United Westside

United Westside's response · Updated Sept. 23, 2026

Oct. 6 Council passed Ordinance 26-48 on Sept. 22, 5–4. The City Attorney's office later told the Gazette that none of the questions raised in the letter “would have been enough to declare the election invalid,” and Mr. Walker told the Gazette he “wasn't trying to challenge the legality of the election.” The ordinance was published without being presented to the Mayor; that dispute is here. This page stays up as the record of what Council was asked to believe.

Jariah Walker's letter to Council, checked.

The short version

Parcels don't vote. People do, and state law says which people. A company votes only if it names someone to vote for it. The election was run by a designated election official, certified by a canvass board, and never contested in the ten days the law allows. Eight weeks ago Council itself found, 8 to 1, that the DDA “was approved by the qualified electors.” The question that created the DDA passed 123 to 90. The only close votes were on borrowing the DDA has never done. The letter came 22 months after the election, from the head of the city's other tax-increment agency, who says in it that he will ask that agency to fund the replacement he prefers.

On Friday, Sept. 18, four days before Council's final vote, the director of the city's Urban Renewal Authority told Council that the 2024 election creating the Old Colorado City DDA can't be trusted. The letter is long and full of numbers. Here is every one of them, next to the certified record.

On this page: Who may vote · The claims, one by one · The certified results · Who is asking, and when · “Form a BID instead” · The offer of money · What we're asking · Documents · The letter in full

What the letter is

Jariah Walker is executive director of the Colorado Springs Urban Renewal Authority, the city agency that finances redevelopment with tax-increment financing, or TIF. On Sept. 18, 2026 he sent all nine councilmembers a four-page letter recommending they “approve dissolution of the OCC DDA.”

With it he sent a heat map, a spreadsheet of the people Old Colorado City businesses designated to vote for them — first and last names, addresses, owner or renter — and a link to a folder of election records his attorney obtained through an open-records request. He writes that he also gave that link to “businesses in the corridor.”

The letter is reproduced in full at the bottom of this page, and you can download it as he sent it, with one change.

We removed the link to his folder, and we have not republished his spreadsheet. The folder includes the election's pollbook: the name and mailing address of every person who was issued a ballot, including 128 people who receive their mail at a homeless-services provider. Nothing on this page needs a single name that isn't a public official's.

Who may vote in a DDA election

Every number in the letter counts parcels. The law counts people. This is the definition, from the Colorado statute that governs downtown development authorities, word for word:

  • “‘Qualified elector’ means a resident, a landowner, or a lessee as said terms are defined in this section. Any landowner or lessee which is not a natural person may vote only if it designates by some official action a representative thereof to cast its ballot.”C.R.S. 31-25-802(9)
  • “‘Resident’ means one who is a citizen of the United States and a resident of the state of Colorado, eighteen years of age or older, who makes his primary dwelling place within the district.”C.R.S. 31-25-802(10)
  • “‘Landowner’ means the owner in fee of any undivided interest in real property or any improvement permanently affixed thereto within the district.” “‘Lessee’ means the holder of a leasehold interest in real property within the district.”C.R.S. 31-25-802(6) and (6.2)

In plain English, three kinds of people vote: someone who lives in the district, someone who owns property in it, and someone who leases property in it. A company, an LLC or a trust that owns or leases property gets a vote only after it takes an official action naming one person to cast it.

What is not on the list is a parcel. A parcel is a line on the assessor's map. It has never been sent a ballot in any election in Colorado. A vacant lot has no resident. A building owned by an LLC that never named a representative has no elector, by the statute's own terms, until it does.

The letter's claims, one by one

Each entry gives the letter's words, then our verdict in bold, then the record behind it. Every claim has its own link: unitedwestside.org/walker-letter/#claim-5, and so on.

