Broomfield Taxpayer Matters

November 18, 2024

This newsletter contains the following stories and information:

Join us at our Holiday Party on December 7th
Election Results
Single Hauler Trash is Coming, and People are Not Happy
Broomfield Council Revisiting their "Focus Session" priorities on November 21st
Election Integrity - Risk Limiting Audits
Ranked-Choice Voting
Council Agenda for November 19 and November 21, 2024
City Council member contact information

Pay Attention to these upcoming items in the Agendas:

November 19 - Study Session
Police Building Update
Update on Broomfield's Retail Marijuana Implementation plan
Concept Review - 480 Flatiron Blvd. Hotel to Multi-family Conversion
Comprehensive Plan Phase 1

November 21 - Study Session
Summary of the 2024 Council Focus Session, status update, and staff direction for 2025

Please let us know if you plan to attend by registering here.

As we wrap up 2024, we would like you to join us at the

Broomfield Taxpayer Matters Holiday Party on December 7th.

Saturday December 7, 2024 from 2-5pm.

(Event Location will be sent after sign up and RSVP verifications are completed.)

Please take a moment to register here. You won't want to miss it!

Local News

So how did the 2024 Election turn out?

Most people vote and then never pay attention to what ballot initiatives passed. Then we would wonder why our taxes went up or how our elected representatives affect our lives with their policy decisions.

We all probably all know how the candidates fared in Broomfield. How did Broomfield voters weigh in on the myriad of ballot questions and races? You can see the results from the Colorado Secretary of State website here. It's important to study the results so that when your taxes go up due to government policy decisions, you can take a look back at the vote and draw a link. What conclusions would you draw? Well, Here are some of our thoughts:

Broomfield voters want their City Council power limited, not expanded (Broomfield Questions 2B, 2G). Looking a little bit closer...the real lesson learned is words mean things to voters. We spent a huge amount of supporting the protectyoiurvotenow.com effort warning voters about local ballot questions 2A, 2B, and 2G which dealt with elections and terms for City Council. Interestingly, voters took the literal wording of each to decide. Voters passed Broomfield Question 2B which asked voters to "limit" Councilmember terms (remember - actually increases the number of terms for 2 to 3 terms). Voters rejected Broomfield Question 2G which asked voters to "extend" the length of the Mayor's. So the intent of the voters were clear, but at the same time the Broomfield City Council pulled a fast one on the public and actually got an increase in the number of terms as a result of the election.
Broomfield voters are evenly divided on how fast the Broomfield City Council should act on land rezoning (Broomfield Question 2C). Broomfield Question 2C asked voters to allow for rezonings to be handled through resolutions, not ordinances, and it passed by a razor thin majority of 50.59% vs 49.41%.
Broomfield voters want our police officers, peace officers, and veterans taken care of (Proposition KK, Proposition 130, Amendment G).
Broomfield voters want a judicial system that has proper oversight and integrity (Amendment H)
Broomfield voters do not want the confusion related to rank choice voting (Prop 131). More on this later in the newsletter.

Below is a summary of all of the measures including our recommendations and how the majority of Broomfield voters voted.

Single-Hauler Trash is Coming, And People Are Not Happy

Did you get your notice from Broomfield about the City's Single Hauler program? Did you see that you have until December 21st to decide what size trash cart you want?

Did you notice on their mailer that you can opt-out, but the City doesn't tell you there's a monthly opt out fee of $10.50? Is it really a choice when the City will charge you not to take their service?

We raised the alarm on the proposed single hauler program over the last several months. We warned that the City Council and City Staff were pushing the program through in spite of the concerns being raised.

Many of you contacted the City Council and City staff asking them to dump the plan and/or to drop the opt-out fee.

Those asks fell on deaf ears, the program was passed by the Broomfield Council on October 22 2024 and now the program is being rolled out.

So now that the details of what the city's single hauler program really does is becoming clear for residents, what's the reaction from the public? Let's just say that not everyone is thrilled about it. Several hundred people have voiced their displeasure with the plan. Social media blew up this past weekend, when people received their notice to sign up for the program or to opt-out.

In this single post on Nextdoor, there are over 400 responses to a simple question gathering opinions about the new single hauler Residential Waste Services program, asking residents if they were OK with it.

