaining how the Town government views our community, and its own raison d’être, these photos placed in a document about financial priorities do a much better job of it.
But I did attend the Town Council meeting last night at Town Hall, and during the ‘public comments’ portion of the meeting, I suggested to the Council that our municipal priorities are due for adjustment. That the Town’s priorities, over the past three decades — which focused largely on the development of tourism and recreational amenities — are no longer appropriate in 2019.
That we, as a community, have important needs that the Town and County governments could address, but so far have been reluctant to place in their budgets.
That reluctance might be changing. For example, both governments dedicated, in this year’s budget, $50,000 towards our affordable housing crisis. A drop in the bucket, but something at least.
We might compare $50,000 to the following figures given in the Town’s new budget:
Here we have the money spent by the Town government on capital improvement projects over the past five years. It appears that about $11.4 million — not including debt and maintenance — was spent on new capital installations within the town limits.
Trails? Playground equipment? Visitor amenities?
Looking through the proposed budget, we see nearly $600,000 in new and upgraded features for our local parks and trails. (More than ten times what is budgeted for housing.) This includes design and planning for future trails and park features. It does not include the maintenance of those features, which we will soon be paying for.
And then we have the biggest line item in the Capital Improvement Budget…