Newsletters

Time Capsule ::
July 2024

    Dear Beckett,

    I hope I will see you at our July townhall meeting on Tuesday, July 16 from 5:30 – 7:00.  We will be at the Superior Community Center, 1500 Coalton Road, Superior, with a presentation on wildfire mitigation on the plains and grassland areas.  You may have received a postcard in the mail with information about a county grant program to assist with the cost of wildfire mitigation.  Details about that program as well as other mitigation funds and services are on the Wildfire Partners website.  As always, we welcome questions or comments about anything else that’s on your mind.

    Speaking of wildfire, I am sure you share my relief that the Friday NCAR fire, the two fires in the northern part of the county on Monday and the grass fire near Niwot High were quickly extinguished.  I wish I could refer to our current weather as “unseasonably hot” but the reality is that the temperatures are climbing due to climate change and fires will be an increasingly regular occurence.  Boulder County is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Suncor and Exxon Mobile for the costs we are incurring as a result of their concealment of evidence that burning fossil fuels would warm the planet.  The expense of fighting these fires and the ancillary emergency responses (evacuation notices, alternative sheltering, etc.) are a very real cost to our budget.  And that is just one of the ways in which climate change is affecting county government.

    Speaking of budgets (I’ll use another verbal transition phrase in all subsequent paragraphs), an initiative to limit the growth of property taxes statewide will be on the ballot in November.  Everyone is reeling from the large increase in property taxes as a result of increased property values (although the county’s increase was capped at 5.5%), but I urge you to reject the blunt, meat ax approach in Initiative 50.  Here’s why.  The legislature passed Senate Bill 233this past session that will limit the growth in a local government’s revenue from property taxes to 5.5% annually.  The bill also lowered the residential and commercial assessment rates from 7.06% to 6.7% and from 29% to 25% respectively.  In addition, the value of residential property is artificially reduced by $70,000 before the assessment rate is applied. (School district mill levies are addressed separately because of the complexity of the state school finance act.)  Property owners will not see the benefit of this bill before we vote in November.  I think we need to give this legislation time to work, and retain the legislature’s ability to adjust assessment rates and offsets as necessary without strangling the ability to deliver essential services of counties, fire districts, park and recreation districts, hospital districts and other local governments that rely on property taxes.  

    In contrast to the approach taken in Senate Bill 233, Initiative 50 lumps every source of property tax revenue in the entire state into one bucket called “government spending” and limits the growth in revenue from all of these combined sources to 4% annually. The growth experienced in the front range and the mountain resort communities would drive down assessment rates throughout the state – similar to the way the Gallagher Amendment did before it was repealed. (The initiative doesn’t specify how and by whom the cap is to be implemented.) In counties and special districts where valuations haven’t risen such as, say Costilla or Sedgwick County, reducing the assessment rate would cause their tax revenue to be less than the previous year instead of merely reducing an increase.  If local governments receive voters approval of new property taxes for needs such as mental health, fire fighting and human services, those additional revenues would require everyone else’s revenues to decline because the additional voter-approved revenue would be counted in the statewide total.  To remain under the blanket 4% cap, new revenue that benefits one area would result in yet further lowering the assessment rate for everyone, potentially nullifying the increase the voters just approved!

    You’ll see that the constitutional amendment allows voters to approve retention of additional revenue.  But since the cap is a statewide cap, the entire state would have to vote to approve the additional revenue, including voters in counties and districts that did not experience any increase.  Coloradans for Local Communities  has started to assemble examples of how Initiative 50 would devastate local governments.  You’ll see on their website that there is bipartisan opposition to this initiative as well as Proposition 108.  Please inform yourself about these two measures between now and November!

    In Boulder County, the existing 5.5% limitation on revenue growth is already making it hard to important services.  We expect to spend approximately $25.3 million in local property taxes to adequately fund human services (child care assistance, child welfare and adult protection services) that state law requires counties to provide. In 2025 we will likely have to draw on our general fund reserves to cover these expenditures.  The Board of County Commissioners recently approved six additional employees for the District Attorney at an initial cost of $735,000.  These position were not budgeted for in 2024 but we deemed them necessary to address the backlog of people in the county jail awaiting trial. Funding these positions will likely also come from our reserve. To provide alternative sentencing services at the new voter-approved facility, in order to improve outcomes and keep people out of expensive jail beds, our annual expenditures will start at $3 million and increase from there. Again, most likely further reducing our reserve. These are just a few of the expenditures, in addition to providing competitive salaries and cost of living, that will require the county’s general fund budget to increase by more than 5.5% over last year’s budget and require us to spend from our general fund reserve.  Were our budget to be limited to a 4% annual increase, we would be unable to respond to the next natural disaster, a recession causing increased demand for human services, additional state-mandated spending at the county jail and resident expectations of Boulder County services.

    I don’t lay this out to whine.  I am providing this information to illustrate that “belt-tightening” isn’t an option at the level of government whose function is to serve people’s needs for housing, food and child care assistance, workforce training, a safe jail, adequately staffed offices for the elected district attorney, clerk and recorder, treasurer, assessor, coroner and sheriff, snow plowing, public health services and more.

    So with that “civics lesson” behind us, I’ll close with a recommendation that you familiarize yourself with Project 2025.  This is the Heritage Foundation’s and other conservative organization’s plan to increase the power of the presidency, weaken civil rights protections and transform the United States into a Christian country.  Here are a couple of resources to understand the implications of this radical plan.  One from Democracy Docket, an explainer from Vox Media and a readable analysis from Democracy Forward. Be an informed voter!

    Claire

    Newsletters

    April 4, 2024 :: April Townhall, Legislative Efforts, and Community Engagement in Boulder County

    I’ll start with information about the County Commissioners’ April townhall meeting. It will be on April 11 at Boulder County Housing Authority’s lovely Kestrel…

    May 28, 2024 :: Recycling Center and a Balanced Approach to Weed Management

    The Board of County Commissioners halted a program to improve winter elk range by spraying indazaflam using helicopters that we entered into in partnership…

    June 14, 2024 :: Wildfire Mitigation, Education Advocacy, and Supportive Housing Initiatives

    Before I turn to other news on what I have been doing as your county commissioner, I want to urge you to vote, if you haven’t already done so, for Kathy…

    July 14, 2024 :: Wildfire mitigation on the plains

    Speaking of wildfire, I am sure you share my relief that the Friday NCAR fire, the two fires in the northern part of the county on Monday and the grass fire near Niwot…

    August 19, 2024 :: Property tax special session

    Before I turn to yet another discussion of legislative proposals on property taxes, I want to share something disturbing that I heard at a recent community event…

    September 18, 2024 :: Upcoming elections 

    Tuesday was National Voter Registration Day.  While I’m pretty comfortable in assuming that you are a registered…

    Paid for by Friends of Claire Levy. 2024.