Woodland Park City Council votes to repeal sales tax that provides millions to its school district
WOODLAND PARK, Colo. (KRDO) - The Woodland Park City Council called a special session on Monday, where they ultimately voted to repeal the city's sales tax rate that helped fund their school district every year since 2016.
According to records, the 1.09% sales tax, tacked onto the city's baseline 3% sales tax rate, helped specifically fund the Woodland Park School District (WPSD) with over $3 million in the 2023-2024 school year.
The surprising move comes just four days after the council had made an unanimous final vote to table an ordinance that would have rescinded it.
Now on Monday, the same council voted unanimously on a new ordinance to repeal the tax, and subsequently its funding to Woodland Park schools.
Students, parents, and members of the community packed the meeting on March 6 where the second vote was made. Questions about how the district was spending its money, including the sales tax funds, prompting the council to evaluate the ordinance in the first place.
WPSD was also late to file its financial report for the prior school year in January 2025. Once those records turned up, a report showed more than $1 million of the sales tax revenue going to teachers salaries and benefits, while $10,000 went towards district facilities and maintenance.
Mayor Kellie Case said she believed the outcome of the vote on Thursday, allows for the city and the district to collaborate, and improve upon the district's financial woes, rather than punish them.
"I come from a place of working together and collaborating to get things right and to make it right. And I commit to that and I know that our staff commits to that as well and they have been, and so that’s where I’d like to see us go and I hear that coming from you all as well," Case explained on the decision.
Mayor Case spoke to KRDO13 over the phone on Monday, explaining that the reason the special meeting was called, despite having just voted to suspend the ordinance indefinitely, was due to what she described as "blackmail" by the Woodland Park Board of Education, which she says came in the form of an action item on the Board's upcoming meeting this Wednesday.
What she was describing was a resolution that was included in the meeting agenda, that was sent to her and other council members on Friday. It dealt with the district's intended sale of its charter school, Merit Academy.
In that resolution, according to Case, the board stipulated that if the city council voted to repeal the sales tax, then the district would sell the Merit Academy building for no charge, to the Academy leadership, a building paid for with tax dollars.
Conversely, Case said that the other stipulation was that if the sales tax was left alone, then the Board of Education would obligate that 1.09% sales tax to stay in place for the next 30 years, throughout the entirety of the building's contract of sale.
Case says the Board tried to backpedal, saying it was only a discussion item, however it was still listed as an action item within the publicly available agenda document online, as of Monday morning.
The Mayor called it "highway robbery" over the phone on Monday, explaining that she did not feel it was a decision that the Board should have felt entitled to make, effectively holding both taxpayers and future city council-members hostage with a sales tax in place.
"I just want you to know that this is the hardest thing that I have had to do. And my weekend, I have not slept much the entire weekend." said Case during the Special meeting on Monday, reflecting on he frustration that led to her vote to repeal the tax.
"I'm done. I'm done with this. I'm done with the back and forth. I don't feel like the city has the right structure to to do this kind of school funding." added Councilman George Jones during the meeting, which lasted well over two hours, as council went into Executive Session for 34 minutes, and there were 23 speakers signed up for public comment.
After KRDO13 broke this story Monday, the City of Woodland Park issued a release addressing the vote. In the release, the city said in part, the vote was necessary for the preservation of public property, safety, and public health. Adding that the latest decision by the council will "prevent subversion of the interests of every single city voter and taxpayer in the City of Woodland Park to interests of a single charter school and to prevent City taxpayers from being willfully leveraged by the School Board in the artless manner proposed."
The meeting, where emotions ran high, also left one city council-member, Teri Baldwin, to file her resignation from her seat effective immediately.
Minutes after the city issued its release, the WPSD released a statement of their own.
The district said it is "deeply disappointed by the city council’s action, which undermines the will of the voters and excessively strains the resources of WPSD." The district went on to say that the revenue from this tax, "has been essential in supporting educational excellence, staff retention, and programs that directly benefit students."
The release from the district also included a statement from Superintendent Ken Witt:
“We are extremely disheartened by the council’s decision to overturn what our community
decisively supported at the ballot box,” said Superintendent Ken Witt, “This funding has played a
critical role in advancing the success of our schools, and its removal will have a profoundly
negative impact on our operations,” Witt said.
Witt is set to resign in April.
Mayor Case told KRDO13 the next step is to inform all local retailers about the decrease in sales tax, which is effective immediately. Without the 1.09%, the sales tax now sits at an even 3.0% within city limits, not including the state's tax on purchases.
