As we’ve discussed in this editorial series, the Pagosa Springs Town Council and the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners met in a joint meeting earlier this week, and talked.
One of the ideas, posed by County Manager Derek Woodman and subsequently kicked around, concerned a plan to hire Boulder-Colorado-based Magellan Strategies to survey our community and find out whether the voters might approve a one-percent sales tax increase, to be shared 50/50 between the Town and County governments.
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Mr. Woodman suggested that this type of survey could guide the government’s effort to collect more tax money.
As the talking proceeded, it became pretty clear (to me, anyway) that neither government has a clear picture of how they might spend millions of dollars in additional tax revenues, but everyone seemed to agree that they could easily come up with ways to spend it.
If they could get the voters to approve it, of course.
Here in Colorado, new taxes, and tax increases, must be approved by the voters, and I’m right now thinking back on tax measures proposed over the past 20 years in Archuleta County. A few of those measures were embraced by the voters. Most were not.
In 2004, the San Juan Water Conservancy District proposed a mill levy increase, to help fund a new water reservoir. It failed. SJWCD tried again in 2017, and failed again.
In 2006, the Town voters approved a new Lodgers Tax. That tax is paid exclusively by visitors. The Town’s attempt to increase the sales tax, to fund a municipal recreation center, was defeated in 2014.
Archuleta County proposed a temporary ‘de-Brucing’ of their mill levy in 2006 to fund roads, recreation and technology. That ‘de-Brucing’ passed, but the roads didn’t seem to get any better, despite a huge increase in revenues collected by the County. When the County came back to the voters in 2012 to have the ‘de-Brucing’ extended, the voters turned them down.
Two nearly-identical attempts at a sales tax increase, in 2017 and 2018, to fund a new Archuleta County jail, lost at the polls.
The Archuleta School District attempted to pass a massive property tax bond issue in 2010, to fund a proposed ‘mega-campus’ on a rocky hillside near the high school, and failed by a 3-to-1 margin. Presumably, ASD learned a lesson from that experience, and they were successful in 2018 at getting a much more modest property tax increase approved, to provide higher staff salaries and ‘school security’.
I don’t remember the exact year… maybe 2012?… the Archuleta County Education Center collaborated with Archuleta County to propose a dedicated mill levy increase for the Ed Center. The voters didn’t buy it.
The Pagosa Fire Protection District tried for a mill levy increase in 2015, and failed. Another shot at a property tax increase by the Fire District, with a more robust marketing effort and a better description of how the money would be spent, succeeded in 2018.
Looking over that list, I’m unable to discern a definite pattern, as to why certain proposals succeed at the polls, and why others failed. A roll of the dice?
We can also look beyond this list and ask, “Have our local governments been seriously hampered, over the past 20 years, because they lost tax elections?”
For example. The Town of Pagosa Springs collected $7.4 million from various revenue sources in 2010. In 2020, without any new taxes or tax rate increases, the Town collected $19.8 million.
An increase of 268%.
How m any individuals or families living in Pagosa Springs saw their income increase by 268% during that decade? Not many, I bet.
The County government didn’t see its wealth grow in quite the same way, between 2010 and 2020. Their appropriations increased by only 169%… from $22.8 million in 2010 to $38.5 million in 2020.
During that same decade, the population of Archuleta County grew by only 12%.
In spite of possibly bloated budgets, the BOCC and the Town Council members were happy, on Tuesday, to entertain the idea that Pagosa individuals and families ought to be paying a higher rate of sales tax, as suggested by County Manager Derek Woodman.
We can all agree — as taxpayers — that our community has some wonderful aspects. And some not so wonderful aspects.
What we might not agree on, and what the various elected leaders in our Town and County governments might not agree on, is what — when you get right down to money and taxes — what are the biggest problems. That is, the biggest problems that government is willing and able to address.
The best things in life are free, they say. Or at least, cheap. And we know that talk is cheap.
Did we get a sense, on Tuesday, during a two-hour conversation among 10 elected leaders, that our local leaders agree on the best way to spend the nearly $60 million dollars they have at their collective disposal each year, courtesy of the taxpayers?
Did we get the sense that $60 million is… well, simply not enough?