Photo: Archuleta School District Superintendent Rick Holt explains why recent dramatic property tax increases in Archuleta County didn’t benefit our school district, due to the way Colorado funds education. November 14, 2024.
At the Tuesday, December 2 “listening session” hosted by the Archuleta School District (ASD) Board of Education, the Board listened to testimony from a dozen citizens, centered upon the basic idea that our existing Middle School and Elementary School are hopelessly beyond repair, and need to be abandoned and replaced with a new PreK-8 school.
It’s a complex issue. But the question under consideration by the Board, and addressed by the audience on Tuesday, was relatively simple. Should ASD plan to build these new facilities adjacent to the Pagosa Springs High School, in downtown, or on a vacant 37-acre parcel uptown, owned by ASD and adjacent to the Vista mobile home park?
The ASD Board and staff, sitting at fabric-draped tables, mainly listened quietly to the sometimes-lengthy speeches, except when the speakers asked questions.
Several of the concerned audience members, stepping up to the podium, noted that they were wearing two or more hats. This was a metaphor, of course, indicating that the witness might have conflicting interests about which location would best serve them personally — or the community as a whole — due to the person’s status and position.
I think I was the only person in the room wearing an actual hat. A baseball cap, to be exact.
But I also wore multiple metaphorical hats when I offered my testimony on Tuesday.
I currently serve on the Pagosa Peak Open School board of directors. As a District-authorized school, facility needs at PPOS would likely be included in a property tax increase proposal, if ASD moves forward with a ballot measure.
I’ve also been serving on the ASD Master Plan Advisory Committee since it began meeting last January.
Additionally, my family and I pay about 50% of our annual property taxes to the School District.
I also write editorials for the Daily Post. My main goal as Daily Post editor is to share “the rest of the story” — to use a phrase made popular, long ago, by radio personality Paul Harvey. To share “the rest of the story” that our local governments might be hesitant to share with the taxpayers and voters.
In his famous 16th-century treatise, The Prince, political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli proposed that lying to the public, and other that immoral acts, are typically necessary to achieve political outcomes. It’s obvious that this theory about the necessity of immoral acts is alive and well in 2025, and even popular among certain sectors of the American public.
But when we get together in a library, in a middle school, in a small rural town like Pagosa Springs, we want to believe that everyone is speaking truthfully and from the heart, no matter how many hats they may be wearing.
During 2024, the Archuleta School District staff hosted several community presentations, purportedly to ‘take the community’s temperature’ around the idea of a property tax increase, either for renovating our existing school buildings or building new school buildings. I attended a couple of those presentations, where Superintendent Rick Holt shared financial information about ASD’s current conditions. One of the graphics implied that the District had a choice of two possible directions:
1. Repair and upgrade our existing buildings.
2. Abandon our existing school facilities and build one or more new schools, somewhere.
Either of these options would require the community’s support, in the form of increased property taxes.
At those 2024 presentations, Mr. Holt wanted the audience to express a preference.
Repair and upgrade? Or totally new facilities?
Although Mr. Holt and his staff had plenty of numbers to share, they did not present the estimated costs for these two options. Presumably, very different costs.
Did Mr. Holt truly expect a valid response, without providing a key piece of information? If the community was going to pay for one of these options with increased property taxes, they might want to know the price of each option.
Nevertheless, the general audience response was “New facilities”. My impression, as an observer and participant, was that most of the audience had come to these presentations with their minds already made up, and that the cost of the two options was, to those particular audiences, immaterial.
Here we are now, a year later, and the cost for a new PreK-8 facility has been roughly estimated at $125 million. As we will hear later, the ASD Board is not yet clear about what that number includes. Does it include site development? New athletic fields? New gymnasiums? New stoplights required on the highway?
Here we are, a year later, and we still have not heard realistic cost estimates for repair and upgrade of the existing facilities. It appears that the “remodel and upgrade” option was never really under consideration.
One aspect to this complex issue has received minimal consideration, so far, although it was referenced (somewhat obliquely) during the Tuesday “listening session”.
What happens to the two rather massive facilities — the existing Middle and Elementary school facilities — that ASD plans to abandon?
If I were planning to abandon my existing house to move into a new dwelling, the future utilization of my old house and property would be of crucial importance to me, considering the sizable investment I’ve made over the past 30 years.
When a school district plans to abandon two centrally located, multi-million-dollar downtown facilities…
… the future utilization of those facilities certainly ought to be a major part of the conversation.
Just my opinion.