I can hold the toy ship, and a little toy man! And look… with my tail, I can hold a red fan! I can fan with the fan as I hop on the ball! But that is not all… oh no, that is not all…
— from ‘The Cat in the Hat’ by Dr. Seuss.
Archuleta County has invited the community to participate in a series of “Interactive Community Forums” connected to a planned update to the ‘Community Plan’ — a land use policy document first created in 2001, aimed essentially at defining “guardrails” to control the way property can be used within the unincorporated county…
…with the goal of producing the community we all want. Or at least, the community some of us want.
The next Forum event will be held tonight, Wednesday, March 25 at 5pm at the Springs Resort, Ponderosa Room, hosted by County Commissioner John Ranson.
Like so many systems devised by humans, the Community Plan is plagued by basic contradictions. We want, on the one hand, for Archuleta County to stay the way it is now, without changing too much. We want scenic vistas and secure property values and not too much government interference in our lives. We want freedom, but also government protections and controls.
Meanwhile, we also want Archuleta County to address its significant social problems and financial challenges and infrastructure issues…
That is to say, we want real change, for the better.
In other words, we want our community leaders to be talented jugglers.
Yesterday, in Part Two, I quoted Town of Pagosa Springs Parks & Recreation Director Darren Lewis, speaking to a joint meeting of the Archuleta County commissioners and staff and the Town Council and Town staff on Monday, March 23.
“How do we create more revenue? We all have these projects that are priorities… right? Whether it’s roads, or affordable housing, or recreation. I’m focused on parks and recreation right now…
“You know… quality recreation attracts visitors. It supports local businesses, and positions our community as a desirable destination…”
Although the Monday night presentation by Mr. Lewis and Recreation Supervisor Amanda Gadonski and President of the Pagosa Trails Council, Bob Milford, went on for about half an hour, there’s quite a bit of information, and some potent assumptions, contained in the three simple sentences quoted above.
“How do we create more revenue?”
That’s one of the essential and continuing goals of American government. Creating more revenue. To address roads and sewer systems and housing and schools and libraries and law enforcement and public health and child care and water resources… and of course, recreation.
“We all have these projects that are priorities… right?”
Of all the possible community issues… roads and sewer systems and housing and schools and libraries and law enforcement and public health and child care and water resources… and recreation… which ones are our true priorities?
We know, from Monday’s presentation, that “recreation” is a high priority for Mr. Lewis and Ms. Gadomski and Mr. Milford.
How about the rest of us? What are our priorities?
The Town voters overwhelmingly approved a sales tax increase last year, to address a failing sewer system. So we have that… as evidence of a certain kind of priority.
When the County government put a similar sales tax increase in front of the voters in 2022, to pay for road maintenance, the voters rejected the tax by a significant margin — voting almost 3-to-1 against the tax. So we have that… as a certain kind of evidence.
When, in 2014, the Town government placed a proposed sales tax on the ballot to build a community recreation center, the Town voters rejected the proposal by a similar 3-to-1 margin. Again, a certain kind of evidence.
Where is the heart of Pagosa Springs? What do we, as a citizenry, truly care about?
And do our government officials prioritize expenditures in the manner that ordinary citizens want them prioritized?
As I mentioned in Part Two, I found the joint meeting presentation about recreation to be slightly disturbing — not because I’m opposed to government support of recreation, per se, but because the three people making the presentation came across (in my opinion) like car salesmen, trying to close a deal.
The revenue from this deal would, as we heard, largely go to support the goals of the Pagosa Area Recreation Coalition (PARC)… sponsored by the Pagosa Area Trails Council (PATC), a group dedicated to keeping Pagosa area hiking trails maintained and open.
PATC has, according to their website, cleared thousands of downed trees since 1998.
From their website:
The Pagosa Area Trails Council, formed in 1998 as a 501-C-3 non-profit trail advocacy organization, primary purpose is to promote local trails within the Pagosa area of the San Juan National Forest…
The focus and need of the PATC currently is to address the crisis due to severe spruce beetle die-off in the San Juan National Forest and the resulting downfall that in 2018 closed nearly 50% of the system trails in the SJNF. Approximately 200,000 acres of forest have been affected in the SJNF since 2010 and the resulting dead fall is threatening to close access to our important wilderness and forest access trail systems. It is currently estimated that between 9,500-16,000 trees are down and need to be cleared to maintain that access — a task that the local USFS Pagosa Ranger District has been unable to keep up with.
It is imperative that user groups, trail users and volunteers step up and help. The PATC raised over $30,000 in 2018 to help with this monumental task and several thousand trees were removed in 2018 with the assistance of the Southwestern Conservation Corps (Youthcorps). Much more needs to be done however, many wilderness and non-wilderness trails remain inaccessible and have been so for years…
Because many of these downed trees are in within the Weminuche Wilderness, the crews are not allowed, by federal law, to use chain saws. Thus the appearance of handsaws in the photo above.
I assume that many of the folks in this photo are volunteers. People with a heart for wilderness access.
We do have, of course, the comment about “$30,000”. That’s a drop in the bucket, though, compared to the $3.5 million the Town of Pagosa Springs expects to spend this year to support parks and recreation…