It can’t be entirely comfortable, in a small town like Pagosa Springs, to be running a weekly newspaper that’s viewed as a government propaganda machine.
But that’s pretty much how Pagosa Springs Mayor Don Volger seems to view our weekly Pagosa Springs SUN. During this past Tuesday’s regular Urban Renewal Authority (URA) commission meeting, the Mayor was making yet another campaign speech in support of an ‘Urban Renewal Authority’ that has very little connection to authentic urban renewal:
“I just wanted to say that the [Archuleta Board of County Commissioners] had a work session today, and one of the items on the agenda was talking about the URA and their opinion about that, and all of them were very supportive of us moving forward with the URA. Very supportive.
“So that’s a public statement. I don’t know how it will come out in the paper. Natalie [Woodruff] had a chance to speak; I had a chance to speak. And the SUN has been exceptional in the way that they have been reporting factual information about the URA.
“So let’s just see how this election goes… ”
“This election” being, of course, a single question placed before the Town voters via mail ballot — Ballot Question A — which will amend the Town Home Rule Charter to require voter approval before the Town can bestow millions of dollars in corporate welfare on private developers and corporations. $79.6 million worth of such corporate subsidies were proposed to the Town Council last summer by David Dronet, a principal with the Springs Resort & Spa, and Jack Searle, the owner of 27 perpetually-vacant acres directly adjacent to the Springs Resort.
The ballots are scheduled to be counted this coming Tuesday, July 14.
Except for a couple of developers hoping to benefit from millions of dollars in corporate welfare, Mayor Volger has been the most outspoken supporter of the proposed URA tax giveaways, although he’s apparently received “exceptional” assistance from the Pagosa Springs SUN.
Daily Post readers may feel uncomfortable, as I do, when the sole print newspaper in a small town elicits enthusiastic endorsements from an ambitious local politician. As I understand the First Amendment to the US Constitution…
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…
…the Founding Fathers viewed a free and independent press as crucial to protecting the citizens and taxpayers from corrupt government actions. When an authoritarian government wants to consolidate its power over a community or a nation, one of the first steps is typically to take control of the media, and prohibit the free flow of divergent views.
So when a local newspaper decides, all on its own, to become a propaganda sheet for local government, we have a problem.
That’s been an occasional problem with our local Pagosa Springs newspaper — a tendency to report the “official party line” as articulated by elected and appointed leaders, and an associated tendency to ignore the taxpayers’ point of view.
It’s easy to quote elected officials, and publish their political pitches as presented during regularly-scheduled public meetings. But to report the rest of the “factual information”… as viewed from the taxpayers’ side of the issue… the “factual information” an elected official might prefer no one hears about? Not quite as easy.
For example.
The SUN was a consistent distributor of water district propaganda during the Dry Gulch Reservoir controversy, between 2008 and 2012, when the taxpayers were questioning a proposed $357 million water project — a time when Archuleta County was actually losing population, foreclosures were rampant, and construction companies were going belly up.
The SUN was likewise an active and consistent promoter of School District propaganda in 2011, when Superintendent Mark DeVoti was pushing a $98 million dollar property tax increase to build a ‘mega-campus’ on a rocky hillside near the high school — a site that was later determined to be completely unsuitable for such a project by a Colorado Springs architectural firm. Fortunately, intelligent voters rejected the tax increase by a 3-to-1 margin, despite the SUN’s editorial support.
In October 2018, a couple of weeks before the voters weighed in on a proposed $48 million tax increase for “justice center capital improvements”, SUN editor Terri House wrote a lengthy article sharing the County government’s party line on the tax issue. Ms. House made no attempt, however, to share the perspective of the (numerous) jail opponents.
This season, the SUN seems to have been an “exceptional” vehicle for promoting Mayor Volger’s point of view concerning taxpayer participation in Urban Renewal Authority tax giveaways. The Mayor’s perspective seems to embrace attitudes common to people in elected office who are authorized to spend other people’s money.
1. It’s the job of elected officials to pick winners and losers, by writing tax-funded corporate welfare checks to businesses that appeal to them personally, and thereby directing development away from other, existing development projects.
2. The voters who pay the taxes, and shoulder the debts created by local government, should have no ability to participate directly in authorizing corporate tax giveaways — because they would probably make bad decisions.
3. Downtown Pagosa Springs is a special place — much more special than anywhere else in Archuleta County — and therefore we should pour tax money into select downtown developers’ pockets, and marginalize other areas of the town.
4. We can use a Colorado law written to address “dangerous slums and blight” to hand over tax money to wealthy developers and promote economic development that has absolutely nothing to do with “dangerous slums and blight” because our attorneys tell us they’ve identified a loophole.
5. It’s perfectly fine for a Town-appointed commission to extract money from every government district in Archuleta County — without County voter representation — to promote development projects that the Town government determines to be ‘catalyst projects’… even if those projects promise no decent jobs, no affordable housing, and 25 years of lost tax revenue for every government district.
When a local newspaper functions to provide “exceptional” service to free-spending politicians, our community is in a tough spot.