Aspen ponders tax proposals

Increased sales and property taxes are being considered for Aspen and Snowmass Village residents and visitors to help fund three local services.

This includes the Aspen Fire Protection District, the Aspen School District, and the Confluence Early Childhood Education coalition, a local nonprofit focused on providing accessible pre-kindergarten education.

Aspen City Council met on Monday to discuss the proposed tax increases. If all three parties succeed in getting their taxes placed on the November ballot and levied, it would increase Aspen sales tax from its current 9.3% to 10.35%. ASD is also hoping to increase property taxes in Snowmass Village.

The district is looking to increase tax revenue as they prepare for decreased enrollment and changes in the state funding formula. They plan to propose three ballot questions:

1. Increase property tax in the town of Snowmass Village to increase the revenue from about $500,000 to approximately $1 million. ASD is considering asking for a further increase to this value.
2. Double the current education sales tax in the city of Aspen from 0.3% to 0.6%, pending approval from Aspen City Council. This would likely double tax revenue from sales tax from $4 million to $8 million.
3. ASD currently has a mill levy of 25%, but recent changes in the state funding formula has decreased the size of the funding that 25% is taken from. If the city council puts this tax question on the ballot, voters can allow the ASD to take 47%.

“The increase in the mill levy override (legislation being passed), in my opinion, was the state’s way of moving it so that Aspen (School District) will always be supported by its local taxpayers, rather than the state,” ASD controller Max Marolt said in a city council work session on Monday.

Aspen City Council may seek alternatives, particularly to the question to double to existing 0.3% sales tax for the school district. According to city documents, the city generates an exceptionally large amount of the tax revenue for the ASD. Aspen generates about $4,400 per student annually from sales tax revenue and almost an additional $4,000 from property tax. They claim to generate about $700 more per student from property tax than Snowmass Village. 

ASD currently has a reserve of 7.4% of their annual revenue that is kept for emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The Colorado Department of Education recommends schools have a reserve of 20-30%. The mill levy override, which will last until 2031, will help the ASD to grow their reserve as well as build a separate maintenance capital fund.

The increase in sales tax will be a more sustainable flow of revenue compared to the mill levy override. According to the district, if the school doesn’t receive the revenue they expect from the mill levy override and the sales tax increase, they will likely lose 32 teacher and staff positions. They will also likely cut 10% of ASD’s budget and 8% to the Aspen Community School, there will likely be few to no staff raises, and likely no progress on growing the reserve.

Aspen is worried about an increase in sales tax impacting both the local community and the tourism industry. According to the city council, an increase in sales tax in Aspen may influence locals to shop elsewhere and may discourage visitors from wanting to return to Aspen. Because of this, some members of city council hope to impose district wide tax increases to lessen the impact on Aspen directly. 

According to Marolt, however, this may be impossible or not feasible. ASD can’t levy sales taxes on the entire district, they have to go county by county or municipality by municipality.

“The only other ways we can make that work is by looking at it from a county level or other municipality levels, but none of those levels align with our exact district borders. Pitkin County goes into the Roaring Fork School District,” Marolt said. “Obviously the different municipalities don’t cover the entire school district, so there’s a lot of different moving parts there.”

Aspen Fire is hoping to levy a new 0.5% sales tax in Aspen as well as extend the sunset date of the existing .24 mill levy, which will be on the November ballot. The 0.5% increase would not apply to groceries, prescription medication, and other goods exempt from state sales tax. 

According to Aspen Fire, the extension to the .24 mill levy, which was originally used to build the North 40 Fire Station and Downtown Aspen Station, would not increase the current tax rate. The increased revenue would support wildland fire mitigation and response in an increasingly more volatile and destructive wildfire environment, maintaining the current emergency response times, and improving first responder health and wellness programs. 

The improvisations in wildland fire protections could increase insurance coverage and lower insurance costs, according to Aspen Fire.

“I don’t want to be one of the officials that are called out after a disaster happens, like they are in Texas, because they were repeatedly asked for warning systems and sirens down in Texas, and they were always told there was enough funding,” Aspen City Council Member John Doyle said. “I don’t want to be on that side of things, and I am willing to support this funding for fire preparedness to the best of my ability.”

Because of the rising cost of firefighting equipment and the worsening wildfire seasons, Aspen Fire believes that a renewed mill levy and a 0.5% sales tax increase is the minimum required revenue to “make things work.”

“The whole goal here is for us to after the fire, to have a town to come back to, not just surviving it, but really having a resilient infrastructure, so much so that afterwards our recreation and our buildings are not totally decimated,” Ali Hammond, the director of Community Wildfire Resilience with AFPD, said.

The Early Childhood coalition is hoping to levy a 0.25% sales tax across a service district which serves Pitkin, Garfield, and Eagle counties, a question that will be on the November ballot. The CECE coalition is focused on providing more affordable and regionally accessible access to early childcare and education for children and families. The 0.25% increase would not include groceries, gas, prescription medication, feminine hygiene products, and other essential items. According to CECE, the average cost for childcare in the Roaring Fork Valley is about 35% of median monthly income, compared to the Department of Health and Human Services “affordable” benchmark of 7% of median monthly income.

“We’re trying to give them (families) a genuine option to get care in the first place, but also be able to stay in the workforce as well,” Hannah Berman, a Basalt Town Council member, said Monday.