The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Approval will not create new taxes
Fourteen years since the creation of the Gunnison Valley Land Preservation Fund, the citizen-led Land Preservation board has acquired an impressive track record in putting those funds to use: 16,426 acres of land valued at more than $47 million have been protected. It’s a track record board members are proud of, and a story that will be broadcast in coming months. The original ballot initiative approved by Gunnison County voters in 1997 sunsets in 2013, and the new group Citizens Protecting our Heritage, Open Space and Economy has been created to promote reauthorization.
“The current resolution sunsets at the end of next year. In order to optimize the certainty of ongoing operations we will go to the ballot this fall,” said Jim Starr, organizer of Citizens.
The Citizen’s group will be visiting with key stakeholders throughout the summer to outline the fund’s successes and ask for their support in reminding voters that preservation benefits the entire valley.
Among the 48 completed projects, many long-time family ranches have been protected, including the Mill Creek Ranch, the Rozman Ranch, and the Veltri’s Cold Spring Ranch. But the benefits have extended beyond the ranching community.
Sage grouse habitat has been protected as a result of preserving ranchland. In addition, trails like the Budd Trail and Lupine Trails near Crested Butte have also been made possible, and development has been prevented in places like the Dillon Pinnacles and Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory research areas. Yet perhaps most impressive about the fund’s track record is how few local dollars have been spent to accomplish all that work.
According to Sue Navy, member of the board and the citizen’s group, the average value of the preserved land is $2,880 per acre, but the cost to the Land Preservation Fund amounts to only $355 per acre. “The amount spent and committed by us was $3.6 million,” she said, adding that for every $1 of local matching funds, the board leveraged $12 in outside funding. That’s a figure that makes the Land Preservation board stand out among statewide land preservation groups and land trusts.
“Of funds generated locally, we are ranked second in the state for leveraging additional funding with our county funds,” Starr said.
Starr explained that monies for the Land Preservation Fund are generated through a sales tax collection implemented during the 1980s. At that time, it was determined that each municipality would keep half of the sales taxes generated and the rest would go to the county. When voters approved the creation of the fund in 1997, that allocated some of the county’s and municipalities’ portion of sales tax collection to the fund.
Today, the Land Preservation fund is funded to the tune of $230,000, with the county chipping in 37 percent and each municipality contributing 21 percent. Those funds are used as matching funds to qualify for grants from Great Outdoors Colorado and other granting entities.
“All this work was accomplished without raising taxes,” Navy said, and that’s a key distinction the citizen’s group wants the public to understand. Funds are allocated from existing sales tax collection and a reauthorization will not increase tax collection. Nor would taxes be decreased if the measure didn’t pass.
At a recent meeting between the group and the Board of County Commissioners, Commissioner Phil Chamberland emphasized that point, saying, “It’s important to make sure people understand that by voting no you’re not decreasing taxes.”
Starr, Navy and other members of the Citizen’s group met with the Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday, June 26 to ask for their support in seeking reauthorization. The commissioners supported the board’s work without question, but did suggest that ballot language be clear this is a renewal of an existing allocation of money. Commissioner Hap Channell also raised the question of whether adding a sunset of 25 or 30 years would increase the measure’s likelihood of passing.
“Mathematically this is one of those things where in some ways the need might go away,” Channell said. He wanted to give the initiative the best chance of passing and wondered whether public support would be influenced one way or the other by including a sunset. But Starr, who has been meeting with several interested parties already, said that concern has not been raised.
The one aspect of the reauthorization campaign that needs further clarification is fundraising. While the citizen’s group hopes to run a low-cost campaign, the commissioners informed them that the cost of placing initiatives on the ballot is now divided among the proponents of each initiative. That could reach several thousand dollars, depending on the number of initiatives on the ballot.
The commissioners will approve a resolution in support of the reauthorization at a future meeting. The Gunnison Valley Land Preservation Board estimates that approximately 4 percent of the private land in the county has been preserved.
