Sunnyside Elementary School is more than a place where children in kindergarten through fifth grade learn to read, write, do math and navigate friendships. The school is also a community hub for its students, their families and for the neighborhood.
The branch library that the school houses is a beloved social and academic center that serves generations of Sunnyside-area families. The La Plata County Board of Commissioners knows this well and saw it first-hand when we held an “On The Road” meeting at Sunnyside last month. About 35 parents, grandparents, students, neighbors, teachers and library staff joined us for the meeting and the message was clear: We love our library and what it provides our neighborhood.
This large turnout is uncommon for these meetings, but it was not surprising because we commissioners have been hearing difficult news lately: We are expecting our recent revenue declines to continue unabated in 2018 and we have to make difficult, but necessary, cuts to our expenditures. We do not want to do this, but with upwards of $6 million in lost revenue between 2016 and 2018, La Plata County has little choice.
We must look at our statutorily required services and prioritize them over those we have been able to provide in more abundant times. As difficult as this is, we must find ways to cut back our expenses, and funding for the libraries at Sunnyside and Fort Lewis Mesa elementary schools is something we feel we must trim – along with many other cuts to county expenditures.
This is not an indication of how the commissioners or anyone else at the county feels about the branch libraries, nor is it a statement of the value we place on them. Instead, this unpleasant reality demonstrates to us the need to bring La Plata County residents together in understanding just how county government is funded and learning what sorts of services are most important to you – and what community investment you are all willing to make in ensuring that they can continue at the levels you expect.
We learned just before our meeting at Sunnyside that Durango School District 9-R had found funds to cover the libraries’ staffing costs for 2018, giving us all some breathing room to find a long-term solution for funding these critical community hubs. We expect to work closely with the school district and the communities that rely on the branch libraries to craft that solution – but our vision is a community-based investment in the libraries and the important resources they offer.
La Plata County’s budget constraints provide us both a challenge and an opportunity, and funding for branch libraries demonstrates each. On the one hand, it brings into sharp focus the fact that our property tax mill levy rate of 8.5, the fourth-lowest in the state, is not sufficient to cover county services now that oil and gas price and production has fallen nationwide and locally. In comparison, Archuleta County’s rate is 13.9 mills, Montezuma County’s is 14.25 mills and the state average is 22 mills. This is a systemic problem that will affect La Plata County’s budget until we find ways to bolster our revenue streams.
These circumstances present an opportunity to think outside traditional lines, because county governments everywhere are largely funded by property tax (as opposed to cities, which draw their money primarily from sales tax). It is this conversation we want to have with residents, both in terms of the libraries and about larger county services. We want to know what is important to you and what are you willing to invest to make it possible? Our goal is to learn from our residents, while also educating you about what is possible, what is required and what our constraints are, both budgetary and service-specific.
La Plata County has always run a tight ship – even when financial times were better. When oil and gas activity was at its peak, the county squirreled money away to make capital investments to meet planned facilities and infrastructure needs. Now, there is less squirreling to be done, and less funding available to make these long-term investments. But there are also far fewer dollars available to cover the day-to-day, year-to-year operations of the county. That scenario is what forces us to have difficult conversations about what we can fund, and allows us the opportunity to learn what is important to you and how we can all work together as a community to provide those resources.
Gwen Lachelt is vice chairwoman of the La Plata County Board of Commissioners. Reach her at 382-6219.
