Major crises have major consequences, usually unforeseen. The Great Depression spurred isolationism, nationalism, fascism, and World War II — but also led to the New Deal, the rise of the United States as a global superpower, and eventually decolonization…
— Political economist Francis Fukuyama, writing in ‘Foreign Affairs’ magazine in June, 2020
I need to get things posted early, this morning. The Town Council will be starting their Zoom meeting — their annual summer retreat — at 8am this morning, and I’d like to hear what they have on their minds, considering they’re going to be spending millions of taxpayer dollars over the next few months, and perhaps also coming up with new laws and policies that will effect us in one way or another. If the retreat plays out in a manner similar to other annual restreats organized by Pagosa Mayor Don Volger over the past six years, it will last all day, and the principle result will be a several page document titled something like “Council Goals for 2021”. That document will then sit on a shelf somewhere, to be brought out by the Town staff on rare occasions, to help justify this or that new expenditure or policy.
Which is not to say, “Planning is worthless”. I’ve done my share of planning, over the years. In fact, I spent about 10 minutes planning this morning’s Daily Post editorial, prior to settling down at the keyboard. But so far (three short paragraphs into it) it’s turning out to be very different from what I had planned.
That’s the thing about planning. You have to expect your plan to fall apart. Plans can be extremely unhelpful, even dangerous, if you can’t let go of them.
Here’s the agenda — the plan — for this morning’s Town Council strategic planning retreat.
REMOTE PARTICIPATION
Join Zoom Meeting By Computer – https://zoom.us/j/93381241040
Dial by Phone – 1-669-900-6833 US – Meeting ID:933 8124 1040
TOWN COUNCIL STRATEGIC PLANNING RETREAT
- Introduction: Survey Responses Review
- Session 1: Defining Priorities
- Session 2: Ethical & Professional Standards
- Session 3: Finalize Top 10 Priorities with Actions
- Session 4: Development Discussion
- Session 5: Review Next Steps
From what I can tell — stranded here in a cultural backwater, amid breathtakingly beautiful scenery, with instant access to 1.5 billion questionable information sources from around the world, 60% of which are written in English — the United States of America has performed poorly on its 2020 final exam, compared to certain other countries. I’m not talking about a school exam; I mean the big test sprung on us by the arrival of a sometimes-fatal, newly-identified germ known among the experts as SARS-CoV-2, and among those suffering from its symptoms as COVID-19.
We, as a nation, were not very well prepared for this test, and it shows in the test results. According to The New York Times, (which is getting its information from The Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University; National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China; and the World Health Organization), the United States is currently posting a death rate from COVID-19 at about one death per 2,100 people.
Among the nations that have thus far kicked our asses:
Australia, one death per 127,000 citizens
Norway, one death per 20,000 citizens
China, one death per 300,000 citizens
Thailand, one death per 1,200,000 citizens
Ethiopia, one death per 415,000 citizens
Paraquay, one death per 148,000 citizens
A few nations have been slammed harder than the United States, in terms of fatalities. The UK. Spain. Italy. Many in South America are seeing essentially the same death rate as the US.
This late-spring-early-summer final exam also posed tough questions about each nation’s economy, but those are much harder to quantify than the alleged death rate from a virus (which itself poses its own challenges.)
But to get back to the Town Council’s strategic planning retreat:
TOWN COUNCIL STRATEGIC PLANNING RETREAT
- Introduction: Survey Responses Review
- Session 1: Defining Priorities
- Session 2: Ethical & Professional Standards
- Session 3: Finalize Top 10 Priorities with Actions
- Session 4: Development Discussion
- Session 5: Review Next Steps
A municipal government in Colorado has traditionally been expected to provide certain types of public services, funded by tax revenues — money extracted from residents and visitors, whether they like it or not. The types of services we expect a municipality to provide have changed over time, but certain services have been handled by the Town of Pagosa Springs ever since the municipal government was incorporated in 1891. We have always expected the Town to take good care of our publicly-owned infrastructure: parks, municipal buildings, streets, alleys, bridges, trails, perhaps a geothermal heating system.
Although some communities expect their town to provide and maintain sidewalks for pedestrian safety, the Town of Pagosa Springs is still — 130 years after its incorporation — working on installing sidewalks in our historical downtown area. They’ve made considerable headway over the past 20 years, but it’s a work in progress.
Those are some of the traditional tasks with which our municipal government has occupied itself.
Starting in about 1980 (from what I can tell) the Town of Pagosa Springs — with encouragement from the state of Colorado and from the federal government — began to view ‘economic development’ as one of its primary duties. Historically, the creation of ‘jobs’ had been left to the private sector, but when we look at the Town budget for 2020, we note that a significant amount of spending is aimed directly at, or is being justified by, the perceived need to ‘create more jobs’. (Less attention has been paid to whether those jobs actually pay a living wage.)
And we note that, of the five “work session” listed in the July 31 strategic planning agenda, one is specifically called out as a “Development Discussion.”
I have no idea (as of 7am this morning) where, exactly, that particular discussion might be headed. The housing crisis? The fake “urban renewal authority”? More corporate welfare for certain private developers?
But I find it interesting that “The Meltdown of the Pagosa Springs Economy Due to COVID-19” is not one of the discussion items.