The Douglas County Board of Education will ask voters to approve a $54 million mill levy override (MLO) in the November 2026 general election. The district joins Denver, Jeffco and about a dozen other Colorado school districts in asking voters for a property tax increase to fund operational costs.

All of the state’s three largest school districts (Denver, Jeffco, and DCSD) are asking voters for a property tax increase in the form of an MLO. MLO dollars can be used only for operational expenses. Think teacher salaries, added security staff, and ongoing costs for academic programming. MLO funding cannot be used for capital projects like construction or facilities repairs.

Voters who live in the fourth largest school district in the state, Cherry Creek, just approved an MLO in 2024. Every four years, Cherry Creek asks voters to approve MLOs and bonds (see an explanation of the difference between the two below), and will likely come back to voters on schedule in 2028 with another MLO to further advance their operational funding.

Examining all four of the state’s largest districts along with a smaller school district, Littleton Public Schools, which is geographically adjacent to Douglas County, provides useful context for understanding DCSD’s MLO ask on the November ballot. Examining smaller districts in more right-leaning areas of the state is also useful to understand the full range of options available to districts in the face of a looming funding crunch.

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Douglas County voters approved mill levy overrides in 2018 and 2023, and those increases still leave the total mills for DCSD much lower than neighboring Denver, Cherry Creek, and Littleton school districts and a little higher than Jeffco at present. Keep reading to see how these mill levies translate into your property tax bill.

Why the need to increase revenues for operating expenses?

In Douglas County, three issues combine to drive the need for increased operating funds. The first is shared by all districts in the state, whether they are seeking new funding or not.

Inflationary Costs Combined with State Cuts

The specifics for each school district may vary, but all are feeling the squeeze of rising costs combined with the pressure to do more with less as the state reduces funding to account for an estimated $1.2 billion budget shortfall. DCSD predicts a $15 million shortfall in its operating budget by 2027-2028 as a result.

Over a decade with no increases

From 2006-2018, Douglas County School District did not ask for a mill levy override. Other districts did. This means that on top of inflationary increases in costs, DCSD is also climbing out of a deep hole in school funding that resulted from more than a decade without incremental increases. Costs increased but revenues did not keep pace during that time, and now the district is seeking to fill that funding gap.

Non-competitive teacher pay

Increasing teacher salaries has been a top priority for Douglas County. Since the 2021 school year and as a result of the 2023 MLO, teacher salaries in DCSD have increased by an average of $15,000. Turnover has decreased from 19.5% to 13.3% in that same time span.

However, despite these significant salary increases, in 2025-2026 the district’s average teacher salary of $77,156 was thousands of dollars behind neighboring school districts. Jeffco teachers averaged $84,392, Littleton Public School teachers averaged $88,804, and Cherry Creek’s teachers averaged $97,070.

By driving an extra 10-20 minutes to work, DCSD’s teachers can increase their annual pay by about 10-25 percent at a neighboring school district. This means that, even after significant increases in DCSD teacher pay, the district is still vulnerable to talent drain.

Teacher salaries are such a priority for DCSD that, immediately following the vote to send the mill levy override to the November ballot, the Douglas County school board unanimously approved a second resolution. That second resolution ensures that, should the mill levy override pass, it will immediately trigger a 4% compensation increase for staff, retroactive to the beginning of the 2026-2027 school year (July 1, 2026).

What’s a mill levy override?

A mill levy is the tax rate local governments use to calculate property taxes. One mill equals $1 of tax for every $1,000 of a property’s assessed value. (Note: Assessed value is far less than the appraised or market value of a home.)

Mill Levy Overrides increase the property tax rate (the mills for schools) to raise revenue for ongoing operating expenses like teacher pay increases, salaries for additional security staff, and the cost of student programs. MLOs create operating revenue for ongoing expenses through voter-approved property tax increases.

Bonds fund capital expenses like new school buildings, renovations and repairs to existing buildings, and physical security upgrades. Bonds create capital revenue for one-time expenses through voter-approved debt.

