Back in the dark ages of Pagosa’s historic development — like, back in 2007 — the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners (BOCC), the Town of Pagosa Springs, and the Archuleta School District spent thousands of dollars on an exciting new Regional Parks, Recreation, Open Space & Trails Master Plan written by North-Carolina-based consultants Greenways Inc.
The 200-page plan proposed a significant expansion of recreational amenities in Archuleta County. After taking input from a ‘Technical Review Committee’ of 21 local leaders, and after a review of 17 existing local government plans, studies, and policy documents, the consultants recommended $55 million in recreation projects.
The plan was funded in part by Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO), which is in turn funded by Colorado lottery dollars.
I was unable to find the Regional Parks, Recreation, Open Space & Trails Master Plan online on the County website. Nor could I find it on the Town website, nor on the School District website, nor on the Greenways Inc website.
The Daily Post might possess the only copy that still exists? Luckily, it’s a digital version, and you can download it here.
I mention this 2007 plan for a few reasons.
One… it cost the taxpayers a lot of money.
Two… it covered the entire landscape of Archuleta County.
Three… it was purportedly based on what the people of Archuleta County really want.
Four… At joint Town and County work session last week, local recreation advocate Bob Milford announced a tax-funded proposal to create a “recreation plan” for Archuleta County, to be produced by the newly formed Pagosa Area Recreation Coalition (PARC) with the help of a Salt-Lake-City-based consulting firm called SE Group.
SE Group started out in 1958 as Sno.Engineering, designing ski areas and developing snow-making and grooming equipment. SE Group slowly branched out into other types of planning and design, and has recently worked all across the nation on recreation and community planning.
Five… In his September 17 presentation, Mr. Milford didn’t mention the 2007 Regional Parks, Recreation, Open Space & Trails Master Plan. I suspect very few people in the room — including the Town Council and the BOCC — were aware of this government-endorsed 200-page Master Plan.
Six… this quote from Chapter 2 of that Plan.
While the population has steadily increased, a low unemployment rate has been maintained in place. Low unemployment rates in Archuleta County are highly dependent on “generally low paying retail and service sector jobs, driven primarily by the tourist and resort industry.” In 2003, The Operation Healthy Communities (OHC) calculated that a wage of $10.36/hour was the baseline livable wage for a single individual renting a one bedroom apartment. Additionally, only about 42% of the population in Archuleta County could afford a median priced home of $181,000.
Vision Statement
“Archuleta County will retain, grow and support our local businesses, and encourage a diverse economic base through business attraction and creation to ensure year-round livable wages for the residents of our County.”
Note here, that the consultants suggest the “low-paying jobs” are driven primarily “by the tourist and resort industry”.
Few of the projects proposed in the 2007 Regional Parks, Recreation, Open Space & Trails Master Plan have come to fruition. For example, the Plan recommended six trail networks as shown in this map… none of which have been built out.
The thing that has changed the most is not our recreation access and amenities, but our cost of living.
In 2007, when only 58% of our population could afford a median-priced home ($181,000) on a typical wage of $10.41 per hour… the Plan proposed $55 million worth of new recreation amenities.
Four types of new parks: “regional”, “district”, “community” and “neighborhood” parks. Newly dedicated open space areas. Hiking trails. A new recreation center. An enlarged sports complex. River restoration and boating access. Upgrades to existing parks.
The situation has changed somewhat, for local residents. A median-priced home is now over $600,000. In order to afford that home, the BankRate.com website suggests I need to earn a household income of about $135,000 a year. When I visited the Region 9 Economic Development District website, their dashboard suggested that only 12% of our full-time population earn more than $125,000 a year.
88% of our households cannot afford a median-priced home. Call it, “9-out-of-10”.
But, as Bob Milford suggested on September 17, “But we still have to have great recreation.”
I believe our elected leaders generally agree with Mr. Milford — that our community, in order to continue to be worth living in, must plan for expanded recreational amenities. A 200-page Plan that proposes $55 million in improved recreation may be terribly outdated. It’s time for a new plan.
And
Readers can see why I am using the headline, “Keeping Pagosa Weird”. Because that’s what we’ve been doing. Keeping it very weird.
Josh Peck, District Ranger with the Pagosa Ranger District, had distributed a map to the elected leaders sitting around the work table, showing the PARC boundaries, stretching from the Continental Divide in the east, to the County border on the west… and the two major wildlife corridors running through the county.
“That seems like a pretty good chunk for us to consider, as part as a sustainable plan. The town of Pagosa — the private land in the middle of that — is a hub, that people come back to, and then recreate outward. So it really didn’t make sense for us to combine with the other regional partnerships…”
Colorado Parks and Wildlife has apparently managed to get “Outdoor Regional Partnerships” created throughout the state, through the grant program created in 2020.
Our local recreation leaders could have chosen to join a neighboring “Outdoor Regional Partnership” — like, for example, “Number 17”, the “Southwest Colorado Conservation & Outdoor Recreation Roundtable”, based in Durango. “SCCORR”.
But Mr. Milford. Mr. Peck and their team decided to create PARC to best serve our local wildlife corridors. As recreation impacts increase, the conflicts between users — and between users and wildlife — are pretty much guaranteed to increase as well.
Zooming in to Archuleta County, we see this map:
This is one of the few Regional Partnership Initiative districts that bleeds outside of traditional ‘county’ boundaries… and encroaches into the existing “San Luis Valley Great Outdoors” partnership.
Will we be playing in someone else’s sandbox? Maybe that’s a little bit weird.