News

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 2A, which addresses funds from the town’s lodging tax.

You’re likely somewhat familiar with TABOR — that’s Colorado’s taxpayer Bill of Rights. It protects the interests of taxpayers in Colorado, and has a set of rules applying to any new tax introduced in the state.

In 2021, voters in Telluride approved a new tax. They voted to end the county’s long-standing tax on hotel and vacation rental bookings and replace it with a lodging tax specific to the town of Telluride. Town clerk Tiffany Kavanaugh recalls the measure “passed in 2021, and part of TABOR requires that when we go to the voters with a new tax we have to estimate how much revenue we’ll collect in the first year.”

The town put that estimate at a million dollars, and considered that number generous — it actually expected to collect somewhere closer to $700,000. Then, lodging in Telluride had a banner year, says Kavanaugh, “and we actually collected $163,598 over what was estimated, TABOR requires when we collect in excess of the estimate we have to return to the voters and ask if we could retain that.”

Here enters the new ballot measure — 2A. It asks voters if the town can keep that roughly $160,000 surplus.

Historically, the county’s lodging tax was directed towards marketing Telluride as a destination. The town lodging tax which replaced it uses that money for a more diverse set of projects, says Kavanaugh:

“Instead of the sole purpose [i.e. marketing] of that lodging tax, Council was interested in using that revenue for other things like affordable housing, the wastewater treatment plant, transportation services…things like that. So that was the impetus,” says Kavanaugh.

If voters allow the town to keep the excess funds, they’ll be used for that diversity of town projects.

And, says Kavanaugh: “If voters vote ‘no,’ then we have to go back to Town Council and basically make up that revenue to the community. It’s not that we would search for the lodgers that stayed during that time and give them a refund, and it’s also not giving a $50 check to each registered voter in the Town of Telluride.”

Instead, the town could perhaps lower the sales tax for a few months, until the 160,000 dollars is ‘returned’ to the community. Other communities in this situation have opened a town facility — such as town pool — free of charge for a few months.

The exact form of the reimbursement would be up to the Town Council.