Recently, the Summit Daily ran a notice from the county regarding comments about upcoming ballot issues. I hope that voters will carefully consider the impacts of this measure put forth by our current commissioners, most of whom are out because of term limits.

Measure 1A is a proposal on the ballot from your county commissioners. The measure mentions “state imposed changes to home value assessment,” referring to the Gallagher Amendment. A proposal to repeal Gallagher is on the ballot this November in our state elections. If the Gallagher Amendment is repealed by voters in November, our home assessments could increase. If Measure 1A also passes in Summit County, we could see our real estate tax bills go up. Can any of us really afford that?

Remember, the complicated language used by the county commissioners starts off with “zero” increase in 2021. That doesn’t mean the money you pay in real taxes will not be increased!

When researching the initiative to repeal Gallagher, I found an article by Michael Fields on Complete Colorado. He states that the legislators who wrote this referendum are doing a disservice by making it so difficult to understand.

“Not only is it confusing, it’s also extremely biased. The first sentence of the ballot initiative starts: ‘Without raising property tax rates.’ This is misleading because if Gallagher is not repealed, our residential assessment rate is projected to be 5.88%. If Gallagher is repealed, that rate will be 7.15%. Put simply, this is absolutely a tax increase.”

Sound familiar?