We noted yesterday in Part Two, that various Archuleta County commissioners have been discussing this new administration building for at least ten years, without ever coming up with an actual plan for financing such a project. Since the County doesn’t have $20 million sitting in a reserve bank account, the obvious idea is to put the taxpayers in debt, either through a general obligation bond (which must be voter approved) or through Certificates of Participation (“COPs” which can be imposed on the taxpayers without their approval.)
The most recent significant debt imposed on the County’s taxpayers took the form of COPs. After the voters twice rejected a plan for a new 56-bed County Detention Center — in 2017 and 2018 — Commissioners Alvin Schaaf, Steve Wadley and Ronnie Maez (all Republicans) committed the County taxpayers to $20 million in COP debt and built the jail anyway.
That action had significant impacts on County services — impacts which would not have occurred, had the BOCC succeeded in getting voter approval for a (smaller?) jail project.
A voter-approved general obligation bond increases local property taxes, to pay for the project in question.
A COP agreement does not provide any additional income, but nevertheless creates government debt. In the case of the County detention center, the COPs created an annual $800,000 payment had needed to be redirected from other County services.
According to my research into County budgets, we saw record tourist visits, record home sales and prices, and record sales tax collections during 2021.
When Finance Director Larry Walton presented his recommended 2021 County budget, one of his charts looked like this:
As we see in this chart, the Archuleta BOCC has had mixed feelings about the maintenance of our county roads over the past decade. In 2014, when many of our roads were in bad shape, the BOCC was allocating 15% of its property tax revenues to the Road & Bridge Fund (shown as “R&B” in this chart)
In 2015, the BOCC came to the intelligent conclusion that our county roads were unlikely to improve unless more tax money were dedicated to Road & Bridge, so they changed the formula and bumped up the road funding to 25% of property tax collections.
Then in 2020, the County had to start paying off the Detention Center COPs. They extracted much of that money out of Road & Bridge.
Here’s Commissioner John Ranson, on September 16, explaining why he would vote ‘Nay’ on a proposal to spend $314,000 on engineering and design for a planned County Administration Building.
C. Consideration to Award of Winning Bid for Engineering and Design Services for New Administration Building
A request for proposals for Engineering and Design Services for New Administration Building fielded with a deadline of August 1, 2025. Three (3) proposals were received. This agenda item is for the Board of County Commissioners to award the winning proposals and direct staff to prepare a contract.
Commissioner Ranson:
“Prior to moving to Pagosa Springs in 1996, my background was in public finance. Back in those days, [the finance industry] invented COPs for emergency financing. And all the investment bankers — that’s what we did — figured out, ‘Gosh, we can use this for anything.’ Instead of just emergencies.
“That’s not what [COPs] were designed for.
“Number one, I don’t think this is an emergency, so I said during my campaign that I would not vote for a COP to finance the [administration building] without significant input from the community. And I stand by that.
“I’m going to oppose this. And I’m going to explain why. Not to mention the COP issue, because the County would have to borrow. We’re not in the position to do this with cash.
“I agree with Larry [Larry Allen, who made public comments earlier in the meeting]. It would be a good idea to get some people in various finance industries together to help us, as a task force, to guide us through this decision.
“I’ve met with our interim County Manager [Mike Torres] several times, and our Road & Bridge fund has been deleted from $9 million down to basically nothing, over the past four or five years. This commission is going to have to find ways to increase that, or that situation is just going to get worse. I think that’s the highest priority, that we have in front of us.
“I believe we could buy Talisman [the former Wyndham offices on Talisman Drive now housing numerous County departments] and do improvements, because we would have to do improvements to that building — you know, some doors, fairly minor stuff…
“…I would like to buy that [building]. I think we could buy it and do the improvements for less than $2 million.”
He referred to comments made earlier in the meeting by local taxpayer Larry Allen.
“This is a tough decision for all three of us. I agree with Commissioner Brown, that we will need this [new administration building] at some point, but I also agree with Larry, that if we extract the kind of money that we’re all talking about from this economy over the next four or five years, between the school district, PAWSD, LPEA, and the Town — that’s way too much money to take out of an economy as small as ours.
“It will hurt us. And I think the biggest hurt will be Road & Bridge.
“My vote is not a ‘No’. It’s just ‘Not Now’. I’m glad the County owns the land [in Aspen Village] for future generations. But I think we have to take a back seat to these other entities, that have bigger needs.
“I think Talisman can be a nice place, for however many years. If we put the doors in and do the things we need to do there, I think it will suffice…”
Commissioner Ranson voted ‘Nay’ on purchasing design and engineering for the planned administration building.
But he was outvoted.