Hotchkiss Fire District Sales and Use Tax

Ballot Issue 6A adds a district sales and use tax of 0.4%. As an example, at 0.4%, $100 of taxable purchases adds 40 cents. The district's property tax for tax year 2025 was 4.8 mills on a total assessed value of $54,903,996, according to the Colorado Division of Property Taxation. The new tax comes in addition to that property tax, not in place of it. The question restricts the revenue to fire protection services within the district.

The ballot states the increase as $280,000 on January 1, 2027, and as whatever amounts the tax generates in each year after that. That first-year figure is larger than the district's total property tax revenue for tax year 2025 as the division reports it. The tax continues without an end date.

Four rates already apply across Delta County, the state's 2.9%, the county's 2% and the county's two 0.80% taxes for public safety improvements and health services, and they total 6.5%, according to the state's January 2026 rate table (DR 1002). The same table lists the Town of Hotchkiss's 2%, which brings the total in town to 8.5%. Each rate carries a separate exemption list, so these totals hold for a purchase that every rate taxes.

A yes vote also lets the district collect, keep and spend the revenue from this tax every year as a voter-approved revenue change under Article X, Section 20 of the Colorado Constitution, the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR). A no vote leaves the district with its property tax and without this sales and use tax.