Hi Dan,
I trust that you enjoyed a nice Thanksgiving and a few days off from the rigors of being a public servant having to listen to pleading neighbors like myself! Per our conversation on Wednesday, I wanted to send a follow up reminder e-mail as you requested.
I live at 213 Summit County Road 672, in the Alpine Breckenridge area. I am writing to you after reading about your leaving the State Senate and wanting to serve the people of Summit County as a commissioner. The people in our neighborhood are in desperate need of an advocate who is willing to do what is right and what is fair.
To remind you briefly of our conversation; we live in an area where the roads were last "assessed" in the 1960's, with no homes then and an abundance of very nice homes built in the past few years. We have always pleaded with the county to maintain the roads, and have been forced to do it ourselves to the point where I personally spend 5-8 hours per week in the summer with a pick, shovel, wagon and iron rake, repairing pot holes and diverting water runoff. Many of the neighbors do the same. In the winter we have used a neighbor with a Bobcat to plow the road but herein lies the urgency: he moved to Conifer last month and we no longer have a local to help! On a personal note, my home has been constantly re-assessed with the taxes increasing 50% each assessment since I purchased it which is completely out of line. If the County has someone who wants to purchase my home for their "perceived value", I'll jump at the chance as it is way out of line. This presents yet another major issue, I am being assessed an paying an exorbitant amount of taxes, yet not only am I receiving nothing (fat chance at a fire truck or ambulance making to my home) but the county gets literally hundreds of free man hours out of me each year as I work the roads and even use a snow thrower to boot.... on the road! Because the County has abandoned us, so has UPS/FedEx and Waste Management. It has gotten so bad that homes are now selling for Hundreds of Thousands less than a year ago! How much will that hurt the county?!
We have always paid the same taxes as every other homeowner and yet have received less services, specifically road maintenance. Similar and adjacent neighborhoods with dirt/gravel roads are serviced by the county at an average expense of $18,000 per mile of which $7000 per mile is reimbursed by the state through HUTF because the County “accepted” those roads. These are the figures given to us by Asst. County Manager Thad Noll. We get nothing in the way of maintenance, and collectively pay a private contractor about $25,000 annually, just for snow removal. Ironically, some of our “unaccepted” roads that are designated by the County as “un maintained county roads” are more to the county standard than ones that they service. We have pleaded with the commissioners to help out and requested that they negotiate in good faith, but instead of acting as public servants, they flatly refused to do anything and hide behind the “TABOR” and “Code Of The West” as an excuse. Their only offer is to assist us in setting up a PID (assist meaning charge us application and annual administration fees) which would only redistribute the $25,000 cost between homeowners and landowners and increase our property taxes by about ten mils, almost doubling the entire amount paid to Summit County from our area. We have requested that the county somehow reimburse us what their cost would be to service the 1.6 miles of road and were told “we can’t”. We requested that the county do the snow removal, since their plows already do part of the roads anyway, to the point that there are next door neighbors paying the same tax rate and one gets road maintenance and the other does not, and we were told “we won’t”. We asked “If we set up a PID, and the county then collects all necessary funds through tax assessments and hires and oversees a contractor to do the work properly, could the county apply for the HUTF money and put it in the fund. We were again flatly refused.
I have discovered discrepancies in the County’s budget for Roads & Bridges in that the overall expenditures are $4,177,741. They collect $1,370,957 from property taxes and $2,982,242 from “other revenue”. However, the 2009 final budget revenues from all sources only amounts to $1,842,060 which would leave a deficit of $1,140,182. This makes me wonder if the $4,177,741 is real, or an inflated figure. If the HUTF money paid to Summit County is based on a percentage of cost, I can understand why the figure would be inflated. There does exist a $651,733 balance in the Road & Bridge Fund. All this information is from the County’s web site.
Mr. Noll has tried to convince us that by forming a PID we could reduce the cost of road maintenance to as little as a one mil levy to each property, which is an outright fabrication. At the County Commission where the motion to refuse any service was adopted, the County representative stated that it would cost them an additional $15,000.00 annually to service our 1.6 miles of road, and that they only receive about $2500.00 from our taxes (.932 mils for Roads & Bridges). So, obviously, an addition full mil would only produce maybe $2600.00, not the $25,000.00 we are paying.
Since the County already has the equipment and manpower in place, I estimate that it would cost them nothing to service these roads after applying for HUTF money, which is why they do so many of the other neighborhood roads. They make money doing them!
We are exploring the possibility of taking legal action against Summit County, since they do not wish to do the right thing, and have been informed that we have a strong case. We would be seeking the entire $25,000 annually, or full road service, and we would request restitution for the past ten years. The County Government is not leaving us any other real option. As a small neighborhood, we hope you can lend a hand to support our cause and avoid a costly legal battle. We would be forever grateful and supportive of you as our representative.
Dan I'd like to personally invite you to one of our neighborhood potlucks, it would be a great chance to meet the fine people of Alpine Breck and share with them your passion and dedication to the needs of Summit County residents. Thanks so much for your attention and assistance with this matter. I look forward to speaking with you soon. Please feel free to call my cell at any time.
Respectfully,
Tim Huber, on behalf of the Alpine Breckenridge Neighborhood
(970)306-3355
