Photo: A well-attended ‘Community Forum’ hosted by the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners and staff at the PLPOA Clubhouse, April 13, 2026.
We’ve touched lightly on an April 21 presentation to the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners by Bill Trimarco, Pagosa representative for Wildfire Adapted Partnership, concerning two pathways towards earning exemptions from the newly-adopted Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code (CWRC). That code will apply to new building construction and large remodeling projects, beginning July 1. As we heard from Mr. Trimarco, neither of the two exemption pathways sound terribly practical or useful.
And in fact, we might ask why the Archuleta BOCC is even interested in helping people earn exemptions from a building code meant to protect the entire community.
If we ask that question, the answer is easy to state. Building codes are generally intended to make structures safer, more durable, and more energy-efficient. Some codes are also meant to help protect neighboring properties, and the CWRC is one such set of requirements.
But building codes generally increase the cost of construction. Safety, durability and energy-efficiency come with a price tag. In the case of the CWRC, the Archuleta County commissioners have expressed concerns about the CWRC requirements causing housing and commercial construction to become even more unaffordable than they already are in Pagosa Springs. And they have, indeed, become relatively unaffordable, for many reasons.
Reports from analysts have suggested that the CWRC will increase the cost of construction by 10%-20%.
However…
At a recent Community Forum hosted by the BOCC at the PLPOA Clubhouse on April 13, we heard a somewhat different analysis from Archuleta County Building Official Randy Betts.
Mr. Betts conducted a survey of local contractors and asked them to estimate the additional costs that would likely be generated by the new requirements in the CWRC.
He received information from six local builders who had recently completed a new construction project, and the analysis suggested that highest cost increase seen was about $1,000. Considering that a typical new home in Pagosa Springs costs $500,000, an increase of $1,000 is not close to 10%. It’s not even close to 1%.
“Most of [the building contractors] are already doing the things we need to do,” Betts told the audience.
When he reached out to other jurisdictions around the state that have not been as proactive as Archuleta County in regularly adopting building codes, he said, those jurisdictions were estimating building cost increases of 5% to 20% .
“When I’m talking to our building community here on a daily basis, we’re just not seeing those cost hikes,” Betts said.
Thankfully, our construction industry has long since increased the cost of building to unaffordable levels, so the CWRC will have minimal impact.
The audience also heard from County Sheriff Mike Le Roux. He noted that the Pagosa Fire Protection District serves about 330 square miles of privately owned property, while the Sheriff’s Office is charged with fighting wildfires on about 220 square miles outside the Fire District. (The majority of land in Archuleta County is either federal or tribal.)
He said the Sheriff’s Office fights fires “from a wildland fire point of view, not from a structure fire point of view.”
“When you live outside the Pagosa Fire Protection District and you don’t pay a mill levy for their 24/7 response, they may respond to your fire… and they do a good job of doing that as a mutual aid function… but they are not obliged to respond…
“So it’s important for us, because [the County] has limited resources to respond to that… when you look at some of the catastrophic fires like the Paradox Fire, the Black Forest Fire, the Marshall Fire — often times, the ‘forest’ isn’t the issue. It’s the structures that cause the most issues, because the synthetic fuels burns hotter and longer, and can’t be extinguished quite as easily with normal suppression tactics.
“So anything we can do to harden our community and protect those further afield, I’m in support of.”
“Hardening our community” is no doubt easier said than done. And no doubt, will be more expensive than we prefer.
In fact, “hardening our community” might be, for all practical purposes, impossible.
Let’s consider some numbers, for example. According to the Colorado State Demographers Office (SDO) records for 2024, Archuleta County has 10,150 housing units. About 3,955 of those are classified as “vacant”… meaning, presumably, vacation rentals or second homes.
Reportedly, there are about 5,350 vacant parcels in Archuleta County.
The SDO reported 141 building permits in 2024. The CWRC is intended to help Archuleta County “harden our community” with fire-resistant building materials, and it applies to all new construction and all major remodels.
I think we can safely estimate that of the 10,150 housing units in Archuleta County, at least 10,000 of them were not built with fire-resistant materials or construction methods. Speaking for myself, the framing and siding of my 120-year-old house downtown is almost entirely local pine. Very dry local pine, at this point.
At the current 2024 rate of new home construction — about 140 new dwellings per year — it will take approximately 70 years until half of our homes are built according to CWRC guidelines. The other half — if they are still around in 70 years — will still be highly flammable.
According to County Sheriff Mike Le Roux, the CWRC is a step in the right direction. According to County Building Official Randy Betts, our construction industry is, for the most part, already building to the specifications in the CWRC.
According to Wildfire Adapted Partnership representative Bill Trimarco, seeking exemptions from the CWRC is not a practical solution to higher construction costs.
Mr. Trimarco also noted that adoption of the CWRC might — might — help mitigate our rapidly escalating insurance costs in Colorado. (Personally, I have my doubts about that outcome.)
Now that we’ve clarified those issues, I think I’ll go fill up my gas tank.