Opposition from property owners scuttles toll road bill

DENVER — The backers of a measure aimed at protecting property owners in the path of an Eastern Plains private toll road said Tuesday that they’ve agreed to kill the bill because residents no longer support it.

Sen. Suzanne Williams, D-Aurora, said she would ask that the measure (House Bill 1068) be killed Thursday when it comes up for its first hearing in the Senate.

The original version of the bill would have required private toll road companies, including the Prairie Falcon Parkway Express, to meet more benchmarks before they could file plans to build a road. It was later scaled back to only require that Prairie Falcon officials void notices sent to owners stating that their properties are within the 3-mile wide corridor where the company plans to build a 1,200-foot-wide toll road.

“They didn’t want a small fix. They wanted to look at the whole issue,” Williams said.

Resident John Shipper said those notices are making it difficult to sell properties in the corridor but figuring out how to legally fix the problems with property titles bogged the bill down. He said stamping “void” on titles wasn’t enough.

“We’re still in the corridor, there is still a corridor filed with CDOT (Colorado Department of Transportation) and we still have this cloud on our property,” Shipper said.

Residents also would have had to agree not to sue the company for filing the disclaimers.

The bill was introduced by Rep. Marsha Looper, R-Calhan, a toll road activist elected to the Legislature last year. She said she thinks it would have helped residents but she agreed to let it be killed because residents now oppose it. She hopes lawmakers can study the issue during the summer and look at repealing the 19th century law that allows private toll roads to be built.

Prairie Falcon spokesman Jason Hopfer said the company supported the bill, which he said helped clarify the law. He said residents shouldn’t be able to file lawsuits over the disclaimers because they were required by another toll road bill passed by lawmakers last year.