Oh, twice as much ain’t twice as good
And can’t sustain like one half could
It’s wanting more that’s gonna send me to my knees…
— from ‘Gravity,’ by songwriter John Mayer, 2005
I’m fascinated with the concept of ‘infrastructure’ and with the idea that it must be maintained… and with how those issues play out in a small town like Pagosa Springs. So it’s a remarkable coincidence that we’re currently running an article series by one of my favorite commentators — Chuck Marohn — focused on urban and suburban infrastructure. The coincidence is doubly remarkable, perhaps, because Mr. Marohn comes to his perspective from a background in engineering and urban planning, while in my own case, I spent most of my life as a working-class artist, and more recently as a news reporter. Clearly, our perspectives are not entirely identical.
One of Mr. Marohn’s primary concerns, looking at the current patterns of infrastructure investment in American communities, has to do with municipal bankruptcy. Not traditional bankruptcy, of course… few cities and towns in the US are facing legal bankruptcy, because they are still growing their populations… and are currently seeing increased property values (ie. increased property taxes)… and that allows them to kick their infrastructure debts down the road.
What our cities and towns are facing, instead, is a gradual reduction in services they provide to the public… as the money is directed instead into paying off bank loans.
For example. In order to fund a $15.8 million infrastructure debt for a new detention center, the Archuleta County Commissioners decided — without voter approval — that they would redirect about $900,000 a year from other County services to pay for the jail debt. (That dollar amount, we will note, does not begin to address the cost of operating the jail, nor the cost of long-term maintenance.) . The County already has a jail, of course… a 34-bed jail built in 1991, and abandoned 24 years later, in 2015, by the Archuleta BOCC as utterly worthless and without any redeeming qualities.
Colorado state law requires each county to maintain a jail, but the state apparently doesn’t mind if a particular rural county abandons its existing jail and spends five years trying to build a new one. (Just so long as, eventually, $15.8 million can be funneled into the Colorado construction industry and financial industry out of the taxpayers’ pockets.)
But most of the debt-funded infrastructure we’ve seen proposed in Archuleta County, over the past 40 years or so, was not required by Colorado state law.
For example. Our community is blessed with a rather unusual geophysical feature: a geothermal aquifer that’s been burping up sulphur-smelling, 145 degree water for at least several centuries. This (reportedly therapeutic) hot water feature is, in fact, the reason why the US government became mildly interested in the idea of building a convalescent hospital in Pagosa Springs in the late 1800s, to serve Civil War veterans. The hospital never got built, but private individuals were nevertheless attracted to Pagosa on account of its forests — for logging — and its vast mountain meadows — for cattle and sheep ranching.
And for its hot water, for soaking.
A travertine meadow surrounding the Great Pagosa Hot Spring was surveyed as the site for the hospital — the one that was never built — and it ultimately fell into private ownership. Most recently, the vacant 27-acre tract has been owned by a corporation known as the Springs Partners, and is valued by the County Assessor at about $1.4 million.
A few years ago, the Springs Partners convinced Mayor Don Volger that the Town of Pagosa Springs — the municipal government — ought to pay for a $7 million bridge leading from Highway 160, down South 5th Street, across the San Juan River, to serve this 27-acre parcel. The Partners also wanted the Town government (that is, the taxpayers) to pay for a complex of new streets on the privately owned parcel.
The Partners promised the Mayor that they were seriously planning a fine new hotel, near where the bridge would be built, and insisted that the bridge and new streets would ultimately benefit the entire community — and especially, perhaps, the Town’s tax revenue stream.
For a mere $7 million in new infrastructure, the Town would see many more millions of dollars in ‘economic development.’ More jobs. More tourists. More traffic.
Did we really say, ‘more traffic?’
But we didn’t say, ‘more debt.’ And we didn’t say ‘ more infrastructure maintenance costs.’
You can read more about the original proposal here. And here.
And you can read about the ultimate Town Council decision here.
In the end (was it truly the end?) the Springs Partners withdrew their offer of building a hotel in exchange for a huge government-funded infrastructure project, and the Town Council took no further action on subsidizing development of the vacant 27 acres.
[Spoiler alert: The Springs Partners have recently come up with a new plan for getting the Town to subsidize a new hotel. More about that later.]
The 5th Street Bridge project was not the first time Mayor Don Volger had become excited by the prospect of ‘economic development’ subsidized by the municipal government. I’ve been following Mr. Volger’s government service for many years, beginning with his career as Police Chief with the Town Police Department, and then his tenure as a Town Council member, and now as Mayor, his enthusiasm for this thriving, friendly small mountain town that can afford to build new stuff and create more jobs.
We’ll further discuss the Mayor’s enthusiasm for ‘economic development’ on Monday.