Broomfield Taxpayer Matters

September 9, 2024

This newsletter contains the following stories and information:

Where was your Council?
CALL TO ACTION! - Waste Hauling
Property Tax Resolution
1st Bank Center - Green Demolition
Resource - Chimney Hollow
Budget Tables
Council Agendas for September 10, and September , 2024
City Council member contact information

Pay Attention to these upcoming items in the Agendas:

September 10th - Regular Meeting
2B. Police Department Presentation-Statistics
2D. 2024R and 2025 Proposed Budget
6K. Approving City Manager's Employment Agreement
7A. Resolution to Approve Agreement for Contracted Waste Hauling - 2nd Reading

September 12th - Study Session
2A. 2025 Budget Presentation

Please let us know if you plan to attend by registering here.

Local News

Were you at the September 5th Enterprise Workshop?

On Thursday, September 5, 2024, the City and County of Broomfield held a "Workshop" to discuss residents' concerns regarding the Enterprise Fund and dramatic water rate increases.

Text Link

ONLY ONE City Councilmember took the time to show up, but left after the initial presentation, and none of our Elected Representatives stuck around to take questions from their residents. Where were they? You were there.

As we've been asking for years, DO YOU FEEL RESPECTED? DO YOU FEEL EMPOWERED? DO YOU FEEL HEARD? They couldn't be bothered to listen to the people of Broomfield.

CALL TO ACTION #1: It is time to email or call the city council and respectfully ask them the question(s) that you would have asked them, if they took the time to hear your opinion. AND.... ask them WHERE WERE THEY?

Broomfield residents deserve to be RESPECTED, EMPOWERED, and HEARD.

CALL TO ACTION #2

Attend the Broomfield City Council Meeting on September 10, Make Your Voice Heard on Contracted Waste Hauling

For the past few years, this city council, has been constantly pushing a single-hauler trash program.

\The September 10 Council Meeting is your last chance for you to push back on this ridiculous idea that will only affect single-family households, not HOAs, not commercial, not apartments, condos or townhomes.

Also, a representative for one trash hauler wrote to the council and said they would be more than willing to work with the council to achieve their goals without having to put people out of work, which will happen with a city managed single hauler program.

We've also become aware of some of the council's talking points. Our side of the same coin - the side of homeowners and families not under an HOA, are provided below.

They Say: "The program will provide more residents the opportunity to recycle by bundling with trash collection at no additional charge"

We Say: "As a homeowner and individual, I can already choose to get recycling through a selection of haulers today."

They Say: "The program will provide more transparent and consistent pricing."

We Say: "As a homeowner and individual, I have clear pricing now and I can switch haulers if I want to. I'm not locked into a 5 year contract."

They Say: "The city will be able to hold the preferred hauler accountable for customer service levels."

We Say: "As a homeowner and individual, I can call my hauler now about their customer service. If they are not responsive, I can switch to another company.

They Say: "Residents who produce less trash could see lower costs for service (volume-based pricing/pay-as-you-throw)"

We Say: "As a homeowner and individual,I can pick a smaller container from my hauler today, and get a lower cost for my service. And the pricing that I can get today is LOWER than the city's negotiated rates."

They Say: "The program will reduce road, traffic impacts, and pollution."

We Say: "That is a theory, at best. Think of all the vehicles that drive on the streets other than garbage trucks, the roads will be impacted far more with the larger number of cars, EVs (which are heavier), trucks, delivery trucks on our roads. These vehicles also add more pollution because they are more numerous."

They Say: "Households that do not want to participate can opt-out and pay a fee."

We Say: "As a homeowner and individual, I can stop my service and go to another hauler, and I don't owe my old hauler anything. If I opt out of the city's program, I get charged, on my city utility bill, another $10.50 and I get nothing for it. This is another utility increase on top of the 50% water rate increase the City and County of Broomfield is considering."

The bottom line is that the City's proposed Contract Waste Hauling program is a bad deal for residents and homeowners.

Attend the City Council meeting on September 10, 2024 @ 6PM at the City and County Building, and send an e-mail to your councilmembers (councilmember emails are at the them at the bottom of this e-mail), and tell them to quit forcing you into ridiculous programs when they can't even manage what they have!

Property Tax Resolution

Governor Polis signed HB24B-1001 on September 4, 2024 intended to control property tax increases for citizens and businesses and stabilize revenues for local governments.

Your state legislature heard that you were very upset about the large increases in your property tax bill and they believed that the citizen initiatives 108 and 50 would pass resulting in a far greater loss to their revenue, so they acted.

Here are the highlights of that property tax legislation...

Your residential assessment rates will be 6.4%, and there will be a 10.5% cap for local governments of 10.5% over two years and 12% for schools.

They do listen when you speak up because they know that they are your ELECTED representatives, they ultimately answer to you.

Continue to Make Your Voice Heard because you pay for everything that government does and YOU Deserve to Be Respected.

