Following Mr. David Dronet’s quick summary of his tax subsidy request on April 6, for an eight unit apartment building on Lewis Street, Archuleta Board of County Commissioners chair Alvin Schaaf expressed some enthusiasm for the proposal.
“So, I don’t know how to look at it, David, whether it’s good that you’re in on the start of this, or now you’ve gotta go through the growing pains. But I think it is the Commissions — without putting words in their mouths before we make any decision — we fully intend to support this, in any way that we can. That’s been our goal all along. So, we just need to work out [the details]…”
Ah, yes. The details. The place where the devil dwells.
Commissioner Schaaf’s phrase — “the start of this” — was presumably a reference to the fact that the BOCC has done very little, to date, to address the housing crisis in Archuelta County… but if developers will start coming forward with (somewhat unclear?) requests that purport to address the crisis, the commissioners will be happy to to start offering up corporate welfare on behalf of the community. As Mr. Dronet has promised, the corporate welfare in this case will actually be shared with the individual workers living in his apartments, to the tune of perhaps $45 per month deducted from their rent.
Of course, the BOCC could just as easily been approached by a group beleaguered workers, each asking for a $45 a month subsidy to help them continue surviving in Pagosa Springs… but that would be actual welfare, by which we mean, ‘socialism’. I suspect our Republican commissioners would laugh at such a request… perhaps not openly, but you get the idea.
But giving a annual subsidy of $4,400 to Olympus SRH, LLC is not ‘welfare’. It’s economic development. It’s okay to give away tax money to rich people, because they know how to use it.
If I sound cynical, it might be because I am cynical.
On the other side of the coin, I fully recognize that the solution to Archuleta County’s housing crisis will be solved — if it can be solved — only by a committed partnership between government, the non-profit sector, and the business community — especially, perhaps, by our local construction-development-real-estate industries. Pagosa’s workforce rarely shows up to BOCC meetings, or to Town Council meetings, to share their stories. (They are at work.) We hear about their struggles only ‘second hand’ — for example, from a non-profit, charitable organization like Pagosa Housing Partners.
The directions taken by Pagosa’s business community and by elected government leaders, over the past 30 years, have helped create this crisis. But the problem is not purely a local issue. American workers are struggling to afford housing in almost every community in the country, it seems. An infusion of $1,400 in ‘stimulus money’ during a pandemic, and a bump to the Child Tax Credit, will not solve a systemic problem… part of which, as I see it, has resulted from the retirement of the Baby Boomer generation. That generation was, previously, our country’s largest demographic group — and they were blessed, financially, by carrying on their careers during the most profitable economic era in American history. That economic anomaly allowed the Baby Boomers to retire with generous pensions and health care plans that will probably never again be seen, by any future American generation.
As I look out at the world, from my little office in a small, isolated town in the mountains, it appears the only way America has been able to keep up even the appearances of economic success, since about 1980, was by yoking its citizens to trillions of dollars in public, and private, and student, debt.
Our local governments and business leaders can do very little about that massive national debt burden. But they can easily put our local taxpayers deeper and deeper into debt, as both the Town and County governments have been doing over the past couple of years — while mostly looking the other way, regarding the workforce housing crisis. Maybe the problem just seems too big? Too out-of-control?
In the 1991 movie, “What About Bob?”, a published psychiatrist — Dr. Leo Marvin (Richard Dreyfuss), author of the (fictional) bestselling book, Baby Steps — is trying his best to get an utterly annoying client, Bob (Bill Murray) to leave him the hell alone.
Bob: Baby Steps?
Dr. Marvin: It means setting small, reasonable goals for yourself, one day at a time. One tiny step at a time. Baby steps.
Bob: Baby steps.
Dr. Marvin: For instance, um… when you leave this office, don’t think about everything you have to do in order to get out of the building, just think to what you must do to get out of this room, and when you get to the hall, deal with that hall, and so forth… you see? Baby steps!
The Archuleta County government has been taking some baby steps recently. They first put a proposed $44 million sales tax increase before the voters (twice) to fund a proposed “Justice Center” in the Harman Park subdivision, and saw it rejected (twice) by the voters. They then went behind the voters’ backs and arranged Certificates of Participation (COPs) to build, first, a $15 million jail, and then to remodel a private home into a new Sheriff’s Office, and then cobbled together some finances to start work on a brand new $6 million courthouse next door.
The County is also building a new Human Services building on Hot Springs Boulevard.
If only the BOCC could find a way to move the remaining County employees out of the old County Courthouse, located (conveniently? … inconveniently?) in the heart of downtown Pagosa… and get someone to build a brand new facility somewhere, to house the County Assessor, the County Treasurer and the County Clerk. I doubt the County has the financial bandwidth to build yet another office building to house those employees, but they can “lease” office space until the cows come home.
That brings us to Mr. David Dronet’s second proposal, discussed on April 6 — a proposal to purchase the historical County Courthouse.
As part of a plan to expand the Springs Resort, perhaps?
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.