Aurora’s latest trick to subsidize developers

It’s a beautiful vision: transforming 26,000 acres of farmland spreading south of Denver International Airport into a thriving community where people live, work and play. The socalled “aerotropolis” could play an important role in alleviating the housing crunch that is punishing the Denver metro area.

For comparison purposes, that’s several thousand acres larger than the south’s 30-yearsin-the-making Highlands Ranch.

So it is fitting that the first piece of the aerotropolis to hit the ground is a 5,000-acre master-planned community named Aurora Highlands.

But included in The Denver Post’s John Aguilar’s Sunday story about the development moving forward is the puzzling news that many of the roads needed to make Aurora Highlands work will be funded by a newly created regional transportation authority — a taxpayerfunded entity created solely for the purpose of building roads for this development.

This is not an RTA created over the full 26,000 acres to ensure the entire region gets the public works projects it needs to move forward. No, this is an RTA that only covers the much smaller parcel marked for the Aurora Highlands.

There are already a few RTAs in Colorado, but they are big. The Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority allows Colorado Springs, El Paso County, Manitou Springs, Green Mountain Falls and Ramah to take a regional approach to transportation issues. Notably, there are thousands of real voters in the district to consider any proposed tax increases to fund infrastructure and to hold the Pikes Peak transportation board accountable for delivering on priorities.

In case you missed the election results in November, the registered voters who live within the Aurora Highlands footprint approved the creation of the Aerotropolis Regional Transportation Authority. The area is now sprawling farmland, so it’s unclear who voted in the election, but if it follows past trends of developer deals in Aurora, it was probably a representative for the developer. The voter or voters also approved a 5 mill property tax, a 1 percent sales tax, and the ability to take out up to $600 million in bonds.

But don’t fret, the developer’s wish list for projects only comes to a cool $295 million, and of that only $175 million will be paid for using taxes generated inside the district.

To be fair, some of the roads and interstate access points listed in the intergovernmental agreement are clearly public works projects that the city or county would likely undertake as the area developed anyway at taxpayer expense. But some of the roads are interior streets to a subdivision sporting a decidedly gated-community vibe.

“My question is regarding the projects that would be identified in terms of regional transportation. A few of the ones that were listed I feel are more developer responsibilities, so is that a decision that would be made by the board in terms of prioritizing or approving that list?” Aurora City Council member Françoise Bergan asked last month before the City Council unanimously approved an intergovernmental agreement that included a list of projects for the RTA.

Bergan and other council members were reassured that, although much of the decisions moving forward would fall to the new RTA board (which includes members from the council), the full council will still hold the purse strings for other taxpayer dollars pledged to the developer in the agreement. The city will allocate nearly 100 percent of the city use taxes generated on construction materials in the district and 100 percent of the transportation impact fee for residential development. Additionally, Adams County is dedicating half of the general fund property taxes generated by the land and all of the bridge and road taxes.

If that RTA intergovernmental agreement sounds suspiciously like tax-increment financing, where a developer gets to put the taxes generated by the project in a pot of money to help subsidize the cost of construction … well, that’s probably because it’s pretty close to the tax-increment financing that state lawmakers have prohibited from use on agricultural land.

So close, in fact, that Aurora council members also approved a stipulation that it would not pursue additional tax-increment financing in the area.

The sad thing is this deal was so close to being done the right way. Creating an actual “regional” transportation district to cover the transportation needs of a much larger area — 26,000 acres — would pave the way for the aerotropolis vision to someday become reality in a way that is much more responsible for future homeowners and taxpayers in the area.