Sitting around the dinner table with family, on Easter, my nine-year-old granddaughter Amelie reacted to our ongoing conversation, by asking:
“What is politics?”
That’s one of the wonderful things about children. They can totally stop you in your tracks with the simplest question — and make you think about what you thought you knew, and challenge you to explain yourself, in language a child can understand. I made an attempt to explain.
“Well, you know how it is when you’re out on the playground with your classmates? And some of the kids want to play a certain game, and some of the other kids want to play a different game, and you have to figure out which game you’re going to play? Well, that’s politics.”
“So, you have to learn how to compromise,” Amelie suggested.
Ah, yes… Compromise. If only politics were so simple…
On Thursday, April 25, Pagosa Springs Town Council members Mat deGraaf and Matt DeGuise will be at The Lift Coffee House, 175 Pagosa Street, from 7am until 8am, drinking coffee and listening, as the people of Archuleta County share their thoughts about Town government. This will be the second of several neighborhood meetings intended to encourage public feedback “on issues that you feel strongly about.”
The Town Council has been talking, for years now, about ways to improve the communication between The People and their Town Government. The “Coffee With Council” events are one of their experiments in public engagement. There have been others as well.
At least two more “Coffee with Council” events will take place on the last Thursday of the month. On May 30, Council members Nicole DeMarco and David Schanzenbaker will be at Boulder Coffee Cafe, 634 San Juan St from 7-8am. On June 27, Council member Maddie Bergon and Mayor Don Volger will be at Higher Grounds, 189 Talisman Drive.
Mayor Don Volger had explained the planned events this way:
…This is not a new concept and similar programs have been initiated by many other communities. As you well know, people like to talk about local issues. The Town Council wants to improve communications with the citizens we serve, and sometimes our Town meetings are a little too formal to encourage those discussions.
For almost five years now, Council has set a goal to improve communications with community members. We discussed ways to do this better at our 2018 Council retreat. This is one of the ideas we considered… If it works, we’ll continue scheduling similar times together… I look forward to developing more trust relationships with those who care deeply about our “refreshingly authentic, small mountain town.”
Late last month, Council members Tracy Bunning and Madeline Bergon spent well over an hour at Pagosa Baking Company, chatting about political issues with nine local residents. The topics included Town impact fees, affordable housing, housing in general, the worrisome presence of numerous vacant commercial lots all through the historic downtown corridor, the proposed County jail, the possibility of combining our Town and County governments, the protection of wetlands habit along the river, and the failure of the Town government to fully address its own noxious weed problems.
The March 28 event was non-contentious. The two Council members arrived without an agenda, and had clearly come to listen to the public’s concerns, and answer the public’s questions as best they could.
Unfortunately, I will miss this Thursday’s coffee event at The Lift, due to a previous engagement. (I’m attending a wedding in San Diego with my partner Cynda Green.) But if I were able to attend, I might want to discuss “zoning” with our Council members. In particular, I might want to talk about zoning in the Harman Park subdivision.
Luckily for me, that very topic will be on the agenda for the Town Planning Commission this evening, Tuesday, April 23 at 5:30pm. The agenda includes two items related to development in Harman Park — specifically, the proposed development of a $14 million Archuleta County Detention Center on a 5-acre parcel located near the subdivision entrance. The first item concerns a proposed change to the Town zoning for the parcel in question. The second item concerns the design and engineering of the proposed jail.
You can download the Town Planning Commission packet here.
Many ethical questions surround the County’s proposed jail project. The Town’s possible approval of a zoning change, all by itself, involves several ethical questions which require resolution before the County can proceed with its $14 million jail. The 5-acre parcel is centrally located in a subdivision which is zoned “Mixed Use Corridor.” From the Town’s Land Use and Development Code (LUDC):
MIXED-USE Corridor (MU-C):
The MU-C district is intended to allow for the vertical or horizontal mixing of uses, including some high-density residential, along major highways. Commercial uses are appropriate, including retail, offices, hotels, and tourism-related businesses. The district is intended to promote gradual development and redevelopment of existing commercial corridors to become more vibrant and attractive mixed-use areas that also contain some housing, offices, and light trade.
As our readers will note, the above definition of allowable uses does not include “jails.” So the County government has applied to the Town government for a zoning change. The proposed zoning change would affect only one single parcel — the 5-acre parcel recently purchased by the County.
From the Planning Commission packet for tonight’s meeting:
On April 3, 2019, the Planning Department received a complete application from Archuleta County requesting the rezoning of property located at 125 Harman Park Drive, proposing to change the zoning from Mixed-Use Corridor to Public/Quasi-Public (PS) zoning…
The Archuleta County Commissioners are and have been proposing the detention facility, sheriff’s office and potentially a new court’s building would be located at this site. This was taken into consideration when revising the Comprehensive Plan in 2018, and the adopted Comprehensive Plan indicates that 125 Harman Park Drive be rezoned to Public/QuasiPublic (PS) zoning. The County proposes to begin with the construction of a new 24,000 square foot detention facility on the subject property.
The Commission packet also mentions a “23,000 square foot Detention Center” — so we’re not quite sure of the size at this point. We’re also told that the jail will contain “approximately 54 beds.” In other words, the jail is approximately the size of the proposed jail rejected by the voters in 2017 and 2018.
Nor do we know where the County would get the money to build a Sheriff’s office and “new court’s building” on the site.
Here’s an artist rendering of the proposed detention facility, which is about two-and-a-half times the size of the existing (but abandoned) Archuleta County Detention Center:
The Town Planning Commission might make a recommendation this evening, about re-zoning the County-owned parcel. Or perhaps they will agree to study the issue more carefully before deciding.
I assume they will be accepting public comment on the matter.