The Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) Board of Directors discussed user protests against the district’s affordable housing surcharge at its Aug. 14 meeting.
This discussion came after the board deadlocked on providing capital investment fee waivers for three consecutive affordable housing projects, including projects by Habitat for Humanity, the Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation (PSCDC) and private developer Peter Hurley.
PAWSD board members Bill Hudson and Glenn Walsh voted for granting the waivers to Habitat for Humanity, Alex Boehmer and chairman Gene Tautges voted against, and Bruce Jones abstained, stating that he was unsure of how to vote but would be able to understand the issue and vote on it in September.
Boehmer cited concerns about rising costs for customers and his view that providing waivers does not fall within PAWSD’s mission statement, while Tautges raised concerns about the board already granting large amounts of waivers for previous housing projects and needing to repay those costs.
PSCDC Executive Director Emily Lashbrooke was advised to return for a decision at the September meeting.
Both Habitat for Humanity and the PSCDC stated that not receiving waivers would significantly compromise their projects and potentially reduce the amount of affordable housing constructed due to higher costs.
The board also deadlocked on Hurley’s request for waivers, with Walsh and Hudson voting in support, Boehmer and Tautges voting against and Jones abstaining.
Hurley was also advised to return for a decision in September.
The board moved on to discuss and potentially hear protests against the district’s affordable housing surcharge.
PAWSD Programs Manager Renee Lewis explained that the board received five letters protesting the fees and that she contacted all the writers to inform them about the opportunity to be heard at the meeting.
However, no one was present to speak on the issue and Lewis stated that she only received one response from the writers from someone who indicated they could not attend the meeting.
Tautges asked if the board members had the opportunity to read the protest emails.
Walsh stated that he had, adding that one was “really quite balanced” and presented “legitimate” concerns about customers paying affordable housing surcharges when they are not benefiting from affordable housing and may be in difficult housing circumstances.
“I think many of the others, quite frankly, were mean-spirited, they were insulting and they were completely lacking in any kind of factual basis,” Walsh said.
He continued that comments that the affordable housing surcharge is a violation of transparency or corruption are illegitimate and that PAWSD is highly transparent by putting the fees on its bills, which many water districts do not do.
Walsh pointed out that no one had come to the meeting to protest the surcharge.
The board then discussed the history of the surcharges before Jones suggested that there is a lack of clarity about the fees among PAWSD customers and that there is “a push for above-and-beyond transparency” about the waivers and how much they cost the district.
Jones commented that, while many of the comments submitted to the board were “poor” and that he stopped reading them at a certain point, they reflect the desire for greater transparency.
He added that the board needs to determine how to more clearly present the surcharges and how the waivers are used.
Walsh noted that the district refusing to grant waivers to affordable housing projects will likely push them to relocate within the Pagosa Springs Sanitation General Improvement District (PSSGID), where PAWSD will still have to treat the waste generated but will receive a fraction of the revenue and no wastewater capital investment fees since these will be paid to the PSSGID.
After Walsh noted that there are differences between the amount of fees theoretically waived and the amount in reality since many projects will not be built without waivers and thus would not generate fees, Jones noted that this is difficult for many customers to understand and that community members focus on the PAWSD board granting large amounts of waivers and their rates going up.
Community member Carl Young spoke about his concerns about how he, as an uptown resident, is subsidizing projects that only assist downtown residents, like the expansion of the Snowball wastewater treatment plant.
Hudson explained that affordable housing and child care facilities are the only type of projects which the state allows local governments to waive fees for.
He noted that the Town of Pagosa Springs and Archuleta County both waive fees for affordable housing and child care projects and “subscribe to that idea that we need child care and we need housing in this community to be a functional community.
“I’m hearing, from this board, hesitation to have a functional community. I’m hearing from this board … ‘We have money, but maybe we’re worried about the future,’ or, ‘No, I’m politically opposed to supporting a functional community,’ because they have a different idea from what the state of Colorado has about housing and about child care.”
Hudson stated that PAWSD “has been in the leadership of supplying a functional community for years now. It seems like maybe we don’t want a functional community, maybe we just want people to leave and not work here and not be able to find to houses and not be able to find child care because something, because of some kind of political belief about something. And I have political beliefs, I have a political belief that I want to live in a functional community. I want to live in a place where this town functions, where people can find housing, where people can find child care, where people can find jobs, where people can find churches to go to, where this community functions. And we’re asking our customers to support this idea and we’ve gotten five people who’ve complained of 5,000 customers.”
Hudson commented that he was “really disappointed” that PAWSD had to send potential waiver recipients away despite the board having a housing waiver policy and funding available.
He added that he hoped the board would return to the issue in September and “embrace” supporting a functional community.
“If we don’t support it, if the town doesn’t support it, if the county doesn’t support it, we’re going to have a dysfunctional community,” Hudson said.
Boehmer replied that, although there are political differences on the board and different ideas about how to get there, everyone on the board wants a functional community.
Hudson challenged Boehmer about how he wants to create a functional community.
Boehmer declined to state his ideas, commenting that he did not want to get into an argument and he would be willing to talk to Hudson later.
