| Despite what some contend, I have great sympathy for people in the local construction trade — homebuilders, contractors, their employees. And I have similar sympathy for those business owners, suppliers who depend on sales to the construction trade. Life has gone from fat to extraordinarily lean, in a very brief period of time. Lots of jobs were involved in that industry when times were flush; lots of livelihoods were dependent on a rich business environment that, given economic realities, could not survive.
I am in the newspaper business. How could I not sympathize?
And now, that environment is gone and the jobs are few.
And now, many people are turning to things they can understand — local institutions and practices — in an attempt to assign blame and find a way out of the mess.
Unfortunately, it is likely that the things readily at hand, those local things that can be grasped and understood, are not the primary causes of the problem.
No matter what anyone says, it is not local fees that are the central, driving force behind the decline in the local construction economy. I’ll grant each case where an individual states they would not build here in the last year due to fees, but I would press them with the question, “Are you using this as an excuse, when other factors are the basic reasons you do not want to build?” Fees may have been part of the decision, but I would wager, in most cases, fees were a lesser element in the process. I wonder how much construction is taking place in places similar to Pagosa. I would wager, not much — and probably not significantly more than here.
The problem is that the cause of our current economic dilemma — in all sectors of the local economy—— is something far beyond our control and far more complex than many of us can comprehend.
We area at the ass end of the animal, like it or not. Things will get better here only when they get better elsewhere. And things will probably never get better, here or elsewhere, to the extent that we see the freewheeling, too-many-jobs-to-handle situation we experienced a few years ago. A truly healthy economy—— global, national, local—— will not allow it.
I continue to believe that what we can do here, now, is tend to the infrastructure needs of the community and do our best to guarantee it is a desirable once a significant number of people again consider relocating to a place as beautiful as Pagosa Country. It will happen, if only because there is a wave of aging Baby Boomers about to crash on the shores of retirement. Many of them will come here when economic conditions improve, and there are more than enough homes here to provide immigrants with options. No doubt, a certain number of them will want to build.
Now, though, we need to tend to our No. 1 industry in the county: tourism. In 2007, tourism produced 40 percent of the total money entering the local economy from outside the county. Any guess what that percentage would be if we could figure it now? Would 60-70 percent be an unreasonable estimate?
Quality infrastructure and amenities make this a great place to visit, to spend money and to leave, hopefully with the desire to return. And returning tourists are often the very people who decide to relocate here. We need to bolster what we offer to these visitors and, most particularly, we need to work hard to ensure the downtown area is the economic center of the tourist economy. We are not going to do that by giving away the revenues that we need to complete the most basic work in that direction — sanitation systems, streets, sidewalks, lighting, trails, etc.
|
