“Just Say No” was an advertising campaign prevalent during the 1980s and early 1990s as a part of the U.S. “War on Drugs”, aiming to discourage children from engaging in illegal recreational drug use by offering various ways of saying ‘No’. The slogan was created Robert Cox and David Cantor, advertising executives at the New York office of Needham, Harper & Steers/USA and was championed by First Lady Nancy Reagan during her husband’s presidency.
Reportedly, the phrase “Just Say No” first materialized when Nancy Reagan was visiting Longfellow Elementary School in Oakland, California. When asked by a schoolgirl what to do if she was offered drugs by her peers, the First Lady responded with her simple advice. “Just say ‘no’.”
When asked about her efforts in the national campaign, Nancy Reagan said: “If you can save just one child, it’s worth it.”
As we have learned since 1982, saying ‘No’ is not as easy as it sounds. In fact, voters in Colorado said ‘Yes’ rather resoundingly in 2012, when they made possession and use of recreational marijuana a constitutional right.
At recent public meetings, here in Archuleta County, we have heard local taxpayers encourage our elected leaders to ‘Just Say No’ to another kind of controversial urge: land development.
These Archuleta County taxpayers are no doubt wondering why our local politicians are encouraging further community growth — such as the proposed 700-unit Pagosa Views subdivision — when we haven’t yet figured out how to take care of the infrastructure we’ve already built and that we struggle to maintain.
As mentioned earlier in the editorial series, the Pagosa Springs Town Council — acting as the Pagosa Springs Sanitation General Improvement District (PSSGID) board — issued a ‘Will Serve Letter’ on June 7, promising the Pagosa Views developers that they would be served by the PSSGID sewer system, on the condition that the developers met all the requirements established by the District. Those requirements are not fully defined, at this point in time.
We also noted that the PSSGID sewer system is currently struggling to serve its existing customers.
And we noted that the Town’s sewage is not treated by PSSGID, but rather, by the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) Vista Waste Water Treatment Plant, which is facing its own infrastructure issues, and might soon be required — by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment — to spend $20 million or so upgrading its sewage treatment facility.
But, in the face of these ongoing and potential issues, certain elected leaders assume that ‘growth’ is inevitable, and necessary. Those certain elected leaders seem to include the Town Council, to judge by the Council’s willingness to issue a ‘Will Serve Letter’.
Before approving the ‘Will Serve Letter’ however, the PSSGID Board discussed the letter at some length to confirm that the letter did not make any promises that the Town could not keep. Here, for example, is part of the PSSGID discussion on June 7:
Council member Jeff Posey: “If the new [sewage pipeline] pumps fail as reliably as the old pumps failed, then I don’t see how we could possibly serve them until we rebuild the system. Is it possible to delay this [letter] until we have ‘X’ number of months with the new pumps, to see if they work well?”
Town Attorney Clay Buchner: “Just to answer some of your concerns here. This letter, in no way, shape or form, obligates us to any sort of development or program or sketch plan or whatever is in front of us. This is just stating, if you jump through all these hoops… if you notice, the language is ‘in [the Town’s] sole discretion”… anything possibly needed to fulfill this request for services would be ‘cost sharing’ infrastructure development. Then, we would be willing to work with you. And by the way, anything else would be at the sole discretion of the District.
“This seems like ‘the cart before the horse’ because they are a private developer, working in a private environment where their lender must see this letter, so they can check the box. That’s really the way you should look at it…
“And frankly, if this letter isn’t good enough for them, then it’s not good enough for them, but this is what we are willing to do because we are protecting any exposure at all for the Town, any liability at all. We’re not going to be on the hook for money or time. They are going to pay us to do this stuff.”
At the conclusion of the discussion, the PSSGID board determined that the interests of the Town — which is to say, the full-time residents of the Town of Pagosa Springs — were sufficiently protected by the ‘Will Serve Letter’.
Of course, this letter implies a few things, which it does not tacitly state.
It implies that the current residents of the Town of Pagosa Springs can refuse to allow a new development, unless the developers are willing to meet all requirements established by our elected representatives serving on the Town Council (which is to say, the PSSGID board.) Or, in the words of Town Attorney Buchner: to jump through all these hoops.
It also implies the opposite condition — that our elected representatives cannot arbitrarily prevent a private property owner from developing their property in a reasonable manner. Which is to say: development must be allowed, within certain reasonable parameters. The question here would be, ‘What’s reasonable’?
It seems to me that “what’s reasonable” is highly dependent upon a person’s value system.
If we assume that right to earn a profit, and enhance personal wealth from the control of private property, trumps other social values, then we should urge our Town Council to do everything possible to ensure the development of ‘Pagosa Views’ — by making the ‘hoops’ as easy as possible to jump through.
Is that truly our highest value? The right to earn a profit?
The question does not have a simple answer, because the creation of housing — in capitalist America — is so intimately connected with what we know as “private property rights”…
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.