We began this editorial series, a few days ago, with a question posed by my nine-year-old granddaughter.
“What is politics?”
The proposal from the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners to re-zone a 5-acre parcel in Harman Park, and the conditional approval by the Town Planning Commission of the architectural design for a 54-bed County detention center, certainly fits the definition of “politics.”
And it probably fits the definition of “hypocrisy” as well.
We’ve been discussing some of the reasons why American municipalities, large and small, have — for the past century — embraced the idea of zoning as an appropriate way to protect property values. More than one sector of the economy has seen financial benefits from keeping commercial and industrial developments physically separated from residential neighborhoods. Those same sectors have benefitted financially from zoning practices that prevent the appearance of apartments and mobile homes in middle- and upper-class neighborhoods.
I mentioned those groups yesterday in Part Three:
- Subdivision developers, who can assure home buyers that only homes similar in value to their own home will be allowed in the neighborhood;
- The real estate industry, which can make the same kind of promises to potential home buyers;
- The homeowners themselves, who can feel confident that their property investment will not lose its value due to the appearance of poor people living in the house next door, or of commercial or industrial development in the neighborhood;
- The government agencies — county, school districts, special districts — funded through property taxes, who can count on higher tax assessments thanks in part to zoning regulations that help create enhanced property values.
Once upon a time, the ownership of private property implied the right to use the property in whatever manner the owner wished. But we’ve become much more modern, and we recognize that government needs to protect us from the arrival, next door, of unwanted neighbors.
With that in mind, we can consider the idea that our Town government has zoned the properties within the Harman Park subdivision as “Mixed Use Corridor.” Only certain types of property uses are implied by that designation, and a county jail is not one of them. The very existence of zoning laws, suggests that Harman Park needs to be protected from uses that will devalue the parcels and structures within that neighborhood.
For the past four or five years, we’ve been listening to the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners whine and moan about the location and condition of current (poorly maintained) County Courthouse — built partly in 1928, with a larger addition added in 1991. One of the consistent complaints from the commissioners is that a jail and a Sheriff’s administration does not belong in the midst of a commercial business area — in fact, that the entire Courthouse does not belong in a commercial area. (This, despite the fact that the Courthouse, once upon a time, was very much thought to belong in the center of town, as a central feature of the community’s activities.)
Armed with that complaint as ammunition, the current BOCC has determined that the best place for a jail, Sheriff’s Office and courthouse is in the central core of the budding commercial area known as Harman Park. Thus, we witness the hypocrisy of local government.
The Town government expanded its administrative reach significantly between 1980 and 2010, growing from the original one-square mile originally platted back in 1883 to encompass an area perhaps four times that size, following Highway 160 to the east and west. The Town government became the protector of property values within several newly-annexed (mostly commercial) neighborhoods: Mountain Crossing, Harman Park, Eagle Drive, Aspen Village, and the commercial area on the north side of Highway 160, spreading out from the City Market shopping center.
Once upon a time, our “town” consisted of the homes and businesses within the historical downtown area, and in fact, the Town government still treats that area as its favored child. From the Town’s new Comprehensive Plan (2017):
An emerging economic center, uptown provides much of the Town’s sales tax base. Meanwhile, downtown remains the heart of the community as its recreation, tourism and cultural center…
The downtown has diverse shops, lodging and restaurants that reflect local character, offer connections to the river, provide public open spaces and house civic institutions. Downtown vitality forms the cornerstone of an attractive area for visitors to the community…
One of the civic institutions that has helped generate downtown vitality since 1928 is the County Courthouse, with its constant public flow of property owners, taxpayers, realtors, vehicle owners, litigants, lawyers, and happy (or pregnant) young couples applying for marriage licenses. The current BOCC very much wants to remove most of these community activities from the downtown core and see the current Courthouse demolished, to create yet another vacant lot in the “heart” of Pagosa Springs.
In order to accomplish this goal of de-vitalizing the downtown, the BOCC needs the Town Council to approve the re-zoning of a 5-acre parcel in the core of the Harman Park commercial area. To judge by the discussion at the Town Planning Commission last week, the Town Planning Department supports this dissipation of downtown energy, and the placement of a non-commercial complex in the center of Harman Park. The Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend this plan.
In other words, the BOCC wants the Town government to support the further economic weakening of Downtown Pagosa, in order to harm property values in the Harman Park subdivision by sticking an industrial-looking detention center in its very midst.
This transformation will be funded by the BOCC by yoking a new $20 million debt around the necks of the county taxpayers, for the next 25 years — for a facility twice rejected by the voters. The new debt will require the County government to cut back on other services, including road maintenance… and also, we can presume, building maintenance.
Politics is a necessary evil, as we can all appreciate.
Perhaps political hypocrisy is also a necessary evil.
Ditto, political stupidity.
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.