One of the key questions posed by Pagosa Springs Mayor Shari Pierce during the Town Council’s last-minute special meeting last Thursday, concerned the Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation, affectionately known as PSCDC. At a previous joint Town-County meeting, PSCDC executive director Emily Lashbrook had expressed the willingness of the PSCDC board and staff to expend up to $10,000 promoting a proposed sales tax increase to the Archuleta County voters.
The Mayor’s concern comes from the fact that most of PSCDC’s budget has traditionally been funded by the Town and County, and another large portion has been coming from state grants. The Town and County are legally prohibited from spending taxpayer money to promote a ballot issue.
Although the Mayor didn’t mention it, the PSCDC was in fact created by a joint action of the Town and County, back in 2010. It would be very easy to classify the PSCDC as a semi-independent arm of local government.
More about the PSCDC later.
First, we can consider the action by the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners — Warren Brown, Alvin Schaaf and Ronnie Maez — at yesterday’s regular meeting. That is, their action approving Resolution 2022-98, to place a $6.5 million sales tax increase before the voters at the upcoming November election. If approved, the additional taxes would be shared 50/50 by our two key government corporations, Town of Pagosa Springs and Archuleta County.
The resolution was written by County Attorney Todd Weaver. You can download it here.
Prior to the vote, only one member of the public testified about the resolution. Me. I asked the commissioners (nicely, I think) to postpone this tax increase measure to a future election, so that the community could truly be involved in discussing the best way to fund government services.
As per the BOCC’s rules, I was given three minutes to address an issue that has been under discussion — by government officials — for at least three months. So I used my three minutes to quote a few comments made last week by Town Council member Brooks Lindner, the only member of either government, as far as I know, who has been involved in, and helped lead, a successful tax increase campaign in Archuleta County.
We shared Mr. Lindner’s comments in Part Three of this editorial series, here.
The portion of Council member Lindner’s speech that I had time to share with the BOCC began like this:
“I don’t think this has a chance of passing. Period. And I’ll just state that, and give you the reasons why I believe that.
“For one thing, I don’t think we have enough information and enough research about the sales tax, and its impacts on a community. So, I think we’re flying blind, right there.”
Flying blind, when proposing a $6.5 million tax increase, is perhaps not the best situation. But I have to agree with Mr. Lindner. At no time, at any of the meetings held over the past three months, have I heard an honest discussion about what this tax would mean to a typical middle-class, low-income, or retiree household.
Nor have we heard an honest discussion about other types of taxes that could provide a similar revenue stream.
For example. This proposed sales tax would supposedly benefit the County bureaucracy to the tune of about $3.26 million a year.
A decent tax on the Short Term Rental industry — an industry that has been benefiting from a huge property tax loophole for the past 15 years — could probably raise a similar amount, and the impacts of such a tax would not fall on the shoulders of middle-class, low-income, or retiree households in Archuleta County.
Such a tax would allow the STR industry — paying a 6.95% property tax rate — to contribute to our community at the same level as all other private businesses that pay a 29% property tax rate.
Not only would an STR tax be “fair” to other businesses that pay the full commercial property tax rate, a tax on STRs would be paid entirely by the tourists who come here, drive on our roads, impact our neighborhoods, utilize our government services, worsen our cell service and other utilities, and then leave… leaving us to deal with the results.
During yesterday’s BOCC discussion of Resolution 2022-98, Commissioner Ronnie Maez made some interesting comments about “principles”.
“As this community grows — and like I said, I’ve been here all my life, and I’ve seen all the roads — and now we’ve got triple the population from when I was in high school. And the impact on these roads, from the Short Term Rental units, and the [tourists] don’t just go to town once a day. They’re in and out all day long, on the roads, causing an impact on them.
“And yet, the person who lives there year round is stuck with it…
“I know if I go against this [Resolution] I will be outvoted. I’m smart enough to know that. I’m also smart enough to know, if one commissioner doesn’t show 100% for a sales tax increase, it will fail.
“I will probably vote in favor of this, to support this resolution. My principle was, I wanted 100% (from the Town Council vote). But my principle doesn’t matter in this case. What matters to me in this case is the people of Archuleta County. We’ve got a good solution for our roads and other capital facilities, as our government grows. And as our community grows.
“And at this point, my principle doesn’t matter…”
Commissioner Maez then made a motion to approve Resolution 2022-98, which then passed unanimously.
I was taught, I guess, that a person’s principles ought to matter. But maybe they don’t, when growing a government bureaucracy is involved?
Before we leave this controversial discussion, however, we ought to know a little bit about the Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation — the government-funded corporation that has volunteered to run a $10,000 election campaign to urge the passage of this $6.5 million sales tax increase.