Yesterday in Part One, I mentioned a ten-part editorial I started writing in late December 2020 — “One Hell of a Year”.
For most people, I suspect, the “Hell” part of 2020 was directly related to the COVID crisis. Isolated at home with your husband or wife and maybe your kids… wearing masks, or not wearing masks… semi-functional Zoom meetings… contemplating your mortality.
Wondering who was telling the truth?
That Daily Post editorial series in 2020 was focused, however, on a particular series of events here in Pagosa Springs, related to my getting fired from my volunteer position on the Town of Pagosa Springs’ Planning Commission by the Town Council…
…and a political effort to protect my community from a crazy proposal by the Springs Resort and property owner Jack Searle, to provide them with $79 million in local tax subsidies to pay for a Resort expansion. That effort involved petitioning a Home Rule Charter amendment onto the Town’s ballot, to allow the voters to weigh in on the Springs Resort proposal. Five of my friends were involved in helping to circulate the petitions, and the voters approved the change by a 3-to-1 margin.
I will never know for sure if that political effort — an effort to protect my community from government-and-private-developer overreach — was behind the Town Council’s decision to remove me from the Planning Commission.
Likely, the firing was also related to my efforts to get the Planning Commission to follow the law. You can read about those efforts in different editorial series from 2020: “How to Get Fired from a Volunteer Job.” Governments don’t always like to follow the law, even when they’ve written the laws.
Yes, 2020 was a hell of a year, on several accounts. A hell of a year for many of us.
2025 was another hell of a year for many of us, especially for those with Spanish surnames who are now incarcerated in warehouses, separated from their families, deported to unfamiliar countries.
And especially for federal employees and federally-funded research programs, and U.S. foreign aid workers, and young people and their parents struggling with gender transitions, farmers going out of business, veterans without medical services, and everybody now paying higher prices, especially for housing.
But was it a hell of a year, here in Pagosa Springs, in 2025? Mostly, it seemed like people were getting along pretty well.
Mostly.
In January, the Archuleta School District started holding meetings of its Master Plan Advisory Committee, with the goal of having the committee advise the School Board on whether we need new school buildings. The meetings were led by Colorado Springs-based RTA Architects, and it was obvious (to me, at least) from the very first meeting that the consultants were presenting biased data to the hand-picked committee, resulting in a predetermined recommendation: to abandon two existing and serviceable existing schools — the Elementary School and the Middle School — and try and convince the voters to pass a $200 million property tax increase for a new K-8 facility.
We will learn more about that plan tomorrow, Wednesday, January 7, at the School Board meeting at 6pm at the Middle School library. You can download the agenda here.
Also in January, our two water districts — Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) and San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) — were engaged in a lawsuit concerning a jointly-owned ranch two miles north of downtown. The lawsuit is ongoing, with local taxpayers and ratepayers funding both sides of the fight.
Disclosures: I currently serve as a volunteer on Pagosa Peak Open School board of directors. PPOS could conceivably benefit from a future school district bond issue approved by the voters. I also serve as a volunteer on the PAWSD board of directors, and I voted in favor of initiating a lawsuit in 2024 to determine if PAWSD has the legal right to sell the Running Iron Ranch, at its sole discretion.
In February, the community began to hear details about the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) plans to rip up about nine blocks of Highway 160 through the downtown business district, as part of a two-year project to replace the failing asphalt surface with a more durable concrete surface. By December, the project was reportedly about half completed. We also heard that most downtown businesses were suffering with reduced incomes during Year One.
As a result of the highway construction, the Town canceled plans for the annual Fourth of July Parade, and has no plans to have a parade in 2026. The Archuleta Board of County Commissioners, however, recently announced their intentions to organize and fund a July 4th parade.
In March, the Pagosa Lakes Property Owners Association (PLPOA) members overwhelmingly voted down a proposed $2 million gymnasium that would have cost each property owner $255 as a special assessment. The vote was 71% opposed, 29% in favor. Following the vote, I calculated — through a series of estimates and demographic guesses — that about 20% of the households within the PLPOA subdivisions include children, suggesting that very few households without children had voted to fund the PLPOA gymnasium project.
We have to wonder whether the School District has realistic expectations about voters approving a $200 million bond issue for new schools.
Also in March, a 100-acre development project was presented to the Town Planning Commission. The Montrose, Colorado-based Dragoo family was proposing a mixed-use development across the highway from the City Market shopping center, to be called ‘Pagosa West’ — similar to the nearby (and largely vacant) mixed-use Aspen Village subdivision built back in 2006. When the project was brought to the Planning Commission, the Town government had already acquired a grant to help the Dragoos build an 80-unit apartment complex on the property. But when the Planning Commission heard the unanimous opposition from the public, and looked closely the proposed plans, the Commission sent the Dragoos and their architects back to the drawing board.
The Dragoos returned to the Planning Commission in October with a new plan — that included almost no information about what the final development would look like. At the public hearing, the Planning Department staff told the commissioners that they didn’t need to see an actual plan — which was (in the opinion of many) an obvious violation of the requirements in the Town Land Use and Development Code. The plan-that-wasn’t-a-plan was nevertheless approved by the Commissioners.
After a group of citizen activists threatened to appeal the decision to the Town Council, the Dragoos withdrew their application. The fate of the project remains uncertain at this point.
In April…
…what did happen in April?
Read Part Three… tomorrow…