1
“84 residential parcels (out of 266) did not receive ballots”

Parcels don't receive ballots. The people who live on them do. A resident, under the statute, is a person whose primary home is in the district. A residential parcel where no registered voter lives — a vacant lot, a rental whose tenants are registered somewhere else, a house held by a trust — produces no resident ballot, in this election or any other. The letter does not identify one person who was registered to vote at an address in the district and was not sent a ballot.

Owners who live elsewhere were not left out either. The pollbook shows ballots mailed to owners across Colorado Springs, around Colorado, and in ten other states.

2
“247 commercial properties (out of 333) did not receive ballots”

A property is not a voter. A company becomes one only by naming a person. The statute says a landowner or lessee that is not a natural person “may vote only if it designates by some official action a representative thereof to cast its ballot.” That is the company's act, not the election official's. Seventy-four pages of those designations were filed, and they are in the letter's own records.

The pollbook shows the door stayed open. After the main mailing on Oct. 14, 2024, another 59 ballots were issued, the last of them on Nov. 4, the day before the election. Fifty-two of those 59 were voted.

3
“This means that 55% (331 of 599) of parcels within the boundary were not provided with the opportunity to vote in this election.”

This is claims 1 and 2 added together, and it doesn't follow. The 331 counts parcels, not people, and it treats a property whose owner never named a representative as a property that was shut out. Count any DDA election in Colorado the same way and most parcels were “not provided with the opportunity to vote.” The measure is wrong, not the election.

4
“17 parcels were later identified to be in unincorporated El Paso county- 4 votes were returned/counted from these properties. If you look at ballot measures C and D, those passed by less than 4 votes.”

Take his numbers as given. They don't touch whether the DDA exists. Question A, which created the authority, passed 123 to 90. Four ballots cannot move a 33-vote margin. Questions C and D each passed by three: 108 to 105 and 105 to 102. Ballots are secret, so nobody, including the letter's author, knows how those four were marked.

Council has already dealt with those 17 parcels, and not by questioning the election. On July 28, 2026 it passed Ordinance No. 26-31, 8 to 1, removing them from the district. That ordinance recites that the election “was held on November 5, 2024, by Spencer Fane LLP, as authorized by City Council and the City Clerk through Ordinance No. 24-87, and the creation of the Authority was approved by the qualified electors.” Councilmembers Casey, Crow-Iverson, Risley and Williams all voted for it. Williams presented it.

Question C is authority to borrow up to $5 million. The DDA has borrowed nothing. On June 24, 2026, at the request of the city attorney's office, its board formally resolved that it has no debt, and that resolution is attached to Council's own agenda for Tuesday. If Council doubts a three-vote margin on borrowing, the remedy is to hold the DDA to not borrowing without asking voters again. It is not to cancel the question that passed by 33.

5
“128 ballots were mailed to registered voters c/o Westside CARES and 6 of these ballots were returned/counted. Designation of an eligible voter for this type of election requires proof of residency within the boundaries. While Westside CARES offers a mailing address to people experiencing homelessness, they do not provide housing or beds to these individuals.”

Colorado law says a homeless voter may register at a homeless services provider. In those words.

  • “For the purpose of voter registration residence, a homeless elector shall identify a specific location within a county where the elector returns to regularly. This location may include a homeless shelter, a homeless services provider, a park, a campground, a vacant lot, a business address, or any other physical location.”C.R.S. 1-2-102(1)(a)(II)

The statute does not ask whether the place has beds. The letter's own sentence calls these people “registered voters.” They are. The election mailed a ballot to every registered voter at an address in the district, which is what it was required to do, and six of those 128 voted. Six votes do not move a 33-vote margin.

What the letter asks of Council here is to decide, two years later and without a hearing, that six Westsiders' votes should not have counted because of where they sleep. If anyone believed that in 2024, the law gave them a courtroom and ten days. Nobody went.

6
“67 ballots were sent to recipients associated with non-residential addresses whose qualification is not explained through the ownership and designation records supplied.”