“Don’t think for one second that I volunteer my time, a guy that works 40 hours a week and has two kids, to come in here and try to destroy our community. That’s not the purpose,” Boehmer said. “We’re all on the same team here; we just have a different idea.”
Tautges commented that he likes to know what the consequences of his actions are and that he does support affordable housing work in the community.
He commented that, out of the “dozens” of PAWSD customers he spoke to, the balance of people supporting keeping or eliminating the affordable housing surcharge was fairly even.
Tautges added that providing more waivers would likely lead to increasing other fees to cover costs.
He added that he agrees with Boehmer and was in support of a functional community.
“I think we’re all on the same page,” Tautges said.
“I think we’re on very different pages, but hopefully in a very civil and mutually respectful way,” Walsh said.
He added that, if the board eliminates the affordable housing surcharge, it will not be collecting any revenues to pay for the waivers already granted.
Jones commented that the board is on “two different pages,” but that they all want a functional community.
He stated that his company volunteered work to both the Habitat for Humanity and PSCDC projects and that this is a way he gives back to the community.
Jones commented that the main issue is not whether people want the surcharge or not, but is the desire for transparency.
“I think it implores us to come up with systems that help us make these decisions,” Jones said, adding that such a system would guide decisions on granting fees.
He commented that he does not want to take the fee away.
“I think what we do with the fee and how transparent we are about what we’re doing with the fee is equally as important as having the fee,” Jones said.
He added that the protests against the fee are a sign of a “bigger problem brewing.”
“What we all have to understand is a small majority talks, we make a small response that honors what they’re saying, it puts us in a better position,” Jones said.
He closed by stating that he wants to vote on the issue next month and had an open mind about how to approach the waivers, but that he wanted to understand the issue better because “the numbers that are being discussed are boggling.”
Affordable housing work session
At an Aug. 25 work session, the PAWSD board discussed the details of affordable housing waivers and its future direction further.
The board discussed the financial impacts of granting waivers, the role of the district in promoting affordable housing and what types of housing should be the focus of affordable housing efforts.
It also discussed a variety of potential changes to the affordable housing waiver policy and the district’s approach to affordable housing, including introducing tiered capital investment fees based on the size of housing being constructed, which would potentially reduce costs for smaller, affordable housing projects, and improving coordination between local government entities to help plan for affordable housing projects more efficiently.
The board also discussed the need to do a new rate study to potentially modify various aspects of the district’s fees in accordance with the proposals discussed.
During the discussion, Hudson and Walsh continued to express general support for the district’s support of affordable housing while Boehmer commented that the current policy is not acceptable to him and should be changed and Tautges raised concerns about the cost of granting waivers for the district and about if PAWSD has borne inordinate costs compared to the support offered by other government entities.
Boehmer and Tautges also expressed support for affordable housing projects and a desire to see them succeed, even though they noted they have concerns about PAWSD’s involvement in granting waivers for them.
Jones expressed a desire to ensure that affordable housing continues to be built in the community while also not incurring excessive costs on PAWSD.
During the discussion, the board also heard comments from Lashbrooke and Habit for Humanity of Archuleta County Executive Director Leah Ballard that commended the district’s previous support of affordable housing through waivers and noted the impact that the housing they construct has had on the community by enabling families to live and work crucial jobs in Archuleta County.
Archuleta County Commissioner Warren Brown also spoke, pointing out the importance of the waivers and highlighting the county’s contributions in terms of fee waivers and land donations to supporting the PSCDC’s and Habitat for Humanity’s affordable housing projects.
Near the end of the work session, Tautges summarized the discussion.
“We all agree on several things,” he said. “There is a housing crisis in this community. Whether it’s worse or not as bad as other communities, I don’t know, but we all agree that we should be doing something. Who ‘we’ is, we might have slightly different opinions on and how much each we should be doing. … That’s why I called this meeting, I did not want to go into [the September PAWSD meeting on Sept. 11] not having this conversation. I think we owed it to all of you to have this conversation. Again, no decisions are going to be made, but, boy, have we brought up some good ideas, some things that maybe need a little more research, maybe get some more numbers so in September when we walk in the room we’re just a little bit smarter than we were last month.”
Jones commented that all the members of the board want to make decisions to support a “better tomorrow.”
He added that questions about if PAWSD has contributed more to affordable housing in the past compared to other governments are “not what it’s about” and that the board should support the decisions it previously made, even if board members do not agree with them.
“It’s not about who does more or less, it’s about how do we move forward from the point we’re at,” Jones said. “I just want to make that very clear. This isn’t a comparison, it’s not … anybody did more than the other. It’s where we’re at right now and how do we need to move forward to, first and foremost, as Alex has pointed out … honor what we need to do to make sure that we’re providing for the clients that we have, but also, secondly, and again somebody could argue even equally importantly, it’s how do we support our community?”
Archuleta County Commissioner Veronica Medina, who also attended the work session, summarized it at the Aug. 26 Archuleta County Board of County Commissioners work session, commenting that the PAWSD board is facing a “big decision.”
“So, I hope that the PAWSD board can really think about this and just know that it is really important to our community for them to continue to participate the way they have because — and I don’t want to say that if they don’t do it everything will fail — because some way, somehow, some things may be accomplished, but it will just be a lot more difficult,” Medina said.
josh@pagosasun.com
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