Dear Editor:
Voters within the town limits will have a chance to authorize a Town of Pagosa Springs sales tax this November, by voting ‘Yes’ on Ballot Measure 2A.
Those of us in Archuleta County currently pay a 6.9% sales tax on local and online purchases. 1.9% goes to the state of Colorado; 4% goes to Archuleta County, and is shared 50/50 with the Town government.
This proposed municipal sales tax will be collected within the town limits, and will accrue to the Town government, to be used specifically to address serious sanitation issues.
The Town of Pagosa Springs runs its own sanitation district, to serve about 900 downtown businesses and homes. I live in one of those homes, and currently pay $71 a month for sewer service. This fee is scheduled to increase in 2026.
Businesses and residents west of Piedra Road are served by PAWSD sewer services, and a typical home pays $47 a month.
Back during the Great Recession, a previous Town Council began increasing sanitation fees to build a new, state-of-the-art treatment plant at th south end of town — but then changed course, and instead decided on a sewer pipeline, to pump our downtown sewage seven miles uphill to the PAWSD Vista Plant.
Unfortunately, that pipeline has been nothing but headaches ever since it came online in 2016.
One of the reasons town customers pay more than PAWSD customers? Millions of gallons of ordinary groundwater seeps into the downtown system through old, leaky pipes, and gets added to the water that must be pumped uphill and treated by PAWSD.
Recent studies by Roaring Fork Engineering have documented a downtown sewer system with serious deferred maintenance problems, on top of the issues with the uphill pipeline. Estimates suggest that a comprehensive solution to downtown sanitation issues will cost $80-$100 million over the next few decades. This cost can be addressed, long-term, by a 1% Town-only sales tax, which will be paid by locals and visitors alike.
Alternatively, the Town could — according to estimates from their consultants — increase the monthly sewer bills for our downtown homes from $71 a month to around $200 a month. Speaking as a person living mainly on Social Security, this seems to me a drastic alternative to a simple 1% sales tax.
This tax is not completely fair, because it will be paid partly by people who do not own homes or businesses downtown. I also recognize that, while no tax is ‘completely fair’, many of our downtown Pagosa businesses and households are already struggling financially and would be negatively impacted by a much larger sewer bill to pay each month.
Bill Hudson