The designation records aren't supposed to explain them. Only an owner or tenant that is “not a natural person” has to file a designation. A person who owns a building in their own name, or who signed a lease in their own name, is a landowner or a lessee under the statute directly, with no form required. A missing form for an individual is what the law predicts, not evidence of an unqualified voter.

The letter does not say it checked any of the 67 against the assessor's ownership records or against a lease. “Not explained through the records supplied” describes the limits of a records request. It does not describe a defect in an election.

7
“A decision of this duration and consequence should require meaningful notice and a reasonable level of understanding among all residents, property owners, businesses, lessees, and the affected taxing entities…”

That is a standard no election in Colorado has ever met, including the one that seated this Council. The letter does not name a notice the law required and the election failed to give. What it proposes instead is that an election counts only if everyone affected reached “a reasonable level of understanding” first. No statute says that, because no election could pass it.

This election was not a surprise to City Hall. Council itself put it on the ballot, by Ordinance No. 24-87, after a work session in June 2024 and two public readings: 8 to 1 on Aug. 13 and 7 to 2 on Aug. 27. The ballot cites the ordinance on its face. Two of the five councilmembers now voting to dissolve, Lynette Crow-Iverson and Brian Risley, voted yes both times. And in July of this year, Council's own boundary ordinance described the election as one held “as authorized by City Council and the City Clerk.”

8
“Preserving the DDA based on the successful question while repeatedly resubmitting the failed tax question risks appearing to honor only the part of the election that produced the desired answer.”

Both answers were honored the day the results were certified. Voters said yes to the authority and no to a five-mill tax. So the DDA exists, and it has no tax, and it cannot get one without going back to the same voters. That is what a ballot with separate questions is for.

Nothing has been “repeatedly” resubmitted. The board plans one question, in 2027. According to the Gazette, it has resolved that if voters say no a second time, it will work with Council to dissolve itself, and it has agreed to tighten its boundaries. This is how DDAs get built. Englewood's voters created theirs in 2020 and turned down tax and debt questions on the same ballot. The one financing question that passed, on tax increment, passed by a single vote, 77 to 76. Nobody dissolved it. The authority went back to the same voters a year later with a new question and won it, Colorado Community Media reported.

The letter calls going back to the voters a way of ignoring them. Dissolving the DDA is the only option on the table that overrides something the voters actually decided.

9
“85% of the non-residential properties that voted listed qualifying-property addresses between the 2300 and 2800 blocks of West Colorado Avenue … the ONLY businesses that were given a form to be eligible to vote … and most of them were commercial tenants.”

The 2300 to 2800 blocks are Old Colorado City. That is where the businesses are. A map of which businesses named a voter is going to be darkest where there are the most businesses. And commercial tenants are not a loophole. “Lessee” is one of the three kinds of elector the statute names.

The letter's remedy is worth reading slowly. Its complaint is that people outside the core, many of them residents, took too little part. Its answer is a business improvement district, which is limited to commercial property. The people who live along the avenue, including the ones the letter says were overlooked, would have no vote as residents at all.

One more thing about the map. The letter says its author “took the time to enter some of these businesses myself to ask how these designated elector forms were obtained.” That is the director of a city agency walking into private businesses to ask how they came to vote.

10
The “Bottom Line”: six things the election is said to lack.

Six bullets. None of them is a ground for undoing an election, and four are answered by the letter's own attachments.

