At least, that’s the way a few but very vocal members of our community would have you believe, and oh, most of them want you to believe. Believe or be damned.

It’s a select bunch, invested heavily in misconceptions and, as such, rewarded with substantial dividends. Given their significant windfall in fail, they’ve graduated from first-rate demonization to second-grade scapegoating, claiming that the district is, almost single-handedly, responsible for slow/no growth, diminishing sales tax revenues, declining school enrollment, the demise of our local construction industry, the dismal state of the local real estate market, swine flu, Kim Jong-il’s haircut and Public Radio fund drives.

Apparently all the kitten sacrifices conducted at board meetings brought PAWSD some truly awesome powers.

Potholes? Blame PAWSD. Shirt comes wrinkled out of the dryer? Who else but PAWSD?

It’s a game anyone can play and a few do, given enough time, money and unresolved issues.

However, no matter how entertaining and easy it is to blame PAWSD for everything from Tween culture to senior citizen STDs, that’s just half the fun. Why not double your pleasure by just making stuff up?

A quick claim that PAWSD is charging $35,000 as an impact fee, across the board (an assertion made by a local Realtor at a recent town council meeting), is just the ticket to get knuckles off the floor and tea bags a-tingling. Since nobody really knows that the $35,000 fee is pretty much what someone would pay on a 10,000 square foot residence with six bathrooms is, well, inconsequential. It’s the response the number gets that matters. Leave facts to the nitpicking know-it-alls; they don’t understand the laugh factor derived from a room full of exploding heads!

While the fee claim might seem a bit outrageous to believers and heathens alike, it’s no more outrageous than a 10,000 square-foot outhouse with six toilets and a full kitchen but, really, who’s counting? Who’s keeping score? And who is using all those toilets?

Who cares? It’s the effect that counts!

By all means, continue just making stuff up — it’s fun and much cheaper than keeping a mistress in Argentina.

And, in fact, inflating the $300 million cost estimate for Dry Gulch, if done well, is guaranteed to send several of the more high-strung and paranoid screaming into the dark with pitchforks and crudely constructed effigies. Really, $300 million? Puh-leeze, the figure is so laughably believable it’s suspect due to the number’s sheer credibility.

So, pop off with the claim that “some estimates” put the project’s price tag at $1 billion. Dare to be bold! A billion! A billion is sexy and scary (by some estimates).

So who came up with “some estimates” you might well ask? Again, why bother with details when the objective is to obfuscate and bedazzle? A billion sounds so deliciously naughty, if not somewhat incomprehensible. In fact, to assist the more numerically challenged, you may want to use an illustration (kind of like drawing a picture but without having blue and red marks on your chin after you’ve finished) to drive home the true immensity of a billion.

For instance, if you stocked the 10,000 square foot multi-toileted outhouse with a billion dollar bills, you’d have enough paper for wiping purposes until well after the sun turns into a big blob of lemon ice slush.

And really, wouldn’t that be fun! Usins dollar bills this way under a lemon ice sun. Doesn’t get much better than that, my friends.

The important thing is to keep your illustration entertaining while using examples that the target audience can relate to; twisting up some balloon animals couldn’t hurt, either.

Still, quite a bit of wiping to do with all those numbers being pulled out of … well, you (unfortunately) get the picture.

Now, for more fun than a car battery and a pair of copper pasties, continue pushing the “just making stuff up” envelope by making an apples-to-pineapples comparison, pitting PAWSD fees against fees from any surrounding county known for easy access to water — as the AEDA has done in its “pro-business” presentation. Next, eschew variables like population density, topography and existing infrastructure. Finally, base those comparisons on a single example, using a 4,200 square-foot house (the AEDA’s claim, again), which is, like, everyone’s house except times two. Oh, and make certain that the house has a construction-only value of $327,000, which, while still about $200,000 more than the average value for a house in the U.S. (in 2008) and substantially more than the median house value of $141,638 for Archuleta County (in 2007), probably represents what its owners wish they could get, in this market.

Anyway, the 4,200 square-foot, never-gonna-get-there house makes a much nicer model for comparison than an oh-so-average 2,343 square-foot house (based on the 2009 U.S. average) because, well, oh-so-average (with only two to three toilets!) not only doesn’t exactly make a dramatic point, it barely makes any point at all. In fact, looking beyond luxury homes, no amount of supersecret ninja math is going to convince anyone that PAWSD fees are responsible for funding the sartorial extravagance of the Four Horsemen, much less that the district is indeed Satan.

And, if you look up the names of Satan — Deceiver, Liar and Trickster stand out prominently among the many aliases provided to Beelzebub. Of course, if you’re just making stuff up, any name you choose should work.