Colorado metro districts and developers create billions in debt, leaving homeowners with soaring tax bills
Districts were created as answer to TABOR, give developers enormous powe
By David Migoya
The two-story, five-bedroom place just east of Loveland was as sweet as Tlene and Tyler Sterkel dreamed it would be, from the custom finishes in the basement to the granite countertops and the en suite master bedroom.
Then their first property tax bill arrived. Already on a tight budget, they stared at a bill that had gone from $818 at their closing in 2014 to nearly $3,500 barely a year later, then $4,400 two years after that.
“We were suddenly buried in property taxes we couldn’t afford,” Tlene Sterkel said. “The mortgage on the house we could afford just fine. But the taxes murdered us. We never saw it coming.”
Their $312,000 home was one of more than 1,900 planned for a community known as Thompson River Ranch, a 650-acre development on the edge of Johnstown. About 650 of those houses are finished today.
Nearly half the Sterkels’ tax bill — and the reason it had shot up so quickly — went to Thompson Crossing Metropolitan District No. 4, the quasi-government metro district that controls the area where they purchased. The district’s tax levy was the only one to increase each year they were in their home…
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