Road Districts: One Is Available, One Is Not
What each one costs a household
Priced per year on Niwot’s median home of $1,095,000.
- 33 mills · $2,300
- A district for your own neighborhood — the one you can form today. Typical, weighted by homes; yours may differ. Find yours.
- About 31 mills · $2,160
- A townwide district, where it settles: drawn without those it would tax for roads it never touches or already pays for, and with every neighborhood that would pay less on its own holding a reason to vote no. Not on offer — defeated at the ballot in 2013 and withdrawn in 2025. How it gets there.
A district buys pavement. A town buys the pavement, plows it, sweeps it, and does everything else a town does — for about a third of the price.
Property tax at Colorado’s 6.8% local-government rate after the statutory $70,000 reduction. A district levies property tax only, so visitors and commercial traffic contribute nothing to one, and it pays for pavement alone — no snow removal, and the collector roads between neighborhoods keep no owner. We are not predicting how any neighborhood would vote on a townwide district; 31 mills is where its own arithmetic leads, and 18 mills is its price only while everyone stays in.
Who’s left: 995 of 1,809 properties, about half the town.
No proposal exists and nobody is assembling one. It has been put to this community twice: defeated at the ballot in 2013 (county Issue 5C) and withdrawn before the ballot in 2025. We are not predicting that any neighborhood objects, votes against a district, or forms its own, and none of the excluded groups has said it would object. The first exclusion is who has the plainest case to be drawn out of the boundary; whether the commissioners would agree is theirs to decide. The second is who would have a cheaper option, and so a reason to vote no. 27 is 26.6 before rounding.
How the first rung is built, and who would stay in, are below. The argument in full, and the law behind it, is in the feasibility paper.
Whether a District Is Actually Available
- 2013. Boulder County put a county-wide subdivision paving district on the ballot as Issue 5C, at up to 7.15 mills. It was defeated.
- 2025. A citizen group proposed a Niwot district at 12 mills, which spread the total cost over a 25-30 year life cycle. It was withdrawn before it reached the ballot.
- Today. The same roads cost 18 mills with everyone in. A district has to borrow and repay within twenty years, which alone takes 12 to about 17, and the roads are two years older (how 12 becomes 18). There is no proposal on the table and nobody assembling one.
A district’s boundary can also lose parcels before it reaches a vote; an incorporation’s cannot. Incorporation is on the ballot on November 3, so the boundary being voted on is fixed and every property inside it is in. A district could not reach a ballot before 2027, and the 2025 proposal is the example of what happens in that window: it lost neighborhoods before it was withdrawn.
A District for Your Neighborhood
The county’s own mechanism is a district for one neighborhood at a time — your streets, your homes, your levy — and it is the one you can form today. Across the 24 neighborhoods the 2025 proposal costed, it runs from 14 mills in Monte Vista to 47 mills in Centrebridge, typically about 33. That is a range about which street you happen to live on: two households a quarter-mile apart, with the same house, are quoted figures that differ by a factor of three, because one subdivision has more road per home than the other.
A town does not work that way. Its 4 mills fall on every property on the same terms and its sales tax is paid partly by people who do not live here, so the cost of a road does not depend on how many neighbors happen to front it. The map is the picture of that.
