For its first 100 years of existence — to judge by the testimony of various older residents who grew up here — life in Pagosa Springs didn’t depend upon ‘economic development.’ It depended upon ‘just getting by.’
Somehow, life has gotten even more expensive and challenging, for certain residents. We’re going to be discussing that problem.
Our current Pagosa Springs Town Council is one of the most honest, thoughtful government boards I’ve witnessed in my 14 years writing about Archuleta County politics. The June 29 Council retreat — eight hours of discussion and goal-setting, by seven people who are essentially volunteers — was a prime example of their conscientious approach to local government.
And although I found it distressing that a government board, overseeing a limited staff with a limited tax-funded budget, would come to the conclusion that their staff ought to attempt to meet 55 ambitious goals over the next 18 months, I was delighted to see that the Council’s three ‘highest priority’ goals were connected with maintenance of existing Town amenities — rather than continue the Town’s previous pattern of constantly building new amenities… with no plan for how to maintain them.
A new Maintenance Facility. Better Road Maintenance. Better Sidewalk Maintenance.
There had not been a realistic maintenance plan, in the recent past.
Even in the case of something as obvious as the paved streets of downtown Pagosa, the Town government in the past had no realistic maintenance plan. You might assume — if you didn’t know anything about government — that a town that had been taking care of its downtown streets for over 100 years would have developed a pattern of regular street maintenance by 2008. Alas, this was not the case in our little community.
In 1993, when Clarissa and I bought our Victorian house on Loma Street in downtown Pagosa, our street was your basic gravel road. I had always wanted to live at the end of a dirt road, and now, by golly, I did.
But the following year, in the spring, a paving company arrived in town and began laying asphalt. Apparently, the federal government had done some air quality studies and determined that automobile-generated dust from our gravel downtown roads was causing possible health risks to local residents. A new federal program called the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program (CMAQ) had been created a couple of years earlier, and Pagosa Springs promptly began using CMAQ grant funds to pave its downtown roads — thus, improving the air quality in downtown.
But just like many of the roads that got paved out in the unincorporated county following the Fairfield Settlement — with asphalt applied unevenly over roadways that did not have a proper road base, and with no curbs or gutters to reduce water damage — the streets in downtown Pagosa got pavement of the cheapest kind. The kind that does not last ‘in perpetuity.’
The kind that the Town also failed to maintain properly.
With a well-prepared road bed… with curbs and gutters… with well-laid asphalt… and with a consistent chip sealing program, a paved surface can last 25 years or longer. Our Town streets, however, had none of these advantages when they were paved. Most of them were done cheaply, and many have been poorly maintained. And it shows.
In 2008, just as the Recession was slamming the local construction industry, and sales tax collections were headed downward, the Pagosa Springs Town Council made a fascinating decision. The pavement on one of the main downtown streets — four-block-long Lewis Street — was rapidly deteriorating, and in desperate need of repair.
But instead of rebuilding the entire four blocks, the Council voted to spend $1 million to convert just one block — the commercial 400 block just north of Highway 160 — into Pagosa’s “Festival Street.” Wide sidewalks with brick inserts, classy street lights, flowering trees and landscaped bump-outs were included in the design. We were assured that this beautifully refurbished street would attract festival- and event-organizers from… well, from pretty much every corner of the globe, I guess.
The accrued economic benefits would surprise even the promoters of the scheme. So we were told.
As I recall, the reconstruction was completed in 2009 at a final cost of around $1.2 million. Some Daily Post readers may have noticed that event- and festival-organizers from around the world have thus far ignored our $1.2 million investment into one block of Lewis Street. But you can’t say we didn’t try.
By the following year — 2010 — we were deep into the Great Recession, and the Town Council realized that we needed to be more careful with our money. So they hired some consultants from Gunnison, Colorado, to analyze our downtown streets and develop a thoughtful plan for maintaining and repairing our remaining pavement. The plan, as approved by Town Council, called for $1.7 million in carefully scheduled maintenance expenditures over the next five years. It seemed like a barely-affordable path forward, considering the financial challenges we were facing.
But the ink on the 5-Year Road Plan was still wet when the Council engaged, once more, in some curious governmental behavior. The Council essentially tossed their new (expensive) road plan out the window, and voted to mortgage Town Hall so they could immediately spend $1.5 million rebuilding the remaining three blocks of Lewis Street.
Some of the same Council members were still serving in 2015, when it began to seem reasonable to put the Town taxpayers even further in debt on a $900,000 re-paving four blocks of South 8th Street, another well-used thoroughfare.
Except that the engineering tests revealed that the original pavement had been even more poorly applied than we thought. So, more like $2 million for a complete re-construction? When the dust settled, the Town created a new $2.8 million loan (rolling in the remainder of the Lewis Street debt) to begin the half-mile project.
A few weeks ago, in 2019, a different Town Council — more conscientious, more thoughtful — voted to create an even larger taxpayer debt to build a brand new Town Maintenance Facility.
$3.7 million.
Like I said, I’m all in favor of proper maintenance of public property. And maybe a shiny new Maintenance Facility is just what the Town government really needs, if they’re really going to focus seriously on maintenance.
But how deeply into debt can we go?
And is this part of what they mean by ‘economic development’?