Bruce petition to revoke stormwater fee disallowed

Anti-tax activist Douglas Bruce submitted a question for November’s ballot that would abolish the new stormwater fee, but the petition was immediately declared illegal by City Clerk Kathryn Young.

Young said the ballot title contains multiple subjects, which city codes disallow.

Bruce called Young’s action a “play for time” so the city can snare more stormwater fees while the issue is litigated.

“She’s trying to stall so we don’t have time to collect signatures, because the city is run by corrupt city officials, including her, that are doing things that are illegal, and that’s a quote,” Bruce said.

He said Young, as a member of a title board two years ago, declared a longer and more complicated ballot title than his as a single topic.

His newest measure contains 49 words:

“City enterprise charges shall be billed and collected for voluntary customer contracts only. Future city enterprises that charge money shall be created only after voter approval. Except to repay voter approved bonds, city property tax charges shall not exceed three mills in tax year 2007 and two mills thereafter.”

Young said Monday that the measure doesn’t meet single-subject requirements and that it’s her duty to reject measures that don’t.

In a letter to Bruce, Young noted the first sentence pertains to an administrative act that cannot be submitted to or decided by voters.

The second and third sentences can be submitted to voters as separate issues, she said.

The second, an initiated ordinance, would require signatures from 11,470 registered voters. The third, as a proposed charter change, would require signatures from 31,936 registered voters.

Young said to make the November ballot, Bruce must return sufficient signatures to her office by early August.

Bruce said Young can’t determine whether a proposed measure is a single subject or not. That duty belongs to the title board made up of a city attorney, municipal judge and Young.

Bruce said he proposed the measure because he thinks, based on collection rates, Springs property owners oppose the stormwater fee enacted in December by the City Council.

On April 19, The Gazette reported the city mailed the first 76,502 bills in February and March. A third were unpaid as of their due date of April 9.

Of the other 55,922 bills mailed later, 60 percent hadn’t been paid as of April 13. They were due Monday.

More recent figures were not available Monday, but as of April 13, the city had collected $1.6 million of the roughly $4 million it hoped to bring in from the first-quarter billing. The city expects to collect $14.6 million in fees this year.

City officials said they think the lag stems from property owners’ unfamiliarity with the fee.

Bruce disagreed. “I think they’re upset because this is blatantly a tax,” he said. “If we don’t stop them (city officials), they might want to tax air, grass, curbs and sidewalks and call it a fee to deprive us illegally of our right to vote.”

Bruce, an El Paso County commissioner who wrote state and city tax limitation laws that require voter approval of tax increases and debt, saw his two anti-tax questions fail last fall.

The measures — to eliminate Colorado Springs’ property tax, trim its sales tax and limit its borrowing authority — prompted the city to sue to keep them off the ballot. But a series of court decisions forced the city to submit them to voters.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0238 or pam.zubeck@gazette.com