Photo courtesy Pagosa Fire Protection District.
As stated previously, I’m grateful to have a functional, well-trained Fire District in Archuleta County, partly because insurance companies base their premiums on the ‘rating’ given to the local fire department. Unfortunately, this hasn’t kept my fire insurance premium from increasing from $600 a year to $2,700, over the past five years. At that rate of increase, it seems reasonable to propose that the insurance companies should be funding our fire department.
As things go, however, the Pagosa Fire Protection District is funded mainly through Archuleta County property taxes.
Here, again, are a couple of District Chief Robert Bertram’s comments to the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners on December 10:
“Right now, [District funding] is predominantly property-tax based. Sometimes, we raise the mill-levy to get more money, then it’s always kind of ratcheting down. We’re losing money with that.
“So we’re looking at other ways to diversify ourselves…”
If Chief Bertram had not made these comments — which I consider to be sadly misleading — I might not have started writing this multi-part editorial last week.
It seemed to me, judging by the commissioner comments that morning, that the BOCC accepted his comments as statements of fact.
Which they are not.
First we need to consider the term “ratcheting down.”
“Ratcheting down” is a very real effect in Colorado, thanks for the TABOR amendment approved by the voters in 1992. TABOR aims to keep state and local spending from becoming excessive. To keep it from far outpacing population growth and inflation.
When our local governments collect more property tax revenue than the TABOR limits allow, the ‘extra’ revenue must be refunded to the taxpayers. This is typically done by reducing the mill levy.
In 2015, for example, the Archuleta County government imposed a mill levy of 18.33 on properties within the county.
Since then, we’ve generally seen our property values increase at a rate that exceeds the TABOR limits, and the County mill levy for 2023 was 13.07 — a decline of 40%.
In 2015, for example, the property tax mill levy for Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation (PAWSD) — in the district served by both water and sewer — was 13.793.
In 2023, the PAWSD mill levy was 3.809 — a decline of 73%.
This is what elected leaders and staff mean by “ratcheting down” when discussing mill levies.
But when a district has been “de-Bruced” — when the voters have removed the TABOR limits for that district — the situation is totally different. Especially if the voters have also approved a mill levy increase.
In 2015, the Fire District’s mill levy was 4.087.
In 2023, the District’s mill levy was 8.363. The Fire District mill levy has far surpassed the PAWSD mill levy, and is approaching the rate of County’s mill levy.
Here’s Chief Bertram, again:
“Right now, [District funding] is predominantly property-tax based. Sometimes, we raise the mill-levy to get more money, then it’s always kind of ratcheting down. We’re losing money with that.
“So we’re looking at other ways to diversify ourselves…”
Is the Fire District really “losing money with that”?
Let’s take a look.
In 2015, the Pagosa Fire Protection District received close to $1 million from the District’s property owners.
Here’s the info from the County Assessor’s annual abstract for 2015:
I don’t pay close attention to the operations of our Fire District, but it seems to me they were doing a fine job in 2015, with tax revenues of $999,543.
Since 2015, the Fire District asked for a voter-approved mill levy increase.
But the District has not experienced any “ratcheting down” that I can discern. It seems to me, the effect has been quite the opposite, due to the fact that — unlike the County and PAWSD — the Fire District has been “de-Bruced” and has no requirement to refund money to the taxpayers when they exceed the TABOR limits… because they are no longer under TABOR limits.
Here’s the Assessor’s data from the 2023 abstract:
The Fire District tax collections have more than quadrupled in the eight years since 2025.
Is this a government entity that is “losing money with that”? Hardly.
It’s quite possible that Archuleta County taxpayers are entirely comfortable paying four times as much property tax to the Fire District, in 2023, as we were paying in 2015…
…while we are simultaneously paying a “ratcheted down” mill levy to our County government and PAWSD.
But that still begs the question. If the Fire District is already extracting four times as much money from our pockets as they were in 2015, why is their Board of Directors and staff taking about “looking for other ways to diversity” the District’s revenues?
In particular, why are they looking to impose impact fees on new home construction, when Pagosa already has some of the most expensive ‘per-square-foot’ building costs in Colorado?
Chief Bertram reminded the commissioners that they have until February 3 to provide input and comments on the Fire District Board of Directors, on the subject of the proposed impact fees. The Town Council has also been asked to offer comments.
Commissioner Ronnie Maez:
“I have no problem with this. I think one thing about the impact fees that I will support, is for fire and police and Sheriff’s Office. Those are the three items that I would support an impact fee on. Because you know, the fact is, vacant land is not that hard to protect, but you put a structure on it, that’s an impact to the fire department, and it also adds more personnel. Because as long as we’re a growing community, we’ve got to look at things realistically…”
I mentioned in Part Four that Colorado data on fire districts suggests that less than 1% of the service calls made by fire districts involve a structure fire. So I wonder if we really want to “look at things realistically”… or if we want to blindly accept misinformation.
Commissioner Maez will no longer be on the BOCC by February 3, so it will be up to our current commissioners — Veronica Medina and Warren Brown — plus our incoming commissioner, John Ranson — to make any official comments from the County government.