Commissioners hear from residents on taxes

Final vote on final $594 million budget Thursday

Larimer County commissioners received public input and elaborated on their thinking regarding next year’s budget, particularly related to property taxes, the exact nature of which have remained uncertain after record valuation increases and legislative uncertainty, at their administrative matters meeting Tuesday morning.

The commissioners announced last week that they would not seek to implement a property tax credit for local property owners, saying that actions taken during a special session of the State Legislature provided suitable relief, and that the county needs the funds for the Disaster Contingency Fund and other service projects.

The final vote on the budget will take place at a public hearing Thursday at 2 p.m. at the County Administrative Services Building at 200 W. Oak St. in Fort Collins, in the commissioner’s conference room.

“I think that has been the word for 2023, uncertainty,” said Commissioner

Jody Shadduck-mcnally at the meeting. “We’ve had a lot of uncertainty in our budget, and a lot of this has been out of our control with the uncertainty.”

The county was required by statute to provide a preliminary budget in October, but a ballot initiative put before voters in November, Proposition HH, would have significantly changed the county’s property tax revenue, a large share of its total budget.

The county submitted a budget assuming HH would pass, as that would be the most limiting outcome on the county’s revenue. At the same time, commissioners pledged to issue some kind of property tax relief if no statewide measure was taken.

HH was rejected soundly by voters, but days after the election Gov. Jared Polis called a special session of the legislature to find an alternative solution. What resulted was SB1, something Commissioner John Kefalas called “Hh-lite,” which would exempt thousands of dollars from residential property owners’ taxable value and decrease the total imposed rate.

All of this left commissioners in the dark in the days and weeks leading up to approving a final budget, without knowing what the county’s actual revenue would be. The amended budget totals $594 million, including $13.4 million more in property tax revenue compared with what the county had budgeted in October.

Some residents provided public comment to commissioners at the start of their meeting Tuesday, arguing that the state-provided property tax relief is insufficient and that they were still struggling, particularly as rising prices for goods and services have stretched household budgets.

Commissioner Kristin Stephens pointed out that the county government was also facing rising prices even as the state’s tax relief reduced its revenues.

“I think our county manager has talked about how it used to cost $1 million to resurface a road, and now it costs $2 million,” she said. “So we’ve seen some of our costs double.”