Photo: The Space Foundation Discovery Center in Colorado Springs. Screenshot from the RTA Architects website.=
On Tuesday evening, May 13, the Archuleta School District (ASD) Board of Education convened a work session with a small group of community members, to hear facilities recommendations developed by the Master Plan Advisory Committee (MPAC) over the past four months.
Following the work session, the Board addressed other issues, including a proposed ‘restructuring’ of instructional duties at Pagosa Springs Elementary School, and a proposal from eighth grade students to raise funds, to help pay for ‘vamping’ detectors in the school restrooms.
I had attended the work session as a representative of the MPAC committee along with eight other group members. But I also stayed to attend the regular meeting, and found it informative, intriguing, and stimulating.
But we’ll begin this editorial series with perhaps the most complex issue facing the ASD Board at the moment:
A Facilities Master Plan, and potential related tax increases.
As I understand the situation, ASD must adopt a specific “Facilities Master Plan” in order to be eligible for BEST (“Building Excellent Schools Today”) funding from the Colorado Department of Education.
Disclosure: I served as a volunteer on the MPAC between January and April, but this editorial reflects only my own opinions, and not necessarily the opinions of ASD or the MPAC group.
The MPAC discussions were facilitated by Colorado Springs-based RTA Architects, a firm that specializes in schools, healthcare facilities, and government and community buildings. Schools make up a sizable portion of their professional work.
From the RTA website:
With a focus on healthcare, education, and community properties, we create sustainable, functional, beautiful buildings that serve our clients’ unique needs.
The ASD Board understands that our current Pagosa school buildings are far from perfect, and face continuing maintenance issues as they grow older. The cost of maintenance grows, as our nation struggles with inflation, workforce issues, and a possible trade war. But the cost of new facilities also grows, perhaps at an even faster rate.
Is our community ready — now, in 2025 — for a big bond issue for new school facilities, to be funded by property taxes?
Here’s a quote from the Colorado Department of Education, “BEST Division of Public School Capital Construction, Public School Facilities Master Plan Guidelines”
A master plan is produced through a team effort involving school administration, staff, students, community members, and professional consultants with disciplines in education, planning, programming, architecture, engineering, construction, facility management, facility operations, and technology…
To offer advice on the Facilities master Plan, numerous parents, grandparents and other community members participated in the MPAC over the past four month, along with school district staff. I don’t believe any students were involved, but we did have two professional consultants, Brian Calhoun and Doug Abernethy, from RTA Architects. The consultants did a great job of selling the idea that Pagosa Springs needs new school buildings, and probably should not prioritize the renovation of existing buildings.
But before we get into the sales pitch, I want to briefly mention that any comprehensive facilities plan — if it’s an authentic plan — must consider not only what facilities are desirable and when they might be needed, but also how much they would cost, and most importantly, who might be ready and willing to pay those costs, in terms of increased property taxes.
The MPAC team, at the conclusion of four two-hour meetings spread over four months, expressed a group preference for a new K-8 facility, located either near the Vista mobile home park or near the Pagosa Springs High School. (This was not my personal preference, but we can get into that later.)
RTA had estimated the cost of such a facility at $125 million. Because ballot measures in Colorado must clearly state the total cost of any bonded debt, including the interest payments, such a facility proposal suggests a ballot issue, presented to Archuleta County voters, showing a total tax-funded cost of over $200 million.
The key part of a facilities master plan that was not discussed by the MPAC team, was “who might be willing to increase their property taxes to help pay off a $200 million debt?”
There are numerous ways to calculate public debt. You could, for example, calculate how much a typical homeowner or business would pay “per day” on a $200 million debt, spread over 30 years. This would be a very small amount per day. The amount they would pay per month would be a somewhat larger number.
You can also calculate the debt ‘per capita’. How much would each person living in Archuleta County end up paying, on a $200 million debt? Right now, our population is about 14,000 people, but by the end of 30 years, our population — based on the past 30 years of growth — might be about 22,000?
If the ‘average’ population repaying the debt during those 30 years was 18,000, then the ‘per capita’ cost would be about $13,000. Or about $26,000 per two-person family, which is roughly one year of wages for certain workers in the tourism industry. But of course wealthier families, with more expensive homes, would pay a substantially larger share than a tourism industry worker. Also, Colorado businesses are assessed property taxes at about 4 times the residential rate.
It’s complicated.
And we’ve only just scratched the surface of the complications.
It’s not as complicated as a trip to the moon, thankfully. But after listening to an MPAC report delivered by the group’s co-chair, Lisa Scott, at Tuesday’s work session, the ASD School Board indicated that not all of the most important questions have been answered, in terms of developing a practical Facilities Master Plan.
The Board agreed, for example, that we haven’t yet taken the temperature of the community, and Board President Bob Lynch made a motion to hire consultant Lynea Hansen, of Denver-based Hansen Communications, to help the District conduct a community survey.
To see how the actual taxpayers, who will have to pay off any future debt, feel about our school facilities.
Read Part Two, tomorrow…