Steve Pomerance

Around noon on Wednesday, I read the Camera story on the latest attempt by our council to  fix their abysmal public processes . They allege to want to get more and better input by taking up the suggestion by the National League of Cities folks to have citizen forums on specific topics early in their process. The story said that the first forum will be Thursday, Sept. 26. So I immediately tried to sign up. But, per the City’s web site, the meeting was to be virtual and signup was already closed. So, I emailed the council and staff that both state law and the city charter require such meetings to be open to the public. When I rechecked at 4 p.m., it had become a real meeting (6 p.m. in the council chambers) open to the public. This is just the latest example of a failure by the council to manage themselves effectively. The meeting with the NLC folks (that I attended) where this process was demonstrated was way back in February. Now, all of a sudden, ...

The Legislature, the Governor, and Advance Colorado and Colorado Concern, the groups behind Initiatives 50 and 108, struggled to write a bill in the special session to reduce property taxes further than the 2024 session’s SB24-233. The stimulus was the increased property tax burden that resulted from rapidly increasing property values in many areas of the state. They accomplished that goal, a bill was passed and the groups pulled their initiatives from the ballot. That was good work. But unfortunately, there are still some fundamental problems with the tax structure that have not been addressed. So, I expect that these issues will reemerge down the road. Our local and state governmental entities are mostly funded in five fundamental ways: income/capital gains tax, sales tax, property tax, fees and Federal grants. Fees may be for operating costs (charged per unit and based on cost, like for water treatment and delivery) or for capital facilities needed because of growth (charged based o...