PHOTO: PSCDC board member Mont McAllister voices his support for Ballot Issue 1A at the October 18 Archuleta Board of County Commissioners meeting. Also shown, County Attorney Todd Weaver and Commissioner Warren Brown.
At a September Archuleta County elected officials’ luncheon, County Assessor Johanna Tully-Elliott indicated that assessed property values could double with the 2023 reassessment…
— from a news article by reporter Josh Pike in the October 20 Pagosa Springs SUN.
I had to smile, during Tuesday’s regular Archuleta Board of County Commissioner’s meeting, when chair Alvin Schaaf opened the floor for public comment.
Two members of the Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation (PSCDC) board of directors — Jim Garrett and Mont McAllister — stepped up to the podium to tell the commissioners (and the audience in the room?) that they eagerly support a 37.5% sales tax increase that appears on our November ballot as Ballot Issue 1A.
Both men spoke eloquently about the need for better maintenance of our County-maintained roads, and their belief — despite of a lack of credible data — that thousands of tourists will be responsible for paying the lion’s share of the $6.5 million increase, while the people who live here 365 days of the years — and who pay Archuleta County sales tax even on their online purchases — will feel very little impact.
The term ‘preaching to the choir’ may have been applicable, considering that all three commissioners approved Resolution 2022-98, authorizing the ballot measure.
So we can feel confident that the PSCDC board, in general, is supportive of a 37.5% increase in the sales tax rate for local taxpayers, as part of PSCDC’s government-funded mission to improve the Archuleta County economy.
And speaking of the Archuleta County economy, Archuleta County’s highly secretive ‘Vacation Rental Task Force’ has been meeting behind closed doors every couple of weeks since September 19, as part of the County’s effort to address the problems related to STRs — Short-term Rentals. The County currently has a moratorium in place, prohibiting the issuance of new STR permits until March 1, 2023.
The community is somewhat divided, however, on the question of whether STRs are a problem. On the one side of the argument, we have certain real estate agents, and STR owners, and STR management companies, who are satisfied with the current situation — namely, to be operating in the only Colorado community that has done almost nothing to mitigate the impact of 1,200 residential homes converted into private motels — in a community with about 6,500 full-time households.
According to my pocket calculator, the number of STRs in Archuleta County is now roughly equal to 20% of the full-time households.
By comparison, resort community Manitou Springs, a few years back, capped their STR permits at 2% of homes. Tourism-friendly Salida is capped at about 3%. Our neighbor, Durango, is capped at about 5%.
I imagine most Daily Post readers are well aware of the economic theory called ‘Supply and Demand’. But speaking for myself, I’m not very familiar with the theory’s history. Some basic online research suggests that Tirukkural, a classic East Indian text composed at least 2,000 years ago, states:
“If people do not consume a product or service, then there will not be anybody to supply that product or service for the sake of price”…
And the importance of supply and demand was also understood, to some extent, by early Muslim scholars such as fourteenth-century Syrian scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, who wrote:
“If desire for goods increases while its availability decreases, its price rises. On the other hand, if availability of the good increases and the desire for it decreases, the price comes down.”
Pretty basic economics.
Here’s how I understand the concept. As the demand for a particular item increases, while the supply stays the same, the price will increase.
As the supply of a particular item decreases, while demand stays the same, the price will increase.
If the supply of a particular item decreases, while demand increases, the price will skyrocket.
Here’s how a modern student of economics might graph the ‘increase’ in the price of a given product or service, as demand increases and supply decreases:
In John Locke’s 1691 work, Some Considerations on the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and the Raising of the Value of Money, he wrote: “The price of any commodity rises or falls by the proportion of the number of buyer and sellers” and “that which regulates the price… [of goods] is nothing else but their quantity in proportion to [the] Vent.”
The Vent meaning, apparently, the Demand.
If it were up to John Locke, we probably would be referring to this theory as ‘Supply and Vent’. But many years later — 1767 — the exact phrase “supply and demand” was used by Scottish writer James Denham-Steuart in his Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy, and then by another Scottish writer, Adam Smith, in 1776… just in time for an ambitious revolution to put the newly formed United States of America deeply in debt to several European kings.
As noted, an understanding of the role of ‘supply and demand’ in determining the cost of goods and services was already at least 1,700 years old at the time of the American Revolution.
So we might wonder… why has it taken the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners until 2022 to realize that allowing 20% of our residential homes to be converted into small commercial motels would have an impact on the cost of housing for full-time residents?
And the ‘cost of housing’ includes, of course, the cost of property taxes. Which are going to ‘double’ next year?
Here’s that quote, again, from yesterday’s Pagosa Springs SUN:
At a September Archuleta County elected officials’ luncheon, County Assessor Johanna Tully-Elliott indicated that assessed property values could double with the 2023 reassessment…
How many tax increases does the BOCC want us to bear?
On a related note, I recently received an email from ‘YES on 1A’ campaign organizer, Beth Lamberson.
Hello Bill,
It was nice to see you at the Board of County Commissioner’s meeting yesterday, 10/18/2022.
Yesterday I confirmed with Archuleta County Attorney Todd Weaver that the Committee for Safe Roads 1A could hang banners on County sites that are not electioneering locations and as long as no county resources or staffing were expended during the process. These banner placements comply with the State of Colorado campaign finance rules.
I suppose we can expect to, soon, see a large banner promoting this $6.5 million tax increase, on the side of the old County Courthouse… which, as you may recall, was largely abandoned in 2015 following a roof leak, and has since been replaced with $28 million (?) worth of new County facilities…
But still a fine government location for hanging a tax increase banner.