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Putting Us Into Debt, for Fun and Profit, Part One |
Bill Hudson | 1/26/12
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Immediately following last night’s respectfully contentious meeting at the Ross Aragon Community Center — a very well-attended meeting, I thought — I was treated to a brief conversation with Town Tourism Committee (TTC) chair Bob Hart.
Mr. Hart also sits on the Town Council, and owns a local construction company, Hart Construction, which has been supported, of late, largely via the only kinds of big construction projects available here in Archuleta County: government contracts.
 My hat is off to anyone who can keep a construction company operating in Pagosa Springs in the current economy, and I most certainly support the idea that our local governments should try and hire locally whenever feasible. I’m not sure, however, that I approve of our local governments putting 'We, the People' deeper into debt mainly so they can help keep local construction companies in business.
But that’s another discussion. This discussion was about a proposed amusement park on Reservoir Hill, and about putting the Town of Pagosa Springs deeply into debt for a very risky tourism project.
“Former TTC board member Pam Schoemig put a letter in the Daily Post," I told Mr. Hart, "and she wrote that this [amusement park] was going to be funded with private investments and Lodgers Tax dollars. And I sent you a copy of that letter...”
Mr. Hart apologized, “I haven’t been reading my emails lately.”
I continued. “I also sent Pam’s letter to [TTC executive director] Jennie Green, and I said to Jennie, ‘Can you please edit this letter, because I don’t think the TTC is really planning to fund this [amusement park] with Lodgers Tax dollars.’ ”
“Part of it might be,” Mr. Hart replied.
I reminded Mr. Hart of a meeting held last month in Durango, when Region 9 Economic Development director Ed Morlan had asked Jennie Green whether the TTC would be using Lodgers Tax dollars to fund their proposed amusement park, and she had replied, very simply, “No.”
Daily Post assistant editor Cynda Green had mentioned that Region 9 conversation to Pam Schoemig, and Ms. Schoemig had given us permission to allow Jennie Green edit her letter, as needed.
The TTC receives about $350,000 a year from Lodgers Taxes collected within the Town of Pagosa Springs — a 4.9 percent tax added to hotel and lodging stays, and earmarked for the promotion of tourism in Archuleta County. The expenditure of that $350,000 is controlled by a group of 11 volunteers — mostly local business owners — appointed by the Town Council.
If the TTC deeply supported the Reservoir Hill Amusement Park concept, the group could — conceivably — stick all their Lodgers Tax revenues into a bank account for the next 12 to 20 years, and then fund a fabulously successful amusement park, with no risk to 'We, the People'.
I’ve known people who actually saved money for 12 to 20 years, and then bought a small house for cash. I've known other people who started with a piece of vacant land and gradually built their house, little by little, as money became available.
But most Americans, over the past 50 years or so, have bought their houses — sometimes houses they couldn’t really afford — via bank mortgages. We Americans put ourselves deeply into debt, with well-meaning promises to make monthly mortgage payments for the next 25 or 40 years.
It’s very difficult to get a house mortgage nowadays, I hear, because too many people went too far into debt and couldn’t pay their monthly mortgage payment — and walked away from their homes. We now have a community here in Archuleta County with one of the highest foreclosure rates in Colorado, and where more than 36 percent of the housing is vacant.
For comparison, we can note that the overall vacancy rate in the U.S. is closer to 10 percent, according to BestPlaces.com
Lately, a lot of Americans have been feeling that debt — deep, long-term debt — is not such a wonderful idea. We’ve been hearing news of whole European governments going bankrupt as a result of too much public debt. Yet we watch helplessly as our own federal government goes deeper and deeper into debt with each passing minute.
The Town of Pagosa Springs put itself $1.5 million deeper into debt just last year, to rebuild three blocks of a main downtown street. Lewis Street had been paved in a clearly unprofessional manner in the early 1990s, and is now a fractured mess that needs complete replacement.
I’ve attended a good number of TTC discussions about the proposed Reservoir Hill amusement park — held in subcommittee meetings, or in front of the Town Council — and I had never heard anyone suggest that the TTC would use Lodgers Tax revenues to fund their proposed $4.3 million amusement park project.
But even more to the point, I had never heard anyone suggest that the Town would put itself deeply into debt to fund the proposed amusements.
Until last night.
As I spoke with Mr. Hart, I was told that the TTC might decide, at some future date, to use its plentiful Lodgers Tax revenues to help fund the amusement park. “But we haven’t discussed that [in TTC meetings],” Mr. Hart told me.
At the packed meeting last night, I don't recall hearing support for a full-blown amusement park come from anyone outside the TTC committee. I’m not sure if the TTC members paid any attention to that fact, but it was pretty obvious to me. But one of the alternative ideas that seemed very well received during last night’s community meeting was to fund a few, select, low-impact improvements to the hill — better road access, a permanent performance venue, maybe improved cross-country skiing trails — and then to consider the “amusement rides” at a later date.
I asked Mr. Hart if the TTC would embrace this seemingly popular suggestion.
But Mr. Hart did not think the project was feasible unless all the amusements were included.
“How would you fund [only] an amphitheater?” he asked, “Without the revenues from the zipline and the alpine coaster?”
Well, the TTC is proposing that the Town itself build the amenities...
“Because the Town can repay them,” Mr. Hart suggested.
That’s where I was caught off-guard.
After seeing the Reservoir Hill PowerPoint presentation twice, and after reading through the Reservoir Hill business plan, and after attending numerous Reservoir Hill planning meetings, and after driving to Durango to attend the meeting with Region 9, I had somehow missed this central concept — that the Town was proposing to take out a $4.3 million loan to build this amusement park.
Now I felt really stupid.
Read Part Two...
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