By Julia Caulfield
On Mondays in the run-up to the November Election, KOTO News will be covering this year’s Ballot initiatives. This week, we have a profile of Ballot Measure 4A, a bond measure from the Telluride R-1 School District to raise money for affordable housing and infrastructure improvements.
“Issue 4A will say ‘will you approve issuing a $31.8 million worth of bonds’ that the school district would like to issue in support of building teacher and staff housing, and in providing critical infrastructure upgrades for the schools,” says Dylan Brooks, a member of the Telluride R-1 School District Board of Education.
“The issue on the table will increase property taxes by less than one mil,” Brooks says, “how that works out is that, a million-dollar home or so, the assessed value of that actual value ends up being about $67,000 – that’s the amount that gets taxed. A 1 mil on that ends up being about $67 a year. So we’re talking about $5 or $6 per month on a million-dollar house, would be in the increase in taxes.”
While many property owners saw their taxes go up this year based on assessed value, Brooks notes that doesn’t have a large impact on school funding.
“That is not the way that Colorado school finance works. The amount of money that our school district, and every other school district in the state, receives is determined by the State. So we’re looking at increases that are generally between 3-5 percent, regardless of what happens to property values,” Brooks says.
Funds from the bond measure, should it pass, will go towards improvements to the school buildings, in addition to construction or purchase of housing for staff.
“The school district has struggled recently with retaining and attracting the best staff possible,” Brooks notes, “we do have vacancies right now. The truth of the matter is the feedback we get from teachers that we lose from our school is that the number one issue is the affordability of living in Telluride.”
Brooks says the school district currently houses approximately 10% of staff in district owed rental housing, but they want to increase that number to 25% or 30%.
“We can provide a benefit that both attracts and retains more staff. Secondly, we can increase our long-term revenue and our financial sustainability because twenty years from now, when these bonds are paid off, we’ll fully own the housing that continues to house our staff,” Brooks says.
He adds the aim of the bond is to help provide the children in the Telluride region with the best education possible.
“The results we get out of the school are exemplary. We continue to strive to make them better,” Brooks concludes, “We are asking the people of the Telluride community to support us, in giving us the resources to do that.”
Ballot Issue 4A comes before Telluride voters in the November 7th election. This story is part of KOTO’s election coverage. Find an archive of all our election coverage at koto.org/2023-election-coverage.