As mentioned previously, the two questions that many of us were hoping to see the Pagosa Springs Town Council address at their Tuesday, November 2 meeting, were pretty straightforward. The questions had first been posed in 2019, when the Town Council adopted the “Roadmap to Affordable Housing 2019-2025” as their official plan for tackling the growing housing crisis.
Phrased in slightly different language, the same essential questions were posed to the Council by the Town Planning Commission last July…
…and then posed again by Pagosa Housing Partners, at several Town Council meetings since July. (Disclosure: I am currently president of PHP.)
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?
I assume the voters could understand those two questions, and answer them without too much problem.
Unfortunately, perhaps, the Town Council was presented with eight different potential ballot measures, one of which addressed Question One, and two of which addressed Question Two. I think no one was surprised when the ensuing debate lasted a full two hours. Some may have been surprised, however, when no definite decisions were made at the end of the two hours.
At the beginning of the discussion, Mayor Don Volger singled out Archuleta County Commissioner Ronnie Maez, sitting in the audience, to share his thoughts about these two questions.
Commissioner Maez, who also serves on Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board, addressed the Council.
“Well, as I stated before, even in the Tourism Board meeting, you know… housing, workforce housing, isn’t your government’s problem. It really isn’t. We’re a mechanism to help solve problems. So then, therefore, it’s up to the People to fix the problem that the People are facing.
“And I think what we need to do is focus on a good, solid, long-term fix. The excise tax, yes, it’s going to generate some revenue, but it’s not going to be a long-term fix. It’ll be a short, quick fix. It’s not going to last. People are going to withdraw from doing short-term rentals… and it’s going to slowly die out. It won’t generate much.
“But like I said earlier, if we really want to do something constructive, for the people of Archuleta County and the Town of Pagosa Springs — we all live in the same place — let’s do it together. We need to focus on a long-term fix, a substantial fix, and a sustainable fix. Not something that’s just going to be quick.
“But we need to let the People make that decision, and we need to let the People set the standards of how we do this money and allocate this money. The way I look at it, you’re going for an excise tax, but there’s nothing that it’s going to be applied to, there’s no plan to it… other than just, it’s going to be workforce housing.
“I think want we need to do is come to the People, and come to the People with a good product, a joint venture, the Town and County together. Because it’s going to generate more revenue that way…”
We have some interesting comments here, from Commissioner Maez. Like certain other members of the Tourism Board, Commissioner Maez criticizes the proposals presented to the Town Council over the past summer for supposedly “not having a plan” for spending the money that will be raised by a reallocation and by a new excise tax.
Yet the Commissioner appears to be suggesting that “even more revenue” could be generated through a joint County-Town effort… without having any plan whatsoever for spending the “even more” money that would be raised.
The Archuleta Board of County Commissioners have known about — and acknowledged — the worsening housing crisis for at least five years now, but still have no plan for addressing the crisis. The Tourism Board itself also claims to care deeply about the housing crisis, yet it also has no plan for addressing it, even though the negative impacts on the low-wage tourism industry have been significant, and obvious, for many years.
The Town Council, meanwhile, does have a plan, adopted in 2019… and has been following that plan, and making some headway. No enough headway to keep the problem from growing worse, month after month, but at least the Town Council has made an effort.
It’s possible that a permanent funding stream, dedicated to workforce housing, is what the community desperately needs. It’s possible that what Pagosa desperately needs is less tourism, not more tourism.
So… how about an excise tax on vacation rentals?
I personally believe such a tax, placed on a Town or County ballot, would pass easily. I personally believe the people who live in Pagosa full-time are fed up with the vacation rental industry; fed up with seeing their residential neighborhoods converted into motel districts; fed up with skyrocketing rents and home prices.
But because the Town and County are two different governments with two different constituencies, and because the Council and the BOCC have exhibited such a low level of cooperation between them for the past five years, and have shown such lackluster leader-to-leader communication — while our housing crisis has become more and more serious — the “joint venture” mentioned by Commissioner Maez seems like a fantasy, at this point.
So Pagosa Housing Partners has focused its attentions and efforts on the Town Council — the only local board with an actual, adopted plan.
Apparently, the idea that the Town Council would take the bull firmly by the horns on Tuesday evening was a fantasy, as well. The Council made no decision, for example, to permanently dedicate any portion of the $1 million in annual Lodgers Tax, for workforce housing.
The Council did express some interest, however, in establishing an excise tax. Two samples of possible ballot language were presented by the Town staff on Tuesday.
One possible excise tax would be assessed annually, based on the number of bedrooms permitted in each vacation rental. That’s the version PHP has been promoting.
The other version of the excise tax would be collected as a percentage of the rental fees, in the same way the Lodgers Tax and sales tax are collected.
That is not the version that PHP is promoting, for a couple of reasons.