Lakewood City Council approves ballot measure to permanently lift Colorado's TABOR limits

The City of Lakewood wants to extend a measure lifting TABOR limits for the city. The city council approved putting the question on the ballot which will ask voters to not only extend the measure that expires next year but make that move permanent.

"We are asking the voters to be able to continue to retain excess sales tax revenue in excess of the TABOR revenue caps," City Council member Rebekah Stewart said.

Stewart also chairs the Budget and Audit Committee. That committee, she says, has spent years discussing the future of TABOR and recent community surveys led to their recommendation to put the question on the November ballot.

"The City of Lakewood... our infrastructure is aging. We are coming up on being 60 years old as an incorporated city and it's starting to show in a lot of our infrastructure and our city services and we need to make sure we can plan and have steady income expectations," Stewart added.

Money collected since the cap was lifted in 2017 goes to parks and open spaces, police and public safety and roads and other transportation infrastructure. That, Stewart says wouldn't change.

"It has been on average about $8 million a year that we have been able to reinvest back into the community," Steward said.

TABOR rights activist Natalie Menten who sits on the TABOR Foundation board, opposes the measure outright but points specifically to the idea that the city is now asking to lift those TABOR limits indefinitely.

"When we talk about honoring voters, this is false in this measure. This one set of voters will take away the right of consent from all future voters," she told council members before the vote.

Community member Wendy Schrader raised her own concerns about the timing.

"Whether it's 85 cents, $85, $850... every dollar counts to people right now who are trying to put groceries in the refrigerator,  trying to put gas in their cars, or trying to figure out how they are going to pay rent and mortgage," she said during public comment at that same council meeting.

Stewart believes pooling those dollars can have a much bigger impact on the community and refunds don't mean cash in hand.

"It might come in the form of a very small property tax refund or sewer fees. People are not actually going to see a check in the mail and I think that's really critical," she said.

While the council has the power to send the measure to the ballot, the community will have the final say.