Color me stunned. Boulder County to refund $5.6M in assessments after judge invalidates paving district – Boulder Daily Camera.
Boulder County is moving forward with plans to refund $5.6 million in assessments paid by homeowners after officials announced they won’t appeal a judge’s ruling that the county exceeded its authority in forming a local improvement district to pay for the repaving of roads in rural subdivisions.
In a statement emailed this afternoon, county officials said the board of commissioners “accepts” the court’s decision.
Also, this piece of County propaganda from the Daily Camera/Times Call reporters really needs to stop…
That leaves Boulder County with as much as a $57.6 million gap in what it had expected to collect from those property owners over the 15-year life of the road rehabilitation program.
The collective group of BoCo Commissioners since 1995 are responsible for that shortfall. There IS no one else to blame, certainly not the property owners who have paid their taxes over the years.
Judge Lowenbach sums it up quite nice on page 15 of his ruling…
Property owners whose roads were accepted for maintenance understood that term to include all activities necessary for upkeep of roads. While it clearly had the duty to maintain those roads, the County did not perform that duty. (emphasis added)
Now Commissioner Cindy Domenico says “..the next step is a dialogue with the property owners on the options.” Commenter williambarty responds here (sorry you have to do a search, I can’t direct link)…
Cindy: Please take some time to actually read the Judge’s decision. It focuses on the invalidity (I believe the Judge used the word “abuse”) of the attempt to parse the word “maintenance.” All aspects of maintenance of these roads that the County owns are the County’s responsibility. The Judge did not leave wiggle room on this, so please don’t try to turn it into some sort of negotiation.
Hmmm Cindy, you LOST. About the only thing I can imagine you should be dialoguing about with the homeowners is perhaps in what order the roads will be rehabilitated.