CAPTION: Source: Chalkbeat Bond Measures & MLOs

Both bonds and MLOs increase the Total Mill Levy for a school district. Bonds typically create a dedicated debt-service mill levy. That debt-service mill levy adjusts annually based on the tax base and the dollars needed for debt service (capital and interest payments on the debt). When the debt is paid off, the debt-service mill levy automatically expires. MLOs create a set mill levy that does not change over time and expires based on the date defined on the ballot initiative voters approve.

But property taxes have increased. A lot.

One of the most common questions people ask, according to DCSD Superintendent Erin Kane, is why the district needs to ask for a mill levy increase even though property valuations have increased substantially in recent years. She explains that as revenues from property taxes have increased, the state’s contributions to per pupil funding have decreased, leaving the school district with no net gains in revenue despite the higher property taxes.

Also, despite the 2023 voter-approved MLO for Douglas County, the district’s current override mills (18.1) are still below 2013 levels (22.5). In 2013, the total mill levy for DCSD was 48.277. Today, 13 years later, it sits at 45.528. This is a result of that decade-long drought from 2006-2018 for MLOs. During essentially the same time period (2007-2017) there were also no new bonds. MLOs and Bonds both increase a school district’s total mill levy. Bonds are long-term funding, and when they are paid off, the total mill levy drops. When that bond funding rolls off and is not replaced with additional bond funding for more than a decade, the total mill levy can drop as it has in DCSD.

Cherry Creek’s regular schedule of small funding increases helps that district keep up with inflation and changing needs. New bonds replace older bonds that are paid off, and create a smoother, more incremental school funding schedule. DCSD’s situation, where it retired old bonds without replacing them for over a decade, results in the sharper funding increases the district has seen in the past few years. It’s analogous to deferred maintenance – in fact, in many cases, that’s exactly what it is because the district has not regularly come to voters with funding asks. In DCSD’s case, the district is making up for that deferred maintenance at the same time it faces cuts in state funding that all districts are experiencing. Those districts that increased MLOs, when Douglas County was not doing so, now have less ground to make up in the face of those same state funding cuts.

How does the mill levy translate to your property tax bill?

This is where we start crunching the numbers. Currently, the state applies a standard school assessment rate to residential property of 7.05%. Mill levies for school districts are calculated on those school assessed values.

According to Zillow, as of 7/31/2026, the average home value in Douglas County was $705,114. We’ll use $700,000 for ease of calculations.

Whether you live in Douglas, Arapahoe, Jefferson, or Denver County, the assessed values for your home remain the same. A $700,000 home in any county in Colorado will have a School District Assessed Value of $49,350.

What differs across counties is your mill levy, and that determines the taxes you pay.

So for a $700,000 home in Douglas County at the current 45.528 mills you pay about $2,247 per year in property taxes to the school district. DCSD says the proposed MLO will cost about $33.50 per 100,000. So if the proposed MLO passes, the cost for that “average” $700,000 home in Douglas County would increase by about $235 (a little more than 10%) to $2,481.

The table above begs a question: Why is the estimated tax increase so similar for DCSD vs. Jeffco when the value of Jeffco’s proposed MLO ($133 million) is more than double that of DCSD ($54 million)? The difference lies in the size of the tax base. The larger the tax base, the less individual taxpayers need to contribute to reach a given total. Because Jeffco has many more homes and businesses contributing to the dollar amount increase, each payer contributes less individually compared with DCSD where the increase is funded by fewer taxpayers. For that same reason, an MLO to give Littleton Public Schools $10 million in property taxes will cost each resident $175 per year while DCSD gets more than 5 times as much ($54 million) for just $50 more per resident. The tax base for Littleton schools is much smaller than for Douglas County schools.

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What are other districts doing?

Our analysis has focused on the four largest schools in the state (DCSD is 3rd) plus a contiguous school district, Littleton Public Schools, which is much smaller. All of those school districts are using MLOs as a tool to address operational funding issues.

With the exception of DCSD, those schools are all in left-leaning communities. So it’s fair to ask: What are school districts in more right-leaning communities, like Douglas County, doing in the face of inflationary costs and the cuts to state funding all school districts are facing?

One complicating factors in answering that question is finding comparably-sized school districts in right-leaning communities in Colorado. The largest schools in El Paso and Weld counties, reliably conservative strongholds in the state, have enrollments of 20,000-25,000 students – about one-third the enrollment of DCSD. Each of those counties has multiple public school districts; Douglas county has just one. Despite the differences, these are the most comparable schools to answer the qeustion.

