I was dismayed by The Durango Herald’s Feb. 16 article about the city seeking to extend the 2005 sales tax in order to fund, in part, the construction of new city and police department offices in the former 9-R building. My concern is that the city (and the Herald) are treating this planned undertaking like a foregone conclusion, when it’s potentially an unnecessary and massive expense for our citizens.

Let’s take a quick walk down memory lane.

In August, 2021, the Durango School District announced it had gone under contract to sell the 9-R building to Durango Fire Protection District, the highest bidder. When approached by concerned citizens about this deal and its implications on public life, City Council initially washed its hands, saying this was a transaction between two other entities in which it could not intervene.

In doing so, the city conveniently ignored its own contractual interest in the new fire station per the terms of its agreement with DFPD (see Agreement, Jan. 1, 2014, Section 5, “Capital Contribution”). In response to this impasse, citizens rose up and successfully passed a citizen petition ordinance through Council in May 2022, to revise the zoning of the 9-R building and effectively put a stop to the fire department’s ill-conceived plans.

The resultant dead-end led to a buyout: The city bought the fire department out of its interest in the 9-R building for $3.6 million and gave the fire department its current River City Hall building, thus concluding the two-plus year saga in November of last year.

But there’s more. Since this time, the city seems to be fixated on rebranding this buyout (consistently referred to as a “swap”) by insisting on moving ahead with its expensive plans to combine city and police offices on the 9-R campus, as though this had been the plan all along. I haven’t seen any evidence the city has looked into other, less expensive options. The most recent estimate available for the 9-R building-turned-civic center, on top of the $3.6 million the city already spent in the buyout, is about $40 million. And it’s believed even this is a conservative estimate because of the age of the building, its historical status and all the necessary mitigation costs involved.

Is this really the best we can do?

It’s very likely that new construction would cost far less, or that there’s another structure or structures already in the area that would cost far less to repurpose. Are the city’s hands truly tied or repeatedly negligent? Even the fire department was able to find a smart solution for its administrative offices to keep its costs low.

The city owns a costly historic building. There are several city employees now displaced from the River City Hall building and our police department is in need of larger accommodations. However, combining these three problems does not a solution make.

I’d like to see due diligence by our Council to engage in long-term planning and look at all available options. And I’d like to see our citizens and the Herald watching Council’s next steps more closely, no longer treating the buyout-turned-civic-center-boondoggle like a done deal.

Justin Jones is retired and lives in Durango.