Colo. hunter banned from 48 states after poaching spree

More than 120 registered for event

A hunter from Colorado Springs has been permanently banned from hunting in 48 states, including Colorado, after he pleaded guilty to several poaching charges across the state.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife said hearing examiner Steven Cooley decided last week to permanently suspend hunting privileges for Iniki Vike Kapu, 28, after he pleaded guilty, KMGH-TV reported.

Colorado is a member of the Interstate Wildlife Violator Compact, meaning the lifetime hunting ban also extends to the other 47 member states, not including Hawaii and Massachusetts.

Kapu was accused of killing 12 deer, two turkeys and a bighorn sheep ram across three Colorado counties.

Kapu first pleaded guilty to illegal possession of wildlife in May 2019 and was fined $900 in Chaffee County. He then pleaded guilty in December 2019 in Teller County and again in February 2020 in Fremont County.

Kapu also pleaded guilty to illegal possession of three or more big game animals. He was fined $4,600 and sentenced to six months in jail and three years of supervised probation in Fremont County as part of a plea agreement, officials said.

Loveland’s City Council held its first-ever town hall Monday discussing metropolitan districts, joined by city staffers, industry exper ts, district residents and dozens of members of the public.

Metro districts are a type of local government that collects and spends proper ty tax on any of several types of public improvements, such as roads, parks and water infrastructure.

Metro taxes are levied in addition to any other property taxes, and districts are governed by a service plan, which must be approved by the city or county where the district is located before the district is formally established by a court.

The service plan generally includes or references details of how a district plans to issue revenue bonds backed by property taxes to fund improvements and how that debt will be repaid by property owners.

According to Colorado’s Department of Local Affairs, there are nearly 2,000 metro districts in the state. As hundreds of districts were established in the 2000s and 2010s, with many being set up by developers to spread out construction costs, concerns grew about how much input residents actually had over taxation.

Assistant to the city manager Justine Bruno said more than 120 people registered for Monday’s town hall. Many who spoke Monday were concerned — most about their property taxes and some about multidistrict structures that limit property owners’ participation in district governance.

Joseph Glaser, a resident of the Lakes at Centerra Metropolitan

District No. 2 in northeast Loveland, asked why his taxes had increased in the three years since he bought his home. In 2020, he was liable for more than $7,800 in property taxes, including about $3,860 in metro fees.

“How is it that every year our metro district taxes seem to go up exponentially?,” he said.

One of the metro district attorneys who took part in Monday’s town hall, Andrew Rubin, suggested

that the increase may have been due to his property appreciating in value (by $72,000 in 2019, according to county property records).

Another Lakes No. 2 resident, Bahadir Demirorz, said his neighbors were questioning how the interest rate of the revenue bonds was approved and whether they could get out from under the debt.

“All these homeowners are now stuck with it,” he said. “We’re now trying to find out how long is this going to last, is this openended (and) how can we get out of it?”

Kathy Hartman identified metro taxes as a barrier to passing other tax issues.

“When we go to pass a communitywide school district tax increase, we have a whole group of people now who are paying significantly higher taxes, and how do they feel then about contributing higher taxes to communitywide needs?,” she said. “I see that as a real developing conflict.”

Cer tain multidistrict structures also concentrate the power to spend tax revenue in the hands of a single district’s board, which proponents say allows districts to coordinate improvements, take advantage of low fixed costs related to bond issues and keep a uniform mill levy across the districts.

In the case of districts such as Centerra and the Lakes at Centerra, the developer may also control the board of the so-called “service” or “master” district, inviting criticism that residents don’t have a say in their taxation.

John Henderson, a former resident of a metro district in Lakewood, said his own district falsely told residents that they were not eligible to ser ve on their local board.

“Unfor tunately, the developers manage to maintain control of the boards, which issue the debt without a vote of the residents,” he said. “They’re rife with abuses.”

One purpose of the town hall was to gather questions for a council study session on metro districts scheduled for April 13. Members of the public asked what led to the proliferation of the districts in Colorado, what the best practices were for district governance, how they worked and what the differences were between residential and commercial districts.

Council members commented at the end — all said they supported the new town hall format. Some, such as Andrea Samson, said they were generally skeptical of metro districts, even though she acknowledged that “there isn’t always an abuse of the system itself.”

“While I personally am not a huge fan of metro districts … in specific instances, it’s something that can help and benefit the city,” she said.

Others, including John Fogle, said they supported the creation of districts as a tool to support development. “Anybody who has any quandary about metro districts and whether they’re beneficial to the public, all you’ve got to do is take a drive through Centerra,” he said. “I don’t think that kind of development would have been available in Loveland without the use of special district funding.”

He said he believed the city’s mandator y disclosure for proper ties in a metro district, which is added to the properties’ title work, needed to be improved. Richard Ball said he believed real estate agents should be educated further to inform their clients about the costs of buying into a district.

“I think no matter how strict we make the disclosure, we are finding out that it’s never quite enough, so we need to work on the disclosure, and Realtors need to work on informing their clients,” he said.

Max Levy: 970-699-5404, mlevy@prairiemountainmedia.com