Roger Baker, Gilpin County Manager. We recently received an email from a company called SmartAsset entitled “Study Finds Low Tax Burden in Gilpin County,” which of course seemed worth opening.

This isn’t a non-profit or “think tank” (though we get emails from such groups), but rather a firm that provides financial advice to individuals on retirement, investments, insurance and the like; apparently this email consolidated some of the data they have gathered to use in making that advice.

Anyway, SmartAsset calculated what they called the “tax burden” for every county in Colorado (and all 3300 nationwide), and Gilpin County ended up with the second lowest tax burden in the state.

The methodology is a little suspect, frankly: all the counties without a county sales tax were calculated with a $454 hit against the total calculation, even though we all know that most Gilpinites make the vast majority of their taxable purchases in the adjacent counties which do have sales taxes.

On the other hand, our fuel tax factor was the highest among the 10 Colorado counties with the lowest overall tax burden, despite the fact that all gasoline taxes are the same statewide.

But the one metric that can be trusted is the property tax calculation; here SmartAsset found that Gilpin’s property tax burden (on a theoretical $250,000 house) was just $711. That’s slightly lower than either San Miguel (which is ranked the 3rd lowest-taxed county), La Plata (the 4th lowest) and Las Animas (the lowest).

No other county was even close to Gilpin’s 9.855 mill levy.

And frankly the difference should probably be even greater. For example, Las Animas County has the Trinidad Ambulance District, with its own mill levy, whereas Gilpin County pays its share of the Gilpin Ambulance Authority budget out of the general fund mill levy (and, of course, gaming taxes).

LaPlata County has two Library Districts (Ignacio and Pine River) with their own mill levies, while the Gilpin County Library is largely (though not entirely) supported by a transfer from the County general fund. San Miguel County has something called the San Miguel County Recreation District #1.

However we slice this pie, the Gilpin County mill levy is extraordinarily low, especially considering the range of services the County provides. But, sadly, the school taxes (clearly something not factored into the tax burden calculations) aren’t, at least for some of our residents.

The south end of Gilpin County pays a proportionately low 7.953 mills for the RE-1 tax levy, but the north end of the County—with little to say about the matter—gets lumped in with Boulder Valley RE-2, which has a mill levy nearly five times higher, at 47.569.

This tale of two counties makes adjusting our finances in the County much more difficult. For example, our Public Works Department has a separate Road & Bridge mill levy but it raises only $287,000 a year, a small portion of the $2.5 million it takes annually to operate our Department.

Just last week one of our big dump trucks (used for both summer road maintenance and winter snowplowing) had to be taken out of service with a cracked frame. It’s a 1996 International, so that’s no surprise, but replacing it with a new truck would take most of that $287,000 by itself.

The point is that replacing that truck (and all the other aging equipment in the fleet) would be a lot easier if we had a dedicated mill levy adequate to road & bridge needs; but passing a tax increase of a few mills in the south County would be much easier than doing so in the overtaxed north end.

So we’ll just continue to rob Peter to pay Paul, and hope that cracked frame can be fixed….