The Planning Division had conducted a neighborhood meeting in October 2019 to discuss some of the challenges of the east end and what might be considered in the future for better pedestrian connectivity to main street. The meeting generated 30 business owners in attendance with lots of great ideas being discussed…
— from the December 6, 2022, Pagosa Springs Town Council agenda.
About eight years ago, a group of Pagosa Springs moms — volunteers, with young children — began working on a written proposal for a public charter school, to serve children and families in Archuleta County. The final plan, submitted to the Archuleta School District in the summer of 2016, totaled 450 pages. It described, in some detail, how the proposed school would operate, and what educational goals it would strive to meet.
The written plan was a essential component of Colorado’s charter application process, and it received final approval from the ASD School Board in the winter of 2017.
Pagosa Peak Open School is now in its sixth year of operation. Speaking as one of the volunteers who helped write and edit the original plan, I will be first to admit that certain elements of the plan have not yet been achieved. Some of the hoped-for goals might never be achieved. The plan was idealistic and comprehensive, whereas actual realization is constricted by practicalities, limitations, and the vagaries of human nature.
Nevertheless, when we wrote the proposal, our intention was to someday achieve all the goals we included in the plan.
The new ‘Pagosa Springs East End Multimodal Transportation Plan’ written by Alta Planning & Design in collaboration with the Town staff, appears to be a rather different kind of ‘plan’.
You throw a bunch of ideas at the wall and see it any of them stick. You will eventually know which ones stick because they end up in a successful grant proposal; because you end up getting ‘free money’ from the state or federal government.
Not so much a blueprint of the Town’s intentions, but more like a ‘wish list’. A letter to Santa Claus. If you ask for a lot of presents, your chance of getting at least one of them seems more likely.
In fact, it’s quite possible that no one is actually expected to read the 179-page plan. It’s even more likely that no one is expected to think deeply about the plan’s implications, or to offer a criticism of certain aspects.
But I can’t help myself.
As noted at the top of this page, the East End plan process began in October 2019 with a meeting between Town staff and 30 business owners, discussing ‘better pedestrian connectivity to main street.’
The plan was officially adopted by the Town Council on December 6, 2022, as its ‘East End’ plan. Community Development Director James Dickhoff reminded the Council that the plan was essentially ‘conceptual’ and that, although Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) had provided a $157,000 grant to its creation, CDOT itself has not adopted the plan, or any portion of the plan.
Mr. Dickhoff also clarified that the Town currently has no money dedicated to achieving any specific goals indicated by the plan. The Town budget for 2023 shows zero dollars in the ‘CDOT East End Gateway Multimodal’ line item.
The Town’s ten-year Capital Improvement Plan, however, shows maybe $3.8 million being spent on an East End pedestrian bridge and walking trails, and on new crosswalks in the East End, over the next decade.
During the Town Council approval on December 6, one Council member — Mat deGraaf — expressed his belief that additional parking is key to the overall success of the Plan. Mayor Shari Pierce asked the staff to clarify some of the language.
Beyond those few comments, none of the other Council members asked questions, or expressed any concerns, before unanimously adopting the Plan. Perhaps they saw most of the plan elements as conceptual ‘pipe dreams’ and not worth discussing in depth.
A few final editorial thoughts related to the ‘Pagosa Springs East End Multimodal Transportation Plan’ before we leave the document to either collect dust on a shelf, or generate significant investments of public funds.
Over the past 20 years, the Town of Pagosa Springs, in its wisdom, has spent tens of millions of tax dollars on tourism promotion and recreational enhancements, on the belief that more and more tourism and recreation will help create an enjoyable, livable community. 20 years later, the community has become a popular tourist destination, a great place to play pickleball… and much less livable for the full-time residents who work here and struggle to pay some of the highest housing costs of any ‘second tier’ mountain resort in Colorado.
Our Town Council, and our Board of County Commissioners, are now challenged to shift gears. It’s not immediately clear if they know how to do that.
Looking through the ‘Pagosa Springs East End Multimodal Transportation Plan’, I see no obvious evidence of changing priorities. But the Council has given various indications, in other documents.
For instance. The Town Council developed a set of eleven priority ‘Goals’ for 2022-2023 during their retreat last summer. The number one goal was to fix the problematic sanitation district pipeline, and considerable progress has been made in that regard. The number two priority is to begin effectively addressing the community housing crisis, and there again, some progress has been made… albeit tentative progress.
Goal Number 5 is ‘Traffic Management, Parking, and Road Maintenance’… but no mention is made of the East End projects.
Goal Number 11 is ‘Parks, Trails, and River Access’… but there, again, the East End is not specifically mentioned.
I understand that a municipal government can take on only a fixed number of projects each year, and things need to be prioritized. In the 2022-2023 ‘Goals’ for example, there is no mention of residential sidewalks, although “trails” and “river access” are mentioned as priorities.
During the school year, I watch from my house as children walk to and from the Middle School on a daily basis, without the benefit of sidewalks or ‘walking trails’ — walking in the middle of neighborhood streets, and down a narrow alley that sees a surprising amount of vehicle traffic. We can search in vain for any sign, in the Town’s 2023-2032 Capital Improvement Plan, for an indication that the Council and staff will be addressing, comprehensively, that particular narrow alley within the next 10 years.
Should I be complaining?