Making laws and regulations, establishing policies, and setting fees and salary schedules… these activities are not for the faint of heart.
During my 18 years as an investigative reporter here in Pagosa, I’ve seen our elected and appointed leaders fumble the ball occasionally. Not regularly, but occasionally.
Only rarely do the voters, as a group, have the opportunity to create fees and regulations. Such a thing did happen, however, this past April, with Ballot Question A.
How did the voters do? There’s apparently some disagreement on that question.
The Town Council, in April, accepted the charter amendment as ‘decided’ and directed Town staff to commence collecting the voter-approved fees from licensed STR owners.
A few people apparently believe the voters violated one or more Colorado laws, and have hired an attorney to convince a District Court judge that their belief is valid. The Pagosa Springs Town Council held a special meeting last night, June 23, to hear advice from Town Attorney Clay Buchner about the civil case officially known as Clinton James Alley et. al. v. Town of Pagosa Springs.
Or if you prefer a number: ‘Case No. 2022CV30035’.
I’m going to be using the term “corporation” in a specific manner in this editorial. We often talk about “business corporations” (and often, in a disparaging manner) but there are many types of corporations. Simply stated, a corporation is a group of people who come together, under a written agreement, to act jointly for the accomplishment of certain shared goals.
In the case of the Town of Pagosa Springs, the essential written agreement is the Home Rule Charter.
As we note, the defendant in Case No. 2022CV30035 is the Town of Pagosa Springs. As I understand Colorado law, this municipal corporation legally consists of all the registered voters living within the town limits. Last April, a majority of the corporate voters in the April 5 election asserted the right to collect certain fees from the operators of Short-Term Rentals operating within the town limits. The Town was already collecting a licensing fee from these same STR owners, and no one was complaining in court about the fees.
Perhaps the fees were too insignificant to bother anyone?
In April, the corporation determined — during a regular election — that an additional fee ought to be collected, to help the corporation address a serious housing crisis caused, at least in part, by these same STRs. We can’t say exactly why this or that voter marked their ballot ‘Yes’ in the April election. We only know that the majority voted ‘Yes’ on Ballot Question A.
Some of our Daily Post readers may be lucky enough, to have never been exposed to the kind of document that typically gets filed in a civil lawsuit. (You can download the initial claim in 2022CV30035, here, as a pertinent example.)
Since I have myself sued the Town of Pagosa Springs in the past, I have a slight familiarity with such documents… and also a slight familiarity with the amount of time that can slip by, between the initial filing and the judge’s final ruling.
A year… or more? Civil lawsuits are not for the faint of heart. This would especially apply to lawsuits where no clear legal precedent has been established, and Clinton James Alley et. al. v. Town of Pagosa Springs might qualify as such a case.
An even greater amount of time can transpire, if the losing party decides to appeal the judge’s decision to a higher court. Two years? Three years?
The arguments posed by the STR owners and their attorney in the June 10 court filing purport to address various aspects of the process by which the voters established the new STR fees. The plaintiffs claim, for example, that:
“The people of Colorado have a limited Constitutional right to initiate legislative matters under Article V, Section 1 of the Colorado Constitution. “
That is basically true, although I’m not sure how ‘limited’ those rights might be, since it applies to “all local, special, and municipal legislation of every character.” To wit:
(9) The initiative and referendum powers reserved to the people by this section are hereby further reserved to the registered electors of every city, town, and municipality as to all local, special, and municipal legislation of every character in or for their respective municipalities. The manner of exercising said powers shall be prescribed by general laws; except that cities, towns, and municipalities may provide for the manner of exercising the initiative and referendum powers as to their municipal legislation.
Maybe there are, in fact, accepted limits to the people’s initiative and referendum powers. In the filing of the STR owners’ June 10 complaint, Durango-based attorney Paul Kosnick asserted that the voters had exceeded their powers under Article V, Section 1.
But Ballot Question A was not an initiative or a referendum.
It was an amendment to the Town’s Home Rule Charter. So perhaps the plaintiffs and their attorney have got themselves off on the wrong foot, right from the gitgo?
From Article XX, Section 6 of the Colorado Constitution:
The people of each city or town of this state, having a population of two thousand inhabitants as determined by the last preceding census taken under the authority of the United States, the state of Colorado or said city or town, are hereby vested with, and they shall always have, power to make, amend, add to or replace the charter of said city or town, which shall be its organic law and extend to all its local and municipal matters. Such charter and the ordinances made pursuant thereto in such matters shall supersede within the territorial limits and other jurisdiction of said city or town any law of the state in conflict therewith.
That makes it look pretty clear that the people of Pagosa Springs “shall always have, power to make, amend, add to or replace the charter of said city or town.”
Which seems to be what happened on April 5. The people were asserting the power granted by the Colorado Constitution, to amend their charter.
As was mentioned yesterday in Part One, the Town Planning Commission last year recommended increasing the fees charged to vacation rentals — STRs, Short-Term Rentals — from $200 annually to $6,000 annually. Nine months later, the town voters established STR fees at a somewhat lower amount: $150 per month per bedroom, or about $10 per day for a one-bedroom STR rented 15 days per month. Most STRs within the town limits are three-bedroom or less, making the fee $30 or less per rental day, for an STR rented half-time.
It’s not unreasonable to assume these increased fees could be paid by the tourists renting these homes.
Ballot Question A provided an exemption from the fees, if the STR owner lives on the same property.
Ballot Question A also directed the Town government to spend the collected revenues to support the creation and preservation of workforce housing. The collection of the new fees began on June 1.