Speaking, for a moment, as a volunteer member of the non-profit Pagosa Housing Partners board, I’m encouraged by the numerous steps taken by some of our community leaders — our elected officials and their employees — at the Town of Pagosa Springs, Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District, Archuleta School District, Archuleta County, to address the housing crisis in our little mountain town. Some of the steps have been small, and some have even been counter-productive, but I sense a real effort among certain leaders to try and dig us out of the economic hole we now find ourselves in.
Yesterday, for example, the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners held a work session to consider financially supporting — through a waiver of building permit fees and landfill fees — the construction of two innovative, all-electric, partly-solar-powered homes in Chris Mountain Village, a Pagosa Lake subdivision that was abandoned by its developer prior to the installation of utilities. These small homes will be built by Archuleta Habitat for Humanity in cooperation with Pueblo, Colorado-based ‘indieDwell’. A decision on those waivers will be made at a future BOCC meeting.
The BOCC also discussed, with Development Director Pamela Flowers, a “density bonus” program, whereby property owners might be allowed to build additional dwelling units on their property, beyond what is normally allowed in their zoning districts, if the “bonus” dwelling units will be rented long-term rather than used as Short-Term Rentals (STRs).
Other measures to address the problem are underway.
In Part Five of this editorial series, I discussed briefly an unfortunate and controversial decision by the City of Salida to try and sidestep Colorado law, and its own taxpayers, by establishing a so-called “63-20” non-profit, appointed by and ultimately controlled by the City Council, to facilitate the construction of an office building for the U.S. Forest Service. During my 18 months living in Salida, I followed the situation closely, and documented the… well, I suppose you could call them “shenanigans”… for a new local news website, the Salida Daily Post.
At one point, then-City administrator Dara McDonald spoke during a well-attended public meeting, essentially apologizing for the City’s decision to get into the development business — but also claiming that the only solution was to keep doing what they were doing.
“You know, this has been a bit of a rocky road,” Ms. MacDonald noted during her presentation. “The City of Salida… most likely…”
She paused. “Probably not best that we’re in the development business. There probably was a better way. There have been mistakes made along the way. We worked diligently to fulfill this purpose that was laid out for us. Could we have been more transparent? Most likely. Should we have held more meetings like this? Absolutely. Could we have offered the land itself, to a private developer to pursue exactly this vision? Absolutely.
“But we’re here now. And we want to keep moving forward and implementing this vision. So I’m not going to try and defend the way we got to where we are. I’m certainly happy to talk about it and explain it. But I know that mistakes have been made in this process…”
You can hear Ms. McDonald’s explanation, and her apology, starting about 5 minutes into this video:
Two years later, Ms. McDonald was terminated as the City’s administrator, following a political shake-up on the City Council.
One of the mistakes made by the Salida City Council and City staff, in my humble opinion, was to believe at the very beginning of this unfortunate process that a City government should — and could — enter into the development business and move ahead with a $7 million project, creating at least $4.7 million in new public debt, without getting voter approval.
Another mistake, in my humble opinion, was to conduct the process non-transparently, behind closed doors, up until the point that the taxpaying public was vocally (and in some cases, angrily) protesting, in opposition to the project, and in opposition to the secret meetings.
The City’s lack of transparency was not merely an apparent violation of Colorado Open Meetings Law, but it opened the City of Salida to accusations of secretly serving special interests.
The Town of Pagosa Springs has recently embarked on a couple of interesting, and potentially expensive, development projects aimed at addressing our worsening housing crisis. One project involves a donation of about 2.5 acres of publicly-owned land along Apache Street, split between three separate parcels. The Town is currently in negotiations with a Texas corporation called Servitas to build approximately 60 units of “workforce housing” on these publicly-owned parcels. Two members of the Town Council and certain members of the Town staff have been involved in closed-door negotiations, and reportedly, a proposed development plan will be presented to the Town Planning Commission on April 12.
We heard an indication, at the March 1 Town Council meeting, that Servitas might now be asking for (or demanding?) taxpayer subsidies from the Town, in order to move the project forward.
In alignment with the Colorado Open Records Act, I officially requested access to the Servitas financial documents that have been provided to the Town, and was denied that access by Town Attorney Clay Buchner. To wit:
Upon review of the attached public records request submitted on November 16, 2021, such request is denied pursuant to C.R.S. 24-72-204(3)(a)(IV). The referenced Colorado statute protects the release of trade secrets, privileged information, and confidential commercial, financial, geological, or geophysical data.
Providing an unredacted copy of the proposal would be counter to state statute, as such contains information marked and submitted as confidential by the submitting party.
A Town Attorney is certainly entitled to his opinion. (Aren’t we all?) But here’s the problem, as I see it. Typically, in the U.S., private property development is planned largely in secret, to prevent potential competitors from knowing what you’re doing. When a local government gets into the development business, it’s oh so tempting to start acting like a private developer.
But a local government that decides to act like a private developer can easily violate its duty to transparently (and legally) inform the citizens they serve and who pay the bills… a violation we witnessed in Salida, back in 2012 and 2013, during the Natural Resource Center Development Corporation debacle…