I was one of the several hundreds of residents in support of Stop the Rocks, particularly as a resident of the Hatcher neighborhood and member of PLPOA, for which my husband also works. My objections were aligned with those of most others who signed the petition. In addition, however, I have a much more personal objection to the expenses and potential damages incurred by gravel mining for our local roads, which is simply that it would seem to be more cost effective and also greatly improve our community overall if that money were instead spent on asphalt paving the gravel roads constituting our residential streets and repairing the two main existing asphalt roads serving our community.
The dust and the annual grading to which we are subjected outside our front door is extremely annoying, to say nothing of the amateurish snow plowing that scraped up the road dirt and pitched it into our drainage ditch, which we spent a significant amount of money and labor to landscape last year. We were careful to hold the landscaping back for the plow, with a rock border that we placed an appropriate distance back from the road after consulting with Road and Bridge Supervisor and neighbor Tim Hatch.
There seem to be a lot of poor road maintenance decisions made, in general, in our community and many seem to favor certain contractors instead of those of us who live here year round and pay property taxes. Each year since we moved here in May 2018, the traffic has increased, and the vehicles include an increasing number of oversized recreational and construction vehicles that wreak further havoc on road conditions as well as kicking up much more dust by nonresident drivers who don’t care how fast they drive down our otherwise quiet residential streets.
It is to the point where we are considering selling and we expect that if we do market our home, another out of town investor will swoop in and add one more property to the growing roster of short term rentals in our area. The mismanagement by Archuleta County which primarily displays a lack of caring for the people who live and work here is rapidly driving up the number of people who are leaving. We have lost three this year on our block alone — all to “investors”.
While we understood this to be a town largely dependent on tourism when we moved here, we did not expect that meant residents would receive second class treatment versus out of state and out of town visitors and “developers”. We also expected more consideration would be given for developing businesses and support for workers who operate them. This town is doomed with the current BOCC, as Michael Caponnetto of Stop The Rocks rightly asserts. I suggest you throw your weight behind his candidacy, hopefully to replace Alvin Schaaf, about whom I have heard many unsavory things.
Thanks to the Daily Post for its continued service to Archuleta and Pagosa Springs. Without your involvement in, and reporting on, local affairs, we would be in the dark about what is really being done with our taxes, often without allowing us any actual input.
Carol Bronder
Pagosa Springs, CO
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