Yesterday in Part One, we touched briefly on the (embarrassing?) failure of the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners to understand the political currents in their own community. In spite of clearly articulated warnings from the people around them, the three commissioners placed a 37% sales tax increase on this November’s ballot — Ballot Issue 1A, estimated at $6.5 million annually — and watched it get rejected by a 3-to-1 margin…
We also touched briefly on a 2018 tax increase proposal by the Archuleta School District… successfully approved by the voters by a 2-to-1 margin.
We could say — if we were so inclined — that the School Board understands how to pass a tax increase measure, while the Board of County Commissioners does not. But that wouldn’t be entirely fair, because an earlier School Board also lost a tax increase ballot measure by a 3-to-1 margin, back in 2011.
Both of these boards are composed of local citizens, who may or may not have experience presiding over a government entity, and who may or may not understand the workings of local politics, particularly when the voters are asked to be involved.
We could say — if we were so inclined — that our local governments are directed by amateurs. But that’s how the system is designed.
The Board of Education consists of unpaid volunteers — while the Archuleta Commissioners are paid a handsome salary, in spite of having no clearly defined job description and no required experience. The paycheck doesn’t guarantee good decisions.
I’m personally fascinated by the process by which voters are successfully prompted to embrace higher taxes, as they were by the School District in 2018… and as they were not, by the Board of County Commissioners, in 2018 and in 2022.
Assuredly, the BOCC had a sensible argument available in 2022, to encourage the passage of Ballot Issue 1A. They were promising to spend at least 50% of the sales tax increase on road maintenance.
There were, of course, minor issue with their promise, including the fact that the ‘50% for Roads’ stipulation was not actually included in the ballot language.
But roads! Is anyone not in favor of better County maintenance of our road system? (That may not be a completely rhetorical question, given that several rural subdivisions have created their own tax-supported ‘metro districts’ and thereby maintain their own subdivision roads, with little help from the County government.)
The arguments against the proposed 37% sales tax increase were obviously compelling to the voters, however. There’s no way to know which argument(s) were most valid to any particular voter. Not doubt some voters are simply opposed to any tax increase, no matter what. No doubt some voters were thinking about about inflation and our struggling local economy.
Some voters simply don’t trust the BOCC to spend the money wisely, as we all found out when the Town and County hired Denver-based Magellan Strategies to survey 1,000 likely Archuleta County voters, and to discover how to best sell Ballot Issue 1A to the taxpayers.
If this survey was accurate, it should have told us that only 27% of voters trust the County to be fiscally responsible. When we compare those survey results to the actual election results, we see that 27% of the voters voted “Yes” on Ballot Issue 1A. Just a silly coincidence?
I suspect it’s just coincidence… because when the BOCC put a 50% sales tax increase in front of the voters in 2018 — to fund a new County jail and other ‘justice system’ expenditures — a much larger portion of the voters voted “Yes”. In fact, about 47% voted “Yes”.
But let’s get back to the basic problem of trust. Many of us don’t trust the County government to be fiscally responsible. And many of us don’t want to pay higher taxes, unless we can be sure the money will be spent wisely.
Meanwhile, we have two serious problems in our community that seem to be getting worse with each passing day. Serious problems.
A lack of road maintenance.
A lack of workforce housing.
Solving these two problems will evidently require money and energy. Either we need to put other community concerns on the back burner, and redirect our existing money and energy to these two problems… or we need to find a way to generate additional money and energy.
During the Ballot Issue 1A campaign, local activist Glenn Walsh ran some half-page ads in the weekly Pagosa Springs SUN.
We’ve discussed this Short-Term Rental (STR) tax loophole on a number of occasions, here in the Daily Post. Here, for example. For some inexplicable reason, vacation rentals in Colorado pay one-quarter the property tax rate paid by motels and all other commercial businesses.
The voters within the Town of Pagosa Springs were given the opportunity, last April, to partially close the tax loophole by charging a sizable STR fee — $150 per month per bedroom — and to use 100% of the money generated to support workforce housing. The ballot question was approved. The fee would, presumably, come from the pockets of visiting tourists — rather than from local residents — by increasing the room rate for STR stays.
Currently, the new Town fee is being challenged in court by a group of STR owners. The basis of the challenge rests partially on the idea that this was approved as a “fee”, rather than as a “tax”. Fees, in Colorado, typically need to be justified by a specific impact caused by the business, while taxes need no specific justification other than voter approval.
The County government proposed a 37% increase in the local sales tax, with no clear requirements about how the money would be spent. The Town’s STR fee, on the other hand, must be spent on solving the housing crisis.
Ballot Question A — the Town’s STR fee specifically dedicated to housing — was approved this year.
Ballot Issue 1A — the County’s proposed sales tax increase — failed miserably.
The BOCC could have placed a different tax increase in front of the voters in 2022. The BOCC could have asked the voters to approve a tax on the operation of vacation rentals, to partially close the STR tax loophole. The BOCC could have specified, in the ballot language, that they would spend the money exclusively on roads and housing.
Our commissioners knew — or should have known — that they would have had a good chance of success with an STR tax proposal, because the Town voters had already showed support for that general idea. (But with a “fee”.)
The BOCC did not present us with that option. Instead, they put a lot of energy into a failed sales tax campaign.
I believe that was a big mistake.
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.