We declare the week of September 17-23, 2021 as Constitution Week in Archuleta County. We urge all citizens to study the Constitution, and reflect on the privilege of being an American with all the rights and responsibilities, which that privilege involves…
— Proclamation by the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners, announced at their September 21 regular meeting.
I’m going to continue my exploration of how we use the word, “free”, during a strange period in the world’s history.
But before we talk about how to level the playing field field in our lodging industry, we’ll take a brief detour, to attend the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners meeting, yesterday, September 21, when the commissioners considered the best way to spend $2.7 million in free money that will, reportedly, be arriving in the County’s bank account courtesy of the American Recovery Plan Act of 2021.
I call it “free money” because the commissioners didn’t need to extract it, directly, from Archuleta County residents or visitors. The federal government borrowed the money — on the backs of our children and grandchildren — with the aim of mitigating the COVID disaster, to whatever degree possible, in individual counties and communities.
The COVID disaster is, of course, three-fold. Many people became infected, and died. Many operational (or semi-operational) businesses and government entities, and many families and individuals, were hammered economically by the COVID lock-downs and other policies.
And we’ve all suffered, I suspect, some measure of depression, or anger, or mental illness.
Financially speaking, the Archuleta County government, and the Pagosa Springs town government, sailed through the pandemic with flying colors, collecting record tax revenues from nearly every conceivable taxable group, including residents and visitors alike. In my opinion, there was no sensible reason for the federal government to hand out $2.7 million to the Archuleta County government over the next two years, except that the federal government doesn’t always know which end is ‘up’… and they hand out money where it’s not really needed, and fail to hand out money where the need is desperate.
But the intentions were good. If the spread of COVID can be interrupted, or if communities can be helped in dealing with the fallout, surely our children and grandchildren would want us to go deeply into debt. And the bankers won’t mind.
Regardless of the intended use of the ARPA funds, the Archuleta BOCC voted yesterday to spend nearly all of the first allocation — $1.35 million — on projects that had, in my opinion, no well-defined relationship to the COVID disaster.
We will start with allocations that were specifically called out in the ARPA guidance: broadband. ARPA money could legally be spent on increased access to broadband, no matter who is being served. The communications industry is always more than happy to get free money to service the exploding desire for text messaging, Facebook posting, ‘distance learning’, and Netflix and Disney+ video watching… and the politicians in Washington are, of course, delighted to support free, universal access to the Pagosa Daily Post and similar news websites.
So the BOCC voted unanimously to spend $580,000 of the ARPA money on a handful of local broadband projects.
But the rest of the free money distributed by the commissioners? Did it really have any connection to COVID?
Let’s run down the list.
The commissioners allocated $280,000 to build a covered walkway connecting the County’s new $15 million jail to their new $6 million courthouse, so the inmates walking from the jail to the County Courthouse next door would be protected from COVID infection during that 100-foot journey. I admit to being rather shocked by the cost of a covered walkway nowadays.
The BOCC gave out $108,000 in ARPA-funded bonuses to County employees, for bravely continuing to work at their jobs during 2020.
The Food Coalition was granted $143,000 for distributing food to needy people.
Aspen House, a proposed facility for developmentally disabled adults, was given $176,000 to hire new staff, even though they do not yet have a facility.
Archuleta County Housing Authority was granted $322,000 to rehab their apartments on S. 8th Street.
Habitat for Humanity was awarded $150,000 towards the construction of new single-family homes.
Archuleta Housing Corporation was given $232,000 towards the renovation of their low-income apartments in downtown Pagosa, most of which are approaching 50 years old and will benefit from the renovation work. (Note: Archuleta Housing Corporation is a separate organization from the Archuleta County Housing Authority.)
Anyone who has read my Daily Post editorials over the past four or five years, has heard me describe the worsening housing crisis in Archuleta County, perhaps ad nauseum. A tsunami of economic factors has swamped the working families of Archuleta County, the first and foremost factor being an outrageous increase in local rental rates accompanied by skyrocketing real estate prices.
The BOCC has recognized this crisis, and wants to address the situation. So the BOCC decided to freely allocate money to several housing projects, using ‘free’ federal funds that were specifically and expressly intended to fund COVID-related problems.
As far as I can tell, none of the projects funded yesterday — other than perhaps the broadband projects and the Food Coalition effort — have any direct relationship to COVID, according to the guidance published with the ARPA funds. But if we claim that “every problem is a COVID problem” and hand out money all around, we apparently have no one stopping us.
That’s not unusual, when you think about how people spend ‘free money’. And maybe our local governments need to be free to make up their own rules?
It’s not entirely clear, however, that no one will stop us. When the COVID-related CARES funding was distributed in 2020, the federal government had fairly strict criteria related to how the money could be spent, and local governments were sometimes surprised to learn that they’d spent ‘free money’ in ways that weren’t going to be reimbursed. Whether the same thing might happen with the ARPA funding…?
Stay tuned.
One thing is clear, however. The Pagosa Springs economy, viewed as a system, does not currently support housing for our working families. Especially, it does not support housing for working families and individuals who are new to the community and didn’t buy a home, years ago, when they were affordable.
Our Pagosa Springs economy does support housing for tourists — quite generously. Millions of tax dollars have been spent to encourage tourists to visit and occupy our existing housing units.
This could be seen as a problem.
And maybe there are solutions?
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.