  • “Lack of accurate and lawful boundaries.” Seventeen parcels and four ballots, against a 33-vote margin, and Council corrected the boundary itself in July. See claim 4.
  • “Lack of a documented and independently reviewable elector list.” The pollbook is 827 numbered entries, each with a name, a mailing address, the date the ballot went out and the date it came back. His attorney obtained it. He reviewed it. It is the source of his own numbers.
  • “Lack of direct and meaningful notice.” See claim 7.
  • “No plain-language explanation of the mill levy.” The ballot put a dollar figure on it: taxes “increased $325,000 in the first fiscal year,” at “not more than five mills.” Voters understood it well enough to vote it down, 98 to 116. The one question about taxes is the one that failed.
  • “No transparent process for designated electors.” The process is the statute's, and 74 pages of the forms are in his own records.
  • “No defined plan of development.” The plan is written by the board, after the authority exists. Council did not finish seating that board until December 2025. The plan is now in City review, and the DDA cannot spend anything until the City approves it.
11
“I cannot just speak on the importance of TIF and infill development tools … without also standing up and saying something when I feel it is being abused”

The OCC DDA has never received or spent a dollar. It has no tax, because voters said no. It has no debt, and its board has said so by resolution. It has no approved plan and no staff. Council's own finding, in the ordinance it passed in July: “The Authority does not have bank accounts or financial documents.” There is nothing yet to abuse. All it has is a vote the Westside cast.

The certified results

From the Canvass Board's Certificate of Determination for the special election of Nov. 5, 2024, signed by the deputy designated election official and two canvassers. Read the certificate. Read the ballot.

QuestionYesNoMarginResult
A · Organize the DDA1239033Passed, 57.7%
B · Operating tax, up to five mills9811618Failed
C · Authority to borrow up to $5 million1081053Passed
D · Keep and spend revenue (TABOR)1051023Passed

What the pollbook shows

We counted the election's Mail Ballot Log ourselves, all 52 pages of it. It matches the letter's figures where the letter gives them, which is how we know his numbers and ours come from the same document.

  • 827 ballots issued, a handful of them replacements for ballots reissued. 214 voted, or 25.9%. Seven came back undeliverable. One was rejected.
  • 768 went out in the main mailing on Oct. 14, 2024. 59 more were issued between Oct. 15 and Nov. 4. Of those 59, 52 were voted.
  • 128 were addressed to 2808 W. Colorado Ave. Six were voted.
  • 14 went to addresses in ten other states, and 38 to P.O. boxes. Owners get their ballot where they get their mail.

About that turnout

The letter asks whether the DDA has a “broadly supported foundation.” About 26% of the people issued a ballot voted. The city's most recent citywide election, the special election of June 17, 2025, was certified by the City Clerk and the Mayor at 24.53%: 82,274 ballots from 335,366 active registered electors. Nobody argues that result doesn't count.

Why there was never a challenge

Colorado gives ten days, not two years, to contest an election result in court. The statute on contests over ballot questions says that if the challenge is filed late, “no court shall have jurisdiction over the contest.” The Local Government Election Code, under which this election was run, sets the same ten-day clock.

C.R.S. 1-11-213(4) and 1-13.5-1403.

No one filed one. Not a business that says it was overlooked, not a taxing entity, not the Urban Renewal Authority. The results were certified, Council appointed the board, and the first objection to who voted arrived in an email 22 months later.

Who is asking, and when

The letter's first sentence says what it is about, and it isn't ballots:

  • “I believe all of you are aware of my concerns with creating a second downtown development authority and the local and statewide risks that carries with it towards the future use of TIF.”

Tax-increment financing is how the Urban Renewal Authority pays for its projects. It is also how a DDA pays for its own. The author's objection to a second DDA came first. The review of the election came afterward, and the letter says so: he “still wanted to dig further.”

The letter describes three people as “experts in the area of districts and the use of TIF”: its author; Kevin Walker, the City's planning director; and Chelsea Gondeck, interim CEO of the Downtown Partnership, who presents the downtown DDA's budget to Council. They may well be experts on districts. None of them ran this election, and none is a neutral reviewer of it.

The “second” DDA is being held to a standard the first one isn't. On Nov. 10, 2025, this Council approved the downtown DDA's 2026 budget of $7,662,189 and its five-mill levy on the consent calendar, without discussion. Five mills is the rate Old Colorado City's voters were asked about. Councilmember Williams, who is presenting the ordinance to dissolve Old Colorado City's DDA, sits on the downtown DDA's board as City Council's member. The objection is not to the tool.

