El Paso county property tax

[hollohas]

If the city or county didn't tax you through property tax, you'd see them coming at it through increases in fees, sales tax, or some other means. Most cities in Colorado are substantially different from 25-30 years ago and it's insane to think they could fund all that activity based on property values from that period. I'm all for reducing some if not most of that new activity but that's really the debate most citizens have to have.

Do you automatically get a pay raise with inflation? Unless you're a governement employee, you likely do not. And the county/state shouldn't either.

The counties wouldn't have to worry about outdated property tax revenue based on old values because a large amount of homes existing at that time have changed hands. But more importantly, the population has boomed and # of new homes built during that time is HUGE. Hell, Colorado has added +250k new people in the last 3 years. Many, many more over the last 3 decades. All those people pay taxes, property taxes (either directly or otherwise) and others. The state and counties are getting more money...lots and lots more money...to cover those increased costs of doing what they do. There is ZERO need to adjust property tax based on a pretend assessed value. Tax revenue is at all time highs and even if property tax was set at a fixed value based on last sale, property tax revenue would continue to increase as long as the population does and/or people continue to buy/sell their homes. It's a B.S. racket.

In 1990, the population in Colorado was 3.3M. It was 5.5M at the end of 2016. 2 million more people. 2 million more people worth of taxes. They have plenty of money stolen from us. They don't need to increase it every year.