City of Greeley hopes voters, and its City Council, have an open mind for open space

By Dan England

Nearly 30 years ago, Larimer County residents approved an open space sales tax. There are days when Megan Flenniken wonders where the county would be without it. 

Would Devil’s Backbone -- or at least the network of trails that extend to its spiny curvature and well beyond -- exist? Would Horsetooth Mountain Open Space, another iconic outdoors playground that makes Larimer County such a great place to live?

Eh, maybe. But she also wonders. The tax passed a few years before growth began consuming the land. It was a slow time for development, if you can believe it, given that we really haven’t seen one since. The City of Fort Collins, which had already approved a tax, and the county could use the money to snap up valuable swaths of land and establish itself as a real competitor to Boulder and Estes Park and all those ski towns for open space recreation, reserving their spot as one of the Best Places to Live. 

“It was a pivotal time, and we were able to secure a lot of land back then,” said Flenniken, Land Acquisition, Planning and Resource Program Manager. “We have the mountain backdrop, and the separators between Loveland and Fort Collins, and so many trails. It’s a lot of things people value.” 

Now Greeley city council member Tommy Butler wonders where Greeley will be without its own tax. Residents still haven’t approved one -- but that could change. The Greeley City Council just allowed draft ballot language for the tax to go before focus groups, one of the very few times it’s survived beyond an informal work session. Butler isn’t a blind champion of an open space tax, but he’s tried to bring one before voters at least three other times, only for the council to say no. 

“I really would have loved to have done it three or four years ago,” Butler said. “Every time you wait, you acquire less and less open space.” 

• • • 

It took several worksessions and conversations before council agreed to allow draft ballot language to go to focus groups, and it’s hard to say if the council will put it on the November ballot. They’re also mulling a public safety tax—really an extension of one  voters already approved—that would pay for an additional 25 officers and nine firefighters. A food tax that voters have approved since 1990 is also up for renewal. The food tax pays for transportation such as expanded bus routes and city street upgrades, amenities such as the Family Funplex, parks, arts and building maintenance. 

The council members said in meetings that they struggled with the idea of an open space tax. Some members are against the idea. Brett Payton, for example, is a self-described “hard no” on it, to the point where he said he didn’t even want to discuss the idea anymore. At a meeting, all councilmembers agreed they don’t want to ask voters for three tax increases plus permission to acquire debt to pay for transportation upgrades. Mayor John Gates said he would want two issues, max, on the ballot. 

The City of Greeley recently purchased 1000 acres of open space dubbed Shurview. Photo courtesy of The City of Greeley.

The reason for that is the longstanding fear that voters will just reject all the increases if they ask for too many. That would be devastating to the city, which has come to rely on the food tax. This is a fear that even Butler harbors. 

“You don’t want to have voters fatigued with taxes,” he said. 

This is also why Butler supports the food tax but expressed frustration with it. The food tax sunsets every five years, which essentially prevents council from asking for other tax increases. Afterall, there’s an election every two years and councilmembers hesitate to ask for tax increases when their seat isn’t secure.  Butler said residents obviously support the food tax—they’ve voted for it since before he was born, he joked—and he doesn’t think the tax needs that short of a sunset. 

“The sunset every five years is why we’re in this bind,” Butler said. “I would be in favor of polling what our citizens think of a longer sunset or just getting rid of the sunset entirely.” 

• • • 

Most communities in Colorado see the open space tax as a necessity, not a luxury that only outdoorsy and wealthy places such as Boulder and Fort Collins can afford. According to the state, the 20 largest cities in Colorado, Pueblo and Grand Junction are the only other two without a dedicated source of funding for open space. Even Windsor has one now. 

Even so, Gates called the open space tax important but seemed lukewarm on the idea, citing the city’s recent purchase of the Shurview property, and the fact that he favored the public safety tax. Gates now works as director of security for Greeley-Evans School District 6 and is a former Greeley police officer.

The recent purchase of the Shurview property doubled Greeley’s open space by 1,000 acres. Gates supported the purchase, but at a work session he also indicated  he thinks it lessens the need for an open space tax. Councilmember Melissa McDonald also said at the work session she thought open space was important but that there was no “immediate need” for it and favored the public safety tax. 

But the open space tax isn’t just for acquiring land, Butler reminded the council. 

“I know you said we just added 1,000 acres,” Butler said, “but we have to turn that into something.”

The city takes money from the general fund, development fees and grants for a patchwork natural areas budget. These cover a third of what the open space tax, a quarter-cent sales tax, would provide, an estimated $7.6 million per year. Perhaps more importantly, the tax would give the city a dedicated source of money to maintain and build trails and even hire rangers to patrol the land. 

According to a five-year stratefgic plan written by the city on natural areas, the number of conserved acres could triple in 10 years if voters approved the tax. But it also would help them maintain and improve the land we already have.

The city hosted community forums on what they’d like to see from the Shurview property, including trails for mountain biking and running, wildlife watching and even some for wheelchair users or those with disabilities. It could be on par with the Horsetooth Mountain Open Space in Fort Collins, but without a way to pay for those improvements, it could also be a lot of open space with some paths that pass as trails. 

“The current level of operations funding…is not sufficient to maintain existing natural areas or the trail system at a desired level of service,” the report states. 

A dedicated source of funding tends to pay for itself because that money can be leveraged toward grants that require matches or simply want to see a community’s investment in the issue before they hand out grants, Flenniken said, and the numbers back her up, as Great Outdoors Colorado has doled out $26 million to Larimer County communities in 25 years. 

The sales tax would likely cost a resident $50 a year at the most, said Justin Scharton, who is understandably biased as Greeley’s natural areas and trails division manager. 

“How many cups of coffee is that?” Scharton asks. “But I do understand there are a lot of asks and people are feeling tapped right now. Any new tax would be a hard pill to swallow.” 

The economic return could triple that investment every year, he said, as Colorado’s tourism and recreation adds more than $60 billion a year to the state economy. As Greeley continues to appeal to  employers, trails and recreation are always discussed. 

“They want walkable communities and open space and parks,” Scharton said. “That’s what high on the list.” 

It’s hard to pin down exactly what open space does economically for a community, Flenniken said, even with many studies.

“But we know it’s much more than what we’ve put into it,” she said. 

• • • 

Scharton, as are some council members, is more concerned about time running out for Greeley. There’s no doubt residents are desperate for affordable housing, and Greeley still has space. It may not take long for that whole area to be snapped up. You can already see several housing developments and apartment complexes going up. 

There’s plenty of land in east Greeley, where Butler serves, and he’s concerned that the disparity between parks in that area and in the western part of town could become much larger. 

“One of our standards is for residents to have a 10-minute walk to open space for the city,” Butler said. “We don’t have that on the east side.”

He’s also concerned about landmarks on the west side as Greeley bleeds into Johnstown. 

“Those bluffs out west are beautiful,” Butler said. “You don’t want those to go away just because we didn’t try.” 

Once the issues go before focus groups, the city will do another round of polling for the taxes and report back to the council. The council needs to set the ballot in August. 

The hesitation to put the open space tax before voters confuses councilmember Deb DeBoutez, who pointed out that the public safety tax got the same positive response from those polled as open space, just under 60%. That worried the council, who prefer to put a tax before voters when it gets 70% approval, but it also showed that people might be willing to support it. 

“I’m hoping we can at least ask the question,” DeBoutez said. “What is the harm in asking?”