Have you ever played the game of Monopoly and been driven unmercifully into the ground by the person who just seems to own every property you land on and it’s always filled with houses or hotels? This is developer-controlled districts.
Well, that’s how some of the businesses at the Interquest Marketplace in northern Colorado Springs feel when they pay their outrageous tax bills. Yes, that’s plural “bills”, because businesses write out one check for property tax and then another for all the fixtures, furniture, and equipment they have – business personal property tax.
And all of it is assessed at 4x higher than residential property. So, for every one mill in property tax voted on by residents, businesses get saddled with 4x more in tax payments.
But to make matters worse, some businesses reside in special districts, like metro districts (MDs) or business improvement districts (BIDs) which pile on another 50 or 60 mills of taxes that they never get to vote on. Why no vote? Because by Colorado law, businesses do not get a vote in MDs and in BIDs many businesses don’t know they can designate a person to vote.
For example, in one 100+ acre district, Interquest North BID, the land developer has had owners or employees of the company sit for the past 16 years on the 5-person board and make decisions about what improvements to install, how many tax mills to impose, how much property the district should own and manage, what amount of bonds to issue, and even who buys the bonds.
I bet you won’t be surprised to find out that the district waived the term limits for the board seats, cancelled board seat elections, continually increase its bonding authority, buy lands from the developer, pay to build parking lots for big retail tenants, keep the mill levy at its maximum, and keep all the excess tax revenue instead of refunding it back to the taxpaying businesses. Oh, and approved the agreement to privately sell all the double tax-exempt bonds to their fellow board member/developer/landowner/landlord/property manager.
Most people think businesses are too sophisticated to get rolled over by a developer-controlled district board. But in reality, all successful businesses are spending 24/7 looking out for their customers and trying to stay above water another day to keep the customer’s cash flowing in their doors.
Businesses don’t have the time to figure out how to register to vote let alone sit on a board of a special district. But the pendulum is swinging. In the northern Colorado Springs district mentioned above, businesses like Burger King and Cheddars have had enough of high tax payments in a booming district and want financial decisions made which favor their success – and they don’t want any corporate welfare.
They want a level playing field and a seat on the board. They are tired of taxation without representation and in this upcoming May 5th board election, they want one of the four candidates running for three seats to be filled by someone who is not on the developer’s payroll. After 16 years, finally an election has not been cancelled for new board members.
Now let’s see what happens in this election.
