You’re invited! Please join the Pagosa Outdoor Recreation Coalition (PARC) for a Community Open House to talk about outdoor recreation and conservation in the region. We will be discussing PARC’s mission, progress towards a strategic plan, and issues and opportunities related to trails, parks, camping, and wildlife on our public lands. There will be opportunities for open-ended and structured feedback; we want to hear from you…
— announcement on the Town of Pagosa Springs ‘MyPagosa’ website, early December.
The South Conference Room at the Ross Aragon Community Center attracted a standing-room-only crowd on December 10, to hear a progress report from the Pagosa Area Recreation Coalition (PARC), a state-funded group with the ambitious goal of enhancing recreation in most of Archuleta County, and also in parts of Hinsdale, Mineral, Rio Grande and Conejos counties.
Two of the group’s concerns appear somewhat contradictory, IMHO. There’s a desire to make recreation opportunities more accessible — which would seemingly increase the impacts on the landscape — while also protecting the environment — which seemingly depends on reducing recreational impacts.
Much of the presentation dealt with a recent public survey of mainly full-time residents. We’ll touch on that survey later.
This wasn’t my first visit to the South Conference Room in December.
Two days earlier, I had attended a meeting of the League of Women Voters, which had attracted about 11 people. The meeting focused on community issues that might be taken up by the League in 2026.
Perhaps the League could have attracted a larger audience if we’d focused on “recreation”?
One comment from the League’s leadership concerned the cost of renting the South Conference Room, and the suggestion that the group find a less expensive space to rent. The Ross Aragon Community Center charges $35 an hour for the South Conference Room, but I believe Town-sponsored events — such as the PARC gathering? — do not pay the hourly fee.
I was serving on the Pagosa Springs Arts Council back in 1999 when a group of local activists began promoting the idea of a community center on Hot Springs Boulevard. As the idea unfolded, the cost of operating the multi-use center would be financed largely by user fees — sports teams, art exhibits and classes, yoga and exercise classes, a Teen Center, theatre groups, fundraising events, and one major group — the Pagosa Senior Center occupying much of the northwest wing.
The non-profit Center was built after getting input from local groups, but the financial model proved to be unrealistic. Once the user fees were established, the Center’s leadership soon found themselves with a mostly-empty facility.
The Teen Center, located in the southwest corner of the building, was one of the first ideas to bite the dust. Then the Arts Council bowed out. Theatre groups continued using the better equipped High School Auditorium. For a few years, the Center staff worked hard to develop their own events, but eventually, the Town government took over the mortgage payments and staffing costs, and the Center became part of the Town Recreation Department.
As far as I can tell, nearly all of the activities at the Community Center are currently managed by Archuleta Seniors Inc. — the non-profit group that took over operations of the Senior Center about a dozen years ago.
I’m thinking about these issues this morning after looking through the PARC survey of the community.
In particular, I noticed a few specific 33 slides that were shared on December 10. (You can download the full slide deck here.)
Here are a couple of those slides:
Looking at these charts, you might conclude that the residents of Archuleta County have nothing better to do than recreate. And that makes sense, if you consider that the majority of the people who took this (non-scientific) survey were recreationalists, and if you consider the relative shortage of other types of activities that you might find in a big city environment.
Here are two more slides, dealing with a wish for more outdoor and indoor activities:
I found these slides interesting because, when asked about the desire for more recreation amenities — and assuming that these survey respondents are mostly active recreationalists — less than 25% of them perceived a need for most of the suggested enhancements.
I read this data as evidence that our community is relatively satisfied with the opportunities our community offers.
Then we come to the question: who should pay for these enhancements?
If new facilities or programs were developed, about 75% of the respondents felt that the costs ought to be funded either mostly or 100% through user fees.
About 25% felt the community as a whole ought to pay most of the costs through taxes, with user fees paying the remainder.
The next slide mentioned a Special Recreation District covering the PARC boundaries.
