City staff members and City Council are planning to introduce a ballot measure in April that, if passed by residents, will extend the city’s current half-cent dedicated sales tax on every taxable $1 spent for an additional 30 years.
The proposed ballot measure will fund a) maintenance and enhancements to our Parks, Open Space and Trails – POST – and b) finance construction of a new Durango Police Department facility at the former Big Picture High School building and a new City Hall at the historic high school building at 201 E. 12th St.
City residents voted this tax into place in 2005 for 20 years to a) provide funds dedicated to improving Durango’s parks, open space and trails, and b) finance construction of a new public library and improvements to Florida Road.
The past two decades of dedicated tax funding have delivered awesome results. Having a great public library offers many community benefits, and improvements to Florida Road vastly improved traffic safety for pedestrians, bicycles and vehicles.
Key accomplishments from 20 years of dedicated POST funding include: redeveloping and extending the Animas River Trail; creating pickleball courts at Schneider Park, preserving Horse Gulch and Dalla Mountain Park; establishing Oxbow Park & Preserve; purchasing Buckley Park; enhancing the Whitewater Park at Santa Rita; and creating Smith Fields and tennis courts on the Fort Lewis College mesa.
The proposed tax measure amounts to 50 cents on a $100 taxable purchase and most groceries are exempt. What many residents may overlook is that nearly two-thirds of sales tax proceeds are paid by visitors from outside the city, so residents benefit from the investments while only directly paying about one-third of their cost.
Though past accomplishments from dedicated POST funding are many, there are numerous prospects to further enhance our outdoor environment. Foremost among these desires is preserving the high quality of our existing outdoor amenities. Regularly investing in proactive maintenance is paramount to prevent our parks, open space and trails amenities falling into disrepair.
Additional hopeful opportunities for POST investment include extending the Animas River Trail to Three Springs and Twin Buttes, enhancing our natural surface trail system, and developing recreational amenities at Durango Mesa Park.
I encourage City Council to recognize that the many POST accomplishments we now enjoy, and paid for with dedicated taxes, resulted from a highly engaged community arrangement including advisory boards involving hundreds of well-informed residents over several decades.
Former members of the Parks & Recreation, Natural Lands and Multimodal advisory boards, Council dissolved in July 2023, volunteered their time and dedicated themselves to listen carefully to public comments, evaluate alternative POST investments and recommend selections to Council.
This robust public engagement process helped guide spending of dedicated sales taxes for 20 years. The draft language for this ballot measure implies the same level of public engagement and gives Council discretion as to whether residents will have as active a role as was in place over past decades to guide future POST tax spending.
I encourage Council to define the citizen advisory board referenced in the draft ballot measure language. A new citizens advisory board is needed to help prioritize an estimated $100 million in POST investments over the 30-year duration of the proposed tax measure. This would complement the Engage Durango system that served to replace the advisory boards to offer residents additional channels of public engagement.
Most of us choose to live in Durango because we have incredible parks, open space and trails. Let’s continue investing in that. I am fully in support of this ballot measure and encourage the community to support it with a new advisory board overseeing future investments.
Together we can accomplish great things.
Seth Furtney is a former member of the Durango Parks & Recreation Advisory Board and 20-year Durango resident.