El Paso County

School District 49, serving northeast Colorado Springs, Falcon, and Peyton, is one of the largest school districts in El Paso county with 26,423 students enrolled in 2025-2026. District 49’s total mill levy is 45.649, just slightly higher than DCSD’s 45.528. In January, District 49 announced a financial exigency based on a $9 million funding gap and only $2 million in reserves. In January 2026, in the face of a requirement to balance its 2026-2027 budget, D49 preemptively announced $1.8 million in cuts to teacher salaries and benefits for the 2026-2027 budget year. Those cuts came on the heels of 2025-2026 school year cuts on the order of $9 million to administrative staff, supplemental programs, and staffing and contract negotiations, according to reporting by the Denver Gazette.

Colorado Springs District 11 lies south of District 49 and serves 23,458 students in El Paso County. While D49 serves rural and newer suburban areas in the Colorado Springs area, District 11 serves the established urban core of the city. The total mill levy for D11 is a remarkably low 37.695.

The last time D11 passed a bond initiative was two decades ago in 2006. In 2021 a proposed $350 million bond failed to pass by just 11 votes. Now a $775 million bond measure is on the ballot for November 2026. School board directors have said that the bond will pay for repairs at every school in the district. The district’s oldest buildings were constructed in the 1950’s. Some have no HVAC. Others require a total rebuild.

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Passing the bond would free up dollars that are currently dedicated to facilities so they could be redirected toward pay increases for teachers – which is unusual since funds for capital expenditures (bonds) and operational expenses (MLOs) are typically acquired through separate voter-approved means. But after the 2021 bond initiative failure, the D11 school board bypassed voter approval and funded about $130 million in critical school building improvements through certificates of participation (COPs).

COPs are a debt obligation secured by a lease agreement. They do not increase taxes, but debt service must come from existing revenue. District 11 has been using general fund revenue to service that COP debt. That explains how passing the $775 million bond would free up dollars for operational costs – the bond would pay off the district’s COPs. Passing the bond on D11’s 2026 ballot would increase the district’s total mill levy to an estimated 43-45 mills, a rate that is more consistent with nearby school districts.

Weld County

The largest school district in Weld County is Greeley-Evans 6 with 22,778 students in 2025-2026. The mill levy in Greeley-Evans 6 is 47.615, slightly higher than DCSD’s 45.528.

Greeley-Evans 6 does not have an MLO or bond on the ballot in 2026. The district receives $20-30 million per year from a 2022 MLO renewal that sunsets in 2032. Also, in October 2025, Greeley-Evans 6 bypassed voters and approved $43 million in COP’s for construction of a new administration building. Payments on the debt for the COP’s will require annual appropriation from operating funds. Like D11, Greeley-Evans 6 will be forced to use general fund dollars to service the debt from its certificates of participation.

Zooming Out

Many schools in Colorado are facing similar challenges. Reduced state funding combined with rising costs is putting the squeeze on operational budgets for school districts statewide. On November 3, voters will decide how they want their local school districts to respond.

Related Articles:

Sources and Additional Reading:

Denver Post: Colorado school districts asking voters to OK millions in mill levy overrides this November

Douglas County News Press: DCSD looks at teacher, staff compensation increases

Understanding Property Taxes in Colorado

DCSD: 2026 Mill Levy Override Resources

Chalkbeat: What’s a bond measure? How do mill levy overrides work? We explain.

Colorado Department of Education Mill Levy Tables

Colorado Department of Education Staff Statistics

KKTV11: Colorado Springs D-11 School Board votes to pass $775 million bond measure to Nov. ballot

A Citizen’s Guide to the Colorado Springs School District 11 2026 - 2027 Budget

D49 Board Declares Fiscal Exigency Ahead of Workforce Program Cuts to Balance Budget

Colorado Springs D11 May Present Voters with $775 Million Bond Measure

Colorado Department of Education Staff Statistics

Colorado Department of Education 2022-2023 Personnel Turnover Rate

Sources with direct knowledge have disclosed to The Lantern that roughly 75% of middle school teachers at John Adams Academy were given layoff notices on September 11th, citing “financial reasons.” The sources asked to remain anonymous for fear of professional retribution.

