When two people purchase Pagosa property together — as I did, with my wife Clarissa, back in 1994 — it can result in controversies about how the property will be used, maintained and improved.
We all have our egos, and our agendas.
Sometimes the simplest solution is to assign all the decision-making power to one person.
How much more complicated when a 660-acre property is jointly purchased in 2008 by two local water districts — Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) with a voter-elected board of five, and San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) with a judge-appointed board of nine
All the board members have changed since that 2008 purchase. The result being, 14 egos and two very different water district agendas.
At the Thursday, October 12 joint meeting, the PAWSD and SJWCD boards basically agreed to disagree about whether to use 20 acres of public land north of downtown Pagosa Springs for employee housing.
A related discussion about whether to use that 20-acre parcel for recreational purposes seemed slightly less conclusive.
We discussed those two controversies on Friday, in Part Three.
A third controversy — about which, remarkably enough, the two boards might be able to come to an eventual agreement — concerned the possible extension of an existing lease with the Weber family, to use the 660-acre ranch for grazing cattle. The PAWSD board had tentatively agreed to sign a lease with the Webers, but the SJWCD had not yet seen the lease, nor had they approved it.
As part of the 2008 sale of the Running Iron Ranch by the Weber family for $10 million, the family had negotiated full use of the ranch property for cattle grazing and gravel mining for 15 years, at a cost of $1 per year. A lease extension gave the family one additional year (2023) to mine gravel and graze cattle. The mining will be completed this year, but the family hopes to continue grazing cattle for at least the next couple of years.
At the October 12 meeting, the SJWCD board offered to bring alternative cattle grazing proposals — from as yet unidentified persons — to the PAWSD board by early November, for the PAWSD board to consider.
One more controversy, and perhaps the most important controversy concerning the 660-acre property, was related to a preliminary offer, submitted by a local Pagosa realtor representing an unnamed client, asking to purchase the 20-acre riverfront parcel. As noted in this editorial series, SJWCD was hoping Archuleta County would lease that parcel and operate a river-access put-in, but PAWSD rejected the County’s lease offer. At the same time, the PAWSD board approved a motion to use the 20-acre parcel for future employee housing, a move that SJWCD challenged at the October 12 joint meeting.
Apparently, the idea of employee housing on the 20-acre parcel was distasteful to certain neighbors.
The letter from the realtor:
Letter of Intent to Purchase Property
To Whom It May Concern,
I am writing to express the intent to purchase the property located on hwy 160 that has been on the board’s agenda recently and discussed at length as to what could be done with it. My client is offering to purchase the Northern property located on the river side of the Highway ( around 19-20 acres) for its market value around 50,000 per acre. I recently closed on the 21 acres west of this piece of land and two years ago closed on the property to the east. Both owners would love the idea of this current tract to be released for purchase and not turned into a workforce housing project. My client would also pay for this subdividing of the property releasing it from the other tracts. I would like to request that the idea of selling this piece of the 68 acres be placed on the next agenda for the PAWSD board meeting for consideration.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely…
The general consensus, on both sides of the controversy, was that the 660-acre ranch — if it were to be sold — should be sold as an entire property, and not in pieces. For both political and legal reasons.
The majority of the SJWCD board appeared to be opposed to any kind of sale.
The PAWSD board, which has the sole right to sell the property, is open to the idea of a sale, if it would get PAWSD ratepayers out from under a massive debt burden.
But PAWSD board is also interested in seeing employee housing built on the property. To repeat the quote, from PAWSD board president Jim Smith shared previously in Part Three, discussing future uses of the former Running Iron Ranch:
“Our board has already made a decision about what the best use would be. We’ve got a project. We have people who don’t have homes; we can’t get them a place to live so they can work here. We’ve gone through this for three years — we couldn’t hire people because they couldn’t afford to live here.
“And [employee housing] might be an alternative for us…”
There’s an obvious conflict between the desire to accommodate long-term employee housing, and also a willingness to sell the 660-acre property to the first $12 million offer that comes along.
I’ve been promoting the idea, for the past couple of years, that PAWSD could someday have a 2,000-3,000 acre-foot reservoir on the property, while making the rest of the 660 acres available for workforce housing — something that every employer and government in Pagosa would very much like to see built in our community.
In other words, a reservoir slightly larger than our largest existing reservoir, Stevens Reservoir. I’m guessing a reasonably-sized reservoir would occupy about 60 acres.
This would be a very different project from the 11,000 acre-foot project that SJWCD has been promoting, which, due to its size, would require the purchase of additional properties beyond the currently owned 660-acres, and which would — at current rates of municipal water demand — be suitable for a Pagosa population of about 100,000 people.
I don’t have many friends who are hoping Pagosa will reach 100,000 population in their lifetime.
When they are not promoting an 11,000 acre-foot reservoir, the SJWCD board has been making an effort to educate the public about water resources.
Recently, Pagosa Springs High School teacher Josh Kurz signed a contract with SJWCD to deliver a series of public lectures about water resources in Archuleta County. I had a chance to attend one of Mr. Kurz’ lectures, at the Ruby Sisson Library, and found his presentation to be informative, and — speaking as the author of dozens of Daily Post editorials about Archuleta County water resources — highly accurate.
I appreciated Mr. Kurz’ willingness to ‘stick to the facts’, and avoid the controversial water-related topics that PAWSD and SJWCD have been disagreeing about for the past decade.
But at some point, the controversies need to be resolved.
Or… do they?