To the Editor,

I recently received my property tax bill and calculated that if the Community Center mill levy had passed, I would be paying $9.56 per month for a fully functioning Community Center. I thought: “all that uproar about less than $10 per month?” Multiply the Net Total Assessed Value on your property tax bill by .00257 and divide the result by 12 if you want to figure how much you would have owed. My house is assessed a bit above the average in Gilpin County which is around $600 thousand according to the County Assessor, so many homeowners will pay less.

There are people who think the significant vote against this mill levy increase (63% opposed) shows that the voters of Gilpin County don’t want to fund the Community Center at all. I disagree, particularly since we approved a temporary mill levy for roughly the same amount in 2020 when the pandemic closed the Center. Even the people who fought against the 1A expressed support for the Center, they just assumed gambling would pay for it in the future.

I think a perfect storm of scary economic times [inflation], increases in home assessments, misinformation [huge salary increases!], gaslighting [the County can spend it on anything they want!], invalid assumptions [the increase in gambling revenue will pay for the Center], the appearance of a broken promise [the 2020 three-year-only mill levy] and missing communication from the County government gave us this result.

In any case I hope the voters of the County are going into the future with eyes open. They are now assuming gamblers will pay for the Community Center forever. I think there are two flaws in this assumption:

1. The County has been deferring maintenance and capital expenditure for years. This freed up funds for the Community Center but has always been a bomb waiting to go off. In 2021 Sandy Hollingsworth, current District 3 Commissioner, asked if the County had a capital improvement plan. The answer was no, so a study was initiated and finally finished in 2023. It turned out there is around $20 million dollars in capital expenditures and deferred maintenance needed. In 2024 just shy of $7 million is scheduled to be spent for fire alarm system upgrades, new roofs, a road grader, a smooth drum roller, vehicles and vehicle upgrades and more (details are included in the County budget). This is now crowding out funding for the Community Center and will do so for an indefinite period depending on gambling revenue, ongoing maintenance needs, unfunded mandates from the State and any number of unpredictable variables.

2. Funding a fixed expense (Community Center) with a variable income stream (gambling revenue) is a recipe for failure. The next unexpected event or recession (and there is always a next one) will certainly result in a budgetary shortfall for the County leading to another funding crisis for the Community Center. It is not a legal requirement for the County to fund the Community Center as it is for the Sheriff’s office for example. In a crisis non-statutory spending is the first to be cut. That’s what we discovered when the pandemic hit, and the Community Center closed until the three-year mill levy increase was passed. As you will see below, this crisis may have already started.

Some contextual information:

• Gilpin County has the lowest combined property and sales taxes in Colorado. Only 19% of County revenue comes from property taxes and there is no sales tax.

• Average assessed value of private homes in Gilpin according to the County Assessor: ~$600,000.

• Property tax from the commercial properties in Black Hawk and Central City would have paid 66% of the total Community Center mill levy, 19% would have come from residential properties and the rest from other types of property.

• Residential home values went up around 40% in Gilpin in 2024. Property taxes, however, went up much less because of a decrease in the State assessment rate from 6.765% to 6.7%, a $55,000 across the board assessment reduction, a Tabor adjustment of -1.254 mills and the dropping of the Parks and Rec mill levy (-2.57 mills). Consequently, according to the Gilpin Assessor, property taxes paid to Gilpin County in 2024 will be LOWER than 2023. 2023 collections were $6,021,270 vs projected 2024 collections of $5,161,396. So much for paying for Parks and Rec out of a bonanza of additional County property taxes.

• Gambling revenue is predicted to drop from $16,102,591 in 2023 to $13,400,000 in 2024. Again, good luck paying for Parks and Rec from excess gambling revenue.

• Median household income in Gilpin County (2017 – 2021): $96,784

See National Institute of Health, HD Pulse Colorado Income Map.

With some variability and depending on the source of statistics, Gilpin County is near the top of the household income ratings for counties in Colorado.

In conclusion, it’s understandable, given the economic and political environment when this ballot initiative was launched that it went down in flames. However, do we really want to depend on welfare from gambling to fund one of the most important services in our happy little County, or should we take it on ourselves?

Eric Douglas

Gilpin County