County News

By Roger Baker
County Manager

1/12/2006 - Now that we’ve caught up with the flurry of end-of-year activities and annual appointments—so much so that the Gilpin Commissioners actually decided to take next week off and catch their breath—it might be a good time to look at what was actually accomplished during all that frenzy.

  By far the biggest project was the adoption of the annual budget, and the pieces of legislation—setting mill levies, and accepting the Assessor’s property valuations—which go along with that.

  It all starts with the assessment process; all Gilpin residents will be getting a County newsletter soon, and it describes the abatement process, one of the steps an individual property owner can take in regard to questioning an individual assessment. Overall, Assessor Anne Schafer and her staff have done an exemplary job in fixing some of the problems we’ve had in the past, and making sure that assessments are fair and accurate.

  But for the Commissioners, the big concern is the overall assessment—how much are the properties in the County assessed for (and that’s just a small percentage of what they’re really worth on the open market). In 1993, for example, when gaming was just getting off the ground, the total taxable value of the County was listed at just over $128 million. This year, it’s more than twice that, at $264 million. And while we’ve had some new homebuilding, and most of our homes have increased in value, the big jump—nearly $100 million—came in commercial properties, mostly the casinos.

  The casinos are the source of our other major source of income, the 12% share of gaming taxes that comes directly to the affected counties, Gilpin and Teller. We’re budgeting for $9 million of that this year; that’s compared to under $3 million in property taxes, residential and commercial combined.

  There are some other revenue sources—fees, grants, contract revenue—so overall we’ll have about $17 million to spend this year. But I hope that when the individual tax bills come out at the end of the  month—we’ll talk more about that next week—folks will remember what a remarkable bang for the buck we get here in Gilpin County. You can figure that roughly two-thirds of the dollars we spend—on worthwhile things like the Community Center and Library, on road maintenance and law enforcement—come from the money we get, directly or indirectly, from limited stakes gaming.

  Regardless of the source of the revenue, though, it’s never enough to do everything we want to do. All our departments have needs, legitimate needs in most cases, for new equipment and personnel. Even when we don’t add something new, many of our existing services have become more and more expensive to provide. Energy prices this year have had a huge impact, from the diesel fuel used by our vehicle fleet to the natural gas that heats our buildings—and remember, in 1993 we didn’t have a Library (really), or Community Center, or Justice Center.

  Now that we have all the numbers in place, it is the challenge for the Board of County Commissioners—and indeed, for all the County departments—to make sure that the monies collected are spent wisely, fairly, and for the benefit of all. And that’s a year-round job.