Photo: A sparsely attended listening session hosted by the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) on June 25 at the County Fairgrounds.
The timing couldn’t have been much worse, as far as the Pagosa Springs economy is concerned, for the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) to tear up the stretch of Highway 160 through downtown Pagosa Springs. But of course CDOT had no way of knowing that the Trump administration was going to seriously shake up the national economy, and cause certain people — people planning vacations, for example — to become unsure of their financial future.
We’ll be discussing how the intersection of these particular changes are affecting the Pagosa tourism industry, as indicated by the somewhat weird discussions at the July 2 Tourism Board meeting.
But first, let’s join a listening session hosted by the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) on June 25 at the County Fairgrounds. The County staff had arranged about 40 chairs for what was expected to be a good size audience, but as can be seen in the photo above, the public turnout was rather meager. The newly-formed Pagosa Lodgers Association was represented by three or four members; also in attendance were a couple of government board members, and two journalists from the local news media were also present, as usual.
The stated purpose of the listening session: to hear ideas from the public about a possible increase to the County Lodgers tax, and where any additional revenues might be used. The Colorado Legislature recently allowed statutory counties (like Archuleta County) to increase their Lodgers Tax rate from 2% to a maximum of 6%, if the voters approve of the increase. The ballot measure would also state how the County would use the funding.
Archuleta County currently collects a 1.9% Lodgers Tax from tourists booking stays within the unincorporated county. The majority of lodging entities out in the county are vacation rentals — STRs, Short-Term Rentals. Currently, those County Lodgers Tax revenues can be used only for tourism marketing.
The percentage, and the uses, could possibly be changed by the voters, as soon as November.
Within the Town’s municipal limits, lodging entities — mainly hotels and motels — collect a 4.9% Lodgers Tax from visitors. The Town is Home Rule, and can use the revenues for any purpose even vaguely related to tourism, as determined by the Town Council. Considering the impacts of tourism on the Pagosa economy, the Council already has a lot of legal flexibility in determining the use of its Lodgers Tax revenues.
As we might expect, the lodging operators in the audience on June 25 were, in general, not big fans of a tax increase, even though Commissioner Veronica Medina reminded them that a 4% tax on a $225 room stay would amount to only $9.
The audience members who were not representing the lodging industry seemed much more supportive of a tax increase, paid only by visitors to the community.
I suggested to the commissioners that we have a question of ‘fairness’ to consider. All the lodging entities within the Town limits are collecting a 4.9% tax, which can cause their rates to be slightly higher than a similar entity out in the county. If the voters were to approve an increase of the County Lodgers Tax to 4.9%, to match the Town tax, this would in essence create a “level playing field”.
I also suggested that a tax increase would allow the visitors to contribute more support to the community they are impacting.
At previous BOCC discussions about this issue, I’ve heard commissioners express support for using a potential Lodgers Tax increase to fund better road maintenance. I personally believe that the biggest problem with the Pagosa Springs economy is, currently, a serious lack of workforce housing…
…but perhaps most of the community thinks substandard roads are a bigger issue… because it impacts them personally?
It’s an interesting debate. Better roads? Or a functioning economy?
Housing seems to be the priority, at the moment, among our state legislators.
At the conclusion of the BOCC listening session, the commissioners thanked the audience for their input and ideas, and briefly discussed how to attract a larger audience to their next listening session. It appears that the BOCC has not yet made a decision about whether to put a Lodgers Tax increase on the November ballot.
In my experience, the best way to attract a large audience is to announce your definite intention to raise taxes.
One of the constant themes in local halls of government, over the past 25 years, has been “diversification of the economy”. Everyone recognizes the disadvantages of a tourist economy — an unpleasant overload of strangers during certain summer months vs. the dearth of business during a large part of the year; the generally low wages paid by the tourist industry; and the negative impacts on housing availability caused by the vacation rental industry.
But no one has yet figured out how to make “diversification” happen. So our local governments keep throwing money at tourism.
If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always gotten.
— Jessie Potter, featured speaker at the seventh annual Woman to Woman conference, 1981.
With that quote in mind, we can get back to the July 2 meeting of the Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board, starting with the presentation by the consultant from Blue Room, the firm that has been analyzing visitor data on behalf of the Tourism Board and staff. As mentioned in Part One, one of the standard methods for tracking the tourist industry is to aggregate booking data from the larger lodging entities in the community, but over the past decade or so, the vast majority of Pagosa lodging operators have consistently refused to provide booking data to the Tourism Board and staff.
So VisitPagosaSprings.com and Blue Room have been using ‘Lodgers Tax revenues’ as a proxy data source, knowing that it doesn’t accurately reflect bookings, and knowing that its consistently out-of-date. Too little, and too late.
Perhaps the newly-formed Pagosa Lodgers Association has a cure?
And perhaps they have very good reasons for wanting to do things differently, in 2025?