At around the age of four, I fell in love with dinosaurs — and in particular, with Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Nothing would have thrilled me more than to see a live Tyrannosaurus stalking through my neighborhood, ripping the roofs off the tacky suburban houses in my neighborhood.
Of course, I understood, even at that young age, that Tyrannosaurus could not help his nature. In order to survive, he had to devour smaller, helpless dinosaurs.
What can we say? He was a tyrant.
The headline for this editorial series was carefully considered. I truly feel, that the Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board is a well-meaning group of volunteers who want Pagosa to have a vibrant tourist industry.
Also, I truly feel, that the vibrant tourist industry has been slowly devouring our community, but cannot perceive its own tyrannical nature.
During a lengthy debate at the September 5 meeting of the Pagosa Springs Town Council, a few of the Council members seemed capable of discerning the tyrannical nature of “The Tourist Economy”.
The debate concerned a proposal from the Tourism Board to begin stashing away tax revenues in a ‘trust’ account, for the purpose of eventually funding (or helping to fund) a public or semi-public “Event Center”.
No details were shared about the cost to build, maintain, and operate such a facility… only a very few vague suggestions developed by consultants from Wisconsin-based Place Dynamics, who proposed that such a facility might be used for business conferences and meetings, and celebratory banquets.
Looking at these numbers, I am forced to conclude that the consultants understand very little about the limited number of large events that typically take place in our community. But maybe, when you are an out-of-town consultant, a thorough understanding is not necessary.
I’m thinking back, this morning, to a process I participated in during the late 1990s. A small group of volunteers had determined that Pagosa Springs needed a “Community Center’ to handle all of the events we were going to be trying to offer over the next several decades. I was, at the time, secretary of the Pagosa Springs Arts Council and the founder of Pagosa Pretenders Family Theater, so I had a chance to be interviewed by the out-of-town consultant hired to help design the Center.
The consultant eventually designed spaces to accommodate a wide range of classes, meetings, banquets, performances, and community gatherings of all types. To hear the presentations, the Community Center was going to become a primary center for Pagosa’s cultural life. Some people were especially excited about the creation of a new teen center.
When the volunteer group was unable to elicit financial support from the business community and from citizens at large, the Town government funded the facility using a “lease purchase agreement”, and handed over the financial oversight to a private non-profit organization — while paying all the employee wages from the Town budget.
A facility director was hired to coordinate all of the groups who would be clamoring to make use of the facility.
The director quickly realized that almost no community groups could afford the rents being charged, and the director’s job became a rather desperate effort to stage Town-organized events in order to fund the facility. Within a few months, the teen center closed its doors, due to a consistent lack of interest from Pagosa teens. The classrooms designed for community art classes have remained consistently underutilized, as has the kitchen in the multi-purpose room.
20 years later, the Ross Aragon Community Center has a struggling senior center and a couple of occupied offices in the north wing, plus occasional yoga classes, basketball practices, and pickleball games in the south wing.
Financially, the Community Center has been pretty much a failure. Socially as well.
But let’s not be too pessimistic! The Town Council actually had a lively debate last week about funding a future “Event Center” using Tourism Board tax revenues, before voting 4-3 to support the Event Center funding. The initial work would involve visits by Tourism Board members (presumably to be reimbursed) to visit existing event centers in the region.
The approved resolution states that the Council can reverse the decision, and pull the $500,000 back out of the trust account, if necessary, in the future.
Council member Leonard Martinez brought up the struggles reportedly coming from tribal casinos:
“The concern that I’ve had about this, since the beginning, is based on the data available, about what’s happening to the gaming tribes and the venues they’ve created — the event centers — and the financials have really been flipped. So, that has still not been looked into. I’m still not supportive of this…
“Coming out of our strategic planning process, the number one issue, for the past five years, has been our sanitation department. And no money has been set aside for that. So I have a hard time taking money out of reserves when we haven’t yet had the discussion about our number one issue…”
Council member Mat deGraaf:
“I realize we’re very early in the process discussion, but a few years ago, when we really started looking at workforce housing, we got a verbal commitment from the Tourism Board that they were going to allocate funds towards that. So can you speak to the funds that are being allocated towards workforce housing — that are tourism driven?”
Tourism Director Jennie Green noted that $500,000 had been allocated by the Tourism Board, in the 2022 budget, to assist with workforce housing. “The Town Council didn’t specifically ask for any funds to be allocated towards housing in the 2023 budget.” The Tourism Board budget was approved, by the Town Council and by the Board of County Commissioners, without any housing allocation.
We are now in another budget season. Perhaps housing will again be considered, in the 2024 budget?
Mayor Shari Pierce:
“My biggest question is: are we putting the cart before the horse?”
[Or, before the dinosaur?]
“…I just have a hard time with it, because there are so many impacts from tourism, on our community…”