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PAWSD Candidates Face the Hard Questions, Part One |
Bill Hudson | 4/28/10
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The turnout for the PAWSD candidates’ forum was rather light on April 20. The five candidates for two vacant seats on the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District board — Allan Bunch, Ron Decker, Ray Finney, Roy Vega and Sue Walan — had been invited to share their views at an event sponsored jointly by the Home Builders Association of Pagosa Springs and the Pagosa Springs Area Association of Realtors (PSAAR).
Candidate Ron Decker did not attend. Continued...
Builders Association president Dusty Pierce. right, introduces the PAWSD board candidates, as candidate Allan Bunch prepares to answer the tough questions. |
The situation was mildly tense, perhaps due partly to the fact that Bunch and Vega — who have already been officially endorsed by the Builders Association and PSAAR — had positioned themselves as critics of certain existing PAWSD policies, such as the continued planning of a $360 million reservoir project in Dry Gulch prior to any voter approval for the project — but with promises from PAWSD already made to the Colorado Water Conservation Board that local rate payers would underwrite for the $12 million loan used to purchase about half the needed Dry Gulch property.
Bunch and Vega have also questioned the impact fees associated with Dry Gulch, and have expressed concerns, on their campaign websites, about the $44 million debt load already being carried by PAWSD for various water and sewer projects. $34 million of that debt amount had been assumed by the existing PAWSD board based on projected fee revenues and without any voter approvals, it appears.
The forum began with each candidate introducing themselves.
Vega noted his long involvement with Eaton International and the Pagosa Lakes Property Owners Association from 1974 until 1998. He was also involved in the creation of the Pagosa Fire Protection District in 1989. Since 1998, Vega has operated an insurance business here in Pagosa.
Sue Walan described herself as a chemical engineer and a civil engineer with experience overseeing the installation of McDonald’s restaurants in Denver, and with brief experience as an engineer with Archuleta County just prior to the County’s financial meltdown in 2007. She now travels throughout Colorado as a bridge inspector.
 Realtor Ray Finney reflected on his years in the Navy, then with Habitat for Humanity, and then his move to Pagosa in 1995 to serve as the director of the newly-formed Colorado Housing Inc. During his eight years with CHI, the organization about 140 affordable, owner-built homes in Archuleta and La Plata County.
Allan Bunch presented himself as a business owner — specifically, as the owner of the Malt Shoppe Restaurant, located at the east end of Pagosa’s downtown business district, since 1990. “I’ve been watching PAWSD since 2002, as some people know, and I’ve been a little discouraged by what’s been going on, so I decided to try and get on that board. I’m just a businessman who solves problems and looks for ways to do things less expensively.”
PSAAR president Lisa Reeve started the forum off with a series of questions formulated by the event coordinators. The first question: “Why are you running for the PAWSD Board and what would be your first order of business?”
Allan Bunch took the first swing at the question.
”As I just said, I’ve been concern about what is going on in Archuleta County, and I’ve certainly experienced, first-hand, the economic slowdown. I do believe the PAWSD board — even though they are all good people — I believe they all sit around and talk to each other, and they don’t talk to the rest of us. And I have a problem with that. My first order of business would be to make a change in that area.”
As a reporter at numerous PAWSD board meetings, I would concur with Bunch’s assessment of the current five-member board. The PAWSD board is the only government board I’ve covered where board members sit with their backs to the audience during meetings — except for one other government board: PAWSD’s partner in the Dry Gulch project, the San Juan Water Conservancy District.
I also recall one particularly contentious and well-attended PAWSD board meeting last year, shortly after the Town of Pagosa Springs and the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners cooperated in mutually eliminating development fees to try and help revive the community’s stalled construction and real estate industries. Members of the Builders Association and PSAAR pleaded with the PAWSD board to join with the Town and County, by lowering or eliminating the costly and questionable fees related to the Dry Gulch project. After supposed ‘listening’ to the public for an hour, PAWSD chair Karen Wessels responded by reading a prepared statement that completely discounted the pleas she’d been hearing for the past hour.
