Categories
Search
This is NOT your official Ballot
Hello Highlands Ranch Voters. If you are a registered voter you probably received the Douglas County “Notice of Election to INCREASE Taxes” this week. November voting day (Election Day) is upon us and we all will see increased voting related ads from all over the place. Time to be aware of what affects you most. In this case we just want to point out what the County has in mind with your vote. First of all the Douglas Country definition of a Yes vote an No vote.
Quote: A YES vote on any ballot issue is a vote IN FAVOR OF changing current law or existing circumstances, and a NO vote on any ballot issue is a vote AGAINST changing current law or existing circumstances.
Well, now that we got this out of the way it is time to look deeper in what the county has prepared for us. Be prepared to see the term “sales tax increase” quite a bit. Take Douglas County Issue 1A as an example. 1A is an extension of the existing sales tax that is used to finance certain pieces around the Douglas County Justice Center. The sales tax percentage involved here is 0.23%. The important piece here is not the actual sales tax value, but for how long we would have to pay the sales tax. Currently it is the year 2007 and this part of the sales tax expires in 2011. Ballot Item 1A wants to extend it until 2020. Yes, you are reading this right – 2020! Our take on this item. We think this percentage of the sales tax is important, but we are not Ok with the extension until 2020. Why is this extension on the ballot in 2007 if it does not expire until 2011? Why an extension of 9 years? How about we vote on this item in 2010 with an extension maybe to 2015? Much more reasonable and more fair as it will be easier for everyone to determine if the 0.23% are still a value that covers the cost.
Douglas County Issue 1B is next on the list. The 0.4% of the collected sales tax is used to maintain County roads and bridges. 1B is also about the approval of Intergovernmental Agreements with municipalities within the County for specified annual sharebacks of the same tax. This is not a new sales tax either, but an 20 year extension. 20 years? Do you see a pattern here? There are forces in place to secure long term sales tax values that will hold the citizens of Douglas County hostage. Locking in sales tax values for such a long time is kinda risky if you ask us. While it is good that we cover roads and anything that comes with it + the contracts between the county cities and towns, but a 20 year extension sounds like an “get out of jail card”. We’re already paying much more sales tax than just a few years ago. An increase in sales tax for specific reasons should also be removed at one point when the need has been covered. We will always have roads and we will always need road maintenance. Making these items dependent on sales is not a good thing. The county should budget for these items properly and think about other ways to collect the funds needed. Sales tax will have big up and downs as it depends a lot on consumer spending. A 20 year extension is no good in our opinion. How about 5 years and then we review the issue and take it from there?!
Tricky one here. Issue 1C is a new increase in sales tax just for a small section of the county. We do not have a map here that would show what the geographical region, but from the reading the ballot item it sounds like the impact can be quite big. The request is to increase the sales tax by 0.5% in the region around the new Lincoln Light Rail Station. Two items here. First – what are the regional borders for this Ballot item? We get the bad feeling that this includes the entire shopping district around the Park Meadows Mall. That is a huge area and almost all northern Douglas County will be affected by this increase in sales tax. The second item is how the proceeds of this sales tax are going to be used. The legal terminology is pretty tricky written here, but it sounds like that if the initial goal of $60,000 is reached that any extra dollar does not have to go back to the citizens of Douglas County, but can be used for further government spending. Please correct us if we are wrong in that assumption, but the feeling we have is that we are dead right on the spot. Let’s review this one more time: large shopping district + unlimited government spending once the initial goal of this sales tax piece has been reached?! That is a clear and LOUD “NO” on 1C.
This is it for today. Please make sure you review your “Notice of Election to INCREASE Taxes”. We think it is very important to vote this year. We are already paying a lot of sales tax and every increase of sales tax or by extending existing sales tax items we will feel it in our pocket. We think this should be questioned and we would like to see better information from the County Government on these issues and what the plans are to reduce our sales tax again to a value significantly below 5% (total Sales Tax).
Send to a friend