Clear Creek County Lodging Tax Increase

The tax, which 1A would raise from 2% to 6%, is charged on the rental price of rooms and accommodations rented for less than 30 consecutive days. The increase adds $4 in county tax for every $100 of taxable lodging charges. Issue 1A changes no other tax on a stay.

Georgetown, which levies a separate town lodging tax, is outside the county tax. The commissioners' resolution sends the question to registered voters in unincorporated Clear Creek County and in every municipality in the county except Georgetown.

Until 2025, state law held a county lodging tax to 2%. House Bill 25-1247, which Governor Jared Polis signed on May 13, 2025, amended that statute to allow up to 6% and let counties spend the revenue on public infrastructure maintenance or improvements and on law enforcement, fire protection and emergency medical services.

County voters approved the 2% tax in 1990 for advertising and marketing local tourism. In 2022 they widened its uses: at least 60% now goes to housing and childcare for the tourism-related workforce, and no more than 40% to tourism marketing.

Issue 1A replaces that split for the whole 6% tax, including the part collected now. Up to 60% could go to public infrastructure maintenance or improvements and to public safety, with no minimum. At least 20% must go to childcare, and at least 10% to housing, in each case for the tourism-related workforce, including seasonal workers, and for other workers in the community. At least 10% must go to tourism advertising and marketing, the minimum state law requires. The childcare and housing floors together come to 30%, half the 60% share guaranteed now. With tourism's 10%, the floors fix 40% of the money, and the county would decide where the other 60% goes among the listed uses. All spending is subject to an annual independent audit and local government budget laws. If the question fails, the 2% tax and its 2022 split stay as they are.

A July 21 memo from the county manager, written before the final wording, sketched the uses: roughly double the county's childcare spending, hold tourism and Clear Creek Regional Housing Authority funding at current dollar levels, and send the rest, about $600,000 to $700,000 a year "under more normalized revenue conditions," to general fund relief for visitor-related public safety and infrastructure costs. The ballot question sets only the percentage shares; the memo's dollar amounts are not binding.

The county's TABOR notice estimates the maximum added revenue in 2027 at $800,000 and puts county fiscal year spending without the increase at $26,166,700. Its table shows the county's fiscal year spending, as TABOR defines it, falling from $30,731,000 in 2022 to an estimated $26,166,700 in 2026, a drop the notice gives as 14.9%.

The question sets no expiration. It describes the increase as "$800,000.00 ANNUALLY COMMENCING ON JANUARY 1, 2027, AND BY WHATEVER AMOUNTS ARE RAISED ANNUALLY THEREAFTER." The first-year revenue and whatever the 6% rate raises in later years could be collected and spent as a voter-approved revenue change notwithstanding any limitation or condition under TABOR or any other provision of law.

The written comments for the measure, printed in the TABOR notice, say overnight visitors add traffic on county roads and calls for emergency response, and that the tax would be paid primarily by those visitors rather than residents. In a text-message survey of 482 voters that Magellan Strategies took for the county from July 30 to August 18, 65% of respondents rated infrastructure 8 to 10 in importance on a 10-point scale, followed by public safety at 49%, workforce housing at 43%, childcare at 40% and tourism marketing at 18%.

The comments against call the measure a 200% rate increase put forward without an independent economic-impact study or a sunset, and warn that fewer overnight stays could cost local jobs, tips and sales tax revenue. At the commissioners' September 1 meeting, where the resolution was on the agenda, a group of lodging operators and short-term rental owners entered a formal objection asking for such a study before the question went to the ballot, a delay of one election cycle and, if the board went ahead before a study, a 4% rate.