The mission of the Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation is to enhance the quality of life for the citizens of Pagosa Springs and Archuleta County by creating jobs; encouraging new capital investment; and creating a business friendly community.
— from the Pagosa Springs CDC website, October 2021.
Prior to last Thursday’s lengthy debate at the Pagosa Springs Town Council meeting, about future ballot questions for the Town’s April 2022 municipal election — in particular, a back-and-forth discussion about additional taxes potentially levied on vacation rentals — Mayor Don Volger invited everyone to recite the Pledge of Allegiance…
… and then welcomed public comment from the audience, concerning issues the Council might address at future meetings. One of the speakers was local resident Chrissy Karas, who served on the Town’s Historical Preservation Board before the Council dissolved that board and handed its statutory duties off to the Town Planning Commission.
Here’s an excerpt from Ms. Karas’ comments.
“My husband and I moved to Pagosa Springs 30 years ago, so that we could raise our children here, because it was very family-oriented. It wasn’t like the Vail-Aspen area where we came from. We wanted them to be around ‘real’ people.
“And because I lived in those ski areas, and I was on the historic board when Colorado Preservation started, I was on the board of that. I was Vice President of that organization. And I served on the historic board here, for 14 years…”
Ms. Karas paused to gather herself.
“And… I’m just very… concerned… about the type of people who are coming here… because I saw it all over the Western Slope. And it’s a different kind of people. Not that they’re bad people. It’s not good or bad. It’s just that… they don’t live here. They put their house on AirB&B… we have so many on our street, it’s ridiculous now.
“We’re losing our sense of community…
“I just want to ask. When is enough, enough? Is it all about money? No, it’s not. It’s about community.
“I just got back from Costa Rica. My kids took me there, because I lost my husband last year.
“And I’ve also lost my mother, here; we brought her here from Glenwood Springs to live with us. And the outpouring of love, from the people, made me really want to stay here. It was incredible.
“I’ve been to Costa Rica several times. They call it pura vida. The good life. But it was different this time. The One-Percenters have moved in, and instead of happy, gentle souls like they used to be, the people look like deer in headlights. Gigantic houses are getting built there.
“And someone is now building a gigantic house on our street…
“When is enough, enough? You know? Don’t we have enough? We have good people here. But we’re getting people who don’t care…”
I took Ms. Karas to mean, “people who don’t care about a sense of community.”
When Chrissy Karas and her husband Nick moved to Pagosa Springs 30 years ago — escaping from the invasion of millionaires into Vail and Aspen — no one could imagine, I suppose, that Pagosa would find itself beset by a somewhat similar invasion in the 21st century. An invasion of Short-Term Rental investors and millionaire second-home owners. People who care about certain things, but perhaps not about Pagosa Springs as a ‘community’.
After we heard from the public, we heard various reports about boards and organizations with which the Town has relationships. We heard about one of those organizations, the Community Development Corporation, from Council member Matt DeGuise, who serves on the corporation’s board.
“The CDC has hired a new executive director. There will be a press release coming out shortly with the new hire’s name; due to job conflicts, we can’t yet announce the person’s name.
“And the other big news is, there’s a lot of progress on broadband recently. The 200 and 400 blocks of Lewis Street, you can get fiber to your home or business. They’re working their way down Lewis Street… it’s through Visionary, but it’s fiber, not wireless. There are additional projects out into the county, into PLPOA, in the works.
“The fiber project up to Wolf Creek had to be postponed. The general contractor ended up going bankrupt. They have to put that out to bid again, and find a new contractor. They’ve scheduled that for next year…”
The CDC’s Broadband Services Office has been subsidized by our local governments for the past several years, and broadband development has been — as far as I can tell — the primary economic focus of the CDC, and of local government subsidies.
We’ll dig into broadband a bit more deeply, in tomorrow’s editorial, but first I’d like to address the general concept of “community development”.
Different folks have different definitions.
Here in Archuleta County, the Community Development Corporation was created by the Town of Pagosa Springs and the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners, back in 2010, to promote ‘economic development’.
Our economy has since developed. The question few people have asked over the past 11 years is: “Did the economy develop in such as way as to make life better for the people who live here full-time? Or did the economy develop in such a way as to benefit mainly visitors and second-home owners?”
Because not all “community development” is equal.
If you do a search for the accepted meaning of “community development”, you find that it has a rather different definition from the term “economic development.”
Here, for example, is the definition of “community development” from the National Association of Community Development Extension Professionals:
Definition: Community development is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes participatory democracy, sustainable development, rights, equality, economic opportunity and social justice, through the organization, education and empowerment of people within their communities, whether these be of locality, identity or interest, in urban and rural settings.
A rather different intention has been implied, by the Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation’s mission statement.
The mission of the Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation is to enhance the quality of life for the citizens of Pagosa Springs and Archuleta County by creating jobs; encouraging new capital investment; and creating a business friendly community.
This organization was formed, not necessarily for the empowerment of people within the community, but for the empowerment of business.
Which relates directly to the comment offered by Ms. Karas to the Town Council, last Thursday.
“Is it all about money?”
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.