The timing is in the file itself. The election was Nov. 5, 2024. Council's first vote to dissolve was Aug. 25, 2026. The letter's PDF was created at 3:13 on the afternoon of Friday, Sept. 18, for a vote the following Tuesday morning, and by the author's own account the records behind it had already gone to businesses in the corridor.

“Form a BID instead”

A business improvement district does not exist in Old Colorado City. It is not on any ballot. When Council first voted to dissolve, the Gazette reported that “no timeline was given” for an election to create one. Dissolving the DDA creates nothing. It trades an authority that exists for a conversation about one that might.

A BID is also a smaller thing. It is limited to commercial property, so the homes along the avenue are out of it, and the people in them have no say as residents. The DDA's chair told the Gazette it “would likely cover fewer blocks and require a much higher levy rate to reach the same funding level.” And Old Colorado City would be starting over on the years of organizing it has already done once.

The offer of money

  • “I will still help this group form a Business Improvement District (both Kevin and Chelsea have offered to help with this as well) and I will solicit funding from my organization to move forward on it.”

His organization is a public authority, and its money is public money. In the same letter that asks Council to dissolve a district the voters created, its director says he will seek his agency's funds to build the replacement he prefers. Two questions Council might ask before it votes:

  1. Did the Urban Renewal Authority's board authorize that offer?
  2. Did it authorize the attorney's time behind the records request and this letter? The letter says “my attorney.”

We don't know the answers. These are questions, not accusations.

What we're asking Council to do

We asked Council to vote no on Ordinance No. 26-48. Five members voted yes. We now ask the Mayor to veto it. The voters were the ones the statute names. The election was run by a designated election official, certified by a canvass board, and never contested. Eight weeks ago this Council said so itself, 8 to 1. Its only close votes were on borrowing that has never happened. If Council has questions about 2024, the DDA's board can answer them in public, on the record, with the documents. What Council should not do is cancel an election on the word of an interested party who raised his concerns two years late.

Final vote · Tuesday
Sept. 22
Meeting starts 9 a.m.
City Hall, Council Chambers (3rd floor) 107 N. Nevada Ave. The DDA is item 9.A, under Unfinished Business. By the City's own time estimates there are about two hours of business ahead of it, but Council can reorder. Sign up to speak on 9.A when you arrive.
Ask the Mayor to veto How they voted

Documents and sources

Hosted here so the links don't depend on anyone's Dropbox:

Not hosted, on purpose: the Mail Ballot Log and Pollbook (52 pages, 827 voters' names and mailing addresses) and the Designation of Elector forms (74 pages). Both are public records, obtainable from the election's custodian by the same request Mr. Walker's attorney made. Our counts from the pollbook are reproducible, and we will walk any councilmember or reporter through them.

Law:

  • C.R.S. 31-25-802, definitions for downtown development authorities — text
  • C.R.S. 1-2-102, rules for determining residence — text
  • C.R.S. 1-11-213, contests — text; C.R.S. 1-13.5-1403 — text
  • Official source for all of the above: Colorado Revised Statutes, leg.colorado.gov

City records and reporting:

