Photo by Omar Lopez on Unsplash.
As mentioned in Part Two, the Town of Pagosa Springs is a corporation — dating back, in fact, to the Gilded Age of American Corporations in the late 1890s. The Town incorporated in 1891, with (as I imagine it) a couple of main purposes in mind. Probably first on the list was street maintenance, perhaps followed by the provision of safe drinking water.
Not on the list of municipal tasks in 1891 (as I imagine it) would be tourism promotion, funding for public art, enforcement of building codes, funding for broadband internet, free music events in Town Park, or construction of a paved four-mile walking and biking trail connecting downtown to uptown.
The list of services offered by the Town have grown, since 1891, as has its collection of rules and regulations.
A free ice cream social is probably a fine thing in a small Colorado mountain town, even if it gets funded by the local government — out of the public coffers — instead by a church group or charitable society. Hosting a community-wide gathering, where ice cream is served to all comers regardless of their ability to pay, can’t help but promote a sense of unity and shared purpose, in a town where we naturally find division and differences — religious, political, cultural, and educational differences — as well as disparities in wealth and income.
Just to be clear, I’m talking here about an ice cream social where the ice cream is gladly served, free of charge, to everyone. That sort of thing happens occasionally in Pagosa. Maybe the local brass band plays some military tunes. Or maybe it’s a rock band, or a Mariachi band.
Less useful in building a sense of unity and shared purpose would be, a free ice cream social where only wealthy families are invited.
Yet that seems to be what happens sometimes, when governments start offering subsidies. The wealthier people go to the front of the line. The poorer people get left behind.
The recent award of $6.1 million to Clearworx Communications from the state agency Advance Colorado Broadband — to install fiber optic cable to homes in the Meadows, Timber Ridge, and Alpha subdivisions — is a case in point. The Clearworx corporation will put $2 million of its own money into the project. I’m not clear whether the installed fiber will then belong to Clearworx? I assume so.
These particular Pagosa neighborhoods feature some of the most attractive residential homes, and some of the larger parcels, in Archuleta County. Larger parcels mean fewer customers per mile of fiber, and higher installation costs per customer, but it can also mean wealthier families who might be willing to pay $110 a month for high-speed internet.
Sometimes, only the wealthier folks get the free ice cream. Except it costs $110 a month.
Last Thursday, the Pagosa Springs Town Council held a work session to discuss, with their staff, a set of established priorities, as published in August 2023 as a document called Pagosa Springs Town Council 2023-2024 Goals & Objectives.
The Council had established three areas of concern as their highest priorities for the coming year. How were we doing?
The number one priority: fixing a problematic sanitation district. The Pagosa Springs Sanitation General Improvement District. PSSGID.
After shutting down a failing lagoon treatment facility and building a $7 million pipeline to pump the town’s collected wastewater seven miles uphill to the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) Vista Treatment Plant , the Town discovered the unpleasant challenges of operating a (poorly designed?) seven-mile sewer pipeline. Those challenges have been diverting resources from other necessary maintenance and repairs to the downtown collection system, leaving the Town system with deferred maintenance issues.
Unfortunately, the population served by this financially-strained sanitation system happen to be — on average — some of the poorer families in Archuleta County. While the average poverty rate in the county is about 10%, the rate within the town limits is closer to 35%. The median household income is “about half the amount in Archuleta County.”
How to fix a failing utility, without imposing the entire burden on some of the community’s poorest families?
The Town staff is currently negotiating an agreement with PAWSD to jointly investigate ways to cooperate on a community-wide system that would (potentially) cost everyone less money over the long haul.
That haul may be very long indeed, considering the steady growth of state and federal clean water regulations.
The second Town Council priority on Thursday was “staffing”. Like nearly every business and government agency in Archuleta County, the Town has struggled to recruit and retain qualified employees. Last year, for example, the Town had a turnover rate in excess of 25%. The HR department essentially spent the entire year hiring and training new employees, we were told.
In an attempt to staunch the bleeding, the 2024 budget includes significant pay increases — more than 10% in some cases. Also, new rules about the use of paid time off, and provision of overtime pay, are being considered.
Then the corporate leaders (that is, the Town Council and staff) moved into the discussion I had come to hear.
3. Workforce Housing
Support private sector and community organizations’ efforts to provide housing of all types to ensure housing choices for residents.
This trickier than it sounds.
Just as with broadband internet, it’s much easier — here in America — to provide housing subsidies for the very poor and the upper middle class (the corporate managers and business owners) than for the average working families. We have some federal and state programs to house the poorest individuals and families — not enough, but some — and the upper middle class has sufficient wealth to make the subsidy process less painful.
It’s actually the workforce that often gets left out, when we discuss workforce housing in Pagosa.