City Council has spent an inordinate amount of time in the last two years discussing residential metro/special districts. Longmonters’ eyes glaze over. Why should the residents of Longmont care? What are special and metro residential districts anyhow?
Colorado State Title 32 Special Districts allows the creation of a third form of state government (a special district serves one purpose, a metro district serves several purposes). This government body has the right to bond and tax, the right to seize and demolish property by eminent domain, and it has no state oversight. Originally special districts were created to help rural areas join larger areas to finance necessities like fire stations or water projects they were not able to afford alone. It also has been successfully used to create long-term stable financing for entities such as the Science and Cultural Facilities District (SFDC), which has benefitted not only Denver metro area organizations like the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and Denver Art Museum, but smaller local cultural facilities all over Colorado. It has been less than successful with the Regional Transportation District (RTD) with which Longmont is all too familiar. But these additional taxes were voted on by all Coloradans. This is not what we are talking about.
Longmont residents should be concerned with residential developments created solely by and for developers using special district law. Residential special districts were illegal in Longmont from 2004 until February 2019, when four pages of municipal law forbidding them was overturned by a one-vote margin of City Council. Not a single resident asked the council to do this. This was solely a developer-demanded change to Longmont law, calling this a “critical tool” to provide affordable housing. Sub-prime mortgages and credit default swaps were also called critical tools for affordable housing and the mortgage industry. These dangerous, complex, and nonsensical financial instruments melted down America’s economy and the economy of the industrialized world. Not all tools are good. Once again, these privately created governments have the ability to 1) bond and tax, setting up the loans and financing before a single homeowner has any vote or choice; 2) seize land and property through eminent domain (by settled case law in Carousel Farms Metropolitan District v. Woodcrest Homes, Inc., the Colorado Supreme Court overturned a previous Colorado District Court ruling and granted the right of eminent domain to privately created residential special districts); 3) have no state oversight. The Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) is merely a repository for special district service plans. They have no ability to investigate, enforce, or penalize for non-compliance. Approximately 40% of special districts do not file a service plan, according to the nonpartisan U.S. PIRG (United States Public Research Institute). Go to DOLA’s website and try to find these service plans. Special districts are also required to file transparency reports and audits. They are apparently not required to file them with our government (DOLA), and most prefer to file them with the industry’s powerful national organization, the Special Districts Association (SDA).
City Council chambers has had the steady testimony of Longmont residents opposed to this community-divisive, double taxation scheme. Our residents have been met with a parade of well-organized and well-funded developers from Florida, California, Canada, Texas, Denver, Boulder, and elsewhere joined by their local-benefiting allies such as the real estate association, banking, and other industry groups who urge the council to open wide the pockets of our residents. The lucrative national “land-secured investment” (special district) industry endlessly proclaims that cash-strapped homeowners financing developer debt is essential, leads to lower costs overall, leads to more affordable housing, that there are only a few developer bad apples, that residential metro districts can successfully be locally regulated without being sued. The national investigative journalism by numerous organizations over the last 10 years, as well as the recent Colorado Sun article and recent Denver Post series by David Migoya and other journalists show these statements to be demonstrably untrue.
Developer-created residential special districts return us to medieval fiefdoms in which local lords each had their own special kingdoms. How does this benefit the residents of Longmont? Is this what you want for yourself and your children?
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February 04, 2020 at 08:20PM
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Pauline Christensen: Why care about metro districts? - Longmont Times-Call
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