What you can do, today, to try and lower your property taxes. I'll show you a guide and then what I've done. Then, because it's Friday, ollas!

First, start by knowing who is taxing you.

Each, therefore, could play a part in lowering your property taxes. This includes your local government.

Let me turn to a quote from the op ed below.

"Just because your property value went up 40% doesn’t mean your local government should get a huge bonus that creates financial distress, or leads to tax liens when people can’t pay the property tax bill. Politicians who think government should benefit from taxpayer hardship when they have an option for relief aren’t fit to hold office."


Hear hear.


Responsible citizens pay their taxes so that governments can function. Responsible government realizes that it is funded by taking from citizens.

It should therefore be the case that the government should carefully consider any extra money it receives without consent from the citizens. This isn't "found money" to be used for pet projects like coins in the couch. This is money that comes out of the hands and mouths of the people in the district.

The way that you, the person who would be burdened, can get involved and push back starts by knowing who it is that takes your money. Whether you own property or no, you will be paying property taxes (even if that's mostly through indirect means such as higher rents and prices.

It's tempting to think that, just because the county is the one that comes in and collects that they are the sole entity taking money. That isn't the case. The county simply has the unenviable task of COLLECTING your money. They then turn around and have to disburse it to all the local agencies that use property taxes as funding.

Schools (and Ms. Menten covers this at length in the op ed--worth a read) are one of the biggest line items in your total property tax bill, but they're not all. There may be a list of several tiny little government agencies (fire districts, libraries, water districts) that take a piece of the pie.

How do you know who all gets your money?

One way is to call your county assessor and/or clerk. Ask what property tax districts your property falls under. I've done this in the past. It's pretty easy.

Another is to check out the video linked second below. The information relevant to this particular post starts at about the 2 minute mark.

Once you know this info, I'd recommend contacting your local officials and asking whether they intend to reduce their mill levies so that their revenue would stay the same, but you're not taking it in shorts.

More on that to come.

https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2023/08/30/menten-local-governments-can-lower-property-taxes-on-their-own/

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Now, put that knowledge to work by speaking up!

Inspired by the op ed above, I decided to look up my own property tax districts and reach out to them.  I thought I would share the results and, I hope, inspire you to speak up too.  

If you didn't catch it before, go back to the earlier post about how to find the property tax districts you belong to.  I ended up calling my County Assessor and asking and they helped me find which districts I was a part of.  Whole thing took about 5 minutes.

I am in the RE-1 Valley Schools District, The Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District, and the Logan County Water Conservancy District.**  Sites for all 3 are linked below.  

As I said in the earlier post (and as Ms. Menten talked about in her op ed), the windfall jump in revenue that local agencies will see comes at the expense of families and I believe that responsible government agencies should understand this and give some of this money back (or lower our tax burden).  They can do so without hurting their bottom line.

Toward that end, I wrote to the districts that will be taxing me in the coming year and asked them what they intend to do.  I attached that email as a screenshot.

I urge you to follow suit.  

Writing to your local taxing authorities matters.  Federal officials don't hear you.  More often than not, state level officials do not either.  Local officials, the people who would have to look at you across a meeting room, the people who might have to meet you at the grocery, are more likely to hear you.  

Taking a few minutes out of your day to politely, but insistently and assertively ask what they intend to do with your extra money is not going to guarantee you'll get results, but it is a low cost way to do something.  And, if you can convince some friends/neighbors/family to do the same all the better.  

If anything I wrote in my letter is helpful, please feel free to use it.

**An interesting wrinkle here about the Logan County District--see Sunday’s newsletter.  

https://www.lspwcd.org/index_files/Page352.htm

https://www.logancountywcd.org/

https://www.re1valleyschools.org/page/meet-the-board-2

Important thing to note #1:

Quick thing to note. I usually write and send my open emails contemporaneously with the posts (often days before) and so I have already had a response from the Lower South Platte District. I am waiting on a call back and will post an update on what I hear when I hear it.

