As I mentioned in Part One, I will be out of town for the scheduled “Coffee with Council” event tomorrow morning, April 25, at the Lift Coffee House (located next door to Mountain Pizza) so I’ll miss a chance to chat casually with Pagosa Springs Town Council members Mat deGraaf and Matt DeGuise, from 7-8am.
I also mentioned that I hoped to attend the Town Planning Commission meeting last night, to listen to, and perhaps weigh in on, a proposal to re-zone a single parcel in the Harman Park subdivision, to accommodate Archuleta County government’s plan to build a 54-bed jail on that parcel. (They’re also planning to build a Sheriff’s Office there, and perhaps a new Courthouse as well. But that’s a story for another day.)
Also last night, the Board of Directors for Pagosa Peak Open School (on which I serve) held a scheduled meeting. So let’s consider that bit of education news, first.
The Board meeting went rather smoothly. Contracts for the coming year were approved, including contracts for the lead teachers (Pagosa Peak refers to them as Lead Advisors) and for the new School Director, Angela Crossland, who will be guiding the school through its third year in 2019-2020. The Board also approved, conceptually, four grant applications — to be added to a dozen grants already in the works. The largest grants will (hopefully) help fund the purchase of the Parelli Building, where the school is located. (I’d like to mention, in passing, that Pagosa Peak Open School is currently seeking an Office Manager and a Custodian for the 2019-2020 school years. You should be able to find more information about these job positions within the next day or so, on the school website under “News > Careers”. You can also call the school: 970-317-2151)
Pagosa Peak Open School was authorized by the Archuleta School District to open its doors in September 2017 and offer an innovative “Project-Based Learning” educational approach, beginning as a purposely-small K-4 operation and growing into K-8 by adding an additional grade each year.
The building in which the school operates — the Parelli Building — was designed as a modern office building, call center, media production studio, warehouse, and museum. It also includes a small auditorium. The Parelli organization has radically changed its business model since the building was finished, 12 years ago, and would like to see Pagosa Peak own the building… if we can raise the money. We hope to purchase the building with the help of several grants, and we’ve had the building appraised by two commercial appraisal companies; the approximate appraised value is around $4.7 million — although it’s being offered on the real estate market at $5 million.
It measures about 38,000 square feet. So the price is around $125 per square foot. Based on our experience since opening the school, we could probably educate 200 students there, and still have room left over. The price of the building — per student — is therefore less than $24,000 each. (If you wanted to calculate the value that way.) We expect our students to graduate with a wide range of useful skills.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, the Planning Commission was looking at changing the zoning for a parcel in Harman Park, to accommodate a new $14 million jail. The proposal mentions “23,000 square feet” and “54 beds.” That puts the cost at about $620 per square foot — for a facility that will likely leave the inmates worse off, emotionally and socially, than when they arrived.
If you wanted to calculate the value by dollars per inmate, the cost is about $260,000 per person. More than a quarter million dollars, per bed.
What can we say. Some people want to build schools. Some want to build jails.
The jail project still has not secured financing — although we’ve heard talk about ‘Certificates of Participation’ — nor has the Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) obtained final approval for the re-zoning of the Harman Park parcel. They cleared one hurdle last night, by getting the Town Planning Commission to unanimously recommend the zoning change. The Planning Commission also endorsed the conceptual design of the facility, with a laundry list of stipulations.
But the final approval of the re-zoning must come from the Town Council. The BOCC must still convince seven community leaders that their project is beneficial to the community, that it fits appropriately into the Harman Park subdivision, and that the County will not begin the project — and then run out of money to finish it.
This whole re-zoning process got me curious about ‘zoning.’ Where did it come from? And what does it do for — and to — a community?
A bit of history:
The Los Angeles City Council passed the first municipal zoning ordinance in the United States in 1908, establishing residential and industrial districts. Dangerous and odorous businesses (warehousing explosives, slaughterhouses, tanneries) were already illegal before 1908, but the new ordinance created three large residential districts with identical laws, and prohibited business such as laundries, lumber yards, and in general, any industry using equipment driven by motors. (The prohibition against laundries had a racial component since many were owned by Chinese residents and citizens.)
The ordinance established eight industrial districts, mainly in areas with existing industrial development, but over the next 7 years, the City Council was lobbied by special business interests to allow exceptions within the three Residential Districts, and as a result, industrial districts were created inside of residential districts. Some of the newly allowed industrial districts were relatively harmless — motion picture districts, for example — but others were polluting, such as poultry slaughterhouse districts.
By 1913, 22 American cities had created similar zoning laws.
In 1916, New York City adopted the first ‘city-wide’ zoning regulations in reaction to construction of the Equitable Building (still standing at 120 Broadway). That building towered over the neighboring buildings, completely covered the parcel, blocked windows of neighboring buildings, and greatly reduced the availability of sunshine for people in the affected area.
New York’s zoning rules established height restrictions for the entire city, limiting building height in residential zones to the width of adjoining streets. The law also regulated land uses, preventing factories and warehousing from encroaching on retail districts.
As zoning became practically universal throughout the US, numerous negative effects also became universal, or at least commonplace. Zoning regulations — intentionally or unintentionally — have caused housing to become increasingly expensive… encouraged suburban sprawl… and promoted a ‘car-centric’ culture where places of employment, services, and retail were no longer located within walking distance of residential neighborhoods. Zoning was also used, in some places, to help enforce racial segregation.
Zoning has also been implicated as a primary factor in discouraging affordable housing in urban areas.