Ray Finney was the next PAWSD candidate to address Reeve’s first question.
“I think my main concern is — you know, water and sanitation are probably the most important public services you get in your community. By an interesting coincidence, I sit on a non-profit board that does water and sanitation projects in Nicaragua, so being on the PAWSD board will not be the first water and sanitation board I’ve served on.
“I realize it’s a burden for the builders to have some fees that make it more expensive to build here than in, say, Cortez or Alamosa. But historically, maybe PAWSD should have been charging more over the 15 years I’ve lived here, to build up a bigger ‘strike fund’ than the one that they’ve got. Although from the research I’ve done, PAWSD has $14 million in the bank, so it seems they have a pretty good handle on that.
”My first concern is to come with an open mind, and make sure we have a well-maintained water system, an energy-efficient water system, and then figure out how to serve the people who live here now and how to serve the people who are coming, and how to work with the builders and realtors and everyone who is trying to bring people into the community. I think we’re in a low spot. The next couple of years are going to be tough.”
Sue Walan stepped up next.
“I think what I would bring to the board is my experience and education as an engineer. As a chemical engineer, I understand the processes of potable water and waste water treatment. As a civil engineer, I understand the processes of getting water and sewer lines into the ground, and the infrastructure that goes with it.
“My main issue is periodic and routine maintenance, to keep the infrastructure that we have, working. Nothing is more important than that. Long term planning is important, but your periodic and routine maintenance is above that, because you’ve got to keep the infrastructure that you’ve put money into, operating effectively.”
Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District was formed in 1971 to service the blossoming developments in the Pagosa Lakes area five miles west of the sleepy rural town of Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Various developers were involved in the growth of that suburban, resort community, but the main force behind the Pagosa Lakes growth was Eaton International, headed by Arizona developer Ralph Eaton. At that time, the one-square-mile town of Pagosa Springs had its own, already aging water system run by the Archuleta Water Company.
When the two water districts were combined in 1993, PAWSD continued serving the sewer needs in Pagosa Lakes while the Town ran its own sewer system for the downtown area — but PAWSD took over all the treated water services in the two districts.
That still left huge areas of the county fending for themselves, in terms of water service. Some of the outlying subdivisions developed their own central water treatment systems, while other areas — such as, notably, Aspen Springs — still rely upon individual wells or on water hauling services to fill individual cisterns.
PAWSD now maintains about 290 miles of water lines and 80 miles of sewer lines. One of the main problems facing the district — though one not often discussed in public — is the fact that PAWSD is currently losing about 30 percent of its treated water, presumably through leaks in its water lines. If some of those leaks could be fixed, PAWSD might see a 10 to 20 percent gain in water capacity without have to build any new reservoirs, or enlarge its existing ones.
If those repairs are not made, then PAWSD would potentially lose a third of the water coming from any future reservoirs.
Next up was Roy Vega, who began with references to his time managing the Pagosa Lakes Property Owners Association and the Pagosa Fire District.
“I’ve come up with a philosophy of governance. And the philosophy of governance that I have, I do not see being currently carried out by the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District board. That philosophy of governance is: “The People are in charge.” In the case of PAWSD, the customers are in charge. The customers, the taxpayers, the rate payers, who ever he is, he’s the customer and the customer is going to be in charge.
“Board meetings should be conducted with the convenience of the customer in mind.
“So my first reason for running for the PAWSD board is that I have some background and training that I believe will be helpful — for the customers.
“And the first order of business. The Water Resource Fee was imposed specifically for the Dry Gulch Reservoir. It was imposed because the San Juan Water Conservancy District’s bond proposal [for that project] in 2004 failed at the polls. It failed 59 percent against, and only 41 percent in favor.
“Then the San Juan Water Conservancy Board went around the voters, to the PAWSD board of directors, and formed a cooperative effort, to proceed with a project that the voters had turned down.”
Mr. Vega is bringing up a very interesting piece of history, and I’d like to look at that history a bit more closely in Part Two.
Read Part Two, tomorrow... |
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