School board rejects GOP idea to arm teachers

BY MCKENNA HARFORD MHARFORD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

e Douglas County School Board rmly rejected a request from the chair of the Douglas County GOP to allow teachers to carry rearms in schools.

Steve Peck, the Douglas County GOP chair and a former school board member, sent a letter on March 27 in the aftermath of the Nashville shooting, asking the district to let trained sta be armed at schools without school resource o cers. Peck did not respond to an interview request from Colorado Community Media.

“We cannot a ord to wait any longer or play political games with the lives of our nearly 63,000 students in the district, especially elementary and rural schools who have no SROs and are sitting today without any armed security,” Peck wrote in the letter.

Board members responded to the letter during the March 28 meeting by reiterating the district has no plans to allow sta to be armed in schools with the exception of school resource o cers, or SRO, who are trained law enforcement.

e district currently has an SRO at every middle and high school.

Board President Mike Peterson said a sta member with a concealed carry permit would not rise to the standard of training the district has for school resource ocers, so he would not support them being armed in schools.

“I’ve had three criteria for our folks who are armed in schools,”

Peterson said. “ e rst one is that they are competent, trained to a ridiculously high standard. Two, that they are pro cient, so they maintain that competency and skill for not just physical, but mental decision making. And third, that they are an integrated part of our planning and response.”

Board member Elizabeth Hanson said the letter created unnecessary chaos in the community because the elected panel has no intentions of arming teachers, which she adamantly opposes.

“I want to call it what it is, it was a political stunt, it was reckless, and I think it was very purposefully sent to create division,” Hanson said.

A statement from Lucy Squire, a third-grade teacher and the president of the local teachers’ union, Douglas County Federation, noted that allowing teachers to be armed would potentially pit them against their students.

“We know that often the perpetrator in a school shooting is a current or former student,” Squire said.

“Why would the Douglas County GOP want us to be confronted with the possibility of having to shoot our own current or former students?” ough the board doesn’t support arming teachers, it is looking at ways to fund 10 more school resource o cers, which would help ll coverage gaps. e district estimates it would cost $5-6 million.

One possibility is that the district asks voters for the money as part of a mill levy override.

“We all respect our SROs,” Hanson said. “We mutually understand that what they bring to our district is absolutely invaluable and we want to continue to elevate that relationship and nothing else.” the increase,” said Douglas County Commissioner Lora omas.

Property taxes partly fund county governments, but they also fund school districts, re and library districts, and other local entities. Property taxes pay for Douglas County sheri ’s deputies, omas noted.

Even when tax rates themselves aren’t increasing, the amount that homeowners owe increases as the value of homes rises. e state legislature could intervene to cap the increase, but Colorado lawmakers face a delicate balancing act: A cap that’s too high could squeeze families’ nances in a tough economic time. But a cap set too low could force local governments to make cuts to services.

Douglas County o cials want to be reasonable and not see citizens “overtaxed,” omas said.

But “I don’t want to have to lay people o because we can’t pay them,” she added.

State in the mix

Rising property values are a problem statewide, not just in the Denver metro area, said omas, who has heard input from other counties.

To address the issue, state Rep. Lisa Frizell, R-Castle Roack, pushed a bill in the legislature that initially proposed a 5% cap on increasing residential property values between 2022 and 2025. Frizell later amended that to a proposed 10% cap after hearing feedback from rural counties.

Her bill met defeat in a committee — before reaching a full vote in the state House — in early March.

One Democrat voted for her bill, which failed 6-5, Frizell said, but that doesn’t mean the conversation is over.

“Uno cially, I was told that (lawmakers) were discouraged by leadership to vote for it,” said Frizell, adding that Democrats are anticipating a plan from the governor’s o ce and “didn’t want the distraction.”

Local o cials as of late March were waiting to hear what Democrats may propose, and a percentage for a possible cap isn’t clear yet, according to omas and Frizell.

A cap as low as 3%, for example, would pose problems for Douglas County’s budget, county o cials said.

“Local government revenues need to keep up with, at minimum, in ation in order to keep the lights on,” Frizell noted.

