Two items of particular interest appear on the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners’ work session agenda this morning. One of the items, to be presented by Commissioner Veronica Medina, will be a discussion about two November ballot measures:
4. Initiatives 50 And 108 – Veronica Medina
This agenda item is perhaps incidentally related to another item on the agenda:
2. Discussion Re Potential Water Line Work For Hangar Expansion – Chris Torres
If we want our County airport to continue expanding, the BOCC may wish to continue using tax revenues to support the construction of more airplane hangers.
Initiatives 50 and 108 are also related to tax revenues — specifically, a potential reduction in tax revenues. Potentially, a steep reduction.
Last May, Colorado lawmakers approved a bipartisan compromise, backed by Governor Jared Polis, that temporarily reduced property taxes… to mitigate, somewhat, property value increases of up to 40% in some Colorado communities. The measure passed the legislature easily; only eight of the state’s 100 lawmakers opposed the bill during its crucial final votes.
But two groups — the conservative political group Advance Colorado and the business group Colorado Concern — claimed the new law didn’t offer enough tax relief for home and business owners, and they managed to petition Initiatives 50 and 108 onto the upcoming November ballot.
From an editorial by two county commissioners, Teller County Commissioner Dan Williams and Summit County Commissioner Tamara Pogue, published last week in The Mountain Jackpot News:
Initiative 50 proposes a cap on revenue growth for over 4,600 local governments, limiting their combined growth to 4% per year. This one-size-fits-all approach ignores the diverse needs and circumstances of individual communities. It allows areas with rapid growth, like the Denver Metro, to dominate the allocation of funds, thereby stifling the ability of smaller or slower-growing communities to invest in their unique priorities…
Initiative 108 takes a different but equally harmful route by drastically reducing statewide assessment rates, slashing $3 billion from the budgets of counties, schools, fire districts, and other local governments. This cut is not only unprecedented but also fiscally irresponsible, as it mandates the state’s general fund to compensate for the shortfall. This backfill requirement would necessitate an 18% cut to state services, a reduction even more severe than those seen during the Great Recession…
While the Town of Pagosa Springs relies mainly on revenues from sales tax — which would not be directly affected by these initiatives — a number of our other local governments rely heavily on property tax revenues… the County government among them. At a moment when the BOCC is considering the construction of a new multi-million-dollar Administration Building and millions of dollars in planned airport upgrades and repairs, voter approval of Initiatives 50 and 108 could have a dramatic effect on Archuleta County finances.
Which brings us to Item 2.
2. Discussion Re Potential Water Line Work For Hangar Expansion – Chris Torres
Anyone who has plans to build in the core residential or business districts of Pagosa Springs understands that they will have to install water lines and sewer lines, and that they will have to pay for extending those lines to their property as necessary. The work will additionally need to meet the standards established by Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD), and must not cause harm to existing customers in the same district.
The party responsible for paying for the installation of the new water and sewer lines becomes somewhat murky, when the land belongs to the taxpayers, but the new buildings belong to private airplane owners.
As mentioned before, this is the situation at our County Airport. The land belongs to the County government — held on behalf of the citizens — but the airplane hangers along the Bravo taxiway are privately owned, and each owner pays for an annual ‘ground lease’ fee for the privilege of siting their building on public land.
Reportedly, the newest airplane hangers at the far end of the Bravo taxiway do not have sufficient water pressure to accommodate the firefighting needs of the Pagosa Fire Protection District, and the Fire District has thus far refused to approve the issuance of a CO (Certificate of Occupancy) for those hangers.
Reportedly, the hangers in question are being occupied anyway.
I left a phone message for Pam Flowers, director of Archuleta County’s Development Services department, to get a better understanding of the “hanger expansion” discussion scheduled for this morning’s 8:30am Board of County Commissioners work session.
Ms. Flowers returned my call — leaving a message that she’d be happy to chat with me about the airport — but I didn’t get around to calling her back. So I will be attending this morning’s work session to learn what I can.
I believe the County Airport is the most expensive facility owned by the County taxpayers, in terms of maintenance and proposed upgrades. According to the Airport Economic Impact Study published by the Archuleta County Airport Advisory Commission in 2012, the cost of airport expansion, between 2002 and 2011, was approximately $16.6 million. This amount did not include annual operations and maintenance, which are subsidized annually by the County taxpayers.
As far as I know, $16.6 million was the largest amount of capital investment funding for any single public project during that time period.
How many people did that investment serve?
To collect the data for the 2012 Economic Impact Study, the Airport Advisory Commission sent out surveys to 110 pilots and received 46 responses.
I mentioned previously that the County airport serves emergency medical flights and as a staging area for aircraft during large wildfires. So in a sense, the airport serves the entire community. But the $16.6 million spent between 2002 and 2011 was primarily aimed at runway expansion to accommodate private jets.
We should note that the lion’s share of that $16.6 million came through federal and state grants.
I’m not yet clear as to who, exactly, will be served by the proposed $60 million in future capital projects mentioned in the recent airport Capital Improvement Plan.