Niwot Four-Mill Property Tax

If Issue 303 passes, a new City of Niwot levies four mills on the assessed value of every taxable home, business and other property inside the proposed boundary. The ballot names no starting year; it puts revenue at $900,000 for the first full fiscal year and lets the levy raise whatever four mills bring in each year after that. Its one stated purpose is meeting operational and maintenance costs; it names no project and no end date.

Property in Niwot carries a total levy of 98.461 mills today, according to a review THK Associates wrote for the incorporation committee, and none of it goes to a municipality, because Niwot has no governing body. The Niwot Election Commission puts the new levy at about $273 a year on a home at Niwot's median actual home value of $1,090,100 and says each property's bill depends on its assessed value.

If Question 300 fails, no municipality is created to collect this levy, the Election Commission says. If 300 passes and 303 fails, the city begins without it. The road bonds in Issue 306 rely on sales and use tax money, not on this levy.

State law limits the property tax revenue of a city or town not chartered as home rule to the prior year's amount plus 5.5%, with exceptions such as bond payments. Issue 303 makes this levy's revenue an exception to that limit, so collections follow assessed values at the four-mill rate without a further vote. Question 301 asks whether to form a commission to write a home rule charter, which would go to voters at a later election. The question's clause under the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR) lets the city keep all of this revenue whether or not Issue 305 passes.

The committee's pro forma budget, version 1.8 of September 21, 2026, forecasts $833,000 from the levy in 2028, the year it models as the first full year of operations, and about $1.42 million in 2040. It assumes residential market values grow 4.4% a year, and it warns that a legislative change in assessment rates can alter the revenue apart from market trends.

The committee's stress test, which changes one line at a time, finds that the levy would have to bring in 46.5% less every year through 2040 before cumulative reserves fell below zero. The budget calls such single-line results "inherently optimistic," because real downturns produce correlated shocks in several lines at once. The same budget forecasts reserves of about $6.85 million by the end of 2040. THK called four mills "very modest by comparable municipal measures," setting it beside 6.559 mills in Louisville and 13.42 in Longmont.