As I drove around Pagosa Springs the other day, taking photos of rooftop objects that are — according to the Town of Pagosa Springs’ current Land Use and Development Code (LUDC) — hazardous to our health, safety and welfare. I was particularly focused on rooftop HVAC units, because we have a conflict going on, at the moment, between the Town Planning Department and the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners over the visibility of some HVAC units atop the new County Courthouse.
The Town Planning Department had also done some photography, to show their Planning Commission that buildings can effectively screen the HVAC units on their rooftops. Those photos were shared at the January 10 hearing on the County requested variance request.
We cannot doubt that buildings, as illustrated above, can be constructed in a manner that hides any HVAC units on their rooftops. And we cannot doubt that the Fred C. Harman Justice Center could have been designed so that the HVAC units were hidden from view. Obviously, the building was not designed that way, and apparently, it would have been a more expensive structure if it were designed that way.
The rooftop machinery serving the Courthouse is visible from certain vantage points. And not visible from other vantage points.
According to the County staff, constructing screening to hide the HVAC units on the Courthouse roof would cost the taxpayers about $100,000. The Town Planning Commission was aware of the estimated cost when they rejected the County’s appeal for a variance.
As I mentioned in Part Two, the Town Planning Commission — ethically — had to reject the variance request, because the request failed to meet the qualifications for a variance as written in the Town’s Land Use and Development Code (LUDC).
In a similar sense, the Archuleta BOCC was ethically bound to overrule the Town Planning Department, in the interests of the taxpayers. Assuming that the taxpayers agree… that a Town government has no authority to demand rooftop screening on a County-owned building.
The taxpayers might also agree that we don’t want our Town government establishing purely aesthetic requirements, that might cost a family, or a business, or a government [that is, the taxpayers] a lot of money.
We might ask, “How much have the Town Planning Department’s aesthetic preferences cost us, over the past 20 years?”
And we might ask, “Why did so many other buildings, located within the Town limits, fail to screen the devices installed on their rooftops?”
Some photos I shared in Part Two:
Because I think of myself as a person with a sense of humor, I snapped a couple of additional rooftop photos while touring the town with my camera.
Down on Apache Street, a block away from Town Hall, a developer has been building some very expensive homes. Well, maybe not ‘very expensive’ compared to the median home prices currently asked here in Archuleta County, but ‘very expensive’ compared to what a typical working family can afford.
The developer has been adding some interesting architectural features to the rooftops. To my untrained eye, they look an awful lot like HVAC units.
I believe they are meant to be decorative ornaments, but don’t quote me. They might actually be HVAC units.
A few blocks away, over on the north side of Highway 160, we find an historic building — the Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church — which features a bell tower on its roof.
If you didn’t know better, you might think this architectural feature was a monstrous HVAC unit.
Some people might find the Catholic Church bell tower to be a lovely piece of historical architecture. Other people might wish it could be ‘screened’ from view.
As the old saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Money, meanwhile, is in the pocket of the taxpayer, until our governments extract it.
As I understand the idea of democratic government, a government corporation in Colorado is specifically charged with protecting three qualities of life: the “health, safety and welfare” of its constituents. We can certainly argue about what, exactly, these words mean. The meaning of the word, “health”, for example, has been subject to rather intense disagreement over the past three years.
Obviously, however, the idea that HVAC units on a building roof must be screened from view has nothing to do with “health” or “safety”.
Does it have something to do with “welfare”?
We might have very different ideas about the meaning of the word, “welfare”. To the Town Planning Department, the term “welfare” seems to include “the aesthetic appearance of buildings.” If you read through the Town’s LUDC, many of the requirements are essentially aesthetic. Someone seems to have decided that buildings best meet the community’s desire for “welfare” when they look expensive to build. And indeed, many requirements in the LUDC do in fact make buildings more expensive to build. Do we ‘fare well’ when a government bureaucracy is telling us what our buildings must look like?
I’m thinking, this morning, about an older document that reads, in part:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…
Some potent language here. I think we pretty much agree that “Life” refers to our right to live, the greatest extent possible, without fear of being killed.
But what does “Liberty” mean?
It could mean, “The right to come and go, as I wish”
Does it also imply, “The right to place an HVAC unit on my roof, without getting hassled by my municipal government…”?
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.