Pagosa Lakes is a covenant-controlled community comprised of over 6600 properties situated in 27 unique subdivisions encompassing 21 square miles. We are surrounded on 3 sides by the San Juan National Forest of the beautiful Colorado Rocky Mountains. The Pagosa Lakes Property Owners Association is a mixed-use planned development which consists mainly of single-family residential lots, but also includes condominiums, townhouses, apartments and commercial properties…
— from the PLPOA website
Back with the joint meeting between the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) and representatives from the Pagosa Lakes Property Owners Association (PLPOA)… the first time I had attended one of these quarterly joint meetings.
And back to the conversation about poor road conditions, and poor road maintenance — one of the hot topics at the May 6 meeting in downtown Pagosa Springs.
I don’t live in one of the 27 unique subdivisions that constitute the covenant-controlled community we know as Pagosa Lakes. But it’s my general understanding that the majority of the homes in Archuleta County are located within this property owners association.
I live within a different political jurisdiction: the Town of Pagosa Springs. About 15% of my community lives within the town limits.
However, PLPOA is not exactly a “political jurisdiction”. It’s an “association” of “covenant-controlled” subdivisions.
Archuleta County, meanwhile, is a political subdivision of the State of Colorado. As such, the County is required to provide a range of services specified by the state government, including tax collection, property assessments, maintenance of property documents, handling of elections, operation of the county jail, law enforcement, a public health department…
.. and perhaps, most controversially, the maintenance of County-owned roads.
I believe most of County’s 350 miles of roads are located within the Pagosa Lakes subdivisions.
The association known as PLPOA — funded mainly through Association dues — manages a number of services within the Pagosa Lakes community, but not road maintenance.
The mission of PLPOA:
Our Mission: To protect property values, further and promote community welfare, protect and enhance the civic, social and recreational interests of PLPOA Owners.
One would assume that a well-maintained system of roads would be an important part of protecting a neighborhood’s property values. And that a poorly-maintained road system would tend to diminish property values.
Road conditions might also be related to civic, social and recreational interests.
But PLPOA is not responsible for the roads in their subdivisions. Archuleta County is responsible. And proper road maintenance is not cheap.
Everyone who spoke at the May 6 joint meeting — from the County government, from the PLPOA, and from the audience — was in general agreement that Archuleta County has historically done a less-than-satisfactory job of maintaining the roads within Pagosa Lakes.
Back in 2022, the BOCC approached the voters with a request to increase the County sales tax by 37%. (The County shares its sales tax with the Town of Pagosa Springs, 50/50, so the Town would have likewise benefited from the sales tax increase.) The BOCC promised that at least some of the increase would be used for road maintenance.
The ballot measure went down in flames.
I had criticized that proposed tax increase, here in the Daily Post, for a couple of reasons. I had watched the BOCC put the taxpayers deeply into debt building an oversized jail — without voter approval — and had seen them abandon an historic downtown courthouse to build a new courthouse uptown — also without voter approval — and like many voters, I worried that the proposed sales tax increase would be wasted building more and more government buildings. (The BOCC already had plans for more buildings.)
In order to build these new government buildings, the BOCC had pulled money out of its Road & Bridge budget.
I also believe — as do many people — that sales taxes are the most regressive type of tax at the state and local levels, because lower-income families have to spend much more of what they earn on basic expenses.
But I am sympathetic to the people driving on substandard roads in Pagosa Lakes. Is there a better way to fund the necessary road maintenance… in a community where we don’t trust our BOCC to be fiscally responsible with our money?
Several neighborhoods outside the Town limits have come up with what seems to be a satisfactory solution. They have formed local “metropolitan districts” — Metro Districts — and dedicated the taxes collected by those districts primarily to road maintenance. The subdivisions with Metro Districts include Aspen Springs, Loma Linda, Timber Ridge, Alpha Rock Ridge, and San Juan River Village. These subdivisions have, in general, some of the best-maintained roads in the county.
But they pay for it. Aspen Springs property owners, for example, pay about 18 mills to the Archuleta County government — to cover all County services — and about 15 mills to their local metro district. In exchange, they have relatively well-maintained roads. Additionally, the neighborhood can adjust its own metro district mill levy as desired.
The PLPOA subdivisions, since the 1970s, have been relying on the County government to maintain their roads. But although the County’s overall government budget has grown steadily, the road conditions in Pagosa Lakes have been on a roller coaster.
It’s my understanding that any Pagosa Lakes neighborhood can form its own metro district, and set its own mill levy, and have the type of roads they want, and are willing to pay for — and stop relying on a (bloated?) County government that will never find enough money into Road & Bridge to properly maintain neighborhood roads.
My question to the PLPOA leadership, with its mission to protect property values in Pagosa Lakes.
Does this sound like a reasonable direction to take with your Association?