Thomas Avenue is failing. And it will fail, city officials said, after voters rejected a ballot question that would have raised sales and property taxes to pay for street projects and law enforcement.
Voters made it clear this week by rejecting ballot measure 2A, by a margin of more than 20 percent, that they don’t want an increase in property and sales taxes. While the decision gives the city some idea about what residents want, or don’t want, insofar as taxes are concerned, it doesn’t solve the city’s dilemma of where to find $8 million to $10 million annually to keep up with city building and infrastructure needs, said Assistant City Manager Amber Blake.
“The only way to generate that much revenue is a tax increase,” Blake said.
The ballot measure came after months of public meetings and a statistically valid survey that found 58 percent of respondents supported a sales-tax increase and 33 percent supported a property-tax increase to fund long-term city needs. The logic in combining the two kinds of taxes was to get as many people as possible to vote for it, said Mayor Sweetie Marbury. But that didn’t work as expected.
2A
Increasing Durango sales tax and property tax
A political organization called Citizens for Durango’s Future sent mailers to residents saying, “the City of Durango is not broke, it simply needs to better allocate existing revenues.” The mailer suggested higher taxes would lead to higher rents, a problem for a city with affordable housing issues.
“The folks who participated in the process – there was a sentiment that said this is a good idea,” Blake said of the proposed tax increases. “It’s clear that there’s a contingent of the population we were unable to reach.”
The tax measure, which asked voters to raise sales tax by 0.55 percent and property tax by 5.4 mills, was intended to pay for street and sidewalk capital projects, a new police station and more officers. The city still has money in its budget to pay for minor street maintenance, like crack seals, but streets that are already failing won’t be fixed, Blake said.
Eight roads in Durango were in “very poor” condition when the city performed its pavement condition study earlier this year. Seventy-two roads were in “poor condition.” Many of those roads will not receive maintenance – it’s more cost-effective to fix streets that are in better condition, Blake said.