Several comments referenced the 2021 and 2023 Community Survey's that the Council used to say that people approved or disapproved. There were ~900 respondents to that question, in the 2021 community survey, and of those 61% said the wanted explore a single-hauler program. In 2023, only 30% of the respondents said they would limit the area to single-family homes, which is exactly the contract that was signed. Only single-family homes are affected by the program. One person on the social media post tallied the results of Bette's post with the following: "So using the same apparent reasoning used in the survey done by the city, out of the 416 comments posted here there were 65 definite NO's on the project and 26 definite YES's with 2 maybes."

A complaint have also been filed a complaint with the state attorney general! People don't like change when they have to pay for something they didn't want and nobody asked them.

An organic uprising of concerned citizens are pointing to a petition website that a Broomfield citizen started, so that people can sign it to voice their objections with the program.

Well, now the city is going to take time to educate you and the community on the program. The City and County of Broomfield will hold two open houses on the program....after they passed it over concerns and objections from many in the community. The open houses will be on Wednesday November 20th from 6-8PM, and December 14th from 10AM-12PM at the George Di Ciero City and County Building (One DesCombes Drive).

Our guess is that they will use these open houses to explain to you why you are going to need to be on the program, or pay to not take the service.

Broomfield Council Is Revisiting their "Focus Session" Priorities.

On November 21, 2024 the Broomfield Council is planning to review their "Focus Session" priorities that they discussed in March 2024.

We summarized their Focus Session in our March 11, 2024 newsletter, and we want to refresh your memory on the topics that the Broomfield Council discussed:

Self-Sufficient/Minimum Living Wage (Shaff)
Best Value Contracting (Holschen)
Community Air Quality Monitoring (Anderson, Lim)
Rental Registration (Holschen)
Immigration/Migrant Support (Henkel)

At the time that these were discussed in March 2024, City Manager Hoffman and the City Staff made it clear that council would have to choose which programs would be pursued as none of these topics have funding for the coming year, staff is already overbooked, and mandates, obligations, and critical needs are priorities this year.

Now, the question is - What is the Broomfield Council planning to do with these and potentially other topics going into 2025?

City Staff will be providing an update on the topics on November 21 2024,

and we're asking you to be there.

Broomfield Council Study Session

Thursday November 21, 2024 @ 6PM

Broomfield City Council Chambers

One Descombes Drive, Broomfield

Election Integrity - Risk Limiting Audits

Do you wonder whether elections are really free from errors? Broomfield has been known for it's very thorough election system. They do a verification of their systems, risk-limiting audits after the election, and the poll watchers, and election judges are bipartisan. But what if, they can't catch some mistakes? This article claims that the Secretary of State may not be complying with best practices. What are those? The risk-limiting audit is supposed to find the risk, or chance, of not discovering and fixing wrong election outcomes. The best practices for conducting these audits are as follows:

Audit original voter-cast paper ballots (Grade: C)
Rigorous chain of custody for all ballots (Grade: A)
Reliable records for ballot organization and stored (Grade: A)
Transparency and public oversight of entire audit process (Grade: C)
Hand comparison of paper ballot to machine tabulated (Grade: F)
All contests could be selected for audit (Grade: F)

The article says, "typically Sec. Griswold selects contests that do no require very many ballots to be audited." The State of Colorado currently has a 3% risk limit, so if a race is very close, then 3% may not capture the correct number of incorrect outcomes in a very close race.

Everyone wants to know their vote matters. Is the threshold to low to be able to catch errors? Maybe it's time to adhere to best practices.

Rank-Choice Voting...FAILED

Voters in Colorado, rejected Ballot Initiative 131 which was based on confusing rank-choice voting. This also includes the confusion behind how someone would cast their vote.

The real problems lie in how to recount the ballots if needed and how the final winner is determined. We saw the confusion in the Alaska election a few years ago. Alaska voted to approve rank-choice voting for the General Election in 2020. They just voted to repeal rank-choice voting in the 2024 General Election.

So who were the prominent backers of this initiative? None other than Kent Thiry, Governor Jared Polis, Senator John Hickenlooper. Why do they keep pushing confusing initiatives on the ballot...Repealing the Gallagher Amendment without a replacement, Proposition HH. If the majority of people hadn't chosen them you would think our leaders actually wanted to make life for Coloradoans more difficult.