We’ve been considering a pile of documents on display at a recent Archuleta Board of County Commissioners’ meeting, on June 10, during a discussion between the BOCC and Road & Bridge Manager Eric McRae. The R&B Department had spend several months, reportedly, collecting these documents, in an effort to understand why our County government has consistently struggled to maintain our road system.
He referred several times to 12 suburban subdivisions that Archuleta County continued to serve — perhaps without any legal obligation to service them — even after the voters rejected a plan to increase the property taxes to fund road maintenance in 2001.
Mr. McRae discussed the road maintenance that has been happening in the Vista subdivision, which he implied was one of those 12 subdivisions. The Vista is, by far, the largest mobile home park in the county, and thus the primary location of the community’s existing ‘affordable’ single-family housing.
“We’re probably going to invest a little over $1.2 million in the Vista this year, to resurface about 3 miles of road surface. Those roads have been in the process of being rebuilt. We’ve already accomplished all the new sub-base and gravel, and we are within a few weeks of investing in a chip-seal surface for those roads…
“This is a subdivision that has been greatly ignored, in my option, throughout the years. They were made some empty promises that they felt were not fulfilled. And last year, we went in and milled up their old chip-seal roads that were unmaintainable; they were not able to be bladed and corrected…
“We brought in fresh gravels and built the roads up to our standard. Addressed all the ditch lines. We’re in the process of cleaning culverts this week and getting the drainage to act properly so it doesn’t ruin our chip-seal investment.
“And we are going to see that completed before the end of July. So that is a substantial investment, on our part, into what we have discovered… That came out of our capital outlay budget for capital projects…
“We also chip-sealed quite a few roads off of Monument, so we’ve invested over there as well.
“And the arterial roads are already ours to maintain, so all the ‘hot milling’ stuff we’re doing — that’s not something we’ve considered.”
Mr. McRae is here drawing a distinction between the County R&B maintenance of the main arterial roads, which he implied is a obligation of the County government… and the maintenance of neighborhood roads in the subdivisions, which might not be such an obligation.
Back in November 2022, we reported on the embarrassing failure of the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners to understand the political currents in their own community.
Despite of clearly articulated warnings from the people around them, the three commissioners placed a 37% sales tax increase on the ballot — Ballot Issue 1A, estimated to generate about $6.5 million annually — with a promise to use at least part of the increased revenues for road maintenance.
The County watched it get rejected by a 3-to-1 margin.
A recent survey, conducted by the County, indicated a general mistrust of the Archuleta County government to make good financial decisions.
But part of the reluctance from the community to approve tax increases for roads could be due to the fact that several subdivisions with their own metro districts — Aspen Village, Loma Linda, Alpha Rock Ridge, San Juan River Village, Colorado Timber Ridge, and Piedra Park — plus the Town of Pagosa Springs, all maintain their own streets and roads, yet still pay the same property tax rates to the County government, while receiving no road maintenance from County R&B.
It’s basically the 12 subdivisions mentioned by Mr. McRae that are benefiting from County Road & Bridge tax revenues.
County Manager Jack Harper invited Mr. McRae to share his thoughts about the existing tax burden on businesses and residents.
Mr. McRae:
“I know that, roughly, every household contributes between $30 and $60 out of their taxes towards the roads. So a misconception I hear quite often, ‘My taxes have doubled…’ We get a lot of those comments.”
Indeed, property taxes greatly increased in Pagosa Springs in 2023, but the lion’s share of the increase went to the Colorado Department of Education. Property tax increases for the Archuleta County government are tightly restricted by Colorado’s TABOR Amendment, so very little of the recent tax increases have accrued to the County government.
Mr. McRae: “The truth is, those tax dollars are spread thin between all of the [County ] departments. Residents chip in between $30 and $50 towards their roads.”
He is talking here about the residents who do not live in existing metro districts. The residents in those 12 subdivisions, for example.
Commissioner Warren Brown mentioned the Highway User Tax Fund (HUTF) payments, which are received from the state. Mr. McRae stated that those funds are used to cover snow removal across the entire county, and do not fully cover that expense. The HUTF funds for snow removal are shared with the metro districts that do their own snow plowing.
Theoretically, the 12 subdivisions that have never formed their own metro districts could do so at any time, and that would allow each metro district to elect a board of directors, contract for road maintenance, and maintain their own neighborhoods roads at the level of service the residents choose.
These residents would also, however, need to pay an additional property tax mill levy, just like the residents in Pagosa’s existing metro districts do.
The option? Live with substandard neighborhood roads and poorly-maintained arterial roads, into the foreseeable future…?
Read Part Four… tomorrow…