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New Blood at the Chamber, Part Four |
Bill Hudson | 2/1/10
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Read Part One
When newly-elected Chamber of Commerce board member Paul Boyd walked into Nello’s Bistro, we immediately recognized each other, even though we’d never officially met. I suppose Paul and I have been attending the same events around town, because I don’t believe I’ve met him at Wells Fargo Bank, where he’s served as Senior Commercial Relationship Manager for the past two years. I do my banking at locally-owned Bank of the San Juans.
Nevertheless, I felt quite comfortable sitting with him over coffee and discussing his many ideas about how the Chamber might better serve its members — and the community as a whole — during his upcoming 3-year term on the board.
I admit, though, that I was smiling inside at some of Paul’s suggestions about how Pagosa might develop in the coming years. He somehow reminded me of myself — arriving in this funky rural town in 1993, full of enthusiasm and hope about the ways I might help Pagosa grow and prosper, before I understood just how fiercely independent Pagosa residents tended to me, and how protective they were of “the way it’s always been done around here.”
In my case, my ideas for a better future centered around theater, the arts, and education.
In Paul’s case, his enthusiasms appear to be focused around economic development: bringing in new business ventures, encouraging the Village at Wolf Creek, and creating a greater sense of unity within the business community.
 “This is my first foray into semi-public life,” Paul began. “I’m on the board of directors at PLPOA, but that’s not so much of a public entity as the Chamber; that’s more of a private thing.
“I just wanted to help the community, and see what we can do to stimulate growth. My area of expertise will probably be marketing — helping to bring in companies from the outside that want to relocate somewhere in the mountains. I can’t imagine wanting to locate anywhere better than Pagosa; I mean, this place sells itself.”
It has obviously sold itself to Paul, who worked in the banking industry in Salt Lake City for 25 years.
“I don’t know how long you’ve been here, but I’ve been here two years, and they’ve been the best two years of my life. It’s really a neat place to live and work.”
Paul said he’d like to see the Chamber working closer with the nearly-defunct AEDA, the Archuleta Economic Development Association — a non-governmental group of business owners who have been pushing an economic growth agenda here in Pagosa for a couple of decades, but which recently have seen a decline in membership support.
The AEDA has applied to the Pagosa Springs Town Council and Archuleta Commissioners for additional financial support — can you spell “bail out”? — and it appears now that the AEDA may be absorbed into yet another quasi-government entity: a new Community Development Corporation that will, someday soon, find even more inventive ways to collect and spend tax dollars.
Attracting major companies to a small, isolated town in the Rocky Mountains is not the easiest task around, especially in the midst of the current national recession.
“That’s where the excitement and the challenge is: bringing in companies that want to relocate. And it’s going to be difficult, because not a lot of major companies are in a growth mode now. A lot of them are downsizing.
“But if we find a company that wants to relocate somewhere, I’d like a chance to talk to their CEO or their Facilities Development Manager, or whoever makes the decisions, and bring them out here to take a peek. Because this is a phenomenal place to raise a family.
“If the community doesn’t want a Big Box, I think a good ‘Plan B’ would be to bring in a business processing center, like Discover Card or American Express or State Farm or Farmers Insurance Group. Those kinds of companies have major hubs where they do all of their major processing. And why on earth wouldn’t they want to put one here?”
Good question. In fact, why haven’t they already put one here, one might ask?
Paul spoke about ways the Chamber might collaborate more effectively with other agencies like AEDA and the Town Tourism Committee.
It sounded to me like Paul, with his personal enthusiasm for this mountain community, would be a prefect salesman for Pagosa’s future — if you agree with him that commercial and residential growth is not only desirable, but maybe even a necessity, for a healthy Pagosa Springs.
Paul talked a bit about the Village at Wolf Creek — a proposed ski resort of 8,000 residents at 10,000-foot elevation atop Wolf Creek pass — and his sense that such a development would benefit the businesses in Pagosa Springs.
At one point, Paul and I discussed whether the concept of continuous growth was really the only sensible model for Pagosa’s future.
There’s little doubt that during the past three decades — during which time the population of Archuleta County nearly quadrupled — our local businesses and governments became habituated to unrelenting revenue growth, based on the simple fact that more people lived here, and shopped here, with each passing year.
That growth has slowed considerably in the past three years, and some folks are suggesting that Archuleta County has actually lost population over the past year or so.
The number of new single family home building permits pulled in Archuleta County for 2009 totaled just 41 — including 7 mobile homes — with no new multi-family units built.
That compares with, for example, the year 2000, when 403 single family homes mobile homes, and 14 multi-family structures, were permitted.
So one question Paul Boyd and the newly reformulated Pagosa Springs Chamber of Commerce board of directors — now with four new members on its nine-member board — might ask themselves:
‘Do we focus all our energies for the next few years around trying to bring back the growth patterns of 1990-2006 — or do we embrace a no-growth community model and figure out how to thrive in a town that is actually losing population?’
That question might also be asked by our local government leaders, though so far I haven’t heard it discussed very much in public meetings.
For about seventy years, from 1910 until 1980, the population of Pagosa Springs remained remarkably steady, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Archuleta County’s population in 1910 was 3,302; in 1980 it was 3,664. During those 70 years, the town pf Pagosa Springs did not vanish off the face of the earth, or whither into a ghost town, but rather maintained its own steady population of about 1,500 people.
As I said, I found Paul Boyd’s enthusiasm and hopefulness to be refreshing. I suspect he will add a good deal to the Chamber board’s upcoming conversations.
I just wonder if the “growth model” is the most reasonable approach to Pagosa’s economy, for the Pagosa Springs Chamber of Commerce, and for any future incarnation of AEDA — looking into an uncertain future.
Read Part Five... |
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