Colorado Springs City Council passes tax levy to lower property taxes, avoid over collecting

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- Tuesday, the Colorado Springs City Council passed a tax levy that lowers the amount property owners will have to pay in taxes in 2024.

The tax levy comes out to 6.2 million dollars of property tax relief for Colorado Springs residents, but District 1 City Councilman Dave Donelson says calling it "relief" is a stretch.

"It's a misrepresentation to say we're doing this out of the goodness of our own hearts, to provide tax relief for citizens," said Donelson. "It does provide some tax relief, but it's because of TABOR."

If the city did collect that $6.2 million in property taxes from property owners, they would have to give it back in the form of a TABOR refund due to caps on the amount of taxes they're allowed to collect, or the city would have had to ask voters to keep the money for another purpose.

"We want to make sure that our citizens have, as opposed to refunding, that their money is available to them before we even have to go through a refund," said District 5 City Councilwoman Nancy Henjum.

The passage of this tax levy means the relief isn't going to come to property owners in the form of a refund on their utility bill. Instead, property owners will pay slightly less in 2024.

If the city had decided to issue refunds through utility bills, a spokesperson for the city said they would have had to pay tens of thousands of dollars in administrative costs. However, that money would have come from the money being refunded, meaning it would have cost property owners a few cents each.

The El Paso County Assessor's Office said they couldn't share what the average savings would look like for property owners with the passage of the levy because the savings will differ based on property value.