John Adams Academy (JAA) is a charter school located in Sterling Ranch that opened to students this semester. The layoffs occurred only 14 days into instruction and coincided with “Grandparents Day” at the school, where many grandparents mingled with the affected teachers only hours before the teachers were shown the door.

Approximately 50 middle school students are enrolled at JAA. The same sources indicated that science and other specialty topics will now be taught by P.E. instructors, the school nurse, and potentially administrators. It appears the administrators, the professional management staff running the school, were unaffected by the layoffs.

JAA was plagued by issues as it marched toward opening this fall, including low-enrollment, construction delays, traffic concerns, and inspection failures. Sterling Ranch Development Company, the Douglas County Commissioners, and JAA were embroiled in a controversy in November 2025 over whether land quotas for community schools in Sterling Ranch could be met with a charter school. The Commissioners ultimately allowed JAA and Sterling Ranch Development Company to skirt the usual requirements to reserve land for neighborhood schools.

JAA also came into the news for a pilot program that deploys drones against school shooters in lieu of school resource officers (SROs) provided by the Douglas County Sheriff. JAA funding for SROs and drones has been a topic that even went before the Douglas County Commissioners as they grappled with whether to subsidize the new charter school’s security needs. JAA ultimately received an SRO from the Sheriff’s Office. Douglas County does provide funding for school security to the Douglas County School District to meet a variety of security needs. The cost of the experimental drone security program was originally priced at $200,000 when it went before the County Commissioners; JAA has since found other funding sources and has not disclosed the cost of the drone initiative.

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The Happy Crew (the program, not the coffee shop) started in 2015. That year, after eight teens in Douglas County died by suicide, Amy Mays was determined to do something about it. A former church youth director, she started inviting students to her home to create a third place (not home, not school) where they could talk about their feelings and start building a culture of belonging.

Since then, teens have been meeting on Monday nights during the school year, sharing a meal, talking about how to navigate challenges, and learning how to be a resource for each other. They leave each meeting with knowledge and strategies that equip them to offer what Amy calls “a mental health cough drop” to their friends and classmates. She explains, “If a kid next to you in class has a cough, it’s the most natural thing in the world to lean over and offer a cough drop. We want to equip kids with the equivalent of that cough drop when they notice someone seems sad or upset or shut down.”

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Mays facilitates and coaches during the Monday night meetings, but the program is student-led. A team of 26 student leaders determines how to address topics that range from building self-confidence, managing test anxiety, and communicating with parents to conflict resolution, active listening, and suicide prevention. Each meeting starts with a meal, then students divide into randomly determined small groups for student-led learning, followed by an opportunity to practice what they’ve learned together.

Statistically, Mays says, suicides spike in November and February. Each school year, the community-building starts at Happy Crew around the time school starts, and it’s in full swing by November. On Valentine’s Day, there’s a huge celebration at Happy Crew – attendance nearly doubled for the Valentine’s Day celebration this year. And, for the first time, there was plenty of room for everyone.

A decade after Happy Crew started in 2015 with a handful of students, Amy’s home was bursting at the seams to accommodate 75-100 students at a time. Alternative meeting places presented an array of challenges until, in 2025, Happy Crew secured the rooftop cafe in the Business Foundry in Lone Tree and opened the non-profit Happy Crew Coffee House. As part of their partnership with Business Foundry, Happy Crew provides a working coffee shop for the co-working space on the ground floor. On Monday nights, when students meet, the program has access to the entire building for small group breakouts and other activities. Plenty of room for those big Valentine’s Day gatherings.

Happy Crew was one of seven local groups to share in $1.37 million in ARPA funds (American Rescue Plan Act) that Douglas County Commissioners granted to community organizations focused on suicide prevention. The $240,000 grant to Happy Crew covered the first year’s rent and startup costs for the coffee house. Memberships for regulars, proceeds from the sale of food and drinks, space rental fees, and donations fund the ongoing programming and future growth of The Happy Crew.

