Boulder County Commissioner Will Toor submitted the following comments to add to our discussion of County ballot issues 1A and 1B for open space and transit improvements, respectively. Comments?
I have read with interest the exchanges on this blog on county ballot issues 1A and 1B. I would like to provide my perspective on why both issues benefit all of Boulder County, and urge your support for these issues.
On issue 1A:County Question 1A enables Boulder County to continue preserving, improving and maintaining important open lands around the county. It continues an existing l tenth of a cent sales tax, or 10 cents on a $100 purchase. It does not increase taxes above the current rate, it simply carries forward an existing small amount.
The preservation of open lands is vital to sustaining our quality of life in Boulder County. As urban sprawl from Denver encroaches on our way of life, there is much to do in terms of managing growth and protecting wildlife habitat and agriculture. Critical wildlife corridors and significant parcels of land will be available for open space purchase in the immediate future. If 1A passes, we will be able to safeguard these lands for future generations. If not, we'll see more development throughout rural Boulder County.
We live in a region with significant growth pressures. State planners estimate that Colorado's Front Range - from Colorado Springs to Fort Collins - will grow by more than 3 million people in the next 25 years. This rapid growth intensifies the need for preserving our remaining open spaces. Further, Boulder County's economic health is directly linked to how well we protect our environment.
Without the continuation of this tax, Boulder County won't be able to purchase additional open space for many years and will face real limitations on funds needed to build new trails and facilities. Current open space taxes only generate enough revenue to pay for the land that has already been acquired. If 1A passes, Boulder County will be able to buy and preserve key parcels now before they're bought up by developers and while prices are still affordable.
The remaining land that should be preserved includes wildlife habitat in the mountains and plains; urban buffers between communities; working farms and ranches; and trail linkages. These parcels are often adjacent to or surrounded by other open space land. If we fail to conserve these lands, the impact on current open space will be significant.
Question 1A also provides funds for maintaining and improving the land we have. It will help pay for weed management, wetland and riparian area enhancements, trail and facility construction and maintenance, forest management, wildlife habitat improvements, agricultural management and more.
The choice is clear. We can pass 1A and continue to protect our quality of life and our rural lands or we can defeat 1A and risk development and sprawl. We can protect wild places for wildlife or we can allow wild places to sprout new houses and attract widespread development.
Boulder County is known statewide and nationally for our land preservation efforts, for our trails, our preservation of historic structures and our efforts to manage growth. 1A maintains a very small tax that allows us to continue these efforts.
In response to questions that have been raised on this blog: Boulder county currently has only $12 million left for land acquisition. This may sound like a lot, but at current rates of land acquisition this will last less less than one year. 1A will generate $4.2 million annually. Of this, $3.2 million will be bonded, providing $40 million in bonds for land purchase; and $1 million per year will be available for land management and trail construction. Dr Bombays' statements that county open space funds are primarily invested in the Boulder area are incorrect; he may be confusing County open space with City of Boulder open space. Major County open space purchases over the last few years have included large parcels near Lafayette, Superior, Lyons, Longmont, and one major purchase in the foothills west of Boulder (near the Betasso open space).
Boulder County Ballot Issue 1B - .10% Transportation Sales and Use Tax Extension will allow Boulder County to continue to provide better roads, safer pedestrian crossings, an expanded network of regional trails, and continued high quality transit service for Boulder County - all key components of a balanced and well-maintained transportation system that provides residents and visitors safe and convenient travel choices throughout Boulder County.
Voting Yes on ballot issue 1B will not increase the current sales tax rate. 1B continues an existing one-tenth of a cent sales tax to be used for fifteen years towards the construction development, maintenance and operation of our vital transportation system.
In 2001, the citizens of Boulder County voted to fund improvements to the County's transportation system. Most of these improvements have been implemented, including 42 miles of shoulder and intersection improvements to County roads, implementation of popular transit routes, and major roadway construction of the Valmont Road and Airport Road bridges.
As growth in the County continues, there is a continued need to invest in transportation improvements. If we are to sustain the high quality of life that makes Boulder County such a desirable place to live, work and play, we must continue to support our first class transportation system.
For only a penny on every $10 purchase, 1B will help provide for these important projects and services:
* Roadway Reconstruction, Road Safety and Maintenance Projects (over 40% of funds), including ten critical roadway and intersection improvements throughout the County and funding for ongoing maintenance of our roadway system. This funding will also help construct key underpasses and sidewalks in areas that present barriers to walking or biking safely and conveniently to key community destinations.
* Road/Bike Shoulder Projects (25% of funds), including thirteen different roads that require wider shoulders to improve safety for both drivers and bicyclists.
