Douglas County Awards $100,000 PILT to Fire Districts Serving Pike National Forest

Douglas County has distributed $100,000 in federal Payment in Lieu of Taxes monies to rural fire protection districts that respond to incidents in the Pike National Forest, county materials show. The awards were announced Jan. 27, 2026 and were formalized at the commissioners meeting on Feb. 11, 2026.

The county said the funds were allocated based on the number of calls each agency answered within the Pike National Forest during the prior year. Mountain Communities Volunteer Fire Protection District received $29,000 tied to 38 calls, and Larkspur Fire Protection District received $6,876 for nine calls. Those figures imply roughly $763 per response call for the two named districts, a math point underscored in local coverage.

Douglas County officials and local reporting say the money will be used to buy new equipment, provide training and upgrade communications for frontline crews operating in the wildland-urban interface. That is critical in a county that is nearly half open space; county materials put federal land at about 144,612 acres and note that PILT exists to offset lost tax revenue from nontaxable public lands. Douglas County received $324,000 in PILT in fiscal year 2019, a reminder that federal payments remain an important revenue stream for preparedness in forested areas.

Board Chair Roger Partridge framed the payments as part of a shared response strategy, saying, "Our investment in and partnership with our rural fire districts, who are often the first responders on an incident in the Pike National Forest, are vital components of our hard, heavy, fast approach to wildfire response."

Some reporting discrepancies remain. County materials and several local outlets indicate six recipient agencies, while a separate excerpt lists five. Another local outlet reported an average of $662 per call, a figure that conflicts with the per-call amounts visible in the Mountain Communities and Larkspur examples. The itemized payments in county and press materials support the approximately $763-per-call calculation for those districts; county finance staff have not yet published a complete allocation table showing all recipients, amounts and the total calls used for the formula.

For Douglas County residents, the distribution signals modest but targeted investment in the volunteer and rural career departments that shoulder early response in the Pike National Forest. Expect incremental upgrades to radios, training schedules and equipment inventories for the districts named so far, and look for the county to release a full list of recipients and the allocation spreadsheet to clarify outstanding questions about who received what and how the per-call numbers were calculated.