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Planning for an Uncertain Future, Part Nine |
Bill Hudson | 8/2/10
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Read Part One
The time has come to talk about toilets.
 The Ignacio FM station, KSUT, features an intriguing mix of local and national programming and, although I never listen to radio when I’m at home, I nearly always switch on KSUT when I’m driving in the van. This style of listening makes for an odd perception of the world, I suppose, because my driving trips in this little mountain town often last less than 5 minutes — so I hear a lot of short, incomplete snippets of music and conversation, sort of like eavesdropping, pr like getting your news from reading just the headlines in the newspaper rack.
You have to piece together the rest of the story from your imagination.
A couple of weeks ago, I caught the tail end of a conversation about sanitation in the Third World. The woman being interviewed was explaining that much of the disease and death in the Third World resulted from improper sanitation facilities — the lack of toilets, to say nothing of proper wastewater treatment. But one of the main barriers to getting people to change their disease-causing habits is the taboo against talking about toilets. When it’s socially unacceptable to talk about bodily functions in public — to talk about toilets — well, that makes it hard to have a public conversation about a crucial health issue.
So the first step in addressing this problem is finding ways to overcome the taboo about even talking about it. You have to be willing to use the word "toilet" before you can start making any progress.
Here in Pagosa Springs, we have several decent wastewater treatment facilities. A couple of them are having their problems, notably the Highland Lagoons (which are right now in the midst of being replaced, thanks to $9 million in federal loans and grants) and the Town of Pagosa Springs treatment facility — also a lagoon system — which has been violating water standards on and off for the past few months, and which the Town is seeking to replace, as soon as they can find the financing.
One local problem that we might be able to address by talking more openly about it, however, concerns not stagnant wastewater but, rather, a stagnant economy. We can’t address this problem properly until we admit it exists, until we are honestly willing to talk about it. We have to get over the taboo against discussing our community’s financial situation in a realistic manner.
That has begun to happen, fortunately. At a recent public meeting with the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District board, County commissioner John Ranson assessed the situation like this:
“We’re in probably the worst economy that we’re going to see in our lifetimes. Our constituents don’t really care if your lawyer calls these [Water Resource Fees] an ‘impact fee’ or what they label them. We feel that they have hurt the economy. We feel that there is a backing up right now — to re-look at this [Dry Gulch] project. And all of us have serious concerns about the fees and would like to see them lowered.”
A lot of my writing for the Daily Post concerns local governments — the folks who are spending our local tax dollars in the midst of a difficult economy. It’s not an easy matter to get governments to change direction; they are somewhat like the ocean liner Titanic, seeing with alarm that iceberg half a mile away, and too big and with too much inertia to make a turn fast enough to avoid it.
The businesses here in Pagosa, however, are a bit more nimble — more like little speedboats, that happened to get water mixed into their gasoline perhaps. Unlike governments, which continue collecting taxes whether or not they are doing a good job, our local businesses have no choice but to get creative in these kinds of tough times, or else go under.
And I’m impressed with much of what I’ve seen, in that regard.
Take, for example, our local restaurants and bars. One of the first things a typical family does to tighten its belt is to eat out less often. So our restaurants are having a rough go of it lately. But instead of sitting in the corner and crying over spilt milk, many of our local dining establishments — particularly the ones that serve alcohol — have taken a very different approach: they have booked live music, on the weekends and even during the week nights. Just when you might think bars and restaurants would cut back on the expense of hiring musicians, the exact opposite has taken place.
I honestly can’t recall a time, during my 17 years in Pagosa, where live music was so prevalent in this little town.
The business activity in downtown, east of Third Street, has been noteworthy as well, considering the difficult economy. Across from the Humane Society Thrift Store, Victoria’s Café has expanded by remodeling and adding a new saloon. A couple of doors down, realtors Mike and Lauri Heraty have, after downsizing into a smaller office, revamped their website — and added a new one, focused on the real estate du JOUR: foreclosures. Next door to Victoria’s to the east, shop owner Bonnie Nyre has converted her former gift shop, Slices of Nature into a consignment store and boosted her traffic (and hopefully her profit margin).
Across the street, Handcrafted Interiors has done a whimsical exterior facelift, covering two sides of their store with sculptural artworks. Farther down the street to the east, three new businesses opened their doors this past spring — laughing in the face of hard times, as it were: The Lift Coffeehouse, Coyote Jane’s Gift Shop, and Earthsense Herbals.
At the far west end of town, Terry’s ACE Hardware just last month added a “Building Materials Convenience Store” and brought in a stock of lumber, sheetrock, insulation, metal roofing and other building materials. Owner Terry Smith also opened a furniture and appliance store in the former Circle T location: Pagosa Mountain Home Company.
None of these business innovations and expansions, as far as I know, resulted from attempts by our local governments to “revitalize” the Pagosa economy (although certainly the Town and County have been helping out as best they can, what with their reduced staffing levels and falling revenue streams.) These business innovations resulted from ordinary people going out on a financial limb and trying something new.
A primary focus of local government attempts at salvaging the economy — including the formation of the new Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation — seem to be on “bringing in new businesses” and on “encouraging growth and development.”
This focus may have been appropriate five years ago, when we lived in a different world. But judging from the comments I’ve heard at Town Council meetings and County Commissioner meetings, almost everyone has begun to accept the fact that Pagosa’s economy is not going to grow significantly over the next few years. Many comments have suggested just the opposite: that times are going to get even tougher here.
Here in the Hudson family — talking on a very personal level — we’ve been through an unpleasant divorce (though not as unpleasant as some.) One happy result of that sad event was my 22-year-old daughter Ursala and her boyfriend Chris Haas moving in with me, here on Loma Street. Just when I thought I was “done with raising kids,” I find myself living with a lovely little granddaughter. The decision to live together was partly driven by these tough economic times; we were all having difficulty paying rent separately, but combining three incomes has made things much less stressful on everyone.
Can Pagosa, as a whole, embrace its existing family and come together? Can we talk openly and honestly about our current difficulties, and extend a hand to one another?
Is there any likelihood that a foreign savior — a big box store like Walmart, or a manufacturing giant like 3M, or a major call center like Startel — is coming to Pagosa Springs in the near future, to jerk our economy back up on its feet? Can we expect our salvation to come from the federal or state government?
Or is it more likely we will pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps? And if that is the case — if our salvation rests in our own hands — then how would we approach the planning of our future?
Can we talk about toilets? |
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