Planatlaw

Friday’s Daily Post had not one, but two, articles on the gold at the feet of downtown residents. Teddy Herzog and Bill Hudson weighed in from their perspectives on the latest manifestation of a bad economy - closure of the downtown City Market. They remain optimistic in the long term; a viewpoint I respect, but doubt. Basic economic models for rural communities have been changing for a generation. Today’s economic realities are forcing even more changes. One significant exception to rural out-migration noted by the ERS a decade ago were those communities with natural amenities, Such communities attracted second-home owners, retirees and tourists. In addition, recreation opportunities attracted twenty & thirty-somethings. Young people with children are also the first and most impacted by a down-turn in the economy, and enrollments for Pagosa schools reflect this. Pagosa and Archuleta County benefited from both natural amenities and many recreational opportunities, and th...

A professor I had in college once told me he rarely read the front page of a paper because the writer’s agenda was obscured. Instead, he recommended I read the opinion pages and judge the advocacy evocated by those writers. I still followed that advice, which is why I read Karl Isberg’s editorial every week in the Pagosa Sun . Last week, Karl was advocating for a position I judged as flawed. The title was “A Slice of the Ideal”. The “ideal” he spoke to was the dream of a perfect mountain community people were expecting Pagosa Springs to be, but his is a simplistic assumption. He was pushing a myth lauded by residents who had been here from birth, which demeans new-comers and extols the virtues of the old-timers. It has been tried many times in many mountain towns, and with the same result. Karl has a folksy style that lulls one into thinking he really is a “salt-of-the-earth” common sense kinda guy. However, after reading his editorial a couple of times, I concluded his a...

Jack Kennedy is quoted as saying “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” It’s a quote, but it has the ring of a saying like ‘Buy low – sell high.”. It is at once obvious as an inherent truth, and elusive in it’s application. I thought of Kennedy’s words as I was reading The Lonely Prince in the Daily Post last week. Mayor Aragon has accomplished much, but one must attribute a great deal of that success to a period of economic boom - the sun was shining brightly. I might also add that the mayor surrounded himself with really good staff people, like Jay Harrington. As a team, they were able to drive home the nails for bricks-and-mortar projects that will serve this community for generations. The article speaks to the Town’s annexation of outlying commercial properties that substantially increased sales tax revenue derived for the benefit of the Town. In-turn, the Town was able to muster revenue for grant matches and loan payments that resulted in project ...

“All organizations are merely conceptual embodiments of a very old, very basic idea – the idea of community. They can be no more or less than the sum of the beliefs of the people drawn to them; of their character, judgments, acts and effort.” Dee Hock from The New Transitional HR Model About twenty-five days out from the 2008 national elections I wrote an article for the Daily Post endorsing Ron Chacey. I lamented over concerns I had for the direction the County might take under a majority consisting of John Ranson and Bob Moomaw. After the election, and as a result of the ambush and assault on the County’s planning commission, I wrote another article lamenting concerns that Archuleta County continued to disregard good process, policies and predictability. Since then, I have pelted Bill Hudson and Glenn Walsh with information, but refrained and even refused to write anything myself. A couple of weeks ago, I re-introduced myself to Terri House at a Rot...