Douglas County defends $65,000 postcard campaign on tax relief

Douglas County is defending a $65,000 postcard campaign that promotes property-tax relief, putting taxpayer-funded messaging under the same spotlight as the relief itself. County leaders say the mailers are meant to explain what the Douglas County Board of County Commissioners has done on property taxes and help homeowners understand the savings being offered.

The spending sits inside a much larger county tax-relief push. In adopting the 2024 budget, commissioners approved nearly $38 million in property-tax relief and described it as a “historic return of $37.8 million in tax relief to property owners.” The county’s budget-flyer math showed that a home valued at $150,000 would have an assessed value of $17,250, and that one mill would equal $17.25 in tax dollars. Using that example, the county’s 3.679-mill reduction works out to about $63 in annual relief on that home.

Douglas County’s relief fight has not stayed local. The county’s earlier proposal to deliver tax relief through a creative property-tax plan was blocked by the Colorado State Board of Equalization, and the county later sued to overturn that decision. A Denver District Court judge later dismissed most of the lawsuit, leaving the dispute over the county’s authority to push property-tax relief in place.

The county has also kept the issue front and center online. Its government site maintains pages titled Property Tax Relief and Reform, Homeowners: Property tax relief is coming, and Your property tax relief check is in the mail. Those pages show how aggressively Douglas County has been trying to shape the public message around taxes, reassessments and the rising cost of living in a fast-growing county where homeowners have been hit by higher bills.

The postcard outlay has also been folded into a broader debate over county-funded communications. A Facebook-posted note from the Douglas County Lantern on Substack said commissioners spent a previously undisclosed $206,130 on the county white book and postcards promoting the June ballot. That figure has added to scrutiny over whether Douglas County is informing residents or using public money to promote a political message about tax policy and credit for relief.

Governor Jared Polis has pushed for more property-tax relief across Colorado, and Douglas County’s moves have become part of that larger statewide fight over mill levies, TABOR refunds and how far local governments can go to ease the tax burden.