Not everyone is willing to stand up in front of a crowd of hostile property owners, and attempt to answer their questions. So my hat is off to the Pagosa Lakes Property Owners Association (PLPOA) board, committee members, and staff at the January 8 informational meeting at the PLPOA Clubhouse, for their willingness to field every questions posed to them — and to answer most of them.
I use the term “hostile” because, it seemed to me — as an outside observer — that most of the property owners who posed questions about the proposed $2 million gymnasium project at the informational meeting were opposed to the project and doubtful that the PLPOA Board and staff were being fully transparent about the immediate and long-term costs of the proposed project.
As mentioned in Part One, about 100 Association members attended the meeting in-person, and another 100 listened online. A few of the online participants were allowed to ask questions, as were all members of the in-person audience. The meeting lasted 3 hours, until every audience question had been addressed.
Apparently, the PLPOA leadership underestimated the interest in this pending Association vote — whether to approve a $255 one-time special assessment to help fund the proposed gymnasium — because the Zoom app apparently maxxed out at 100 participants, although additional members were hoping to join.
The full meeting video is available online at the PLPOA website.
Although I am not one of the approximately 8,400 PLPOA owners who will be allowed to vote on this proposal — and thus will likely never use the facility (if approved) nor pay the $255 assessment — I have considerable experience attending government meetings and watching governments share misinformation and be less than fully transparent.
I also happen to serve as a volunteer board member for Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District and for Pagosa Peak Open School, our local district-authorized charter school. So I understand how it feels to be on the “governing” side of the dais.
My impression, speaking as an investigative reporter with a special interest in good governance, is that the PLPOA leadership has made a remarkably thorough and transparent effort at informing the public about the proposed gymnasium, and especially, about the “positive side of the story.” Government leaders (and Association leaders) tend to see their job in terms of defending their goals and decisions. It’s the public’s job to question those goals and challenge those decisions.
Most government leaders — and homeowners association leaders — naturally assume that they are making the best possible decisions for the community.
So it was the audience’s job at the January 8 presentation and Q&A to ask the hard questions.
Many of the questions I heard posed at the January 8 meeting were perceptive and deserving of answers. However, many of those questions had been asked previously — and answered previously — on the PLPOA Gymnasium web pages. Here, for example.
One of the audience questions concerned the allotment of votes.
Each of the 4,200 PLPOA member households will be allotted two votes on the gymnasium assessment question. But some of those households own multiple properties in PLPOA, and each property will — if the gym is approved — owe a $255 assessment. So, theoretically, a household that owns six PLPOA properties will get only two votes, but will pay $1,530 in assessments.
This can easily feel “unfair” to such a household.
Some perspective on this question:
I live outside the PLPOA, but within Archuleta County. When the County holds an election, I am entitled to one vote. Even if I own six properties, and pay property taxes on six properties, I am allowed one vote.
Is this unfair?
When America’s Founding Fathers were designing a democratic government to replace rule by the British monarchy, one of the controversies concerned how to allocate voting rights. Some leaders argued that voting rights ought to be based on the amount of property a person owned.
When the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress in 1776, it identified the electorate as property-owning males. The U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1789, and allowed state legislatures retain the power to regulate elections and voting rights under the Tenth Amendment. Most states limited voting to white men who owned property… and some enacted other requirements regarding religion, gender, and race.
New Hampshire was the first state to drop ‘property ownership’ as a requirement to vote, in 1792. In 1856, North Carolina is the last state to end property requirements for white male suffrage, effectively extending voting rights to all white males in the U.S.
Nevertheless, the suffrage tradition in the U.S. was “one white male, one vote”. Owners of multiple properties were still allotted just one vote. Ultimately, people of color and women were granted the right to vote, although some state legislatures continue to seek (and find) ways to discourage voting by people of color.
Thus, the PLPOA gymnasium election, that will begin on January 27 and run through March 1, owes its pattern of ‘voting fairness’ — or ‘unfairness’ — to 250 years of ever-changing American political traditions.
Other questions on the minds of property owners?
Why is the PLPOA leadership proposing to rent out space in the gymnasium to sports teams and other organizations — including, perhaps, the school district — when the Association bylaws prohibit the use of PLPOA amenities by non-PLPOA-members?
If the plan is to allow people from outside PLPOA to use the gym when they belong to a sports team or renting organization, why isn’t the County government paying for the construction?
If a household has no children and no one plays pickleball or other indoor or outdoor adult sports, how does it benefit that household to fund the construction of a community gymnasium?
Those are valid questions.
And this one:
Given the current economy we are all trying to survive in, how can you consciously ask us to foot the bill for an unnecessary wish list of yours?