  • Ordinance No. 24-87 (2024), placing the DDA questions on the ballot, with roll calls for both readings — Legistar file 24-277
  • Ordinance No. 26-31 (July 28, 2026), correcting the DDA's boundaries, with roll calls and the signed ordinance — Legistar file 26-262
  • Resolution No. 164-25 (Nov. 10, 2025), approving the downtown DDA's 2026 budget — Legistar file 25-456; its five-mill levy — file 25-455
  • Downtown Development Authority board roster — downtowncs.com (as of Sept. 21, 2026)
  • City Council Regular Meeting agenda, Sept. 22, 2026, item 9.A, Ordinance No. 26-48, with the DDA's no-debt resolution and June 24 minutes attached — Legistar
  • Colorado Springs Gazette, Brennen Kauffman, “City Council gives Old Colorado City DDA chance to make new case for staying in business,” Sept. 9, 2026 — gazette.com
  • Colorado Springs Gazette, Brennen Kauffman, “Old Colorado City DDA could be dissolved by City Council amid fight about its benefits,” Aug. 3, 2026 — gazette.com
  • Colorado Springs Gazette, Brennen Kauffman, “City Council votes to dissolve Old Colorado City Downtown Development Authority,” Aug. 26, 2026 — gazette.com
  • Colorado Community Media, “Election Results 2021: Englewood downtown authority scores a finance win,” Nov. 8, 2021 — coloradocommunitymedia.com
  • Colorado Springs Gazette, Brennen Kauffman, “City Council voted to end the Old Colorado City DDA. What comes next?” Sept. 28, 2026 — gazette.com (City Attorney's office: the letter's questions would not invalidate the election; Walker: not challenging its legality)
  • Everything else on the DDA fight, with its own sources — unitedwestside.org/dda

Corrections. Every figure on this page comes from a document linked or named above. If we have something wrong, write info@unitedwestside.org and we will correct it here, with a note saying what changed.

The letter, in full

Verbatim from the PDF sent to Council on Sept. 18, 2026, including its emphasis. The only change is the removed link.

Councilmembers,

I believe all of you are aware of my concerns with creating a second downtown development authority and the local and statewide risks that carries with it towards the future use of TIF. I’ve also spent time with both Kevin Walker and Chelsea Gondeck on this issue and both have stated that the DDA is not only the wrong tool, but that it’s more than clear that a BID is the more appropriate and proper path (Chelsea just recently publicly stated this in her last DDA meeting). Kevin, Chelsea and I are all experts in the area of districts and the use of TIF, but I still wanted to dig further into what happened with this election and why I was receiving so many calls from businesses not receiving ballots and claiming no communication from DDA supporters, because if I was a councilmember, I would want that too. In the hopes of putting some of these theories to rest, I asked my attorney to do a CORA request with the election officials, and all those documents (sorry too big to attach) can be found here:

[Link removed by United Westside. The folder lists voters' names and addresses.]

In addition to the information in this link, I’ve also attached to this email a heat map of the businesses that were given a designated elector form to be eligible to vote, as well as a simple excel spreadsheet listing the address of each business, the first and last name of the elector and whether they are a renter or an owner (I think you will easily see a theme). I also took the time to enter some of these businesses myself to ask how these designated elector forms were obtained in the first place.

Before I begin to explain the issues that I have discovered below, I want Council to know that on September 2nd I met with Adam Stepan (OCCDDA chair) and we had what I feel was a polite conversation. While we still disagree on the path forward, the meeting was civil and I’m telling him, OCC and all of Council, that I will still help this group form a Business Improvement District (both Kevin and Chelsea have offered to help with this as well) and I will solicit funding from my organization to move forward on it.

I understand the two principal arguments for allowing the DDA to continue that some of you have brought up or considered:
1 The voters approved its creation, and Council should respect the will of the people.
2 The DDA should receive another opportunity to secure approval of its mill levy, with the understanding that it will voluntarily dissolve if that effort fails.
On the surface, both arguments are understandable. Unfortunately, neither resolves the underlying concerns about the election, the adequacy of stakeholder notice, or the long-term financial commitment represented by this authority.

1) Respecting the vote requires confidence in the election
Council is right that election results should not be casually overturned. However, respecting an election requires more than accepting its certified outcome without examining whether the correct electorate was identified, whether the boundaries were lawful, whether qualified electors received adequate notice, and whether those electors were treated fairly and consistently.