Here is a reasonable property tax model:

More taxpayer money to be used on the 1st Bank Center - "Green Demolition"

On August 28, The Broomfield Council was presented with three options for the demolition of the 1st Bank Center. The three proposals were:

Deconstruction - $7,035,000 in estimated costs - 1-year timeline
Hybrid Green/Deconstruction - $3,765,000 in estimated costs - 7 to 8 month timeline
Green Demolition - $3,325,000 in estimated costs - 6-month timeline

The council chose the Green Demolition, not only because they want to recycle as much as possible but because of the estimated lowest cost and the timeline. In the staff memo (see attachments), they said they hope to achieve an approximate 90% waste diversion rate for all three scenarios. Interior furnishings and electrical equipment will be auctioned or repurposed and the concrete and asphalt would be recycled. They would not get any benefit from saving the steel which is probably why they cost is lower. The demolition company would sell the steel for a profit.

A couple of questions that should be asked:

Will the true cost exceed the estimated costs due to unforeseen circumstances?
Will the taxpayer get an itemized list of the project details, since the City and County of Broomfield still owe $35M on the First Bank Center?

We need to demand that we get a timeline and a cost analysis from the Council.

Chimney Hollow - Costs Rising

The Chimney Hollow Reservoir will become a part of the water infrastructure for Broomfield to deliver water to the Front Range in the future. This is part of the Windy Gap Firming Project (WGFP) and will provide water to 12 communities.

The construction was set to begin in 2019, but had to be delayed until August 2021.

The additional costs include cost overruns due to the density of rock that had to be moved, the inflationary costs of diesel fuel, and steel, and a lawsuit by your federal government against the project that it's citizens need to have water sustainability. There was no mention of what the lawsuit entailed.

Julie Story, the Broomfield communications director, said the costs were included in the 2025 increased rates but took no further questions.

The increased costs are due to government interventions, if government hadn't shut down businesses decreasing productivity and increasing costs, if they hadn't passed the "Inflation Reduction Act", if they hadn't pursued the lawsuits, the costs for this project would not have increased except for the increased fuel costs due to the extra rock and weight of the rocks.

Tracking the Broomfield Budget...

The Broomfield 2025 Proposed Budget is now available will be reviewed by Council on September 12 during a Special Thursday Study Session. We know the Council said they wanted a study session to dig into the budget, so this is probably what they decided to do.

Broomfield Taxpayer Matters has been reviewing budgets since 2019. And we want to empower you to understand where your money is going.

We keep track of the yearly budget in a spreadsheet. We can then slice and dice the information and verify the numbers from prior years. One of the difficult things about tracking the budget is it changes constantly from year to year and even revision to revision, the following are a couple of items that we have identified from our initial review.

The first thing we will look at is the pie chart shown at the beginning of the 2024 and 2025 budget documents.

Why change the categories in pie chart from 2024 to 2025? Because it makes it hard for taxpayers to track.

What are the differences? First of all the total budget for 2024 was $579.8M and the total budget for 2025 is $233M. Wow! that's a big difference, what changed?

In 2024, the staff included fiduciary spending, in 2025 the staff excluded it, why?

In 2024, fiduciary plan contributions (Table 1C, 2024 budget) were $222,781,674, and in 2025 (Table 1C), the contributions are expected to be $211,845,751. This would bring the Total Revenues for 2025 to $545.6M. But we know this number will go higher.

The other change is the percentage due to property taxes, in 2024 the staff said it was 11.9% of the total, in 2025 the staff said it was 28.1% of the total, but if fiduciary funds are included, property taxes are still at 11.9%.

We also know the city and county received extra property tax revenue, so what happened to that increase?

Let's now look at the Combined City and County Summary Tables, 1A for 2024 and 2025.

2024 Budget

2025 Budget

Looking at the 2024 original budget from the 2024 Budget Document and the 2024 original budget from the Proposed 2025 Budget Document, the values are different. For consistency, these should be the same since they reflect the 2024 budget document adopted in September of 2023.

The next thing we notice is that the revenues in the 2024 document are $623,523,101 and the revenues in the 2025 budget have been reduced by $717,627 to a revenue value of $622,805,474. If we look to the arrow at the bottom of the 2025 budget it says that funds were removed to an Intra-Fund. So what is that fund?

The other thing we look for is the increase in revenues (e.g. - your taxes and moneys from the State or Federal Government) from year to year. The actual revenues (which should be tied to the 2023 Annual Financial Comprehensive Report) were $522,980,015, and the initial budgeted amount for 2025 is $598,506,337, an increase of 14.4%. Why isn't this highlighted?

Looking at the comparisons at the end of the table, they will try to tell you that the budget for 2025 has decreased by 23.85% from 2024. because they compare the 2024 Revised Budget (which they've amended through 2024) to the 2025 Proposed Budget. So, they increase the 2024 budget throughout the year, then act as if they are reducing the forecasted spending the next year. The reality is that the Proposed budget is actually going UP by 8.45% when comparing apples to apples (2024 Original Budget vs. 2025 Original Budget).

These reported numbers should not be changed or manipulated from one annual budget report to the next. The proposed budget numbers they report for the previous year (2024) should be identical to original budget numbers for this year (2025). And they should be clear that they are actually increasing their budget spending not only year to year, but also within the current budget year through their budget amendment process.

Don't let them fool you. They will manipulate the budget numbers to tell one story as opposed to another story. That is why we look at original numbers, actual numbers, and proposed numbers from one budget year to the next budget year.

Not only do you deserve to be respected and heard, you deserve not to be manipulated by the data presentation.