The Thursday, December 29 issue of the weekly Pagosa Springs SUN included a front-page headline.
Judge strikes down town’s voter-imposed short-term rental fee
The accompanying story was written by reporters Dorothy Elder and Randi Pierce. It began:
In a Dec. 26 order, Chief Judge Jeffrey Wilson of the Sixth Judicial District struck down the town’s voter-imposed per-bedroom fee on short-term rentals…
As one of the Pagosa Springs voters who helped carry the petition to place the new ‘Workforce Housing Fee’ onto the Town’s April ballot — where it was narrowly approved by the town voters — I naturally found the news item slightly depressing, though not unexpected.
Our citizen-driven attempt to collect a fee from visiting tourists staying in Short Term Rentals (STRs, vacation rentals) and use the revenues to support workforce housing, was reasonably similar to a July 2021 recommendation from the Town Planning Commission. That Planning Commission recommendation had not found sufficient traction with the Town Council, however. So a group of town voters came together and wrote up a proposal to amend the Town’s Home Rule Charter, as allowed by the Charter itself. The group labeled the new fee as the “Workforce Housing Fee”.
Shortly after the votes approved of the new housing fee, however, a group of Pagosa STR owners hired a Durango law firm to challenge the legality of our citizen-led effort.
The lawsuit was filed on June 10 to the District Court on behalf of plaintiffs Clint Alley, Monica Alley, Blackhead Properties LLC, Melissa Buckley, Escapa LLC, Gregg Fitts, John Grey, Kristin Grey, JLSFUN LLC, Peter Macomber, Nicole Buckley, Olivia Modern and Aaron Moore.
According to the SUN article, Judge Wilson’s December 26 order listed five reasons for ruling the citizen-led amendment, and the subsequent Town Council resolution inserting the new fee into the Municipal Code, to be invalid.
However, that’s not the end of the story.
The SUN followed up on the judge’s ruling, yesterday morning on their website:
On Wednesday, Dec. 28, Chief Judge Jeffrey Wilson of the Sixth Judicial District entered an order vacating his Dec. 26 order that struck down the Town of Pagosa Springs’ voter-imposed short-term rental fee.
The order, which was issued in the afternoon after The SUN’s press time, states, “The order issued on 12/26/22 in this case was issued in error and is vacated.”
I learned a little bit about filing documents with District Court over the past two months, when I decided to petition the court, asking for a ruling on a TABOR notice, mailed to Archuleta County voters, regarding the 37.5% increase in our local sale tax as proposed by the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners. In my opinion, Archuleta County Manager Derek Woodman had violated Colorado law when composing the required notice, resulting in a potentially ‘unfair’ election.
Fortunately, the county voters had their own opinions about the sales tax increase and were not swayed by Mr. Woodman’s effort. The tax increase lost by a 3-to-1 margin.
But during the process of challenging the TABOR notice, I learned that a plaintiff can provide the court with a proposed ‘order’. In other words, the party filing the lawsuit can present the judge with some suggested wording for a successful ruling. This, of course, saves the judge the time and effort of writing up the final order, assuming the judge agrees with the plaintiff’s arguments.
I cannot say for sure what happened on December 26, when the SUN reporters determined that Judge Wilson had ruled against the Town government and in favor of the plaintiffs, in the ‘Workforce Housing Fee’ lawsuit.
I wonder if a ‘suggested order’ filed by the STR owners’ attorney was mistakenly published as a final order?