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Pagosa Springs News:
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| EDITORIAL: An Exciting Saturday, For Some |
| Bill Hudson | 7/2/12 |
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 Last Saturday, June 30, was a busy day in Pagosa Springs, with at least six well-publicized community events taking place. Cynda and I, between the two of us, managed to attend four of them: the Ribbon Cutting and Grand Opening of the Yamaguchi Skate Park; the High School Wrestling Team fundraiser in Town Park featuring Durango-based Country Music band the High Rollers; Pagosa’s first-ever competitive roller derby match hosted by Rollergirls In Pagosa (“RIP”) at the Middle School gymnasium; and the First Annual Geothermal Greenhouse Celebration at the Ross Aragon Community Center.
At least three of those four events were quite well attended.
The Skate Park celebration started at 10am and attracted a nice crowd of mostly working-class Pagosans: skateboarding kids and adults, parents, and supporters of the new concrete skate park completed last fall. A silent auction and various fundraising opportunities managed to raise about $2000 towards a planned addition to the skate park: a deep, kidney-shaped “bowl” that will no doubt generate increased use of the park, whenever it gets built. The initial park design and construction was funded by the Town government in cooperation with the non-profit Skaters Coalition for Concrete.
Photos by Cynda Green and Bill Hudson.
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We hope to share a nice Photo Essay of this event in tomorrow’s Daily Post.
The Rollergirls inaugural event in the Middle School gym — “Red White & Bruised” — was another non-profit effort that managed to pack the bleachers with curious fans, eager to watch our local roller derby team butt heads with the Four Corners Rollergirls team from Cortez, CO.
We plan to post the Photo Essay about that event either tomorrow or Thursday.
The Wrestling Team fundraiser in Town Park also attracted several hundred people, who danced in the grassy athletic field to the music of the polished and professional High Rollers, as the sun set slowly the smoke-filled western sky.
The fourth event — the First Annual Geothermal Greenhouse Celebration sponsored by mayor Ross Aragon’s Geothermal Greenhouse Partnership (GGP) — had also done considerable advertising for their Saturday event, promising:
Live music, fabulous food by Chavalos and a beer and wine garden. An auction will be held in conjunction, featuring over 25 items and services, including Art, Car, Grow Dome, Lodging Packages, Variety of Western Items, a Horseback Ride with the Mayor, Parelli Savvy Days VIP Package, Window Washing, Oil Change and much, much more...
The GGP’s Facebook page explained a bit more about the event:
Learn more and celebrate the positive progress of the Geothermal Greenhouse Partnership. Saturday, June 30, 10am to 4pm, Aragon Community Center. See you there!
I showed up at the Community Center at 11am — an hour after the advertised start of the event, and found the spacious room nearly devoid of people.
I’d come to the event hoping to interview members of general public about their honest feelings regarding this government-subsidized agriculture project. But I found only about 20 people there — the members of the non-profit GGP board and their friends. I quickly came to the conclusion that the general public was probably not going to show up until maybe 1pm, the time set for the start of the auction.
That two-hour auction, I had found out as I walked in the door, was going to include — among numerous other items — a lovely, sage-green Ford Expedition in excellent shape, donated to the cause by GGP board member Elaine Wood.
The auction was scheduled to run from 1pm until 3pm, I was told. So I set my mental alarm clock for 3pm. I was sure I would find a big crowd at the Community Center at 3pm.
But when I showed up at 3pm, here’s what I found:
The “celebration” was already over. The two-hour auction had attracted so few participants, one of the attendees told me, that it had lasted only about half an hour. The celebration itself, which was supposed to last until 4pm, was already being disassembled when I arrived at 3pm.
Luckily, I was able to get a photo of the happy couple who’d won the bidding for the Ford Expedition: local residents Oscar and Karla Dominguez. They’d bought the car for their daughter and son-in-law, Nicole and Adrian Baird, who will soon be moving to Austin, TX.
GGP board member Elaine Wood, who had donated the car, came out as I was taking the photos, and congratulated Nicole and Adrian on their good fortune.
Unfortunately, I was unable to interview members of the general public at the First Annual Geothermal Greenhouse Celebration — because, except for the Dominguez family, I didn’t come across any members of the general public at the Community Center that day. Bad timing on my part.
I am consistently amazed, however, by the way our local community leaders sometimes make such a big noise about their pet projects, even when those projects have garnered little or no visible community support.
A posting on the GGP's Facebook page added on Friday by board member Sally High, however, shouts out this encouraging information:
Pagosa Springs, Archuleta County, and the Geothermal Greenhouse Partnership! Well represented at the Colorado Energy Office's Geothermal Working Group meeting in Denver yesterday. Very productive and very positive. So good to be with 100+ Coloradans who see Pagosa Springs as leading the way in geothermal development!
Sounds like some politicians and bureaucrats in Denver welcomed the GGP board with open arms last week, and acted "very positive" about Pagosa’s Geothermal Greenhouse project.
How curious that the mayor and his board can’t seem to find 100+ Pagosa Springs residents who feel the same way.
Could it be... that our local leaders are heading in exactly the wrong direction? Could it be that our leaders should be focusing their energies on the things that we Pagosans truly get excited about — like skate parks, and roller derby competitions, and country music?
But we all know that could never happen. |
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