Building a Better Colorado (BBC), a bi-partisan effort to address some of Colorado’s biggest challenges, has been going around the state gathering input on three main issues: the constitutional initiative process, TABOR and the State budget and the lack of participation in the primary process. After attending one of these meetings in Loveland, it is clear that more input is needed from the business community in general and REALTORS in particular.
One of the issues addressed in these meetings is the Gallagher Amendment, which was designed to maintain a constant ratio between the property tax revenue that comes from residential property and from business property. One of the consequences of the Gallagher Amendment is that the assessment rate for residential property has declined, creating less funding for K-12 education.
When polled, the participants in the Loveland meeting, 75 percent of whom were retired, voted to modify the Gallagher Amendment in order to better fund schools. However, the participants did not realize that changes to Gallagher could likely increase their property taxes.
The problems facing Colorado are complex. There aren’t easy answers and changes could lead to unintended consequences. BBC is preparing a list of ballot questions for voters to consider this year. Your opinions matter, so please provide your input. It is probably very unlikely we will see a ballot question to modify Gallagher this November, but think about the potential consequences to our industry if it happened. BBC has completed its community meetings but there is still time to comment via BBC’s website:https://betterco.org/issues/index
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