I have also heard from the Superintendent of the RE-1 Valley District and he told me that the mill levies are set by the Colorado Department of Education, not the district.

There are some subtleties involved here that I didn’t include in my original open letter that I need to touch on here, because this is partially true and something you may also encounter.

There is a mill levy “floor” (see Ms. Menten’s op ed) set by the state to be sure. That is 27 mills. No district can go below that.

However, if your district is taxing at 40 mills and/or if they’re breaking out their mill levies for extra things (e.g. there is a separate mill to pay for transportation or some such) those are at the discretion of the board and thus worthy of scrutiny.

If you get similar pushback, simply follow up by asking what the mill levy is for your district, and what (if there is an excess of 27 mills) they plan to do about that excess.

Also a good reminder to me to read more carefully. To be completely honest, I missed this 27 mill “floor” in my original reading of the op ed and thankfully (with help) caught my error so you don’t make it too!

Important note #2

This just came across my inbox this morning (I'll sneak it in before the last post of the day):

A good video with 5 solid tips on how to both save money on property taxes and fight Prop HH.

I would like to, again, say a big thank you to Ms. Menten for her help and advocacy. I'd also like to thank Free State Colorado for their work on this important topic! Give them a look and a follow.

https://freestatecolorado.com/five-quick/

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It’s pronounced “oy - ya”

It's that time of the week again, time for the last post of the day.  Something not related to politics.

It'll also be the last post for a couple days.  I'll be "out of the office" so to speak til Sunday.   

I wrote a ways back about trying ollas in my garden (unglazed terra cotta pots you bury and fill with water so the water seeps out through the pot to maintain soil moisture with less evaporation).

I showed how I did the homemade versions.  

I just yanked the plants I'd put near them and thought I'd share results and thoughts.

Upshot? Definitely worth it. Saves water and time watering.

Picture 1 attached shows one of the ollas prior to digging it up.  There was some erosion around the olla and I didn't want to disrupt the plants nearby, so the tops got exposed a little.  C'est la vie.  

**As an aside, if you look carefully and know what you're looking for, you'll see the damage those damned squash vine borers do!

Picture 2 attached shows one of the ollas after I dug around it, wiggled, and then pulled it out like a loose tooth.  I put a blue arrow to show you which way was up in the soil.  Notice the lingering wetness on the terra cotta?  Yes, they do actually keep things moist for quite a while in the soil.  Notice the fine white netting on the lower end too.  Those are roots.  The plants nearby found the olla and starting putting fine roots all around it.  They know where the water is!

Picture 3 attached shows one of the holes after I pulled the olla out.  I pointed to the fine netting of roots that surrounded the lower half of each hole (interestingly, there not many roots on the upper half of the ollas--maybe the roots stay down from the surface??).  In some of the holes, like this one, the root massing was pretty uniform and almost made like a fabric lining each hole.

So, worth it?  Did they work?  Yes and yes.  An hour's labor and a few relatively cheap materials from the hardware store and I had 4 ollas which maintained my squash plants even in hot hot weather.

The thing is, too, that you needn't just do this for vegetable gardens.  You can put them next to any plant, you just need to be aware that frost heaving may bust them up in the cold Colorado winters, so you might have to take them out every Fall.  I would recommend that if you do them with perennials that you be aware of where you are going to put them, because if you have to replant every Spring, you'll want to not chop up a bunch of roots to do it.  

That would be working at cross purposes!

One last bonus picture.  Take a look at picture 4 attached.

I had such high hopes this year for melons and cucumbers. I got some rare new types of melon seeds and was all set to grow things you can't find in the store.  Best laid plans of mice and men right?  This has not been a good year for melons.  

i got one so far.  It's a rather sad example of a Kajari melon (a kind of melon from India, I think, basically a party-colored muskmelon).  It smells good.  It'll taste good, but out of three vines, this was it.  

I'll dust myself off and try again next year, hoping for inspiration or better weather.

Have a good rest of the day!  Back at it on Sunday.

p.s. tips on melons are gladly accepted.  :)