I took the photo above about a year ago, at the beginning of 2023. I wanted to document some unsightly mechanical equipment that sits atop the County Courthouse in Harman Park. Unfortunately, the unsightly equipment was not visible from the facility parking lot.
At the beginning of 2023, the Pagosa Springs Town government found itself involved in a dispute with the Archuleta County government regarding this not-visible rooftop equipment atop the new County Courthouse. The Town Land Use and Development Code (LUDC) requires the mechanical equipment (e.g. HVAC units and antennas, etc.) on a roof to be “screened”, and because the Courthouse is within the town limits, the Town Planning Commission wanted “appropriate screening” installed on the roof.
After the building was completed — except for the required screening — the Town gave the County a ‘Temporary Certificate of Occupancy’ with the understanding, implied by the County, that the screening would be installed later.
Instead, the County applied to the Town Planning Commission for a ‘variance’, asking for the screening requirement to be waived, and explaining that the screening would cost the taxpayers an estimated $100,000.
The Town Planning Commission refused to grant the requested waiver.
The Board of County Commissioners then approved a resolution, claiming that the Town had no legal jurisdiction over County-owned property, since the County was a sovereign government.
WHEREAS, in December 2022, the County submitted an application to the Town’s planning commission seeking a variance for the Archuleta County Justice Center from the Town’s Land Use Development Code Section 6.10.4.D that requires “rooftop appurtenances, such as mechanical equipment and antennas shall be screened from view” because the requirement to do so would cost in excess of $100,000.00 of taxpayers’ money and the requirement is simply for aesthetics and nothing more…
I personally found the dispute interesting, because, as I’ve suggested often in Daily Post editorials, our local governments sometimes place unreasonable limits on land development that have nothing to do with “health and safety” or “public welfare”. Quite the opposite of public welfare, in fact. Requiring “screening” of HVAC units on the roof of a new County Courthouse does not make anyone safer or more healthy, or even more prosperous. And we should note that there’s no guarantee that We The People will find the “screening” to be more attractive than the HVAC units themselves.
The Courthouse is next door to the County Jail, also part of the Fred C. Harman III Law Enforcement Complex. The jail had been substantially completed a year earlier, in July 2020.
The jail also had mechanical devices installed on its roof, without appropriate ‘screening’. But the Town, for whatever reason, issued a permanent Certificate of Occupancy for the jail in September, 2020. You can see several light gray mechanical devices, on the roof, in this photo:
It’s my understanding that the Town has refused to grant a permanent CO (Certificate of Occupancy) to the County, on account of the dispute about the rooftop equipment, and as a result, the County has been unable to access certain state grant funds that were supposed to help pay for the new Courthouse. I hope to learn more about that situation. The Town Planning Commission — the group that refused to grant a variance to the County — has traditionally met twice a month, but has not had held a meeting since August 8. I wrote about that curious situation here.
As I noted last year while this legal fight was taking place, there are buildings all over our community — within the town limits — with non-screened ‘mechanical equipment’ on their roofs.
I confess that none of these rooftop installations, shown below — including the non-screened mechanical equipment on the roof of Town Hall — have bothered me even slightly, during the 30 years I’ve lived here. Maybe I have thick skin?
Non-screened mechanical equipment and antennas seem to be fairly common within the town limits.
During 2023, the Town government has been busy with a number of projects and issues, and so has the County government. Among other things, the Town had to find a new Town Manager following the departure of Andrea Phillips, and hire a new Public Works Director up to speed following the departure of Martin Schmidt.
The BOCC, meanwhile, has been organizing a new Public Health Department necessitated by the dissolution of the San Juan Basin Public Health district. The County has also been looking at ways to encourage more workforce housing in the community, while choosing to leave the Short-Term Rental industry free to grow without any limitations.
The County also completed several painful paving projects, negotiated the placement of a temporary bridge at Pagosa Junction, and contracted with a company to build a new bus facility in Harman Park. (Perhaps the bus facility will include ‘screened’ rooftop devices?)
The Town and County also negotiated a new agreement suggesting that each governments will continue to contribute its Lodging Tax revenues to the Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board — a total of perhaps $1 million annually — to subsidize the marketing of our local tourism, without spending any of the money to address the problems caused by the tourism industry… problems such as low wages, high housing costs, and impacted streets and roads.