The Archuleta Board of County Commissioners suffered a case of cold feet on Tuesday, March 1, after promising two weeks ago to make a final decision on the prospective sale of the historical County Courthouse, at this March 1 meeting.
The BOCC had received fresh bids from some of the investors interested in the 25,000 square-foot building in downtown Pagosa, bumping up the amount some of the bidders were offering.
But when they arrived at the point on Tuesday’s agenda calling for a decision, Commissioner Ronnie Maez announced that he would was hesitant to pick a buyer.
“I know we’re looking at selling the building. I too am in favor of selling the building.
“But… I question the timing. I question whether we should, right now… or not… simply because we don’t have a plan for the new house. I personally don’t believe in selling my old house without having a plan for a new house. We have conceptual ideas, and conceptual plans, but we still don’t have the brass tacks that we need to know before we move on this.”
It’s my understanding that the expression ‘brass tacks’ originated with the rhyming slang used by Cockney speakers from the East End of London, where ‘artful dodger’ means ‘lodger’. ‘china plate’ means ‘mate’, and ‘ones and twos’ means ‘shoes’ — among many other colorful rhymes. ‘Brass tacks’ meaning, of course, ‘facts’.
One of the facts the BOCC has yet to define, for themselves and for the public, is the cost of a new facility to house the three County offices still operating out of the old Courthouse: the Assessor, the Treasurer, and the Clerk & Recorder — a total of over a dozen employees who interface regularly with the public.
Commissioner Maez continued:
“I know the affordability of the new [County facility] is going to be very expensive, and I’m hesitant to sell, just on the fact alone that we’re going to have to ask the taxpayers to help get this built and help get this done. As well as working with the Town. There’s a lot of work to be done, and to be initiated. Probably prior to actually selling this building…”
These comments by Commissioner Maez strike me personally as unusually perceptive, considering the more haphazard manner in which the County has financed and built the new jail and the new courthouse and the remodeled Sheriff’s Office.
Before you sell your house, you might want to know, with reasonable certainty, what the new one is going to cost, and where it might be located. As far as I can tell, the BOCC has absolutely no idea what this new facility would cost, and only vague ideas about how large it would be and where it might be located. Apparently, the taxpayers will be footing the bill, so we at least understand that important detail.
It’s fortunate, meanwhile, that all of the purchase offers received by the BOCC make allowances for the Clerk, Treasurer and Assessor to remain in the Courthouse for some period of time.
An offer from Whitney Van Zort, for example, would allow the County to continue using the building for up to two years, for a rental fee of $73,000 per year.
An offer from Olympus Real Estate (David Dronet) would permit the County to remain in the building for up to five years, paying a rental fee of $83,000 per year.
An offer from Bob Hart would allow the County to remain in the building for an unlimited amount of time, with the first five years being rent-free.
Commissioner Maez:
“I believe we have some good offers. We’ve got some really good offers. But I’m very, very hesitant.”
Commissioner Warren Brown noted that the County incurs costs — maintenance, operations — in continuing to use the old Courthouse. (We might note that “interest payments on a mortgage” are not among those costs.)
“I have a report that was produced by our Finance Department — Sophia Hassman, who is currently contracting with the County — and it looks like there was a value of $68,724.65 that was stated as, this was the expense to the County. I think we have to start somewhere, and we’ve been looking at this and talking about this since February of last year. And I don’t see us moving forward on this.
“I think it’s unreasonable to ask the folks who have made these offers to wait around for a few more months, or years, in order to start moving forward.”
I will mention, in passing, that the County government has been talking about abandoning the historical Courthouse since at least the late 1990s, when the then-commissioners purchased a 5-acre property on Hot Springs Boulevard as the site for a future courthouse. That acreage is now the site of Rose Mountain low-income housing, and a new multi-million-dollar Department of Human Services office building.
The Sheriff’s Office now maintains and pays to operate a $15 million jail, twice the size of the old downtown detention center, and if I’m not mistaken, the Sixth Judicial District will be moving into its $6 million courthouse this weekend, a building twice the size of their old downtown courtroom space, and which will be maintained and operated. The taxpayers will also be paying for substantial mortgage interest on these (oversized?) government buildings.
When Commissioner Brown talks about “moving forward”, he’s presumably talking about shiny new facilities to serve the County residents and employees. But he’s also presumably talking about creating even more public debt, for even more new (oversized?) County buildings — which is, indeed, a certain type of motion, though not everyone would describe it as “forward.”
I have to wonder what the local Republican Party thinks about the slow explosion of local government in Archuleta County?
Isn’t “smaller government” part of that party’s philosophy?
Last I looked, all three of our County commissioners were Republicans.
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.