The Town of Pagosa Springs — in line with a recently expressed Town Council goal of improved public communication — has launched a public engagement website meant to “facilitate constructive feedback” from the community.
The new site, https://mypagosa.org/, will be “a useful tool to provide updates and information on upcoming projects and to solicit feedback from the public on proposals, plans and ideas,” according to a press release sent out last week.
“Public engagement is based on the premise that people who are impacted by plans or projects should have a say in those decisions. Town Council expressed support for this by including Community Communications as one of their 2020-21 goals,” states a recent press release about the new site. “While all public decisions are made in public settings with public notice, we recognize not everyone can attend or may be aware of the items for decision and how those decisions may impact them. This allows people to take a better look into plans and proposals when and how their schedules allow.”
“We are very excited to launch this site and want to encourage people to visit the site, take the quick polls, answer the surveys, leave a comment or ask questions. The system is monitored to keep the online space safe and constructive.”
Public engagement of all types — business, government, social — has suffered somewhat during the coronavirus pandemic, in spite of attempts to keep the community involved through publicly-accessible, online Zoom meetings. Some of the Zoom meetings I’ve attended since last April have attracted large audiences, but the willingness of the audience to participate via public testimony has remained unremarkable.
Will the public choose to participate more fully via a “public engagement website”? The Town government will soon find out.
The surveys require participants to create a user name and password, and to share their email address.
As of this past weekend, the website featured two “Featured Projects” — the Yamaguchi South Planning Project and the Pagosa Springs Public Arts Program. The Town had an unusually profitable year in 2020, in terms of sales tax collections, and 2021 might be a good year for initiating some expensive municipal projects.
The other featured project on the new website concerns the development of a new public arts program. The current Town Council has expressed a desire to support more public art — visual and performance arts, and perhaps other types.
Painted murals are generally the most affordable type of visual art for public spaces, although over the past couple of decades, the Pagosa community has benefited from the artistic talents of local wood sculptor Chad Haspels, who has transformed several local (dead) trees into wildlife sculptures.
The Town also appears to be hinting at an interest in performance art.
How art projects in Pagosa Springs would be funded is not immediately clear from the survey.
One closing thought about “public engagement”. Typically, the public enters an “engagement process” with very little information about the proposed projects, and very little understanding of government budgets. Spending tax money on a new park or an aggressive arts program necessarily redirects dollars away from other potential future uses. To ask “the public” to lend their support to a project like “Yamaguchi South” is akin to asking a naive teenager which new car they want most — without explaining how the purchase will affect the overall family budget.
To visit the new website, go to https://mypagosa.org/.
For questions, call the Town Planning Department at 970-264-4151, and select option 3.