Local action in Douglas

If the state doesn’t take action, Douglas County may reduce residents’ tax bills on its own.

If property values increase around 50%, “we will do a temporary mill levy credit like we have done ve of the last seven years that I’ve been a commissioner,” omas said. e county has authorized such credits in 2017, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, e ectively lowering county revenue by $30 million.

But omas hopes the state will step in. e budget that Douglas County o cials wrote for 2024 was based on expecting a 9% residential property value increase, she said.

“I would like to see us be able to in uence (a legislature) bill to cap that property tax increase 7% to 10%, somewhere in there,” omas said. omas and her fellow commissioners haven’t had a conversation about that, so “I can’t even begin to guess what we would do,” omas said.

(For example, if a home was valued at $500,000, with a 10% increase, its value would rise to $550,000 for 2024 tax purposes.)

If Colorado lawmakers pass a cap lower than that, the county services that could be a ected aren’t yet clear.

How property value assessments work

It’s the job of county assessors’ o ces to establish accurate values of homes and other properties to determine how much property owners will owe government entities in taxes — a process meant to ensure that the amount of taxes people pay is fair and equitable.

( e assessor doesn’t set the tax rate but determines the value of the property that the tax rate then gets applied to.)

e law requires the assessor to value properties every two years in June, so the property valuation homeowners will soon receive is based on June 2022 data, near the recent peak in the real estate market, omas said. So even though home prices have declined since then, property values determined by the assessor’s o ce re ect last year’s exceptional highs.

Since the start of 2010 — when the median single-family home price in metro Denver was about $200,000 — the median price had roughly tripled, according to a report by the

Colorado Association of Realtors based on data as of August. Statewide, it had tripled as well, according to the association.

Homeowners can see the breakdown of the property taxes they owe by typing in their address in a large search bar near the top of the Douglas County assessor’s webpage at douglas.co.us/assessor. at search function shows how the taxes are divided among each government entity based on the “mills” charged. Property tax rates are o cially called “mill levies.”

One “mill” is equal to one thousandth of a dollar. Generally, property taxes are calculated using a formula that involves mills — the tax rate — and the property value.

Living within a metropolitan district, such as Highlands Ranch, can make a big di erence in a home’s total property taxes, omas said. Metro districts are a type of government entity that can o er some government services.

A complex background

Part of why property taxes can rise so relatively high is that Colorado voters recently repealed the Gallagher Amendment, omas noted.

A state constitutional amendment, Gallagher prevented residential property tax bills from quickly rising by shifting the tax burden to commercial property owners through assessment rates, which help determine how much property owners pay in taxes, the Colorado Sun reported. But Gallagher collided with another constitutional amendment, the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, employment, and more. rough analysis, surveys, interviews and roundtables, PUMA looks to refresh and create a forwardthinking strategy to guide economic development in Parker, one that promotes economic resiliency, diversication, fortify the town’s revenue base and create local job opportunities according to Segal.

T.J. Sullivan, president of the Parker Chamber of Commerce encourages those who live or work in Parker to complete the anonymous survey as it is an opportunity to in uence the town’s direction and investment in economic development.

“It’s important to remind folks that the prosperity of businesses and whether they are creating jobs or selling goods, are really key to the tax base and the tax base is what allows this body to provide a quality of life that is really unmatched in the metro area,” said Segal.

As of March 27, there were 425 responses to the survey. Segal said the survey data and trends tend to be even more accurate if there are more than 500 responses.

“Economic development is different in every community that we work in, so we are looking at really tailoring to what does that mean in Parker and how do we best pursue that moving forward,” said Segal.

Naomi Grunditz Lacewell, an associate with PUMA, spoke about the key themes that emerged from interviews and roundtable discussions.

“ ere’s widespread support for existing businesses, desire to see those grow, to have more homegrown talent and an understanding of the environment that’s needed to do that such as smaller and more a ordable creative spaces to foster entrepreneurship,” said Lacewell.

Other themes included downtown redevelopment, diversifying dining, retail and entertainment experiences, expanding tourism experiences and an opportunity to create a