Our candidates’ forum last Thursday — co-sponsored by Pagosa.com — drew a modest crowd to the Tennyson Event Center to hear four candidates running for two Archuleta County offices: County Commissioner and County Sheriff.
Not all the candidates currently seeking our votes were willing, or able, to attend.
Although we had invited all three of the folks running for County Commissioner, two of the candidates — Alvin Schaaf and Veronica Medina — declined to join us. Fortunately, candidate Rachel Suh fielded our questions in a confident and informative manner and gave us a clear picture of how she views the office of County Commissioner, and the concept of ‘service’.
Three of the County Sheriff candidates — Wayne Bryant, Monica Medina, and Boyd Neagle — participated, although Mr. Bryant was at home with a respiratory illness, and had to answer our questions via phone. (Ah, the joys of technology.)
Sheriff candidate Rob Keating was unfortunately in the hospital in Colorado Springs, and not able to attend.
Sheriff candidate Mike Le Roux sent a message through his campaign manager that he didn’t have time for the forum.
I mention the Thursday forum because we’re discussing, in this editorial series, the general topic of being ‘willing to serve’. One of the key ways citizens serve their community is through elected and appointed government offices. All of the candidates who spoke at the Thursday forum are obviously ‘willing to serve’, although they had a variety of opinions about what, exactly, the most important aspects of ‘service’ might be.
We currently have seven people serving on the Pagosa Springs Town Council: Maddie Bergon, Mat deGraaf, Matt DeGuise, Brooks Lindner, Jeff Posey, Gary Williams, and mayor Shari Pierce. According to Town regulations, these folks also serve as the board of directors for the Pagosa Springs Sanitation General Improvement District (PSSGID). Thus, the concerns and beliefs of the seven-member Town Council play out in the Town’s sanitation district actions.
The Town Council will be convening this week, on Thursday, June 23, for their annual retreat. In my experience, the annual retreat provides the Council with an opportunity to discuss, publicly, those same concerns and beliefs at a deeper level than typically happens during regular Council meetings.
In Part One of this editorial series, we briefly discussed the ‘WILL SERVE LETTER’ that the PSSGID Board considered — and ultimately approved — at their June 7 special meeting. The letter concerns the proposed ‘Pagosa Views’ subdivision, and future connections to the PSSGID sewer system.
From the agenda brief written by Town Public Works Director Martin Schmidt:
It appears that the developer is in a hurry, but in the interest of the citizens of Pagosa Springs, this project will be carefully reviewed at every step. The developer has turned in the required request for a will serve letter as well as their application for inclusion, with a letter giving permission for the buyers to pursue inclusion by the owner. The application for inclusion will be considered at the direction of the Board. The Board does reserve the right to refuse service based on its judgement. The Board can also set requirements for connection.
The Will Serve Letter was requested on an official PSSGID form, by Phil Williams, PE, representing the proposed subdivision project. Mr. Williams appears to be associated with a Utah-based company called ‘Encanto Tierra LLC’, incorporated in March 2021.
According to my daughter Ursala, who studied Spanish at Fort Lewis College, ‘encanto’ can be translated as ‘enchanted’, and ‘tierra’ as ‘land’.
But normally, Spanish speakers put the adjective after the noun. As in: ‘Tierra Encanto’. Putting the adjective before the noun, Ursala says, gives the adjective a heightened importance. So then, ‘Encanto Tierra’ might be translated as ‘Very Enchanted Land.’
As we note on the ‘Will Serve Letter Request Form’, shown above, the two adjoining properties mentioned as not currently within the Town’s sanitation district.
We also note, on the form, the following:
Properties must go through inclusion process to receive a will serve letter. Inclusion request received.
But the developer is ‘in a hurry’. So, at Mr. Schmidt’s suggestion, the PSSGID Board ignored their own regulations and issued the ‘Will Serve Letter’ without requiring Pagosa Views to first go through the inclusion process.
We can understand developers being in a hurry, in 2022. The national economy is acting like a roller coaster heading up the ‘lift hill’ — the initial incline before everyone starts screaming.
The developers have 90 acres of mostly-vacant forest under contract and are in the process of refining the subdivision design, and no doubt would like to get the project underway before the economy gets any more frightening than it is right now.
But as we mentioned in Part One, the PSSGID is currently pumping the town’s sewage seven miles uphill — at considerable cost and risk — so the waste water can be treated in the Vista Waste Water Treatment Plant operated by the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD). Until the pipeline was completed in 2016, the PAWSD waste water plant served the homes and businesses in the uptown Pagosa Lakes area. Town had its own sewer lagoons.
When the sewer pipeline from downtown to uptown was built, everyone’s assumption was that the pipeline and the Vista plant would be able to accommodate the growth of downtown, including any new subdivision annexations, into the foreseeable future.
As it turns out, the sewer pipeline is currently struggling to service the existing homes and businesses. So whatever assumptions were made in 2012, when the pipeline design began, or in 2016, when the Town’s sewage began flowing uphill, might need to be re-examined.
Who would pay for that re-examination? Assuming that would be a prudent course?
And who would pay, if the Vista plant needs to be expanded in the near future? To accommodate all the growth that some people would like to see happen in Archuleta County?
Let’s consider such an expansion for a moment.
A few years ago, PAWSD began planning to renovate the Snowball Water Treatment facility. That facility treats the drinking water for downtown Pagosa and homes out Highway 84. When planning began, we were hearing estimates for the project in the $20 million range.
The latest estimates for the project, revealed this month, are in the $38 million range.
And getting higher by the day?