Mays says near-term goals for the program’s growth include expanding to serve 500+ students and adding programming specifically targeted to middle school students. One of those goals becomes reality this school year. Middle Crew, the program tailored to middle school students, starts with its inaugural meeting on September 16th. High school students have their first meeting of The Happy Crew on September 14th. Students are welcome to join at any time. Learn more here.

Students who participate in The Happy Crew build skills they take with them when they leave for college and the work force. They’re paying it forward and expanding the ripple effects of building a community where everyone matters and everyone belongs. Those who choose to be student leaders also build meaningful people-centered leadership skills. Evan Teal, one of the students that met for the first Happy Crew in 2015, is now Chair of the Board of Directors. Another alum recently sent a note to Mays saying, “I still have a bag of cough drops and I’m still giving them out.”

The coffee house is open daily 7 a.m. - 3 p.m. at 9044 Forsstrom Dr. (2nd floor) in Lone Tree. Membership supports programming and is not required to visit the coffee shop.

More information about how to Join the Crew.

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Douglas County and a Series of Unfortunate Ethical Dilemmas

The Douglas County Director of Communications, Caroline Frizell, began commenting on Lantern articles when we published information about the $19,000,000 tax incentive Commissioners delivered to a data center in Parker. Shortly after that, Frizell reached out via email to establish two-way communications between the Douglas County Government and The Lantern, and a day or two later we published our article about how Commissioners gave a no-bid contract for Zebulon to a financial advisor with close ties to the Sterling Ranch Community Authority Board (CAB).

The Lantern established a policy with the County, based on the SPJ Code of Ethics, that we do not want quotes and comments from the County Commissioners until they take steps in good faith to allow free, open public comment at their meetings. In short: The Lantern should not have access to the Commissioners that the general public does not enjoy.

Frizell indicated the story about the no-bid contract had inaccuracies, I am waiting to hear what those are, but we did publish her replies to the questions we posed in the article.

In the meantime, Frizell offered to field any questions we have so I sent four questions on critical topics The Lantern has covered. I think it’s worth calling out the Commissioners and Frizell have been subscribed to The Lantern for a year and are only just now reaching out. The no-bid contract article clearly struck a nerve.

And I want to explain why I posed a question on the Chatfield Basin Wastewater Treatment plant. Sterling Ranch is basically at its limit for wastewater processing and without new capacity, building additional homes is not feasible. Sterling Ranch/Dominion Water have agreements with Roxborough Water and are working on other partnerships for wastewater treatment. The County Commissioners are planning to use Federal ARPA money to build the wastewater plant Sterling Ranch developers need to move forward. The Chatfield Basin wastewater project is a really interesting entry in the story of Sterling Ranch, the County Commissioners, water, and money.

It is worth noting the County communications staff reached out to The Lantern for a better dialogue and it’s The Lantern placing a restriction on that communication, not the County. So they deserve credit for making that outreach and The Lantern deserves at least some scrutiny over whether our policy is fair. The Lantern allows comments on our articles, the County* disables comments on its social media posts. The Commissioners have three microphones, news cameras, and control of agenda and public comment to broadcast their message; should The Lantern receive a privilege of access that ordinary citizens don’t have? That doesn’t seem equitable.

It’s not our job to alert the County about what we’re working on.

(*The County government controlled by the Commissioners disables comments; the Sheriff’s Office and County Clerk have separate, official accounts that do allow comment)

Sterling Ranch, The CAB, Dominion Water, and “The Tangle”

It came to my attention that Harold Smethills, in a Sterling Ranch CAB meeting, said The Lantern was putting out inaccuracies about the relationship Sterling Ranch has with the advisory firm Stifel.

“Sterling Ranch” is a tough term to unpack but I am sympathetic to the point he’s trying to make and I want to clarify and talk about how we, The Lantern, can do better and how we cannot do better.

Harold Smethills is the principal owner of Sterling Ranch Development Company. He sits on the Sterling Ranch Community Authority Board (CAB), which is where he made the comment. He and his son Brock Smethills also sit on the Board of Directors of Dominion Water, which supplies Sterling Ranch.