A review of the election records found:

  • 84 residential parcels (out of 266) did not receive ballots
  • 247 commercial properties (out of 333) did not receive ballots
  • This means that 55% (331 of 599) of parcels within the boundary were not provided with the opportunity to vote in this election.
  • 17 parcels were later identified to be in unincorporated El Paso county- 4 votes were returned/counted from these properties. If you look at ballot measures C and D, those passed by less than 4 votes.
  • 128 ballots were mailed to registered voters c/o Westside CARES and 6 of these ballots were returned/counted. Designation of an eligible voter for this type of election requires proof of residency within the boundaries. While Westside CARES offers a mailing address to people experiencing homelessness, they do not provide housing or beds to these individuals.
  • 67 ballots were sent to recipients associated with non-residential addresses whose qualification is not explained through the ownership and designation records supplied.

“The people voted” is persuasive only if Council can first answer: Which people were legally entitled to vote? Were all of them reasonably identified? Were they adequately informed (many were not offered a designated elector form)? Were ballots limited to that electorate? In my opinion, at present, the official record does not provide satisfactory answers, and I’ve only outlined a portion of some of the issues that lay within it.

The adequacy of notice is particularly important because the consequences of creating and financing a DDA extend well beyond a single election or a modest annual assessment. A mill levy would increase property taxes across the district, including residential and commercial parcels that may receive vastly different levels of direct benefit from the DDA’s activities.

A decision of this duration and consequence should require meaningful notice and a reasonable level of understanding among all residents, property owners, businesses, lessees, and the affected taxing entities (SD11, PPLD, El Paso County and SEWCD). The available record also does not show this to be the case.

2) The 2024 vote produced two distinct expressions of voter intent
The same electorate that approved creation of the DDA also rejected its proposed mill levy.

Preserving the DDA based on the successful question while repeatedly resubmitting the failed tax question risks appearing to honor only the part of the election that produced the desired answer.

A new mill-levy vote would not establish that the original electorate was complete. It would not resolve whether adequate notice was provided. It would not explain why so many parcels lack a traceable ballot recipient or why many recipients cannot be connected to an owner or designated-elector form through the records provided.

3) The geographic pattern of election participation is concerning
85% of the non-residential properties that voted listed qualifying-property addresses between the 2300 and 2800 blocks of West Colorado Avenue (see attached map of DDA boundaries and the red heat area of votes that make up the ONLY businesses that were given a form to be eligible to vote) and most of them were commercial tenants.

Most of the communication and outreach, organized support and participation came from the businesses most likely to receive direct benefits from marketing, events, streetscape improvements and investment in the core commercial area.

The proposed DDA boundary contains 599 parcels stretching well beyond that concentration of participation. Many of those parcels are residential, are outside the core business district, or have not been shown to receive benefits proportionate to the taxes and public revenues that will be committed.

These facts further solidify why this discussion should be about creating a BID and not a DDA.

Bottom Line - allowing the OCC DDA to continue specifically discounts the “will of the people” as evidenced by what appears to be numerous issues with the election itself:

  • Lack of accurate and lawful boundaries;
  • Lack of a documented and independently reviewable elector list;
  • Lack of direct and meaningful notice to residents, property owners, businesses and lessees;
  • No plain-language explanation of the mill levy, TIF and the effect on other taxing entities;
  • No transparent process for designated electors;
  • No defined plan of development

This decision should not be framed as choosing between supporting Old Colorado City and abandoning it. The issue is whether this particular authority has a sufficiently reliable and broadly supported foundation to exercise long-term governmental and financing powers. In my judgment, and after reviewing the election documents, it does not.

I cannot just speak on the importance of TIF and infill development tools and why I feel they are needed in various areas/projects without also standing up and saying something when I feel it is being abused; otherwise, my word means nothing.

For those reasons, I recommend that Council approve dissolution of the OCC DDA and encourage the stakeholders to work with Kevin, Chelsea and myself to evaluate a more focused and equitable business improvement district structure.

Respectfully,
Jariah

PS
I did make this election information link available to businesses in the corridor who expressed concerns about how the DDA process was handled.