| Neighborhood | Incorporation | Its own district |
|---|---|---|
| Cottonwood Park Condos 118 homes · median $339,500 · private roads | $336 | private roads |
| Countryside 140 homes · median $367,100 · private roads | $352 | private roads |
| Cottonwood Park West 136 homes · median $649,000 | $494 | $1,691 40 mills |
| Old Town Niwot 62 homes · median $747,100 | $541 | $1,310 26 mills |
| Dry Creek / Johnson Farm 151 homes · median $887,100 | $608 | $2,890 44 mills |
| Meadowdale / Johnson Farm 14 homes · median $921,100 | $623 | not costed |
| Meadowdale 33 homes · median $987,900 | $655 | $2,710 45 mills |
| Elm Street 12 homes · median $1,011,200 | $666 | $3,030 43 mills |
| Country Creek 20 homes · median $1,044,050 | $681 | $2,946 41 mills |
| Johnson Valley 58 homes · median $1,074,750 | $695 | $1,226 18 mills |
| Morton Heights 160 homes · median $1,086,800 | $701 | $2,711 37 mills |
| Burgundy Park 43 homes · median $1,113,000 | $713 | not costed |
| Peppertree Estates 30 homes · median $1,167,000 | $736 | $2,711 35 mills |
| Centrebridge 28 homes · median $1,245,350 | $772 | $3,848 47 mills |
| Overbrook 63 homes · median $1,261,100 | $779 | $2,836 35 mills |
| Niwot Estates 41 homes · median $1,266,200 | $780 | $1,982 25 mills |
| Triple Crown Meadows 26 homes · median $1,388,450 · private roads | $835 | private roads |
| Heather Hills 29 homes · median $1,453,300 | $862 | $3,220 31 mills |
| Springhill 44 homes · median $1,597,550 | $924 | $3,137 30 mills |
| Brittany Place 13 homes · median $1,661,000 · private roads | $952 | private roads |
| Monarch Park 12 homes · median $1,670,550 | $955 | $5,297 47 mills |
| The Cove 16 homes · median $1,688,150 · private roads | $963 | private roads |
| Waterford 32 homes · median $1,711,250 | $972 | $4,539 40 mills |
| Somerset 68 homes · median $1,782,600 | $1,003 | $3,422 29 mills |
| Waterford Park 32 homes · median $1,835,100 | $1,024 | $3,904 32 mills |
| Autumn Ridge / Blue Sky 21 homes · median $1,902,100 | $1,052 | $3,094 24 mills |
| Foxhaven 6 homes · median $1,967,350 · private roads | $1,079 | private roads |
| Niwot Meadow Farm 27 homes · median $2,433,000 | $1,268 | $5,409 35 mills |
| Quiet Retreat 11 homes · median $2,581,300 · private roads | $1,326 | private roads |
| Legend Ridge 52 homes · median $2,616,850 | $1,341 | $3,920 22 mills |
| Goldbranch 16 homes · median $2,704,100 · private roads | $1,375 | private roads |
| Somerset Estates 89 homes · median $2,800,000 | $1,413 | $4,612 23 mills |
| Monte Vista 13 homes · median $3,117,900 | $1,536 | $2,848 14 mills |
| Niwot Hills 25 homes · median $3,202,500 | $1,569 | $9,520 43 mills |
Per year. Incorporation is 4 mills plus 2.5% sales tax on the neighborhood’s median home. A district is priced on its own average home, because its levy is computed over its own parcels. A neighborhood on private roads has no district to price: a public district cannot spend on private pavement. Computed from src/data/neighborhoods.ts, which is generated from the parcel data.
In none of the 24 costed neighborhoods is its own district cheaper than incorporation. A townwide district, where it settles near 31 mills, would cost a median home $2,160 a year, against $752 for incorporation. Its rate falls as home values rise; its bill does not. Over the twenty years of its bond that is about $48,800 against $21,400 (why the rate falls and the bill does not).
How the Townwide Figure Is Built
Boulder County surveyed Niwot’s pavement, and a treasurer’s workbook built from that survey carries the cost of bringing every street up to standard and holding it there. With the construction bond repaid over 20 years, a district covering the whole town needs about $3.39 million a year. A district drawn without the business parks needs about $3.16 million: it no longer collects their taxes, but it no longer repaves their 1.4 miles of parkway either — 237,841 square feet of pavement. Both sides of the ratio move together.
The levy is that bill divided by the taxable value behind it, and Niwot’s is unusually concentrated. The 15 parcels in Boulder Tech Center and Monarch Park carry $40.4 million of assessed value plus $5.4 million of business equipment — about a quarter of everything a townwide levy could fall on — against a sixteenth of the pavement. Downtown is a second question: the 2025 proposal left Second Avenue out, because it already pays an improvement-district tax of its own.
| Who is in the district, everyone else paying | Parcels | Taxable base | Bill a year | Mills | Median home |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Downtown in, Tech Center in | 1,838 | $200.4M | $3.39M | 17 | $1,185 |
| Downtown out, Tech Center in the 2025 proposal’s boundary: the first rung | 1,809 | $189.1M | $3.39M | 18 | $1,254 |
| Downtown in, Tech Center out | 1,823 | $154.7M | $3.16M | 20 | $1,394 |
| Downtown out, Tech Center out | 1,794 | $143.4M | $3.16M | 22 | $1,533 |
These four rows answer one question, who is inside the boundary, and each assumes every property in it pays. None is a price anyone would be charged. The build-up uses 18, the boundary the 2025 proposal actually drew, and goes on from there to about 31. Losing downtown costs everyone else about a mill; losing the parks costs about four, because they carry four times as much taxable value as road. Every levy here is in whole mills: the cost rests on a pavement survey priced at a generic $11 a square foot, and two decimal places would claim a precision the chain does not have.
