Call me a trifle cynical, but with rare exceptions, growth never pays for itself. Revenue streams just can’t keep up with expenditures. Why? First, growth’s new property taxes and the sales taxes collected from those new residents can never keep up with the needs for infrastructure improvements.
For instance, the streets can’t handle the additional traffic growth. Will that new growth require more schools? Probably not, owing to the high percentage of retirees bringing saddlebags of cash from the sales of homes in more expensive regions of the country. Public utilities will strain to keep up as well. School classrooms could swell to unmanageable numbers, if children come with the new arrivals.
Then there will always be the issue of water supplies for all those new hookups. From single-family homes to condo and apartment development, we are not out of the woods when it comes to the long-running drought on the Western Slope, especially while Arizona, Nevada and California maneuver in the courts for more of an already stressed Colorado River.
But here is the objective truth (which is true whether or not one chooses to believe it): The growth of Durango and La Plata County carries the sorts of stress points that will not be well-received by people already complaining and, rightfully so, about too much traffic.
Frankly, it appears the planning department officials are living in their own bubble. “Planning,” per se, requires more than simply crunching some numbers. It’s also about cause-and-effect outside the numbers.
David Ohman
Durango
