This Valentine’s Day, The Durango Herald played Cupid.
We contacted people from opposing viewpoints on controversial topics to see if the leaders of those movements could come together in a reasonable, respectful and communicative way. We mostly succeeded, but not entirely.
We were able to unite an environmentalist and a representative of the gas and oil industry. We brought together a business owner and the director of the Business Improvement District who have differing views about Main Avenue bump-outs. And we joined a fire chief and community member who battled over a proposed downtown fire station.
Back in 2016, the cultural commentator and columnist David Brooks wrote that “we live within a golden chain, connecting self, family, village, nation and world. The bonds of that chain have to be repaired at every point.”
Consider this an effort to repair the bonds of Durango’s and La Plata County’s golden chain.
Mark Pearson, executive director of San Juan Citizen’s Alliance, likens the difference between his own perspective and that of Michelina Paulek, executive director the Energy Council, to the difference between milk chocolate and dark chocolate; the product is fundamentally similar, but differences between them are the basis of fierce disagreement.
Pearson’s organization advocates for environmental protection, while Paulek’s is a trade group representing gas and oil interests in the Four Corners. Despite conflicting opinions about regulatory matters, which often play out in board rooms at every level of government, Paulek and Pearson agree their goals are not so far apart.
“I like to drink clean water and breathe clean air,” Paulek said. “We work, we live here. I’m camped out next to four pumps. (Our goals are) not mutually exclusive, we just have different ways of getting there.”
Members of the gas and oil industry must pay due diligence to the environmental impact of their work, especially given that rules governing the industry in Colorado are among the strictest in the nation.
Where industry and conservationists differ, Pearson and Paulek say, is on the regulatory role of government.
“It’s how we get there, how fast and how we agree on what technologies to use, what innovations,” Paulek said.
“And whether the government is dictating those technologies or leaving it entirely to industry innovation,” Pearson added.
Paulek and Pearson joked together about the heyday of natural gas when it was the definition of clean energy.
“Not long ago,” they both reminisced.
The two agreed that the challenge is to rise above the pithy, quote-worthy statements and focus on working toward mutually agreed-upon goals.
“We can go farther if we’re collaborating together,” Paulek said. “We do spend a lot of energy fighting each other.”
– Reuben Schafir
Jackson Clark, owner of Toh-Atin Gallery, has voiced his displeasure with the extension of Durango’s bump-out program because of the limited number of parking spaces downtown.
The Business Improvement District endorsed the continuation of the bump-out program in a letter to City Council in fall 2022.
BID Executive Director Tim Walsworth, who has advocated for keeping the bump-outs, sat down with Clark last week to discuss their perspectives. While the two have been on opposite sides of what is best for downtown Durango, they agree it doesn’t mean there has to be hostility between the two.
The two had a brief discussion about Clark’s plans to go skiing and the weather before diving into the bump-out topic.
Walsworth said Clark’s business has been a large part of the downtown community for a long time.
“They ship products and curate from the Native American community all over the place,” Walsworth said. “The BID has also been around for a while, and the commonality there is that we love this downtown, and we care about it.”
Clark has argued that the bump-outs favor downtown restaurants but do not benefit downtown retailers because they reduce the number of parking spaces downtown.
“When you take 35% of parking spaces off of Main Avenue, you reduce the number of people who come downtown,” he said.
He later said that when it is difficult to park downtown, customers are less likely to shop at downtown retail establishments.
Walsworth said the bump-outs have had positive impacts on some downtown restaurants but there are some adjustments that must be made to ensure businesses are using them.
He said there should be a usage requirement for downtown businesses to continue using the structures.
The two men found common ground on one solution: Downtown needs a parking structure. They agreed building a parking structure should be a priority over the city’s Downtown’s Next Step plan.
“You found our agreement right there,” Clark said.
Walsworth said the last thing the BID wants is people to travel to Farmington to shop because of a lack of parking.
“Let’s build something with 200 spaces and put it right there in the transit center where it’s a block off Main,” Walsworth said.
– Tyler Brown
Greg Hoch, former planning director for the city of Durango and the de facto leader of a group called Citizens Voice Durango, has had his public disagreements with Durango Fire Protection District Chief Hal Doughty.
Conflict arose after DFPD moved to purchase the Durango School District 9-R Administration Building at 201 E. 12th St. Hoch emerged as the leader of an organized group of neighbors who opposed the project, citing a lack of transparency, insufficient opportunity for public comment and disapproval of a fire station.
Hoch led what he calls a “relatively polite” group of residents to an effective victory. The group approached DFPD with a request to conduct a yearlong feasibility study to explore the possibility of reconstructing the fire station at River City Hall, located at 1235 Camino del Rio, to meet DFPD’s needs.
Doughty agreed, and a year later, the entities are aligned in an effort to secure the location as the future site of a new downtown fire station. DFPD has called Station No. 2, which is currently located at the site, an “undersized, unsafe and inadequately equipped fire station.”
“The fire department is exceptional if grandma’s dying, if you’ve been in a car accident or if your house is on fire,” Doughty said. “We aren’t so good at playing the political and public opinion game.”
Doughty said the department has enjoyed a great amount of public support in the past, citing the landslide vote in 2017 to raise city and county property taxes to fund the district. He thought the department could count on that level of support again.
“We underestimated, quite frankly, the power that a small group of really motivated property owners around the area where we were proposing to move the fire station,” he said. “We underestimated greatly what their success would be in trying to stop that project.”
Hoch reiterated that his mission was to stop the project, but support the department.
“Our position was that it was in the wrong location,” he said. “All through the process, with maybe a few exceptions by weirdo members of our group, we never stopped supporting the fire department, we never stopped supporting the fire staff and the services they provide.”
Although the two men are now aligned, Doughty acknowledged tensions in the past and said the feeling of support did not always shine through.
“When a mad group of rabble-rousers shows up in City Council to speak against you, it doesn’t feel like that,” he said.
Doughty said he came to realize the fight was not about putting a fire station in the 9-R building, but about getting adequate facilities for first responders, and quickly. Hoch and his group are pushing the city to enter into a lease with DFPD for the River City Hall location. Now that plans to rebuild that location are slowly moving forward, Doughty and Hoch are working to secure an agreement between DFPD and the city before the newly elected City Council members takes over in mid-April.
– Reuben Schafir
TheDurango Herald tried to unite representatives of La Plata County and the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. The railroad is suing the county over its enforcement of the land-use code at the Rockwood Depot. John Harper, the general manager of American Heritage Railways, the company that owns D&SNG, was willing to meet, however Commissioner Marsha Porter-Norton declined the invitation.
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The Herald also tried to bring together the chairwomen of the La Plata County Democratic Party and the La Plata County Republican Central Committee. Both leaders were willing to meet, but their schedules could not align in time for this story.