* Transit Projects that support Senior Transportation programs, Eco Pass programs for neighborhoods and businesses, and continued support for important transit routes throughout the county (approximately 16% of funds). Passage of 1B will mean continued support for transit service between Lafayette, Erie, Louisville, Superior, Longmont, Lyons and Boulder, as well as improved connections between communities in the southeast county to the U.S. 36 corridor.
* The completion of our Regional Trails system (15% of funds). This program will complete the final sections of the Coal Creek and Rock Creek Trail system, implement the planned St. Vrain Greenway Trail between Longmont and Lyons, continue work on the Feeder Canal Trail and the UP Rail Trail, and provide Nederland and Lyons with additional trail connections. The trails fund would also pay for the Boulder County sections of the U.S. 36 Bikeway to link Boulder with Superior, Louisville and on to Westminster and Denver.
Lastly, by leveraging these funds with state and federal dollars, we can complete an even greater number of projects than could otherwise be implemented.
You can find Will's biography and contact information on the Boulder County website.
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11 comments:
Mr. Toor,
Thanks for the contribution to the blog.
I always need to preface my comments on this subject with the same boilerplate – I’m generally an advocate of Open Space. I’ve voted in favor of all previous OS ballot items. Seems when anyone questions OS in any way they’re painted as against OS. I’m generally not.
I’m just not inclined to jump on the “Vote Yes on 1A” bandwagon because “you’re either with us, or against us.” By expressing my concerns, I’m hoping for a discussion that goes deeper than this.
I don’t agree with the way the argument for continued acquisitions is made. You stated the choice is either continue the tax until 2030, or risk development and sprawl. This seems to imply it’s a race between OS and developers to acquire land. I don’t believe any such race exists. By using the other tools available to them, local county and municipal governments have restricted development to the point it’s occurring just outside of the County borders at a much more rapid rate than within. I use southwest Weld County and Broomfield as examples. The fact the County population has remained flat for several years is also proof no such race to develop exists.
You may be correct with your statement regarding County versus City purchases in and around the City of Boulder. I use the map on the County’s website for reference and the various shades of green are too similar. But, the fact the County has made some acquisitions in EastBoCo doesn’t disprove my statement about the City and County working too closely together at the expense of the rest of the County.
That being said, there is sense in bonding the forecasted revenue to acquire properties as they become available at today’s prices.
But, a 20 year extension? This is pretty close to a forever tax. If historical stats hold true, most of the people who vote for this won’t live here in 2030, if they’re still alive. There must’ve been a fear that a “forever” tax would not go over well with the public. By making it “only” 20 years, and threatening rampant development if it doesn’t pass, it has an excellent chance of passing.
Welcome to Will Toor. I look forward to the perspective of a County Commissioner.
Commissioner Toor presents sort of a mirror image of my perspective. In my view you have the same two scenarios: (a) if 1A passes, (b) if 1A fails. Pretty simple.
If 1A fails, the County cannot afford to compensate rural land owners in possession of lands desired for preservation. Upon failure of 1A, the question then becomes whether the County should try to turn a temporary moratorium on annexations into a permanent moratorium.
What if, without adequate funding to continue public open space acquistions, the County did not push for an unlimited halt to urbanization of the County, and the County encouraged previously-intended open space owners to pursue a new highest and best use? Might it be organic farming, as some have claimed?
If cities of the future are allowed to get bigger, do they grow "smartly" or "dumbly"? I'm not so sure the County has arranged to purchase every last piece of the rural County by the time the current growth limits of the County's cities and towns are reached. Another round of SuperIGA talks is necessary to determine whether the County's cities and towns are really going to stop growing horizontally. If 1A fails, can the County prevent 35 acre ranchettes forver? Do we want to try?
If 1A passes, you don't have to deal with this can of worms. If 1A passes, owners should be fairly compensated for keeping the County's rural properties in agriculture and as open space. That is my entrustment as a voter, at least.
I'm agreeing with a lot that is said in favor of 1A and 1B. Short of some unforeseen revelation, I will be voting yes on both. At the bottom line, I do believe at least one more period of the County's open space tax is appropriate to complete the open space system in way that fulfills public expectations, especially in the East County.
When I look at the years on the tax, I'm just seeing the County looking at this as a bond, and the cash value of each additional year. There is a lot left to accomplish in the East County, and Commissioner Toor also mentions a lot to accomplish in the mountains and throughout the County. A total collection of $80M is not unreasonable to achieve the County's current plans. Even with $80M more dollars, you'll still be among the County's most fortunate if you have open space lapping at your doorstep. The plan is limited and reasonable in scope, and I don't believe it is much of an extension beyond what we think we see as open space today, if not more conservative in aspiration...
But I think Doktorbombay has a worthy point to open on.
