The narrow passage Tuesday of the city’s half-cent sales tax is good news for Durango, not because the city needs the money to fix the roads, which it does, but because the narrowness shows Durangoans’ wisdom. Fifty-two percent of voters swung this, a difference of 195 votes.
In the end, 4,432 people, a little more than a third of the electorate, took the time to complete a three-question ballot. These are the engaged residents. We know because we have heard from quite a few of them, pleading for the 1A tax increase and also vowing to fight it by any means necessary. It got heated there for a while. Barbara Noseworthy, who won a City Council seat Tuesday evening, must know it, too, after knocking on so many doors.
Voters who wanted to participate also heard a good range of views, and weighed them. What narrowly won out was investing for the future, particularly in roads, which are as basic as water, over distrust in government. If voters had crushed it, voting 90-10 for the tax raise, or sending the city reeling in another defeat after scaling back its failed bid from last November, we would be concerned. It would seem heedless. Closer elections make for better consensus in the long run, which Durango will need as a new Council starts to work with the city manager to budget and plan. It looks to us as though at least half of voters want to see some changes in budgeting and planning.
They got a distinct change on Council Tuesday. Along with incoming Mayor Melissa Youssef, and Noseworthy, there is Kim Baxter, who won a Council seat, leading the polling. When Council voted to send this sales tax proposal to the ballot, Youssef wanted to consider alternatives. Noseworthy and Baxter refused to endorse it. This leaves a majority of Council with the revenue of a tax they did not champion, eating their cake and having it too – and with a mandate to fix the damned roads. This also shows the wisdom of the voters.
Baxter will bring a direct, levelheaded style to the Council. That counts as leadership in our book. Noseworthy may be its member best informed about what the residents want. Our sole regret about this compact election is that Marcos Wisner had to come third.
Wisner was the “young” candidate, the entrepreneur from 11th Street Station, the bright new spot for food and drink downtown – although, at 31 years, it is not so much that Wisner is young as that our city leadership tends to get on in years. Retirees have a significant stake in the city as well as the time and experience to give to its affairs but it also does not hurt to have people in government who do not remember Ronald Reagan or rotary phones – and this is doubly true if we are talking about planning for a future they will actually experience.
Wisner supported the tax. It was a bracingly simple proposition for him, uncluttered by liberalism or conservatism: We have to fix the roads, he said. It is nice to see that while he lost, his argument won.
Yet that is not the end of it, or should not be. We think Durango still needs Wisner. It needs to hold him hostage while it contemplates Durango 2030 and 2040. It ought to make him an immediate voting member of any commission that deals with long-range planning, which should be every commission.
Trailing in Council polling was Jaime McMillan, the financial advisor who was another light in the race. He took his loss in stride Tuesday evening and with unusual grace. “I’ve always felt that good candidates win elections,” he told the Herald. Noseworthy and Baxter “deserve those seats,” he said.
This after McMillan came with a signature concept, turning Durango into a marijuana destination for the world. It did not excite enough voters to also put him in charge of water treatment and parking fines, but he is worth hearing out. Perhaps it is time for Council to appoint a committee to explore and recommend possibilities for developing businesses in marijuana, including tourism and on-site consumption as well as hemp production and CBD oil. We think we might know someone who could chair it.
An earlier version of this editorial gave an incorrect vote spread from the election.