Harold made the point that Stifel doesn’t advise his private company, Sterling Ranch Development, but does advise the Sterling Ranch CAB - which is a separate, government entity. We relied on emails from Douglas County staff showing that Stifel was giving the County a better deal than they give the Sterling Ranch CAB to establish the relationship between the three parties.

The CAB is formed by intergovernmental agreement between several metro districts, which are elected, government boards. Dominion Water is a government entity, its board is elected, and is de facto controlled by the principal owners of Sterling Ranch Development Company.

The Lantern does use “Sterling Ranch” as shorthand for the homes and community, the private development company, the government CAB and metro districts, and even Dominion Water. Perhaps that is too broad, perhaps it’s a distinction without a difference. We try to make sure it’s clear in articles what entity we’re describing, if it’s ever unclear or we get it wrong - we’ll correct it.

I went through the article and added the abbreviation “CAB” where appropriate and made a correction comment in the article’s header. I take getting it right seriously and I don’t want readers misinformed or confused.

At the CAB meeting, Smethills said The Lantern is trying to “weave some type of conspiracy” together by conflating all these entities. I don’t think there’s a conspiracy, in that I don’t think they’re hiding the plans. But if you want to weave them all together… I would just say it doesn’t take much yarn.

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The Lantern posted an article about a No-Bid Contract Awarded to Zebulon Advisors, and the Douglas County Communications Director responded. This is the first instance of an official from the Douglas County Government responding to a Lantern article.

The email response came from Caroline Frizell, who began commenting on Lantern articles this week, only when we released information about the $19 million tax break Commissioners gave to a data center in Parker.

In the email reply, Frizell accuses The Lantern of violating the SPJ Code of Ethics. Adhering to an ethical standard is a requirement of joining press associations.

In bold below are the questions that appeared in our article with Frizell’s reply on behalf of Douglas County.

Will general fund sales tax be used to support Zebulon construction until it generates revenue?

Douglas County does not collect general fund sales tax. Douglas County voters approved a sales and use tax of 0.17% allocated to Parks, Open Space Acquisitions, Open Space Operations and Maintenance, and Historic Resources. The Parks portion of this 0.17% sales and use tax will fund the annual lease payments while the facility is under construction. Once the facility is open, operating revenues will fund the annual lease payments.

Under what provision of the county’s Purchasing Policy was a $137,500 professional services contract awarded without competitive bids?

Section 7 of the County’s Purchasing Policy allows for procurement of “professional services selected from a pre-qualified vendor list if the pre-qualified list was created as a result of a formal process.” Stifel was most recently selected through a competitive Request for Qualifications (RFQs) process issued by the County in 2021. That RFQ was for the purpose of assembling a “short list” of qualified firms that could be utilized as needed for public finance advising in support of the Board and special district financial review. Prior to that, George K Baum and Company (acquired by Stifel in 2019) acted as a trusted public finance advisor to the County for many years, including a competitive selection in 2016.

Why did the County Commissioners delay approving a contract with Stifel for almost a year?

When the Zebulon project was initially proposed, a range of ownership and operating structures were under consideration. Potential options included a public-private partnership with an operator in which the financing would be private, a county contribution to a Sterling Ranch Community Authority Board-owned and financed project, or a County owned and financed project. Throughout 2026 and into 2026, all three options were explored. The County moved forward with the Stifel contract when it was determined that County ownership and financing was the most suitable option.

What answer, if any, did Finance Director Christie Guthrie receive to her March 27, 2026 question about an RFP, and who decided the item would proceed to the March 31 agenda without a competitive bid?

Staff from the County Manager’s office discussed purchasing policy compliance as described in this email with the Finance Director prior to publication of the March 31^st agenda.

Did the county assess Stifel’s work for Sterling Ranch-affiliated entities as a conflict before retaining the firm as its fiduciary?

Stifel’s work for Douglas County is specific to the roles described in its agreement for financial advisory services. In that role, Stifel will provide advice and analysis on pricing and structure of Certificates of Participation (COPs); coordinate with bond counsel, underwriters, consultants and accountants; and coordinate scheduling and logistical aspects of bringing COPs to market. In this role, Stifel does not and will not advise the County on real estate matters, infrastructure provision or any aspect of its interactions with the Sterling Ranch Community Activity Board, Sterling Ranch Development Company, or other affiliated entities.

