A friend here in Pagosa put her house on the market this past Thursday, and in less than 24 hours had an offer for more than the asking price. That’s an anecdotal story, but based on numerous anecdotal stories, it sounds like home values have been headed higher in Pagosa Springs, in 2020.
That suggests that our property taxes might also be headed higher. Just how much higher, we don’t know. But we do know that the County Assessor uses past home sales to help define the property tax valuations.
It’s possible, even likely, that the Archuleta County government — and numerous other local governments funded by property taxes — will see increased property tax revenues rolling in, within the next few years, courtesy of you and me. Those increases are held in check, to some degree, by a section of the Colorado Constitution known as TABOR — the Taxpayers Bill of Rights — and by section 29-1-301 of the Colorado Revised Statutes.
On Friday, in Part One, we looked at a couple of Archuleta County documents, showing that our three County Commissioners — Ronnie Maez, Alvin Schaaf and Steve Wadley — are currently looking at a budget that assigns zero 2021 property tax dollars to the Road & Bridge Fund. The total 2021 dollars directed to Road & Bridge — from all property-related tax sources — appears to be $32,995. That’s quite a change from 2019, when the Board of County Commissioners had directed $1.6 million of such dollars into the Road & Bridge Fund.
Commissioner Alvin Schaaf offered these thoughts:
“The basic thing the public needs to know is the $1.9 million. That’s a ‘gimme’ that is not going to come around again…”
Commissioner Schaaf is here talking about a $1.9 million grant, awarded last December by the Colorado Underfunded Courthouse Facility Commission. That grant required the County prove it had secured all the funding for a proposed $5.8 million courthouse by November of 2020, in order to receive the money.
Where would the BOCC find $4 million of dollars to match the state grant?
As many Daily Post readers know, the County already owns an existing courthouse building, which sits largely vacant in the heart of downtown Pagosa Springs, and which could be remodeled, presumably, for much less than $5.8 million. But the BOCC has, over the past few years, expressed a clear intention to dispose of the old courthouse and construct brand new facilities for a detention center, Sheriff’s Office, and court facilities…
…and put the county taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in debt, in spite of the plan being rejected by the voters in 2017 and 2018.
Back in September, Commissioner Steve Wadley explained the spending spree in a Pagosa Springs SUN interview:
“We’ve got enough to where we have enough money to… whatever we start, we can complete. So, we’ve got enough money right now to start and finish a one-courtroom courthouse, but we will continue to seek grants until we get to a three-courtroom courthouse.”
Grants such as those sought by the BOCC can be used only for future construction. Although the BOCC wants to build a three-courtroom facility, they had — as of September — scrounged together only enough for a facility with one courtroom.
Wadley continued:
“By the time it’s complete, we’re hoping it’s three courtrooms, but that’s dependent on grants. Right now we’re starting with one courtroom in the justice center. The purpose in this, is so that we can bring in as much money from outside Archuleta County that we can, and I’ve heard it said that, ‘These commissioners haven’t gone to bat to get outside money.’ There was $3 million awarded for underfunded courts in the entire state and this county got $1.9 million. And that’s because the three of us went out there and bared our souls to get it.”
Part of the soul-baring process, apparently, has been to redirect 2021 property taxes away from the maintenance of the Archuleta County road system, to be used on a shiny new $6 million “justice center.” (Whether the taxpayers will see that move as embodying “justice” remains to be seen.) As shown in the following chart, the 2021 budget assigns zero property taxes to Road & Bridge (“R&B”).
In spite of the redirection of property taxes, however, the draft 2021 County budget does include millions of dollars in funding for roads. According to County Finance Director Larry Walton’s October 6 budget presentation (which you can download here) much of that money was supposed to be spent this year, but was not (for various reasons?)
According to the published budget documents, the BOCC allocated $6.4 million to Road and Bridge in 2019, from various sources. About $2.0 million came from the federal Highway Users Tax Fund (HUTF) and about $1.6 million was from local property taxes. Another $3.0 million came from sales tax revenue.
The proposed 2021 budget, which you can download here, budgets $32,995 from local property-related taxes… and about $3.2 million from sales taxes, an increase from about $3.0 million in 2019. The HUTF funding is estimated at $1.7 million for next year.
The BOCC plans, however, to withdraw a sizable amount out of the Road & Bridge savings account for 2021. According to the presentation we saw last Tuesday, the BOCC will spend $3.3 million more from the Road & Bridge Fund than they will put in. That particular Fund is healthy at the moment, because Road & Bridge expects to complete only $4.8 million, of the $8.0 million worth of projects proposed for 2020. Delaying those road projects until 2021 left about $3.2 million unspent in the Road & Bridge Fund, and it appears the BOCC wants to spend that money this year, while also withdrawing $3.3 million out of the Road & Bridge savings account.
Of course, the Road & Bridge Fund will not be healthy, going forward, if the BOCC decides to deplete the account by $3.3 million every year.
Finance Director Walton’s October budget presentations are informative. Last year, Mr. Walton showed us a chart illustrating the amount of debt we are looking forward to over the next decade or so. As we can see, the amount of County debt increased substantially in 2019 when the BOCC agreed to use Certificates of Participation (COPS) to build the new detention center in Harman Park. The County debt nearly tripled in 2020, compared to 2018. But some previously acquired COPs and leases will be paid off in 2024, and the yearly detention center COP debt will then be only about $300,000 more than the pre-2019 debt levels… for the next decade.
The above chart is from last year’s presentation. Mr. Walton did not include a similar chart in his 2021 budget presentation, showing a picture of the total debt burden in 2021. Apparently, the millions of dollars for the new courthouse will not be coming from new debt?