Two initiatives targeted at City services will be on the November ballot. In 2006, there was another two ballot items (200 and 201), by the same author, that also targeted City services. The voters soundly defeated those measures. These two new initiatives have the potential to have even more devastating effects than 200 and 201. If passed, there would be significant impacts on the City’s ability to fund services that contribute to our quality of life as well as the ability to protect the quality of our water and provide flood protection in our community. Our goal is to equip you with the facts.

• Initiatives Q & A


• City Initiatives Video

Initiative 1 Impacts

The first initiative reads:

Excluding hospital charges, all city enterprises shall bill and collect charges for voluntary customer contracts only.

Since the wording does not indicate how this would apply to each enterprise, we are unclear as to how far reaching the impacts may be. However, it seems this initiative could effectively eliminate the Stormwater Enterprise that was established after years of extensive research and effort by citizens and staff to find a way to fund critical projects. Colorado Springs became the last major city in the state to establish through a legal process, a dedicated funding mechanism to address the serious needs in our stormwater system. A loss of this funding would have dire consequences for our community. We would no longer be able to take care of major capital improvement and maintenance projects, which means we wouldn’t be able to handle our stormwater runoff properly. This would jeopardize the quality of our water and increase the threat of damages from flooding. The federal and state governments have mandates in place related to the Clean Water Act, so if we can’t control our runoff, we risk the Environmental Protection Agency coming in and dictating to us what we must do. Federal mandates almost always come with a higher price tag. It’s important to keep local control of how we manage and fund stormwater.

It is also of vital importance that we act responsibility in regards to our downstream neighbors. When we neglect those responsibilities, we put those neighbors at considerable risk from poor water quality, erosion, and flooding. If we expect to have regional cooperation when it comes to securing additional water for our community’s future, we must do the right thing in controlling the runoff we are sending down Fountain Creek.

For information about improvements the Stormwater Enterprise is making throughout our community, click here (open in a separate window: www.springsgov.com/swent)

Excluding sales and use taxes forwarded from enterprise customers, all enterprise payments to the city shall phase out in ten or fewer equal yearly steps starting in January 2009, with all yearly savings passed on as reductions to each customer bill in dollar amounts as equal as possible.  All future loans, gifts, and subsidies between an enterprise and the city or another enterprise are prohibited.

Like the first initiative, there is a lack of specificity in the wording, making it difficult to ascertain intended and unintended impacts. It’s likely to change how municipal operations and the City enterprises work with each other and could severely impact the City’s ability to fund the services necessary to maintain our quality of life. The initiative would likely eliminate Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT). PILT represents the taxes and fees an enterprise would pay to the General Fund if privately owned. These monies are used by the General Fund to support crucial citizen services such as Public Safety and Public Works. PILT payments are a significant source of revenue to the General Fund – more than $25 million annually. With rising costs, any loss of revenue to the General Fund would hinder the City’s ability to fund services that provide the quality of life this community expects and deserves.

This initiative would also mean that administrative resources currently provided to City enterprises by municipal departments, such as accounting and human resources, could possibly be prohibited. Without the ability for the enterprises to pay the General Fund for their share of administrative resources used, cooperation and efficiency would be lost, resulting in more costs to the taxpayers and enterprise users.