Broomfield Taxpayer Matters

2025 Community Survey Results

The 2025 Community Survey results were discussed at the May 20, 2025 Study Session.

The 2025 Broomfield Community Survey was distributed via text message to 44,628 residents, representing approximately 71% of the adult population. By the conclusion of the more than three-week response period, 2,908 completed surveys were submitted, providing a statistically valid representation of community perspectives. 

Let's recap a few of the presentation slides:

Do residents feel like Broomfield is headed in the right direction?

36% of the respondents said Broomfield is headed in the right direction

29% said Broomfield is on the Wrong Track

35% were unsure

What about the City council job performance ratings?

The graph to the right shows that this council's performance rating continues to decrease.

The overall performance has decreased by 21% points over the last 4 years.

Do Broomfielder's feel that their tax money provides good value?

This is a rather unusual graph, nothing we've ever seen before. The "Very Good Value" and the "Somewhat Good Value" are lumped together in a category labeled "Good Value."

No Developers

The City and County of Broomfield (CCOB) tore down the former 1st Bank Center at a cost of $3M to the Broomfield taxpayers.

The CCOB then opened bids up to develop the land in February, 3 months ago. So far, no developer has submitted a proposal to build citing market and investment considerations.

One business opened in 2008 to bring traffic in from the event center, however, when the city forced businesses to shut down during the pandemic, a lot of businesses didn’t make it and the business in this story has to "scrimp and save," during the summer months, to make it through the winter.

This owner stated that we have plenty of mixed-use developments, but none of them bring traffic into the business.

“[We need] something that’s going to draw people in, like a bowling alley, a grocery store, a literally anything, but apartments.”

The city would like another mixed-use development, but none of those that have been approved are close to being finished and now that the city has closed the bidding process for this location, there is no strategy moving forward.

In the recent 2025 Community Survey, we see that business is down in Broomfield...

• The strength of the local economy is down 34% from 2021
• Citizen's belief that business and the local economy is positioned for tomorrow's opportunity is down 37%
• Pace of development and growth is down 34%
• And despite all of the multi-family housing units, access to affordable, quality housing is down 8%

The CCOB is not accomplishing the goals they set for themselves, maybe it's time to quit telling developer's how and what to develop, and let the development experts follow the market signs and develop what will lead to business and affordable housing growth.

Housing is a Right?

What is the definition of a right? In this video clip by Walter Williams, a distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, "a right is something that exists simultaneously among people. A right does not confer [or impose, emphasis ours] any obligation on another. Let me give you an example of this. My right to free speech does not impose an obligation on another except that of non-inference. My right to travel to travel to Texas to travel to California does not impose an obligation on somebody else."

According to Councilmember James Marsh-Holschen, you have an obligation to support another person if they live in your community. Here are his actual words taken from the City Council Meeting. "Um we absolutely need to fix the housing in our community... Um you know, housing, access to housing...We live in a community. We are not all individuals living on our own doing our own thing [except we are, emphasis ours]...Part of living in community is paying an appropriate level of taxes for essential services...Housing is an essential service. Housing, access to housing is a basic human right as is shel shelter, food, healthcare, basic human rights."

Soon after that he said, "I think obviously the usefulness of this survey is finding out we have a lot of education to do." In other words they are smart and you are too stupid to understand you have an obligation to support someone else, that is the definition of being a parent. When you become an adult, you no longer have the right to impose your will on another person.

In the next part of the discussion, he describes the exact conditions created when government decides they can take your property from you to give to someone else...

"And now it's [housing in Broomfield] more than doubled. And the simple reason for that is housing supply. What is the housing shortage? There aren't enough homes for the demand. And so your prices and your values keep going up."

• This is nonsense.

• The government imposes ordinances on developers, which cost more for the developer, which gets passed onto you the consumer. Housing prices increase because government told the developer how to develop.

• The CCOB has spent more and more each year, in fact, 95% more than in 2017.

In another part of Walter's William's video clip, he says the following:

"And when you allow government to say, "Well, we're going to create this right. We're going to create that right, even though people don't have the money," then it's taking away rights from other people. Is that fair? Is that any kind of justice?"

So is it fair or just if someone obligates your money to their given cause? If 10 people jumped you and forced you to give them your wallet or your car, is that fair? How is government force any different?

Before government decided it had the power to take your property, by force, people gave from the heart to charitable organizations. You decided if you could afford to help another person in need.

Walter Williams asserts that rights do not impose obligations on others, whereas declaring social welfare benefits as “rights” implicitly forces redistribution, which is funded by others’ earnings through taxation, often backed by government coercion.

From this perspective, charitable giving—defined as voluntary, non-coerced donations by individuals or entities—is distinct from government-mandated redistribution.

In 2023, the largest source of charitable giving came from individuals, who gave $374.40 billion, representing 67% of total giving.

Don't let government tell you, we aren't giving enough, Americans love to help people, but not by force, I choose, not the government.

Housing Tax Survey

Here is the rest of the story...

There is coordination across:

• Broomfield Housing Division
• Broomfield Housing Sustainability Task Force (BHSTF)
• Broomfield Council,
• Broomfield City Manager's office
• Broomfield City Attorney

BHSTF lobbied the Broomfield Council to fund the $20,000 “Housing Stability” Survey. The response to the survey that your tax dollars paid for was clear: No support for the sales tax increase either a 0.5% increase or a 0.25% increase...

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