Boulder County Subdivision Paving Public Improvement District Issue 5C
Formation, Mill Levy and Debt Authorization
Vote Yes
If you’ve ever been in a trailer park, you’ve seen the signs:
Privately Managed Road, End of City Maintenance, things like that.
Within that little subdivision, the city isn’t maintaining the roads
because the residents of that subdivision should pay to keep up what
are basically their private roads.
This
ballot issue is asking the same thing about subdivisions in
unincorporated Boulder County. Roads in these subdivisions are aging and
haven’t been kept up adequately; now, saying they lack money for
repairs, the Boulder County Commissioners have referred this question
about creating a new paving district to voters.
A
yes vote means a new Public Improvement District (PID) is created,
putting all those subdivisions together and raising taxes on them to
repair the roads. A no vote means the same thing. See, the
commissioners also have the power to create a Local Improvement District
(LID) themselves and implement fees — shaky ground, TABOR-wise, but it
does have precedent — to repair the roads. The commissioners’ website
says a PID is the wiser choice to assure long-term upkeep and is a
“permanent solution” over the “temporary fix” of the LID, and it says
there’s no avoiding a new district: A LID is coming if voters reject the
PID.
So like it
or not, these subdivisions are being placed in a district and are being
charged to repair their roads. It’s just like the trailer parks with
their signs — except this is something residents probably didn’t know
they’d have to do at some point. LID payments aren’t tax-deductible, and
PID payments typically are. We recommend a yes vote to avoid these
voters having to pay twice to two different levels of government.
View all of Boulder Weekly’s endorsements here.
