How the City Pooched the Rain Tax

The City of Colorado Springs has a problem: Too much water at once. When it rains in our fine desert town, water runs off all the roofs, onto the driveways, into the streets, and down the storm drains, into the creeks. From there, it rolls down the creek, happily eroding banks, around sewer lines and bridge supports until it visits our neighbors to the south. Sometimes, the excess water breaks sewage facilities, and takes that dark gift to our neighbors as well.

Our neighbors don't take too kindly to us pooping in their creek, and object strongly, and the City gets fined. The neighbors to the south even get uppity, and try to block water projects the City needs to continue growing. (Whether the growth is a good idea or not is a different discussion.)

So, to counter the first problem, the City creates a second one, their "Stormwater Enterprise" to fund work needed to control the flooding issues. This "Enterprise", having all the attributes of a tax, was pushed through the City Council by a majority that deemed this issue "too important" to be left to a vote of the people, as required by Colorado state law, even though this same council repealed a "fee" added to utility bills that funded streetlights because of similar objections.

Now, people are refusing to pay the "Rain Tax" bill, for numerous reasons...some because they don't recognize the legitimacy of the tax, others because the didn't know it was a real bill, others (like myself) that never received the bill. Douglas Bruce, a man that never met a tax he liked, attempted to get a petition started to repeal the tax, unfortunately, he larded it up with other tax issues he didn't like, the city ruled his petition had too many issues, and refused to approve the title so signatures could be gathered.

Doug--simplify your petition so it only deals with repealing the City's "stormwater enterprise", and leave the other issues off it. We'll sign and pass it (at least those of us that have the option to vote on it will--I live in Manitou, and don't get to vote on those city issues, even though I own property and pay taxes in the city--a completely different issue). If the city considers the issue that "important", it can sell the idea to the voting public, or decide what to de-fund in order to do the alleged "backlog" of stormwater projects they've been backburnering for years. In either case, they've got some explaining to do, and should be made to do so.