Council again asking voters for part of TOPS tax

Even though Colorado Springs voters said no in April, City Council will ask again in November to take money from trails and open space and dedicate it to park maintenance.

Council seems to be calculating that a summer of discontent, full of weeds and trash in city parks, will swing the vote.

“All you need to do is drive around town to see the need for this,” Councilman Tom Gallagher said Thursday, minutes before the council voted in favor of sending that issue and two others to voters. Darryl Glenn, Randy Purvis and Larry Small opposed the TOPS measure. The other two passed unanimously.

The question, slated to appear on the Nov. 2 ballot, seeks to alter the Trails Open Space and Parks sales tax (TOPS), which levies a penny for every $10 purchase in the city. When TOPS was passed by voters in 1997, it spelled out that TOPS money could be spent only on purchasing, developing and maintaining TOPS property, and that only six percent of the funds could be spent on maintenance.

The idea was too keep the city from siphoning off dollars for other projects.

The question approved by council Thursday basically asks voters to give them a siphon. It would increase the maximum maintenance expenditure to 15 percent and allow the city to spend the funds on any park. The law would sunset in two years.

The city has had to slash budgets in recent years as the economy faltered, and parks have seen much of the cutting, to the point that mowing is rare, brown spots are growing and trash pickup has all but stopped.

The majority of the council sees the TOPS change not as a siphon but as a lifeline.

When the city put an almost identical question on the ballot in April it failed by two percentage points. But the previous TOPS change lasted five years instead of two, and the vote came before voters saw local parks at their worst this summer.

“I think voters want a chance to consider this again and might pass it,” said Councilman Sean Paige.

Critics argue that the change in TOPS would do little to help parks, freeing up an estimated $500,000 when the parks department water bill, alone, can add up to $1.7 million.

“This is just a Band-Aid for a much larger problem,” said Susan Davies, director of the Trails and Open Space Coalition, who addressed the council Thursday to oppose the ballot question.

She pointed out that the money would only maintain an estimated 25 of the city’s 128 parks.

A group of citizens wants to ask voters sometime in the future to raise taxes specifically for a regional recreation authority that would tend to parks, she said. And this ballot question could make that more difficult.

But with the regional recreation authority plan perhaps years away, the council decided to ask voters to divert funds from TOPS now.

“A Band-Aid is used to cover a wound temporarily so it can heal,” said Councilman Bernie Herpin. “I agree, this is a Band-Aid, but a Band-Aid is what we need.”

Davies said she hoped her group could work with the city, but did not say whether it would support or oppose the measure.

The council, as expected, voted to certify two other questions on the November ballot: Whether the city should be allowed to keep $600,000 in property tax revenue that would otherwise be refunded under the Tax Payer Bill of Rights to repair roads and bridges; and whether the city should change its charter to create a strong mayor position.