Reportedly, the English idiom ‘He can’t see the forest for the trees’ has a long history. The first documented use of the expression appears to occur in a collection of proverbs by the English playwright John Heywood, in 1546.
The proverb later saw some popularity, specifically when criticizing the Pope… when the accumulation of wealth by the Roman Catholic Church seemed to be taking precedence over spiritual matters.
Certainly, this is a common human tendency: to focus on details (like, say, amassing money) and to lose sight of the big picture. To lose sight of the forest, so to speak.
Near the end of a 2 1/2 hour discussion yesterday, Thursday April 27 — about the Town of Pagosa Springs Land Use and Development Code (LUDC) — Town Planning Commissioner Mark Weiler expressed some concerns.
He was responding to proposed updates to the LUDC, regarding allowable signage.
Signs are a form of speech, and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that governments are limited in how they can and cannot control signage.
“It’s my personal opinion that many of the businesses here in Pagosa Springs are fragile, in their current financial environments. And what I think would be most helpful is for the business people to understand that — if you decide to do some remodeling and so forth, and the threshold is $50,000 — that what the Land Use Code is proposing is that this will require you to update [any out-of-compliance] signage.
“And it’s my opinion, that this is a great plan — if the business has unlimited financial resources. But my experience is that Pagosa businesses are quite fragile.
“And for [the Town] to layer on additional expenses onto them, I think is the wrong direction.”
A bit of explanation.
The subject of signage was part of a lengthy discussion, yesterday, about the extent to which the Town government ought to limit private property rights.
If your business owns exterior signage within the municipal limits of Pagosa Springs, and the sign does not ‘conform’ to the most recent LUDC regulations, you are perfectly welcome to keep your existing sign and make minor repairs to it.
But if you decide to change your sign… or update your sign… or if you make improvements to your building costing more than $50,000, you will be required, by the municipal government, to install a brand new sign that meets all of the latest LUDC regulations — whatever they might be at the time of your improvements.
Commissioner Weiler was explaining why he felt this requirement was taking the community in the wrong direction.
The Town of Pagosa Springs, once upon a time, allowed a business owner to erect whatever kind of signage the owner felt would attract paying customers to his or her business, and that he or she could afford. You might say that the Town government, back then, trusted its business owners to make reasonable decisions about signs, and other such details, without the Town needing to stick its nose into those decisions.
At some point — shortly before, or shortly after, I arrived in Pagosa in 1993 — someone at Town Hall convinced the Town Council that although signage is essential to most retail businesses, the size, type and location of signage is properly a concern of municipal government. That would included, in some cases, even the color of the sign.
The Planning Department didn’t want our town to look ugly. The assumption was, of course, that the bureaucrats at Town Hall understood more about economic vitality, and making the community attractive, than our business owners did.
So a ‘Sign Code’ was added to the LUDC. But the LUDC is now getting a facelift. Should we change the sign code?
Mark Weiler continued:
“And I haven’t heard very much talk at any of our meetings, about the financial impacts that the LUDC has on our business community. And I expect that it won’t be well understood what we, as the Bureaucracy, are proposing to pick their pockets for remodeling expenses and so forth, for us to have a different view of what our community looks like, from the rules that were in place when the current commercial structures were built.
“I think that’s a mistake…
“I would submit that installing a handicapped bathroom, you get to $50,000 pretty quickly, and then we would require the owner to bring their sign into compliance? That would be an arduous expense to incur, to upgrade their property…
“I don’t think we’re accounting for the financial impact on the businesses that are going to be affected. It’s great for us to make decisions in a vacuum of, ‘Oh, that’s going to look much better than the way it looks now…’ But at the end of the day, we are putting a financial burden of the commercial property owners.
“…I think that’s the wrong path for us to take.”
Mr. Weiler is a business owner. I’m also a business owner. In my experience, business owners view the world through a certain lens, and it’s not always the same lens through which government employees view the world.
The proposed LUDC changes to which Commissioner Weiler was reacting yesterday were being presented by Town Senior Planner Karl Onsager. According to Mr. Onsager’s LinkedIn account, he has never owned a business.
The presentation was supported with occasional comments provided by Community Development Director James Dickhoff, and Planning Manager Cindy Schultz.
According to their LinkedIn accounts, neither Mr. Dickhoff nor Ms. Schultz have ever owned a business. Or, at least, not recently.
So we have to ask ourselves, who is seeing the forest, and who is seeing the trees, when it comes to controlling land uses in Pagosa Springs?
Or, alternatively, when it comes to not controlling land uses?
Here’s Council member Mat deGraaf:
“I have to agree with Mark on that one. The handicapped restroom example was very poignant, because upgrading facilities to accommodate people with disabilities is a noble act, and we should definitely encourage that. But I would be disincentivized to do that, if as a result, I also had to pour money into an upgraded sign…”