Photo: A discarded ‘Yard Sale’ sign noticed on Monday, while walking the 4-acre parcel the Town government is proposing to purchase and convert into a riverfront park.
We ended Part One with a couple of questions posed by long-time Pagosa resident Eddie Archuleta, at the September 3 meeting of the Pagosa Springs Town Council.
“What’s the deal with this property you’re trying to buy down by the Circle K?”
“Why do you need to buy a piece of junk like that?”
His questions related to a proposed purchase, by the Town government, of a 4-acre parcel on Highway 160, for perhaps $800,000… as the site for a future riverfront park. The east-end property is currently serving as a Basin Co-op propane sales office, but the Town Council has authorized the Town staff to write grants to help purchase the property, and to make an offer to the property owners.
I assume Mr. Archuleta was referring to the buildings on the property as “junk”?
They are certainly old buildings, but I myself wouldn’t classify them as “junk”. Not exactly.
But there is some authentic junk visible along the property’s riverfront.
Pieces of old rusted automobiles, and chunks of concrete, mostly.
At the September 3 meeting, Mayor Shari Pierce did not answer Mr. Archuleta’s question about why the Town Council and Town staff need to buy “a piece of junk like that”. But she did invite Mr. Archuleta to stick around and listen to the discussion about the property, later in the meeting.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to hear any of the discussion, because it was conducted behind closed doors in an executive session.
But Mr. Archuleta wasn’t yet through with his comments. He addressed Mayor Pierce.
“So, when are you going to start taking care of our stuff here in town, for the locals? Back when you were running for Mayor, you said you were going to take care of the locals. Well, you ain’t done squat, except for the out-of-towners and the goddamn tourists. That’s all it’s been about.”
Mayor Pierce — who has, in fact, been making attempts, often in vain, to focus her Council on taking care of the locals — noted that she is only one vote out of seven.
The motion at the end of the meeting, made by Council member Matt DeGuise, was to have staff draft an offer on the Basin Co-op property, with a closing date in April 2025. The motion was unanimously approved, even though Mr. DeGuise did not state a dollar amount in his motion.
Maybe the Council had already decided on a dollar amount, during their executive session?
Government boards in Colorado are forbidden from making decisions in executive session.
Back in 2004, when the Daily Post first began publishing news stories, the Town government had just begun a concerted effort to convert the San Juan River into an exciting tourist attraction, as had already been done in other Colorado communities, like Salida. The effort was led by then-Town Manager Mark Garcia, and leadership was later assumed by Planning Director James Dickhoff.
Unfortunately, the San Juan River is not exciting. Compared to certain other Colorado rivers, the San Juan offers a relaxed but essentially unexciting float experience for 90% of the year, except perhaps at a handful of specially-engineered, artificial ‘wave’ features installed over the past 20 years.
Elsewhere in Colorado, towns have been able to attract whitewater rafters and boaters to annual races and boating festivals, and these events have contributed to the local economy.
But unlike the Arkansas River, for example, and the Animas River, the San Juan is not a river that normally attracts rafters and boaters. It’s a river that attracts families with children, riding inner tubes. So spending $800,000 in tax money to buy a property for a boat ramp and a large parking lot is borderline crazy… in my humble opinion. This massive investment will provide tubers a two-minute-longer ride down a slow-moving river.
The Town Council and staff hope the $800,000 will come mostly in the form of state grants. In other words, they hope the initial investment will be paid for by the entire population of Colorado taxpayers, not merely by local taxpayers.
This is only the initial investment, however. The Town of Pagosa Springs currently has six riverfront parks, and some of the infrastructure for those parks was paid for by state grants, through programs like Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO). But typically, the state grants cover part of the initial construction. Grants almost never cover the ongoing maintenance.
The local taxpayers cover the maintenance. Forever.
So, if this municipal effort comes to fruition, we will have a seventh riverfront park to maintain, to benefit mostly tourist families. Although these are clearly investments in tourism, the Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board does not (to my knowledge) contribute any money to maintenance of our riverfront parks.
Did the Town Council ask for an estimate of the annual maintenance costs for a new park at the east end of town, before directing staff to make an offer on the property?
We don’t know, because the discussion was conducted secretly, behind closed doors, in an executive session.