The local Pagosa newspaper has been sharing some stories, lately, about a proposed $6.5 million tax increase proposed by Archuleta County. And also, some people have submitted letters to the editor about the issue. Some of people seem to be against the idea.
I think people don’t really understand the power of higher taxes.
100 years ago, taxes were rare in Pagosa Springs. As rare as automobiles, for instance, or tourists.
Almost as rare as silk top hats. (Remember, this was ‘cowboy country’.)
Which is not to say, there were no taxes at all. Property taxes had already arrived, but back in those days, property in Pagosa Springs generally wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. If you wanted a 100-acre ranch, you could probably pick one up for $100, with the cows thrown in for good measure. So your taxes on that 100-acre ranch were fairly minimal.
Thankfully, things have changed.
Of course, 100 years ago, it cost almost nothing to run the county government, because there were only a couple of major public roads, and no one drove on them, except in wagons. The one-room jail was typically occupied by the same town drunk. There were only a dozen automobiles in the whole town, and they were mostly for show.
The county commissioners were basically volunteers and, like the automobiles, county government was mostly for show.
The gas tax hadn’t yet appeared (it didn’t arrive until 1932), and neither had state sales tax (arriving in 1935). The Colorado income tax finally blossomed into its full glory in 1937, but here in Pagosa, a lot of people weren’t quite sure what the word ‘income’ meant. Mostly, the local economy consisted mainly of bartering livestock for potatoes and moonshine from the San Luis Valley.
These unfortunate facts are rarely talked about in polite society, nowadays. For whatever reason.
Suffice it to say that local governments, 100 years ago, had shoestring budgets, but no one expected them to do much anyway.
The dreadful lack of tax income naturally had a huge impact on the community, in the sense of not having much impact at all. The hills and meadows were covered by the same boring landscape of trees, flowers, and wild animals that had been there for thousands of years.
The San Juan River — which is nowadays often filled with happy, squealing people in inner tubes — offered little in the way of excitement, other than schools of native trout, which people were forced to eat because ‘catch and release’ had not yet been invented.
Cows and sheep eating grass. The occasional pig, rolling in mud.
The ‘downtown’ barely existed. A little drug store that also served as a liquor store. A hardware store. A couple of bars. A Metropolitan Hotel with ‘relaxing mineral baths’ in the basement and rooms available by the hour upstairs.
A couple of barber shops.
I hope I’m painting an accurate picture for you, here, of a town with very little to offer in the way of socially-acceptable activities.
But look at us now!
Those formerly-boring hills and meadows are now fairly covered with $450,000 suburban homes, blessed with homeowners association rules that prohibit clotheslines.
A Sonic Drive-in. A McDonald’s. Two Subway sandwich shops. Two breweries and seven marijuana dispensaries.
A pickup truck or an SUV in every driveway — maybe both? — and hundreds of miles of roads that will someday be properly maintained.
A downtown fairly bursting with t-shirt shops, where the economy just keeps on pumping even with annoying CDOT construction squeezing the traffic for two years running.
The essential root of this amazing progress? Taxes. Lots of taxes. And also, lots of fees.
The traditional property taxes are still with us, but are now benefiting from a doubling of home valuations since 2015. Gas taxes. Sales taxes. Lodging taxes. Income taxes.
And fees for almost any service the tax-supported government provides.
Is it any wonder we’ve converted a natural paradise into an Economic Paradise?
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.