Here’s the image many Colorado Springs officials want voters to remember as they cast ballots on Nov. 4:

Barbara Crane was working in her garage in August 2005 when rainwater crept under the door. Within two hours, the storm soaked her carpets and washed away her landscaping. Two feet of water stood in her Paseo Road driveway, caused by a drain built above street level and clogged with tree limbs.

“There were chunks of asphalt moved down the street,” she said.

Crane later learned that the home’s previous owner, who didn’t tell her about flooding problems, pleaded for help but was told the city had no money.

Today, the flooding is just a memory for Crane, thanks to a Stormwater Enterprise project that rebuilt the drain and added a swale to carry water to ponds around a neighboring golf course. The Stormwater Enterprise is one, and perhaps the most controversial, of 11 enterprises the city runs as stand-alone businesses, reliant only on user fees.

Anti-tax activist Douglas Bruce wants a different image in voters’ minds. He wants them to remember news reports of government waste and big utility bill increases expected next year. He wants voters to remember the Stormwater Enterprise bills that started arriving in property owners’ mailboxes in 2007. The Colorado Springs City Council didn’t seek voter approval to impose the fees, which Bruce said makes the fees illegal.

The Colorado Supreme Court disagrees.

If two ballot measures Bruce is pressing get voter approval, the city claims it will have to drastically scale back work fixing drainage problems. Officials said the enterprises will be less efficient and have to jack up fees. Little by little, the effect on city government would be “catastrophic,” said Councilman Scott Hente and other city officials.

Bruce scoffs at the idea.

“These people, they get hysterical. If the tax relief were $1 a person they would say that’s the end of the world,” he said.

One ballot measure, Question 200, would likely eliminate the Stormwater Enterprise by making all charges voluntary. The other, Question 201, would phase out payments from city enterprises to the general fund, making them self-sufficient.

Bruce and city officials agree on this: very few people would voluntarily pay the Stormwater Enterprise fee and that the intent is to eliminate the enterprise. The city would be back to the $2.3 million annual funding for stormwater projects, spending that was continued even after the Stormwater Enterprise got going. The money goes for emergency repairs and other activities required to maintain a federally mandated water-quality permit.

City officials have identified more than $300 million in stormwater projects across the city, including $82.8 million considered critical. “Very few to none” of them would be done without the Stormwater Enterprise, Hente said. The backlog would continue to grow.

“Obviously, when you’re spending $2 (million) or $3 million each year, you’re not exactly taking big swipes out of that backlog, and the backlog is growing every year,” Hente said.

Not according to Bruce.

“Sure we need to spend more money on stormwater, but we should take it from the lower-priority projects,” he said.

Bruce points to a report he and others compiled in 1999 that identified tens of millions of dollars in savings that could be diverted to projects.

Among the ideas in the report: use the lodging and auto-rental tax ($4.4 million this year) for infrastructure rather than attracting tourists, freeze city employee salaries and fringe benefits for a year, stop tax support for recreation and neighborhood services, and sell city-owned Memorial Health System.

Question 200, Bruce said, would also restore compliance with the state Constitution and city charter. Bruce wrote amendments to both documents that say the government can’t impose a new tax without voter approval.

Hente shot back: “It is neither a tax, nor is it illegal. He’s obviously lying.”

The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled in similar cases that stormwater fees are not taxes and don’t require voter approval.

“He’d be the first guy to sue the city if he thought we were doing something illegal,” Hente said.

In addition to the Stormwater Enterprise, 10 other city-owned “businesses” would be affected by Question 201, which would phase out payments to the city starting in January, with savings passed on as reductions on customers’ bills.

The other enterprises are the airport, cemeteries, Colorado Springs Utilities, Development Review Enterprise, Human Services Complex, Memorial Health System, Parking System, Patty Jewett Golf Course, Pikes Peak – America’s Mountain and Valley Hi Golf Course.

Each enterprise uses some services from the central city government, such as legal advice, vehicle fleets and human resources. The enterprises pay the city for the cost of those services, about $7.2 million this year.

In addition, the enterprises give the city what’s called payment in lieu of taxes. It’s a common practice for government-owned agencies, which aren’t subject to property taxes, to give an amount roughly equal to the tax that would be paid if the property were privately owned.

Enterprise customers, such as utility ratepayers, pick up the cost as part of their bills.

These PILT payments add up to $26.9 million this year, nearly all from Colorado Springs Utilities.

The smallest category of payments from enterprises to the city is called street-cut fees.

That’s where Utilities pays the city for tearing up a street to get at underground utility lines, a projected $163,109 this year.

If Question 201 passes, all the payments would be phased out over 10 years, with a combined hit to the city of $211.8 million.

That would be catastrophic, Hente said. The city would have to slash its budget to make up for the lost revenue.

“Where are you going to cut?” he said. “Go online, there’s the city budget. If there’s fluff, tell me where it is.”

An analysis of the measures City Manager Penelope Culbreth-Graft issued in June determined city services would be reduced 17 percent if Question 201 passes and the enterprise payments are fully phased out. The analysis didn’t spell out the government services that would be reduced.

Utility bills would be reduced about $1 per month in the first year and $11 per month at 10 years, Culbreth-Graft’s analysis found. But the enterprises might have to increase fees to make up for the higher cost of establishing services in-house such as a legal staff, the city manager said. There were no details on whether that means higher greens fees at golf courses, steeper charges at the parking garages or something else.

To Bruce, it’s a trumped-up “doomsday scenario” designed to scare voters.

Losing the reimbursement for services it provides to the enterprises won’t have any effect, Bruce said, because the city also won’t have the cost of providing those services.

The enterprises should be able to get those services in-house or from private contractors for the same price or cheaper than the city charged, he said.

Bruce also argues the city’s lost revenue from Question 201 is more like $148.5 million.

The city’s estimate accounts for anticipated increases in the payments during the next decade.

By Bruce’s calculation, which city officials dispute, it’s a 3.5 percent cut to city revenue phased in over a decade.

“How many people in the private sector have to cut their budget 10 percent in one year?” he said. “They talk about this being extreme? How is it extreme when it’s being phased in?”

The second part of Question 201, prohibiting loans, gifts and subsidies, is designed to prevent the city from establishing a new enterprise. The city would be unable to give any new enterprise startup money, as it did with stormwater.

After nearly two years of operation, Stormwater Enterprise has collected $24.5 million through Sept. 2. About 94 percent of property owners have paid their bills.

_

Contact the writer: 636-0187 or perry.swanson@gazettedev.gazette.com

A picture of Marko from his MySpace page Photo by