Are developers waiting to buy every parcel in rural Boulder County? Are there even enough buyers for developable annexed land in the County's cities? I'm just not sure there is such an arms race between developers and open space either. Not all participants in the private market are developers. And not all developers are criminally insane - what if an ultra-fantastic Paolo Soleri-inspired Arcology were proposed for Boulder County? Would that be green enough?
If you've been following the blog before this, you know that I've labeled "special interests" as a pejorative in common usage. "Sprawl" is another example of pejorative usage.
I am an unflinching proponent of open space, and I don't think Boulder County is done with acquisitions. There are critical acquisitions yet to be funded in the vicinity of Lafayette. I am also an unflinching advocate of good urban planning. Annexations and land conversion are tools in urban planning. You could still fight pressure to develop rampantly without public open space. I like public open space because I like its benefits, but I also believe that innovative land uses might come from the private sector.
Let's spice the conversation up a little. .10% for the county OS and .50% for Lafayette is .60%. That in reality is big bucks, at least $1,300,000 to $1,500,000 a year for OS.
The Lafayette City Administrator has submitted a 2008 proposed budget with a year ending surplus of $17,000. To make that even happen, the City is taking "extra" money from the Emergency Reserve Fund, taking the interest on it, dipping heavily into one of the Open Space funds, relying on the second year of a FEMA grant, and projecting an optimistic revenue forecast with what I contend are questionable assumptions. (Even the WM EDA was miscalculated.)
So now the council has to entertain cuts to Library services, forgo some $400,000 in Rec Center repairs, and add to traffic enforcement based on traffic ticket revenues. The voters are also being asked to commit 10 years of increased (phantom?) sales tax revenue to fix the roads around town and fund two sets of traffic signals for our most dangerous intersections.
If the revenue projections miss, repairs will not be made and equipment will age another year.
So playing devil's advocate here and not being a good politican, is the tradeoff worth it? There is a real opportunity cost here to our city government.
I'd like to hear from fellow bloggers.
I, for one, see the OS tax extension as a completely separate issue from the inability of Lafayette to get it's financial house in order.
However, there might be a connection. Long term, Lafayette may be grateful the Waneka property wasn't converted to OS so it could become a future tax generator.
Not sure how that sits with OS supporters. They must be wincing at the thought of a brightly lit Lowe's at that corner. I know I am.
So, maybe the race is not between developers and OS. Perhaps it's a race between OS and the local municipalities' appetite for taxes.
Hmmm. Long term impact of OS could be higher local tax rates?
D-B,
There always is a connection when a decision has to be made as to how to spend tax money on A or B. You're a finance guy and had to do budgets. And the impact of OS is already higher sales tax rates. Now one can argue the voters only approved the increase rates because of OS.
City councils are indoctrinated quite quickly as to the appetite of city government for money. So if the tax rates can't be increased because they are on par with neighboring cities, then the focus turns to applauding development. No wonder at the Longmont City Council pushing for Lifebridge. That in turn leads to competition over land. Which leads to a push for more development.
Folks on this blog pushed for Lowes because it would generate OS revenue. The Lowes preliminary plan is posted on the city's web site. My fellow bloggers should take a look as to what is being proposed at the intersection of 119th and Hwy 7.
By the way, most BC cities are in financial trouble. Did you know the 29th Street Mall is currently a bust?
What exactly is this tradeoff? The County open space tax and the Lafayette Legacy tax are completely separate issues from anything else. They were approved, collect and operate, or at least they should, completely separately from any other funding question.
So I completely disagree that opportunity cost has anything to do with what we're talking about. To underscore that, General Fund has not in years been used for open space in Lafayette, and now the City is "dipping heavily" into one of those open space funds. If there were an opportunity cost, the competition would be for GF, not erosion into a dedicated fund.
By the way, Legacy is a quarter-cent and POST is a quarter-cent, so it's true that there is potentially half a cent on the City's sales taxable dollar going to open space in Lafayette, but has that ever happened? No. POST goes mostly to parks and other costs within the parks administration.
A few months ago, the Community Life department put out a questionnaire that asked if voters in Lafayette would support a dedicated arts tax. What was the result of that survey? Unless you know that there are competing tax issues that would have voter support, I think it is at best an academic argument that any sort of opportunity cost is at work. People have voted up open space funding because they want open space. Period.
There were many, many posts on the Waneka annexation prior to April of last year, which is when I think you arrived, Doktorbombay. You might want to scroll back through the archives. Like I've said, there were open space supporters on both sides of that issue. And like Cyclorado indicated, I think we've exhausted ourselves on that debate, even six months later.
A couple of years ago, the city did explore the possibility of raising the retail sales tax. Building and use tax revenue was dropping as was motor vehicle use tax. The writing was on the wall. The idea was discarded when it was found to be comparable to that of other BC cities. That's why cities look to raising property taxes these days or attracting more residential or the big boxes.
