A couple of Pagosa citizens, who — not incidentally — also happen to be members of the local media, sat through a day-long ‘retreat’ held by the Pagosa Springs Town Council on Saturday, June 29.
The aim of the eight-hour retreat: to establish a certain number of Town government goals for 2020.
The two reporters in attendance included Randi Pierce of the weekly Pagosa Springs SUN newspaper, and myself. We sat, listening quietly, as facilitator Yvonne Wilcox led the Council members (and two Town staff members) down a seemingly endless rabbit hole of possible bureaucratic priorities.
Through those hours of discussion and occasional disagreement, the Council and staff grappled with 55 potential goals, with each goal having perhaps a half dozen measures for determining if, indeed, the Town staff was moving the project forward efficiently.
For example:
Build a New Maintenance Facility for Public Works, Facilities & Parks Maintenance
1. Have CMGC construction company on board
2. Have project under construction by next summer
3. Council will participate in facility design
4. Obtain financing
5. Make sure to establish a maintenance schedule and budget for the building
6. Discuss xeriscaped landscaping
Other goals, among the 55 discussed, included:
“Develop a Plan for Sewer Lagoon Property”
“Explore and Expand Downtown Parking Capacity”
“Increase Beautification of Downtown Core”
“Increase Bicycle Mobility”
“Enhance Wayfinding Throughout Town”
“Complete Town-to-Lakes Trail”
“Make Pagosa Springs More Foot-traffic Friendly”
“Ensure Appropriate ADA Compliance”
At the end of eight hours, Ms. Wilcox asked the Council members (and staff) to choose their three top priorities from among the 55 possible goals posted around the room on the large sheets of easel paper.
Here are the top three entries:
Build a new Town maintenance facility, enhance road maintenance, and devise a plan for maintaining sidewalks.
Out of 55 possible priorities, the Council overwhelmingly voted to focus the Town’s energy on ‘maintenance’ over the next 18 months.
From what little I know about Pagosa Springs history, this is not exactly a new development. I assume that the primary function of our municipal government, since 1891, has been the maintenance of publicly owned property. Our streets. Our parks. Our sidewalks.
The Town of Pagosa Springs has never been what one would call a “wealthy” government. The downtown streets were dirt roads when I moved here in 1993, and most of them had no sidewalks. Most of the downtown streets still have no sidewalks.
Street maintenance has remained a challenge.
Other Town functions have grown up along the way… one policeman eventually became a Police Department; a sewage treatment facility was built, and homes were required to hook up to sewer lines; an innovative geothermal heating system was created to serve downtown schools and businesses; a trail was built along the river; a multi-million-dollar Community Center was constructed; and the municipal government adopted hundreds of pages of building regulations, and related fees.
As the Town government added additional public facilities and took on new tasks, maintenance became more of a problem… but not necessarily more of a priority.
The state of Colorado as a whole was growing in population and wealth, and various grant programs were created to share the state government’s primary goals, which concerned public health, education, transportation, safety, recreation, and economic development.
Especially important among the Town government’s own priorities were recreation and economic development, and in our case, we can substitute the word “tourism” for “economic”. The Pagosa Springs economy had been struggling for most of the community’s first 100 years, and by 1993 almost all the sawmills had closed, agriculture was in decline, and it had become apparent to Town leaders that the future — if Pagosa Springs even had a future — would need to focus on tourism and real estate sales.
Luckily, the Colorado state government was all about recreation and tourism as well. With resource extraction — logging, mining, agriculture — slowly losing its attraction, the state government came to the conclusion that many rural communities would probably whither and die unless they could become tourist attractions.
Local governments were coming to the same conclusion, and towns like Salida, Crested Butte, Durango and Pagosa Springs soon discovered that the state government had significant money available in the form of matching grants, for amenities like hiking trails, river enhancements, and parks. Building these new amenities, with the help of state grants, made the towns more attractive to second home buyers and tourists, while also serving local residents. And the grants also helped municipal governments grow their own bureaucracies.
Generally speaking, the state and federal grants helped cover the cost of new construction. The grants did not, as a rule, cover the cost of maintenance. So the most feasible way to have a thriving municipal government, during the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, was to write plenty of grants and build lots of new facilities.
Unfortunately, new facilities do not stay ‘new.’ They become old facilities, and begin to need serious maintenance. They become gradually more expensive to own.
The state of Colorado and the federal government are sometimes helpful in funding new municipal facilities in small rural towns with limited tax bases. Those big governments are much less helpful when the municipal facilities have become maintenance burdens.
One Town facility struggling with maintenance issues this summer is 12-year-old Yamaguchi Park, one of the municipal facilities constructed in recent years with help from matching ‘recreation and tourism’ grants. In the midst of the wettest spring and summer in recent memory, the expansive (and expensive) soccer field at Yamaguchi is covered in dry, brown grass, dotted with areas where the turf has been completely worn off by running feet.
Problems with the irrigation system, as I understand it.