One thing’s for certain: We have a lot to look forward to in 2022. Let’s all do our part and resolve to get involved to make our community better.
— from an editorial by Terri Lynn Oldham House in the Pagosa Springs SUN, January 6, 2022.
Ah, yes… resolving to make our community better, in some way. Let’s all do that.
But how?
At a Town Council meeting on Tuesday, January 4, six Council members wrestled with the ‘second reading’ of Ordinance 968, an ordinance that would have directed a portion of the Town’s Lodgers Tax revenues towards housing solutions, in a community struggling with a serious ‘affordable housing’ crisis.
After a lengthy back-and-forth, the Council was unable to find a way to approve the ordinance.
We posted a short article, yesterday, about the upcoming Town of Pagosa Springs election — slated for April 5 — and noted that campaign packets are now available for potential Council candidates, including candidates for Mayor…
You are eligible to run for Mayor or one of these Council seats, if you live within the municipal boundaries (and meet the other criteria). Although the latest Census count pegged Archuleta County at about 13,350 residents, only about 2,050 citizens live within the town limits.
Which is to say, 85% of our community cannot help elect our Town Council.
This political-demographic situation has resulted in an interesting dichotomy. Of the seven people currently seated on the Town Council, six live within a few blocks of the Great Pagosa Hot Springs, and within the historic area first settled in the late 1800s.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of the community lives in suburban subdivisions created after 1965 — outside the municipal limits. Thus, most of our community is unable to serve on the Town Council, or even vote in the April election.
Yesterday, the editor of the weekly Pagosa Springs SUN, Terri House, posted a three-column editorial titled “Readers share ideas for 2022.” The first column of reader suggestions focused on our housing shortage. In the next column, we heard about poor road conditions. Then, in the last column, a miscellaneous mix of various proposed community improvements, including this one:
1 government for county and city.
This idea — a unified county-town government — makes sense to many of us here in Pagosa Springs, in a community where nearly the entire population of the county is served by the very same framework — the same streets, the same retail outlets, the same communications network, the same health services, the same small businesses, the same schools, the same library… and so on.
Easier said than done, of course, to get a county government and a town government to work hand-in-hand.
I believe all three of our County Commissioners — the three men who represent the rural subdivision dwellers outside the municipal boundaries — live outside the municipal boundaries.
And all seven of the Town Council members live inside the municipal boundaries.
Over the past three years, the number of times the Board of County Commissioners have sat down at a table with the Town Council, to discuss our community’s most pressing needs, can be counted in the fingers of a person who has no fingers.
How do you get “one community” to act like “one community”?
I have a vague recollection of hearing or reading a story… something to do with a prince who didn’t know how be a king, and who was advised, “Just act like you know how to be a king, and before you know it, you will know how to be a king.”
I thought maybe a bit of online research would lead to some ideas about how a community can “act like” a real community, until such time as it actually becomes a real community.
We don’t talk much about kings these days, so my research tended to bring up a fair number of biblical quotes, dating from 2,000 years ago, or earlier, when kings were an accepted societal fixture throughout much of the world. (Not among the indigenous people of North America, apparently, but in a lot of places.) A lot of the biblical quotes I came across, about how to behave like a king, mentioned righteousness, justice and compassion.
Very few quotes mentioned economic development, or the promotion of tourism, for example.
Back in those bygone days, certain kings seemed focused on fighting wars, crucifying criminals, and keeping the treasury well-stocked with gold and jewels. But the “good kings” also set an example… of mercy, honesty, and concern for the general welfare… while preserving a sense of law and order.
We can assume that some kings — not all, but some — considered themselves the caretakers of their ‘subjects’.
Nowadays, community leaders no longer consider themselves to be royalty. They’re just ordinary folks who get picked, during an election, to sit on this or that government board for four years, and maybe for a second term as well.
Leaders, nowadays, no longer spend twenty or thirty years as a prince, training to become the king someday. Our elected leaders come to us from more humble occupations. A barber. A ski lift operator. A real estate agent. A stone mason. A sheriff’s deputy. A school teacher. A shopkeeper. People like you and me. Most consider themselves to be caretakers of their ‘constituents’, but they often have zero training in how to properly shepherd a community.
We can’t know how important the royal training endured by a crown prince may have been to his eventual success as a king, nor can we know whether there is any type of training that would have made a difference at Tuesday’s Town Council meeting, when the six members failed to reach a compromise on Ordinance 968.
Looking at the mess in Washington DC, it would appear that — in a polarized culture — even many years of political experience only rarely results in compromise, bi-partisan legislation.
I don’t see the Town Council as a polarized group. Quite the contrary. So what happened with Ordinance 968?
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.