How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, just like a rolling stone…
— Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan
Perhaps as part of an efforts to start the year 2020 off on the right foot, the Pagosa Springs Town Council held a two-hour work session on January 30 to discuss “housing.” The Council meeting room was packed with housing advocates and interested citizens, and we heard presentations or comments from Pagosa Housing Partners, Homesfund, Habitat for Humanity, Archuleta County Housing Authority, Archuleta Housing Corporation, and Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD).
We also heard some discussion by the Council members… but no firm decisions were made. The direction forward remains unclear.
First… a little bit of recent history.
Almost five years ago, on April 28, 2015, the Pagosa Springs Town Council and the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners sat down together for a five-hour work session, to hammer out an agreement. We had some distinct challenges facing us in 2015, and Commissioner Michael Whiting had been urging our two key local governments to come together and set some “joint strategic priorities.” Knowing that we can’t accomplish everything we want to accomplish, what should we focus on over the next few years, to ensure a reasonably functional and agreeable community for locals and visitors?
The meeting concerned mainly short-range priorities. We all have our priorities, even governments, but we sometimes fail to recognize their true nature. Governments sometimes tell themselves that their priorities are ‘such and such’, when in fact, the end results are not what they were aiming for. It can be a fascinating exercise, then, to gather a bunch of government leaders in a room for five hours, and find out what they believe their priorities are.
I recall one particular statement from that lengthy work session in 2015, because Commissioner Whiting had used the same phrasing on numerous previous occasions. It appears that the adage is often attributed to the famed Indian leader Mohandas K. Gandhi…
“Action expresses priorities.” A wonderfully simple way to define the priorities of a person or organization, when conflicting perceptions exist. What actions are actually taking place? How is the money actually being spent? No matter what fantasies we might have about ourselves, our actions express the priorities we hold.
Are we walking our talk… or are we merely talking?
Commissioner Whiting co-chaired the 2015 meeting with Pagosa Springs Mayor Don Volger and, yes, the fact that that these elected leaders sat around a table for five hours, talking about strategic planning and possible collaborations, expressed a certain type of priority. Talking and planning are one type of action. Talking about cooperation, and collaborating on a strategic plan for five hours, means something. But we’ve all witnessed attempts at community cooperation and planning over the years that produced very little in the way of tangible results, other than perhaps frustration and polarization.
Here’s a quick look at the priorities that the BOCC and Town Council wrote down on a piece of paper on that April morning in 2015, listing some actions they imagined could express important — cooperative — priorities in the near future.
Not in any particular order of importance.
- Better Town-County and Government-Public communication
- Plan and Fix the Broken Courthouse and Jail
- Build the Town to Lakes Trail
- Plan for the Transportation Mess that will be Created when the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) Builds the McCabe Creek Bridge in Downtown Pagosa in 2016
- Promote Economic Development, especially through Expanded Access to Affordable Housing and Early Childhood Education
Not in any particular order of importance, we can consider the outcomes, five years later.
Communication between the Town and County did get better for a couple of years… and then sputtered out. I don’t think anyone would have labeled it “Better” in 2019. The Town has continued to hold open public meetings, to provide information and accept citizen input; I’ve not heard of the County doing anything similar. The County planned its new jail without any significant input from the Town government, which was something of a slap in the face — and then used the cost of the jail as an excuse cut its funding for Town street projects.
The Town’s plan to build a Town to Lakes Trail has been put on the back burner of late (a move that I personally find eminently sensible, given the other pressing issues facing the community.) Other than tearing down several commercial buildings, CDOT did not move forward with the McCabe Creek Bridge project, in the middle of downtown, in 2016, and the project — which will indeed create a traffic mess — has still not begun as of the winter of 2020.
Then we have the agreement to “Promote Economic Development, especially through Expanded Access to Affordable Housing and Early Childhood Education.”
These two key economic (and social) issues — housing and childcare — relate directly to livability and diversity, but they’re also issues that many people feel are outside the scope of proper local government spending. In spite of such feelings, the BOCC and the Town Council have each made financial contributions to these two issues since 2015. Both boards contributed public funds towards the creation of more childcare “slots” in the community, with the main result being a new childcare center now preparing to open its doors near the airport. We posted some photos of that project yesterday.
The BOCC granted a 99-year lease on 2.5 acres of County-owned property on Hot Springs Boulevard, to allow the Archuleta County Housing Authority to obtain funding for a 34-unit “LIHTC” (Low Income Housing Tax Credit) housing project, aimed at households earning less than 60% of the Area Median Income. The Town Council hired fledgling non-profit Pagosa Housing Partners to survey workers and employers in the community to better define the problem, and also to create a written plan for short-term actions: “Roadmap to Affordable Housing, 2019-2025.”
How is that plan progressing?
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.