The Montezuma County commissioners are mulling the idea of putting a sales tax on the ballot this year.
At their workshop on Monday, they had a discussion via Zoom with David Flaherty, CEO and founder of the research firm Magellan Strategies and Advocacy Marketing. That firm conducts opinion surveys and does education and public engagement activities for local governments, special districts, and other entities.
Montezuma County is one of only a handful of counties in Colorado that does not have a county sales tax, though there are state and municipal taxes in place.
Neighboring Dolores County also has no sales tax, but La Plata County has a 3 percent tax, San Miguel has 1 percent, and Archuleta’s is 4 percent, according to information online.
Montezuma County is facing increasing budgetary difficulties because of declining revenues from carbon-dioxide production, unfunded state mandates, and decreasing funds from the federal government.
On Monday, Commissioner James Candelaria said carbon-dioxide production by Kinder Morgan represents about 34 percent of the county’s commercial tax revenues.
Revenue from overall oil and gas production, not just Kinder Morgan, provides about 43 percent of the county’s total tax revenues, according to county Assessor Leslie Bugg.
Kinder Morgan has been producing less CO2 over the years. “It’s a finite resource,” Candelaria said. “It will disappear at some point in time.”
He said 34 percent is a huge amount of county taxes.
“If that kind of funding revenue goes away, if I go look at every department and say, ‘Cut 34 percent,’ what are you going to do?” he asked.
“We are looking to the future. It’s going to come. A finite resource will disappear eventually.”
Candelaria said a sales tax would ease the burden on local property owners by bringing in funds from outsiders who come to the area for recreation.
“We are a pretty large community of recreation,” he said. “I can’t get the point across that recreational users are using all the infrastructure. It happens on a daily basis. They need to bear some of the burden instead of just the property owners that are paying the burden of everything.”
He also noted that the majority of the county consists of federal public lands and the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, saying “we get very little tax revenue” from those lands.
Tribal members do, of course, pay sales tax when they shop in Cortez, Dolores, or Mancos, but those are municipal sales taxes and don’t go to the county.
The county also receives PILT (Payments in Lieu of Taxes) from federal public lands, but those payments are not as much as could be raised if the lands were covered in homes and businesses.
Decades ago, then-county attorney Bob Slough said in a commission meeting that Montezuma County’s problem was that it was too slow in trying to get a sales tax, lagging behind the municipalities. “The first hogs to the trough get the feed,” he said.
Candelaria said the minimum amount the county might ask for would be a 1 percent tax, with the revenues split evenly between the sheriff’s office and the road and bridge department.
“I think 1 percent would be a great advantage to the county,” he said. “I’m not sure it would cover all the needs.”
Flaherty said he would develop a proposal for his firm doing a survey and community engagement regarding the tax.
If a proposal is actually placed on the 2026 ballot, it will face an uphill battle. Though voters have passed proposals around the county to raise taxes or mill levies for school districts, the hospital district, the Cortez Fire District, and other entities, they have previously said no to county sales taxes
In 2024, the county sought a 1 percent public safety sales tax that would have raised about $8.1 million annually for the sheriff’s office, detention center, and drug task force. It failed by a margin of about 56 percent to 44 percent.
In 2004, the county also sought a 0.55-cent sales tax specifically for the road department. That failed by a similar margin.
In 2018, the commissioners talked about seeking a sales tax but ultimately decided not to.