So now the city has turned to funding out of the POST fund. Most of the POST money has gone for acquisition, not park maintenance until the proposed 2008 budget. So yes, the money is coming in from an open space tax which included voter approved maintenance and is going into the General Fund (that's the way the accounting works) to pay for OS and park maintenance.
Academically if there was no OS tax, the city would have proposed raising the sales tax by .5 percent by now. So that's why I wanted to spice up the conversation. Hypothetically, it would be interesting to see if the voters would reduce the OS tax to fund road repairs and traffic safety. It would be a quite battle.
As for Lowes, it is not over. If approved, when the construction begins and then when it opens with more gridlock on 7, the reality will set in. Then we will see. It could effect the 2009 elections.
As for opportunity cost, try explaining to a police officer that their pay is limited because money is going to purchase OS. A real eye opener.
I did, in fact, go back and read most of the posts on the Waneka annexation when I started lurking on this blog last spring.
I don't, however, believe the debate has been exhausted. The conflict of OS proponents supporting big box development will always be subject to discussion. It's an interesting quandry. We want OS, but how are we going to pay for it?
Isn't it conflicting to tie OS funding to retail sales? Shouldn't we, at some point, put the burden of funding OS on property taxes? Isn't it more appropriate for property owners to pay taxes to protect their investment?
This would also eliminate the conflict of needing commercial development to fund OS acquisitions.
This seems too simple, I must be missing something. Is my naivety showing?
Well, under TABOR, you can only fund new programs to the extent you are growing your tax base or asking for voter approval.
I agree with everything you've said about OS being more appropriately funded as a property tax, Doktorbombay. But there are at least two problems with that philosophy. Number one, property taxes have a way of hitting those on fixed incomes in a way that sales taxes don't. So it's not as popular, even though, ironically, sales taxes are actually a way to put more of the burden on spending for basic needs. The first Legacy tax proposed in Lafayette was a property tax. It failed, where a sales tax passed in the next election. A second problem is the chokehold that the Gallagher amendment puts on property tax collections. It's easy to get out of whack with Gallagher if you don't develop a commercial-residential balance. So why saddle the residential property owner with new taxes if you have to grow your commercial base one way or another?
I will consider the Waneka discussion exhausted if it's just you, me, and Kerry going around and around on this, Doktorbombay. The only way to feel supported here, way too often, is to be the critic. I believe that public officials earn their stripes by reconciling tough questions, and I stand by everything I've said on the topic of Lowe's/Waneka. Quite honestly, the discussion will really start, if that's what everyone wants, when some credit is granted for the true depth of what was said before (as in, the number one reason I supported Waneka's annexation is that the comp plan supports it, and secondly, the cost of doing anything else was going to paid for out of thin air from all that I could see, which I could not believe in - Waneka can barely afford to keep the land out weeds as is...).
I don't think any of this discussion is naive at all, but it certainly has drifted from the question of the County's ballot issues.
It's completely ridiculous if anyone is out there telling the LPD that they're not getting raises because they work in a County with open space. If 1A fails, you can tell rural preservation property owners in the County to expect to sit on their properties for a lot longer, not knowing whether the County or the cities are going to win in that tug of war. Doktorbombay is correct that the race is not with devleopers, but with cities. Cities will not make up their minds on how to grow with infill and stable revenues until that game is over. To me, funding acquisitions helps to provide answers.
Well, I guess I started this because sale tax is always talked about as a tenth of a cent on the dollar. The actual big dollar amount is not included. So it appears as a minor inconvenience. But it is big bucks.
As for opportunity costs, we all personally face it every day. But tax discussions rarely go there because the discussion can get nasty. Then we add up state, county, city, BVSD, etc. What's the old adage: a penny here, a penny there,...
As for not using sales tax, this means the commercial property owners don't contribute. And they benefit from public safety services - police, fire, ambulance, etc. I don't think their property tax covers the rising costs that much.
And the reality is that city employees including the PD witness the city spending big bucks on OS and do scratch their heads when they look at their paychecks and focus on the benefit tradeoffs they're being faced with.
No reason to open up the Lowes debate here. It will be reopened by the public when the bulldozers show up and the backhoes to dig the trenches for the utilities. Maybe it will come up during this campaign season.
Been on vacation for a bit, glad to see the old fires still burn. Lowes discussion is dead in my book. Just to reiterate my position. Darn shame that there will be a box in the middle of that place. Maybe it will spur more development over there and it won't look so out of place. It won't be the same again, though. Not sure how to tie it to this discussion.
Vote 1A, even though it won't stop Walmart and Lowes, or the impossible to fathom degradation of S. Boulder Road businesses. Vote 1B because it will reverse the degradation of many other roads.
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