Am I feeling discouraged?
That the Pagosa Springs Town Council spent two hours debating two crucial tax questions on Tuesday evening, November 2…
…and ended up deciding to kick the can a bit further down the road?
No, I’m not discouraged. I’ve been waiting three years to hear the Council even begin such a discussion, and now, at least the discussion has finally been started. Even if nothing particularly exciting came out of Tuesday’s discussion… hey, it’s a starting point. Be thankful for small favors, as my dad used to say.
The digging has finally commenced… on the foundations for a potential housing solution.
The two crucial tax questions had been framed for the Council over the past several months, by two groups: the Town Planning Commission, and a local 501c3 non-profit known as Pagosa Housing Partners. (Disclosure: I currently serve as the board president of PHP.)
The two tax questions, brought forward by PHP, are directly related to recommendations approved unanimously by Planning Commission and forwarded to the Council back in July.
Question one: Should our municipal government, with voter approval, reallocate 50% of the existing Lodgers Tax towards workforce housing, instead of spending $1 million every year subsidizing the tourism industry?
Question two: Should our municipal government ask the voters to establish an excise tax on vacation rentals, and use those tax revenues exclusively to help generate housing options for the workers who keep our economy — including the vacation rental industry — operating?
This editorial series will look closely at those two questions, and share some of the conflicting ideas that apparently caused the Town Council to make a couple of indecisive decisions on Tuesday.
Our Daily Post readers may already be familiar with this debate, considering the number of editorials I’ve published on the same topic. But on Tuesday evening, the Council had a sizable audience — and many attending via Zoom — obviously interested in where our community is headed, and in what might be at stake at the upcoming April 5 municipal election…
…considering that the audience stayed, and listened, through a two-hour debate that left me wondering if anything at all had been decided.
Not that I’m complaining. You can’t simply rush into things, when you finally realize, that your local economy is slowly falling apart, in spite of your Tourism Board spending $1 million a year promoting tourism, and you finally realize you desperately need to switch gears.
Well, actually, you can rush into things, when you see that your house is on fire… but that’s not what governments typically do. So, sometimes the citizens have to step up and take matters into their own hands. And maybe that’s what really happened on Tuesday evening: the citizens realized the necessity for them to step up.
So I’m not complaining, and I’m not blaming the Council either. They are trying to do the best they can, with limited information, and with a sense of loyalty to their own bureaucracy.
One thing that made it difficult to reach a consensus on the way forward: Too many options. For the past several months, the Town Planning Commission and PHP have been advocating for simple answers to the essential questions.
Yes, you should reallocate a percentage of the Lodgers Tax towards workforce housing. Exclusively and permanently. “The Market” is not going to solve this crisis. It never has. Other mountain resort communities in Colorado have been struggling with the workforce housing crisis for the past 30 years, and even with generous government and taxpayer help, have failed to solve the problems.
And the VRBO industry has only made matters worse, for everyone.
Yes, we should be taxing the vacation industry, so they can help us replace the 1,000 residential homes in Pagosa that they have converted into mini-motels.
Simple answers to simple questions.
What the Town staff presented on Tuesday was anything but simple. Instead of giving the Council two possible (and simple) ballot questions, and ask them for thumbs up or thumbs down, the staff generated eight lengthy and somewhat complicated ballot questions, and expected the Council to sift through them and give staff further direction.
Not an easy task, at 5pm on a Tuesday evening, when no one has had a chance to grab dinner.
Raising my children years ago, I learned that you should never give your child more than two options. (If you even want to give them options.)
If the child wants to suggest a third option, that’s fine. You should consider that as well.
Based on my experience, government boards are like children, in this regard. But sometimes you have to take what they give you, and the Council bravely plunged into the eight options with forks and knives.
Then Mayor Don Volger asked the chair of the Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board — Julian Caler — to offer advice on whether his Board could support a reallocation of the Lodgers Tax, considering that the Tourism Board, this year, has been given over $1 million to spend subsidizing the tourism industry, and considering that they expect a similar amount next year.
No surprise there. The Tourism Board has already allocated $130,000 out of next year’s budget for pickleball courts, but has no plan whatsoever for addressing a local housing crisis that affects hospitality employees as severely as any other group.
Nevertheless, Mr. Caler and his board are opposed to specifically dedicating any particular percentage of the Lodgers Tax towards the housing effort. The Tourism Board, he explained, sincerely wants to address the ongoing crisis. Although they have no plan for how to do that.
Mr. Caler, addressing the Council.
“Pretty much, we’re against the excise tax. We’re against reallocation of the Lodgers Tax… We’re more on board with what [County Commissioner Ronnie Maez] proposed, a sales tax…
“Maybe we can get our bigger employers to contribute. Possibly Wolf Creek [Ski Area], the hospital. Obviously the Springs Resort is doing what they’re doing. Maybe Walmart, City Market. Maybe we can get the bigger corporations to help solve this problem.
“[Tourism Board member] Lauri Heraty was very adamant in asking you guys to trust us… I don’t think you guys don’t trust us, by any means. But she was trying to state that. ‘Hey, like, we’re doing the right thing with the money, so just continue to trust us. Because we will do the right thing with the money.”
As noted, the Tourism Board has never presented any type of plan for spending even a small portion of their $1 million budget on housing. Nor has the Tourism Board (to my knowledge) spent a single penny on housing, in the past 15 years.
The Town Council, on the other hand, adopted a 54-page housing plan three years ago, and has been chipping away at that plan — purchasing vacant land, modifying the Land Use and Development Code, waiving development fees, and several other actions delineated in the plan. You can download the plan here.
Two action items included in that 2019 plan have not yet been addressed by the Town government: reallocation of the Lodgers Tax, and an excise tax on vacation rentals.
So you might say, the Planning Commission and PHP are merely trying to help move things along…