Decades ago, developers in Colorado figured out they could leverage metro districts to drastically reduce their costs to build houses by taking out debt to fund development infrastructure (roads, sidewalks, water, pools, etc.) and transferring that debt to future homeowners instead of the developer bearing the cost upfront.
This is complex financial engineering! Imagine buying a refrigerator and then receiving another bill from KitchenAid every month for the next 30 years because the ice maker was actually debt-financed, and the debt passed onto you upon sale (it was on page 237 of the fine print!).
I ran some numbers to understand how impactful a metro district tax can be. An $800,000 home in Arapahoe Ridge (no metro district) will pay ~$6159/year in property taxes, while Flatiron Meadows (metro district) will pay ~$9343/year. That is ~$265 more a month, every month, for decades that Homeowners will be spending.
For those in a metro district, is Erie using its authority to ensure sufficient governance regarding metro districts? Is there transparent reporting, board membership, how they are funded, complaint resolution, and accountability? Did you understand the tax obligation at the time you purchased your home? Do you support this model going forward? How could it be changed for the better?
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