The lodgers tax is being billed as a boon to Durango, with no cost to its residents.
Last year we were overrun with tourists. Ice Lakes was damaged and burned so badly, we now need supervision for it. Many of our favorite trails were overrun.
Then the tourists didn’t go home. Shoulder season? According to The Durango Herald (1/21/21), the median home price in La Plata County rose 40% in the fourth quarter of 2020 – and that’s not a typo – while Durango cries for affordable housing.
How do those two come together? Where is the money in this tax to cover the additional personnel for our forests? Our police? Fire departments? Water and sanitation? Medical? All the needs that arise when a friendly town is overrun and becomes an unfriendly city?
That money will be squeezed from those of us who live here. What is the cost of losing the town we loved? I don’t want to live in Telluride. We already have these monster, big-city hotels climbing out of our town, emphasizing that the tourists were already here. I strongly support a lodgers tax for the arts and transportation and other needs for our town. We do not have to kill Durango to do that.
When you sugar-coat a poison pill, it doesn’t reduce the poison. How many tourists are enough? Let’s put the money where we need it.
Debby MalcolmDurango