Who Would Stay In
Every figure above assumes everyone inside the boundary pays. A district does not get to assume that: its boundary is drawn by the people who petition for it and approved by the county commissioners. Four groups have the plainest case to be drawn out, because a district would tax them for roads it never touches or roads they already pay for — the eight neighborhoods on private roads; the homes on Niwot Road, Franklin, Monarch Road, Neva, 79th and 83rd, which the county still maintains; Burgundy Park, which already pays its own district; and the business parks.
The parks’ parkways are in the townwide program today, but the parks do not need anyone’s permission to change that. The same statute lets their owners — about fourteen of them — form a district for their own roads, and then they stand where Burgundy Park stands. Take the four groups out, leave downtown out as the 2025 proposal did, and the district that is left levies about 27 mills, or $1,882 a year on the median home.
That is not where it stops. At 27 mills, five neighborhoods would pay less for a district of their own. Their own streets are in the townwide district, so they have no way out of it — but they have a reason to vote against it, and each one that does leaves the rest paying more, which gives two more the same reason. Run to the end, it settles at about 31 mills: the neighborhoods whose roads cost the most to fix, paying for themselves. By then 995 of the 1,809 taxable properties in the 2025 boundary are still inside it: about half the town, which is no longer a townwide district.
We price each neighborhood’s own district the dearer of two ways, so fewer of them look better off alone than a cheaper estimate would show; priced the way the townwide figure is, it never settles. Even financed over 25 years, the district that survives starts near 25 mills and settles near 28.
We are not predicting that anyone asks to be left out or votes a particular way, and none of these groups has said it would. Nothing has ever proposed leaving out the business parks. The statute’s benefit test applies to a district as a whole; whether the commissioners would approve any particular boundary is theirs to decide. The full derivation, and the statute, are in the feasibility paper.
What a District Buys
A district is a single-purpose taxing body. Its levy buys what its petition asked for, and no district drawn for Niwot, in 2013 or in 2025, asked for a dollar of snow removal. The town’s budget carries $100K a year for snow removal and street sweeping from 2029, inside the same 4 mills and 2.5%, and a further $53K for signs, lights and striping. Under every district proposed here both lines stay at $0, and plowing stays with Boulder County on the county’s schedule.
The rest is harder to price and the same shape: a district cannot write a land use code, has no standing at a county hearing, no seat on a regional transportation board, and no authority over a minimum wage. There is no one for a letter on behalf of Niwot to be addressed to.
It could not plow it.
Common Questions
Why does a district cost about three times as much and still not cover as much?
Because a district has one revenue source and a town has several. A district can only levy property tax, so the whole road bill lands on the mill levy. A town levies 4 mills and collects a 2.5% sales tax, and roughly half of that sales tax is paid by people who are not Niwot households — visitors, and businesses buying equipment and services delivered inside the boundary.
That cuts the other way too: the sales tax is a real cost, it is included in the $752, and it is why the comparison narrows on the least valuable homes.
Doesn’t the levy fall as home values rise?
No, it rises. Property values grow about 3.8% a year in the pro forma; construction costs grow about 3%, and pavement deterioration adds about 2.4% more of scope as streets drop below the thresholds where an overlay stops being enough. Costs outrun values by roughly 1.6 points a year.
Where do these figures come from?
The road costs and the district boundaries come from the treasurer’s workbook built on Boulder County’s own pavement survey. The tax base is measured parcel by parcel from the Boulder County Assessor’s roll, with exempt property — churches, schools, government land — excluded, because exempt property pays no levy whatever it is worth.
Every figure on this page is reproduced by working/neighborhood-pid/derive.py in our published repository. The derivation is in PID Cost Methodology, the history of the two attempts in The PID Proposal, and what the statute permits and how a district is formed in the feasibility paper.
Nobody currently proposes a townwide district, and this page is not an argument against the people who once did — they were trying to solve the same problem, and the 2025 group’s work is part of why the cost is now well understood. It exists because “why not just do a PID?” deserves an arithmetic answer.
The roads get paid for by the people who drive on them either way. The question on November 3 is what else you get for it, and who decides. See what it costs a household, run your own number, or read the roads case.