Photo: Members of the Pagosa Springs Town Council discuss funding ideas with the Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board on September 17, 2024.
I shared in Part Three, on Friday, some comments made by Town Council member Gary Williams during an August 29 Council work session, where he suggested that the Council consider ‘capping’ the amount of Town Lodging Tax revenue contributed to the Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board… and letting Town Council control the spending of amounts above that capped amount. With a new hotel under construction at the Springs Resort, and other changes to the lodging landscape, he proposed that Town Lodging Tax revenues will soon increase by $300,000 or more.
He argued that the Council has a broader view of community needs than the Tourism Board has, and is also more adaptive to changes in the local economy. He also suggested that the Town Lodging Tax could be increased — with voter approval — beyond the current 4.9%, to perhaps 10%, thus providing more funding for “improving the tourist experience.” And maybe, improving the experience of full-time residents?
Mr. Williams also serves on the Tourism Board, as the Town government’s representative… so he’s expected to be simultaneously loyal to Pagosa Springs’ full-time residents — as a Town Council member — and to the tourism industry — as a Tourism Board member.
Those two groups appear to have rather different needs and desires, from what I can tell.
Mayor Shari Pierce asserted that the existing Town ordinance allows the Council to direct the tax revenues to other areas besides tourism marketing and tourist-oriented events, to include spending on municipal infrastructure.
Those ideas were reiterated by members of the Town Council when they sat down with the Tourism Board on September 17, 2024. Mayor Shari Pierce noted that no decisions have been made, yet, about capping the Town’s contribution.
But this is budget season in Colorado, and annual budgets need to be defined by early December, allowing for public hearings and posting of draft budgets. So maybe some decisions will, in fact, be made this season?
When the Tourism Board staff presented its draft budget on September 17, I didn’t notice any indication of significant changes from previous years.
The Board then asked for public comment. A gentleman stood up in the corner of the audience and talked about his experience promoting entertainment events, and suggesting that he would like to get more involved in organizing events here in Pagosa.
Then I stood up, with my laptop open, displaying some data collected during a 2021 survey of working households, conducted by Pagosa Housing Partners in cooperation with the Town of Pagosa Springs.
It’s a generally accepted threshold among government agencies that a household — in order to thrive — should not pay more than 30% of their income for housing. This graph of survey results, created by Pagosa Housing Partners, indicated that most of our workforce, at all income levels, is paying in excess of 30%…
…but especially, the workers in the low-paying tourism industry?
Some Daily Post readers may remember 2021 …deep in the depths of the COVID crisis… when it seemed like everyone who had ever imagined visiting Pagosa Springs simultaneously arrived here during the summer.
That was the same summer that Pagosa Housing Partners conducted a survey of Pagosa employees, to find out how many were challenged by the shortage of affordable housing in our community.
Disclosure: I serve on the Pagosa Housing Partners board, but this editorial reflects only my own opinions, and not necessarily the opinions of the PHP Board as a whole.
I went door-to-door in August 2021, visiting Pagosa businesses, asking them to encourage their employees to log in to our online survey and answer a few questions about their housing situation. I personally spoke with 50 business owners or managers, and — although I didn’t specifically solicit comments from them — many of them expressed unhappiness about two things: the lack of workforce housing in our community, and the ‘overtourism’ Pagosa was experiencing in 2021.
I cannot recall even a single business owner expressing positive comments about the number of tourists in 2021.
Not a single one.
I shared those thoughts with the Tourism Board on September 17, and then added:
“When you are sitting around the table with people involved in the tourism industry, you’re not seeing the full picture of our community. You’re not seeing the people who are struggling, and you’re not seeing the people who were unhappy with the amount of tourism we had in 2021.
“But it sounds like there are people at this table who want to get back there… want to get back to 2021, and even higher levels.
“I don’t think that’s what the community wants, judging from my experience with non-lodging businesses, who are trying to find places for their employees to live. Who have employees living in the national forest, or living in their cars, or bunking on a friend’s couch.”
Without workforce housing, Pagosa cannot have a tourism industry.
I reminded the Tourism Board — and the Town Council members sitting in the audience — that the Council had asked the Tourism Board, a few years back, to dedicate $500,000 of their revenues to help address the housing crisis, and the Tourism Board did, in fact, help the Town purchase a vacant 3-acre parcel adjacent to Walmart for a workforce housing project. Unfortunately, the Town staff have other priorities — a sanitation system in desperate need of help, for one, and riverfront parcels to purchase for recreation purposes — and no housing has yet appeared on that vacant parcel.
“If this [Tourism Board] wants a vibrant community… if this board wants a vibrant community… pushing more and more money into tourism marketing, to bring more and more visitors here, while employees are living in their cars…
“That’s not the outcome I would like, from this board.”
The next member of the audience to speak was Springs Resort Marketing Director Jesse Hensle, who reminded the Tourism Board of all the great things the Springs Resort does for their employees, including company-sponsored housing… and of all the money brought into the community by the tourism industry. He mentioned that some members of his immediate family recently moved to Pagosa to enjoy working here.
“By giving money to the private sector, we can accelerate this, instead of keeping it in this government bureaucracy and allocating $500,000 that hasn’t yet turned into housing…
“What can we do with marketing dollars, that returns it back to the community at a rate of 85-to-1? Thank you.”
He wasn’t exactly clear, though, what he wanted to see ‘accelerated’.
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.