I find it useful to write about things I don’t fully understand. The physical act of writing, I find, sometimes opens conceptual windows onto surprising vistas.
But I will be the first to admit that, after serving for four years on the San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) board, and many additional years attending their board meetings and writing about the District as a journalist, I don’t fully understand that board’s behavior.
My intention this week, however, is to write about “Asking the Community for Advice”. Something SJWCD has not done.
It’s something most local government boards rarely do.
As mentioned earlier in Part Three of this editorial series, the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) board of directors decided on December 12 to officially offer the Running Iron Ranch for sale. This decision follows a previous decision by the San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) board to unanimously reject an offer from an apparently qualified buyer to help them build a reservoir on the Ranch.
Disclosure: I currently serve as a volunteer PAWSD board member, but this editorial reflects only my own personal opinions and not necessarily the opinions of the PAWSD board or staff.
Neither of these decisions — the decision by SJWCD to reject an offer of assistance, and the decision by PAWSD to sell the Ranch — resulted from an effort to involve the general public in offering advice. Both decisions were made immediately following lengthy closed-door executive session with attorneys, during which the general public was excluded.
Does this lack of public involvement, in what might be a crucial long-range decision, reflect government incompetence? Or does it reflect thoughtful decisions about our community’s future, made by very small groups of concerned board members?
Or… maybe we had we already heard from “the community”… and some of us just weren’t listening.
Here’s a paragraph from a three-page commentary shared with the PAWSD board on December 12 by local high school teacher and SJWCD consultant Josh Kurz:
Regardless of our stance on the reservoir, we need to engage the public before we make a major decision about our community’s water future. Although there was community involvement in the 2012 Water Supply Community Work Group, I believe our community has changed and new residents need to be engaged. I recently asked my students how many of them were born in Pagosa. To my surprise, very few of my high school students were born here, which means many of our families that live here today were not here in 2012.
Mr. Kurz here references “the 2012 Water Supply Community Work Group” (WSCWG) which published its recommendations in 2011. This was a group of about two dozen community members — including business owners, realtors, retirees, at least one attorney and a couple of journalists (myself included) — who spent about a year researching the water supplies in Archuleta County, to recommend the best location for a future reservoir. The research looked at projected population growth, water demand, existing infrastructure, and interestingly enough, discovered massive water losses within the PAWSD pipeline system that PAWSD had never revealed to the public. (PAWSD has been attempting to find and fix those leaks since 2011, but has found it challenging to get ahead of the problem.)
The WSCWG volunteers concluded in 2011, after a year of research, that the Dry Gulch Reservoir was not a good idea, and was not necessary. You can download the report here.
Some of the folks who researched and wrote the WSCWG report are no longer with us. Some have died or moved away. Other people have moved into the community.
But have the facts changed? If PAWSD organized a new volunteer work group — representing similarly diverse segments of the community — and they spent another year researching our water resources, would they come to different conclusions?
Would we get contrary advice… from the community?
Depends on how the asking is done.
A decade ago, the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners wanted to know how the taxpayers felt about the formation of a “recreation district”. Archuleta already has a number of special districts that can collect tax revenues, including the Upper San Juan Health Service District (hospital and ambulance service); Pagosa Fire Protection District; Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District… and several more.
Some Colorado towns and counties have established “recreation districts” that collect tax revenues and provide a variety of parks and recreation services. This map indicates about 40 such districts.
In YEAR, Archuleta County and the Town of Pagosa Springs wanted to know how the taxpayers felt about the formation of a recreation district, so they placed a couple of ‘advisory measures’ on the ballot. The measures did not commit the taxpayers to anything; it merely asked their opinions.
When the results came in, the voters spoke clearly. Yes, they wanted a recreation district. But no, they did not want to pay additional taxes to fund the district.
That killed the idea, because the Town and County did not want to fund the district out of their own private budgets. (Actually, public budgets.)
But this was, in my opinion, a great way to hear from the community, if you wanted a large number of people to weigh in.
Do we really want a large number of people to weigh in, on the Running Iron Ranch controversy?