Students at Pagosa Springs Elementary School. Courtesy MyPagosaSchools.com
Many Americans feel like the spin and outright lying in politics has gotten worse in recent decades…
— from the Harvard Gazette, December 2024.
I spent some time last week, reviewing the CitizenForASD.org website… and speaking as a person who has been following this two-year process rather closely, I found some of the information to be truthful and accurate.
But we expect ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation’ during a political campaign.
Of course, this is a “campaign website”… so we would not expect to hear “both sides of the story.” All of the information provided on this website is carefully crafted to encourage a “Yes” vote on the $156.5 million bond issue that will appear on Archuleta County ballots when they arrive in your mailbox.
And of course, there are always two sides to a story. Do we want voters to have access to both sides, as they consider whether to impose the largest public debt in Archuleta County history on themselves, on their neighbors, and on local businesses?
If so, where will voters get the “other side of the story” regarding Ballot Issue 5A?
Let’s start, for example, with this information related to repairing and upgrading our existing school facilities, presented by CitizensForASD.org. “The Assessment” was provided by Colorado-Springs-based consultants RTA Architects in January 2025:
Ouch. $88 million is a pretty darn big number to cover the deferred maintenance in three functioning school buildings. And the architects at RTA told us that the cost of fixing “deficiencies” would increase by 8 percent annually.
Lisa Scott, campaign manager for Citizens For ASD, shared this “$88 million” number in a letter to the Pagosa Springs SUN on September 10. From that letter:
Our elementary and middle school buildings have significant issues that will cost more than $88 million to tackle and will not address other concerns that just cannot be fixed.
Sadly, this is disinformation. The “$88 million” figure came from a January 2025 presentation by RTA Architects, the Colorado-Springs-based architects who would no doubt love to design an expensive new facility for Archuleta County.
I was a member of the Master Plan Advisory Committee (MPAC) when we first heard the above estimates presented by RTA Architects. A few hours of research, on my part, revealed that these figures had been greatly exaggerated, so I expressed my concerns about the disinformation to Superintendent Rick Holt, and to MPAC chair Lisa Scott — and I offered to present my findings to the MPAC group, so that my fellow committee members could hear ‘both sides of the story’.
Based on RTA’s own spreadsheets, my research revealed that the numerous “urgent” repairs they identified — needed within five years — would actually cost around $14.7 million… not the $29.0 million RTA claimed.
I was never invited to make my presentation, in spite of the fact that RTA Architects had clearly provided disinformation to the MPAC group.
A year and a half later, ASD Chief Operations Officer Jason Taylor presented a report to the School Board, with his estimate of the “urgent” repairs needed at the Elementary and Middle School buildings over the next 10 years. His estimate — as accurately reported in the Pagosa Springs SUN — was $17.4 million, between those two existing campuses…
…to keeping the buildings “limping along”, he said. (Mr. Taylor did not define what “limping along” means. Perhaps the buildings been “limping along” for the past 30 years, for example?)
From the Pagosa Springs SUN:
As I recall, Ms. Scott was in attendance at the August 5 presentation by Mr. Taylor, and clearly heard him estimate the necessary repairs, over the next 10 years, at $17.4 million.
But even if she wasn’t at that meeting, I personally sat down with Ms. Scott 18 months ago and showed her how the fiction-laden spreadsheets from RTA Architects had grossly exaggerated the cost of maintaining the Elementary School and Middle School.
Ms. Scott has the audacity, 18 months later, to publicly claim that the RTA estimates of “$88 million” are in some way related to reality… when ASD’s own highly qualified staff has put the number at $17.4 million. That’s disinformation, plain and simple — the spin and outright lying that has become so prevalent in U.S. politics.
Ms. Scott asserted in her same public letter to the SUN that our existing facilities are in “dismal condition”.
I’d like to draw your attention to ballot proposal #5A: proposing a solution to the current dismal condition of the elementary and middle schools to build a new PreK – 8th grade school on land owned by the school district…
I have been inside Pagosa Springs Elementary and Middle School on numerous occasions in recent years. The schools are, in my humble opinion, as well maintained as any government buildings in Archuleta County, and as well maintained as many businesses and homes in our community. In no sense of the word are those buildings in “dismal condition”.
To say so is not only more disinformation… it’s also, in my opinion, an insult to the school district maintenance staff.
Not only are our existing buildings in decent shape, and reasonably well-maintained… they’re continuing to serve the important educational purpose for which they were constructed, as evidenced by the fact that all five of our ASD schools have been ranked “Performance Plan” — the highest ranking given by the Colorado Department of Education.
Simply stated, Ballot Measure 5A asks us to put our community $156.5 million in debt, for a “problem” that can be addressed for a fraction of that amount. I personally believe Archuleta County taxpayers would gladly step up to help ASD fund necessary repairs and safety upgrades to our existing buildings. But we have not been given that option.
The real problem that needs fixing? Disinformation.