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Growing Concerns, Part One |
Glenn Walsh | 3/24/08
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Technically, the Pagosa Springs Town Council convened two meetings Thursday evening: its routine (if always unpredictable) mid-month meeting of the seven-member body, and a special session with local business owners meant to address the year-long slowdown of the local construction and real estate economy.
The two meetings converged into one, though it took three hours — and two conference rooms — before it was over. Continued...
And, of course, it is not nearly over. The suggestions made to the Town Council will certainly become demands made upon the Town of Pagosa Springs, Archuleta County, the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) and the San Juan Water Conservancy District in the very near future.
By 5pm, a roomful of local businessmen and women had gathered in the south conference room of the Community Center on Hot Springs Boulevard. By 5:30pm, the overflow of that roomful were gathering in the hall outside the south conference room at the Community Center, unable to find seats or even standing room.
The subject matters of the first meeting — short-term annexation plans with long-term consequences for Town and County, major construction and reconstruction of Town infrastructure, and the likely costs of the long-needed and soon-to-be-constructed $5 million waste treatment plant — led naturally, if uncomfortably at times, into the subject matter of the second session: how to pay for the costs of development in a sound, business-like manner, while simultaneously promoting economic development in Pagosa Springs.
 Town Manager Mark Garcia touched briefly on the major annexations on the Town's horizon, literally and figuratively, including the Blue Sky Ranch and Village projects, and the potential Levine annexation running the entire length of Light Plant Road. Garcia summed up the extent of the Town's likely expansion, “Between those three properties we are talking about in excess of 2000 acres... It is bigger probably that our current corporate boundaries.” In short, the Town may double in size within two years, with, as yet, no clearly stated revenue plan to maintain that expansion.
As the crowd doubled in size in a few minutes, Mayor Ross Aragon excused a momentary lapse in moving through the agenda with some guarded humor, “So many people have come in that I was looking for an escape route.” One of Aragon's traditional, and gracious, aspects is his clear unease if anybody is left without a seat, or is not well-mannered enough to take it.
Garcia then made some preliminary reports on what promises to be a complicated and controversial issue: the new wastewater treatment plant and its effects on monthly service charges and hook-up fees. Garcia informed the Council that the sanitation rate survey is “real close to being finalized.” But the debate about those rates and fees has not even begun. Garcia continued somewhat plaintively, “I will give you a head’s up that we are looking at some pretty significant increases on fees and rates.”
Garcia has outlined a plan to reassess the usage of existing businesses and residences so the costs of the new facility can be shared more broadly and equitably, without burdening new development with the total cost of the new facility. In fairness, the plant is long overdue and will service the entire Town, not just new growth areas. Whether Garcia's broader approach will excite effective, narrow opposition is one of the bigger outstanding questions.
The Town Manager then gave a quick and comprehensive update on the more than $4 million of park, road and bridge projects budgeted for 2008.
The Town has awarded the contract for the second phase of the new Sport Complex to Trigon Construction, the low bidder, who will commence work “any day now.”
The Apache Street sidewalk project, which will provide South Pagosa's major crosstown street with sidewalk from the Apache Street bridge to 7th Street, “came in considerably under engineer’s estimates" and the preliminary plans for the complete reconstruction of Lewis Street, including new sidewalks, will be the subject of meeting with local businesses this week.
Finally, Garcia reported on the often-tread topic of the two pedestrian bridges planned for Town Park and the still-unimproved east end of Hermosa Street. The Town Park bridge will go to bid this summer, while the Hermosa Street bridge has hit some roadblocks. “There are some challenges with that bridge,” Garcia admitted, “it will require longer spans and it is pushing us further into the Hermosa Street right of way and it is going to potentially obstruct some access. We need to look at that more closely.”
Updates on these bridges have, of course, been given umpteen times.
Councilor Stan Holt then expressed worry that $100,000 budgeted for chip sealing roads will not repair the damage the Town's roads have evidently suffered this winter. Aragon quickly added his concerns about the Town's roads, "Mark, you have to be creative looking at the budget ... You can wish a lot, but it is a reality thing that we have to do it.”
Garcia then reported that first quarter sales tax receipts are essentially flat, adding somewhat hopefully that the trend was “not in a negative direction at this time, so that’s good news.” Gar-cia is normally a very cautious interpreter of the Town's sales tax data. Recently, in January, he went back two years in order to find comparable figures which did not overstate sales tax increases. Members of the audience would later criticize Garcia for putting a positive spin on a negative report. It is probably fairer to assume that Garcia was expecting far worse numbers.
Aragon then asked the assembled business owners to “volunteer to come up and expound a little bit on your concerns about the economy.
They would expound quite a bit over the next two hours. Continued...
Garcia explained the hoped-for focus of the session which the Town had emphasized on the invitations sent to the Chamber of Commerce business list: “A desire to focus on the downtown development authority’s feasibility study. I would hope everybody could share with us their comments on the downtown development authority study, that feasibility study that I encouraged you to read. It has been on our web page.”
That study was first presented to the Town Council by Angela Atkinson at last year's Council retreat. Most discussion at that session dealt with intelligent planning of rampant growth and attempts to control the social effects of that growth. Atkinson, chosen to fill a vacant Council seat six months later, punctuated that uneasy optimism with a stark summation, "Downtown is dying."
Few in the audience Thursday would disagree now, though probably few have read the report. There was not a feasible hope, given the depth and wide-ranging fears of the local business community about the state of the economy — and their bottom lines — that the 25-page paper would be the center of discussion. Over the next two hours, not one specific comment on the feasibility study was made.
The focus of the Pagosa Springs business community, it became quickly clear, is not on feasibility. The focus is on survival.
Read Part Two
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