Photo courtesy Jeff Laydon, Pagosa Photography.
In November 2004, I took on a new project with a group of friends: an online magazine called the Pagosa Daily Post, with the goal of sharing news and (fearless?) commentary about Pagosa Springs politics and culture, as a free service to the people of our community.
That decision made me instantly unpopular with certain folks, who felt a local news source should share ‘only the good news’. How would Pagosa promote tourism and real estate sales, they argued, if a free online news website was discussing unpleasant things happening in our community?
Obviously, those fears were unfounded. In spite of the Daily Post’s existence, our tourist industry has been generally thriving, in particular during the COVID crisis.
Real estate has had its ups-and-downs, with home values dropping during the Great Recession, and commercial property values as well. From what I’ve heard, commercial property has never quite recovered.
But home values have recovered spectacularly since 2011.
“Recovered” isn’t even the right word. Real estate values took off like a skyrocket during the COVID crisis, driven largely by low interest rates and Short-Term Rental investments that converted our residential homes into mini-motels.
Although the owners of million-dollar homes might see the largest tax increases in terms of actual dollars, the financial impacts of higher property taxes and higher rents and higher home values will hit our working families much harder than our local millionaires.
Shall we cast blame, for our recent property valuations? Maybe, blame the real estate industry? Maybe blame our elected County commissioners for failing to control the STR industry?
I see no point in casting blame. But I see plenty of reasons to advocate for improved government policies.
With that in mind, I’d like to share some background on a community conversation I’ve been privileged to participate in, over the past few weeks.
Archuleta School District (ASD) has enlisted the assistance of consultant Lynea Hansen to help guide a committee of local citizens. The committee’s job (as I understand it) is to advise the ASD Board of Education on the proposed renewal of the MLO — the Mill Levy Override — approved by local voters in 2018.
ASD is funded by a mix of local property taxes plus state funding. This year, local property owners provided about 50% of the money for our public schools.
With the increased property valuations, Archuleta County taxpayers will probably foot about 63% of the bill next year. That’s a 26% increase.
We, locally, have zero control of that funding formula. All the control is in the hands of the General Assembly legislators in Denver.
Although local property owners will be paying 26% more of the cost of our public schools here, the General Assembly has increased school funding by only about 10%. Which makes it a raw deal for Archuleta County, but maybe a good deal for some of the poorer Colorado counties who also saw their school funding increase by 10%, but didn’t see their property taxes increase.
Disclosure: I currently serve on the board of directors for the Pagosa Peak Open School, one of our local public schools, but this editorial reflects my own opinions and not necessarily those of the PPOS board as a whole.
In 2018, ASD went to the local voters and asked for a Mill Levy Override — a special, and temporary, $1.7 million increase to property taxes, to fund increased staff salaries, safety and security upgrades to school buildings, the hiring of School Resource Officers to serve in the schools (“SROs” who are trained law enforcement personnel), and full-day Kindergarten classes. The MLO was approved for seven years, so it expires in 2025.
I will mention that PPOS benefits from the MLO, although we do not have SROs in our building. We have been using MLO funding on other types of safety and security.
In 2019, the state legislature approved funding for full-day Kindergarten for all Colorado public schools, and as a result, ASD decided not to collect revenue for that purpose. So the collections have been about $1.5 million instead of $1.7 million.
Now, a committee has been formed to explore the idea of extending the MLO after it expires in 2025.
Should the School District put this question in front of the voters at the 2023 election? Or should ASD wait until the 2024 0r 2025 elections?
Those are the key questions the MLO Committee will be considering.
Some Daily Post readers may have the opinion that 2023 is possibly the worst possible year to approach the voters with a tax question, considering the massive increase in property taxes suggested by the Assessor’s recent appraisals.
But those are merely assumptions. How does the community truly feel about school funding and property taxes, in 2023?
The MLO Committee decided, this past Monday, to hire Keating Research to survey 300 registered voters, by phone or text message, and take the pulse of the community. According to what the committee was told, a representative survey of 300 voters would provide a 95% confidence level in the data.
A representative sample would include a statistical mix of Republicans, Democrats, and Unaffiliated voters; families with or without children; workers and retirees; a proper mix of cultural backgrounds; and so on.
Although the questions that will be asked in the survey were vetted in a public meeting on Monday, consultant Lynea Hansen asked the local media not to publish the questions in advance of the survey, because, she said, that might influence the potential respondents and affect the ‘scientific’ validity of the survey.
Here at the Daily Post, we have no qualms about influencing the general public. But as a member of the MLO Committee, I’m comfortable waiting until early July — when the survey will reportedly be completed — before discussing the actual survey questions. And of course, 300 of you will hear the questions over the phone or read them in a text message, and you are not obligated (in my opinion) to embargo the information.
But you might want to, anyway, in the interests of ‘scientific statistics’. If such a thing exists.