In last week’s editorial series, I had shared the first slide in an informational slide show posted to the Pagosa Lakes Property Owners Association website. You can view the slide show here.
The slides provide an overview of a proposed “PLPOA Sports Center” — really, a fairly modest gymnasium that the PLPOA Board of Directors have proposed for a vacant spot behind the existing Recreation Center.
The Rec Center, which serves exclusively PLPOA property owners, includes an indoor swimming pool, racquetball courts, fitness rooms and aerobics space. The proposed gymnasium — estimated to cost about $2 million — would offer a versatile indoor space for basketball, volleyball, pickleball and indoor soccer, among other activities.
PLPOA’s Mission:
To protect property values, further and promote community welfare, protect and enhance the civic, social and recreational interests of PLPOA Owners.
If we look closely, we can discern in this mission statement the tension between two seemingly discordant American values.
- Individual property rights
- Community welfare
It’s probably fairly common to view these two values as conflicting. But you can also see them as inseparable. Unless I want to live as an isolated hermit, my individual property rights mean very little if my community is dysfunctional.
My property values depend, in a very real sense, on my community’s overall welfare.
The proposal to build a recreational gymnasium resulted from a series of community surveys and Board decisions, starting in 2018, based around the idea that the Association had not focused enough of its efforts on the community’s youth. Other types of capital projects — walking trails, clustered mail boxes — had been completed in recent years, to serve the general population…
…but not enough, the Board felt, had been done for the sizable population of families with children. These families did not, however, constitute a majority of the Association’s property owners, who tend to be retirees and second-home owners.
But, could the whole community come together to build something that served, especially, the non-adult population?
Because the cost of the proposed gymnasium exceeds 15% of the Association’s equity value, the Association will need to get voter approval for a ‘special assessment’ of about $250 per property. The new gym could be funded with a ‘one-time’ payment of $241 per property… or with a monthly assessment of $4.75 per month for five years, resulting in a total payment per property of $285.
The Pagosa Lakes Property Owners Association — more affectionately known as PLPOA — took over management of one of Colorado’s largest subdivision developments in 1992, when Fairfield Pagosa Inc. filed for bankruptcy. Since then, they’ve worked to improve property values while enhancing the community’s welfare, and accommodating certain social needs and desires.
From their website:
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.
I can’t give an exact number, but I been told that a majority of Archuleta County’s population lives within the PLPOA boundaries.
The election to approve the special assessment — and thus, to approve the gymnasium construction — will take place between the end of January and the beginning of March.
To find out more about the project, I sat down last week with Lars Schneider, PLPOA Board President; Allen Roth, General Manager; and Jen Pitcher, Lifestyle and Communications Manager.
Lars Schneider started the conversation.
“What we’ve been fighting, as the Association, is so much blatant disinformation…”
We’ll be discussing that ‘disinformation’ later on. But first, a quote from Communications Manager Jen Pitcher. She was discussing past surveys of Association owners, asking them what improvements they would most like to see.
For example, pickleball courts.
Ms. Pitcher:
“When we say that we needed to do more for the youth, and people look at the survey results, they ask, ‘How did you come to this?’ As a whole — and I’m just throwing out numbers — it was less than 50% who were saying we needed to do more for the youth. But it was 95% of the families who have the kids
“So we were taking that into consideration. What does this demographic of people want?
“Almost everything people wanted in the surveys — there’s been part of that accomplished already, except for the things for the youth. We’ve addressed lakes, and trails. We’ve addressed needing mailboxes. We addressed getting bathrooms at the lakes. We addressed getting more parking…
“We did all of those things before addressing the youth, simply because the things we wanted for the youth were extremely expensive…”
When the Board researched the gymnasium cost, it quickly became apparent that it would exceed the amount that could be funded without voter approval.
“If anything exceeds 15% of our equity value, then it has to go to a vote.. .
“We have never needed to go to a vote, to complete walking trails, to install mailboxes for people, to do all the things I mentioned. We’ve never had to go to a vote.
“So that’s where some of the hubbub is coming from. People think that we’re just going to do it anyway. Which is not the case.
“It has to go to a vote…”