Why does the executed agreement cover $65 million in debt plus County Revitalization Act (CRA) bonds when the county’s public materials detail a $100 million funding requirement and no CRA involvement?

The agreement presented to the Board of County Commissioners on March 31, 2026 specified neither an amount nor a reference to CRA bonds. The County explored a variety of funding amounts and structures. As identified in public materials, the County intends to proceed with a COP issuance of approximately $100M, with final amounts and structure to be determined through upcoming due diligence.

What was the nature of the conflict of interest that prevented Piper Sandler from participating in the RFP process?

Piper Sandler resigned its role as the County’s financial advisor citing an interest in acting in an underwriter role with the County’s COP issuance.

When did the Board of County Commissioners first discuss the Stifel engagement — in work sessions or executive sessions — before the sole public vote on March 31, 2026?

Staff and the Board evaluated a range of financing options in the summer and fall of 2025, during which time the Board of County Commissioners was appraised of the County’s long-standing relationship with Stifel as a public finance advisor.

Will any Federal funding benefit the Zebulon project and trigger audit requirements from a U.S. Inspector General that would press the G-23 and G-42 rules issues?

No Federal funding is expected to be used for the Zebulon project. The blog post’s discussion of Rules G-23 and G-42 are a mischaracterization of the requirements and a misunderstanding of the standard disclaimers that appear on all Stifel emails. As indicated in the first sentence of the disclaimer, Stifel does not owe a fiduciary duty when it is serving or proposing to serve as underwriter or placement agent. Stifel was not serving or proposing to serve in those roles, and absent those qualifying conditions, it owes a fiduciary duty.

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Today, the Douglas County Clerk and Recorder issued a Statement of Sufficiency, certifying that the 3-to-5 Initiative has qualified for the November 2026 ballot.

In March, signature collection began for the 3-to-5 DougCo Petition, aimed at expanding the Douglas County Board of Commissioners from three members to five and electing at least some of those five commissioners by district. Douglas County currently has three county commissioners elected at-large and serving a population of more than 400,000 residents.

“This is a victory for the people of Douglas County,” said Angela Thomas, spokesperson for the 3-to-5 Initiative. “Thousands of residents took the time to learn about this proposal, ask thoughtful questions, and make an informed decision to sign our petition. Today, their voices have been heard.”

Learn more at the campaign website.

All documents provided by Douglas County for the relevant CORA Requests are being made accessible at this link. Many files are email communications from Microsoft Outlook, you can view them with any .msg file viewer but we use Encryptomatic.

The original version of this article conflated Sterling Ranch Development Company with the Sterling Ranch Community Authority Board (CAB) and has been edited for clarity.

On March 31, 2026, the Douglas County Board of Commissioners convened a special business meeting and approved a contract agreement retaining Stifel, Nicolaus & Company as the county’s financial advisor for the proposed Zebulon Regional Sports Complex. The contract was for planning the issuance of Certificates of Participation (public debt) that county materials describe as $100 million over 30 years. The contract fee: $137,500.

The vote to approve the contract took just a few minutes in March, but the paper trail of Stifel’s work for the county dates back almost a year before commissioners formally hired them. Because the contract was for a financial advisor with a fiduciary duty to its client, it means that during the time before the March 31 contract, at least 9 months, Stifel may have been conducting financial advisory work without a fiduciary duty to Douglas County.

Stifel also advises the Sterling Ranch Community Authority Board (CAB), and the debt it was working on for Douglas County will eventually fund both Zebulon and a contract awarded to SR Construction LLC., an entity associated with Sterling Ranch Development Company.

Emails and documents produced in response to a CORA request show that Stifel transmitted a signable financial advisory agreement to County Manager Doug DeBord and Budget Director Martha Marshall on June 12, 2025. Six days later, Marshall reported to DeBord that the fee had been agreed to. Through the fall and winter that followed, before any public agenda item that approved the contract, Stifel was advising county staff, building a financing strategy, and modeling repayment structures for Zebulon debt. But the contract was not approved until March 31, 2026 in a special business meeting covering a range of Zebulon issues.

The records reviewed by The Lantern contain no request for proposals, no competitive bidding, and no documented justification for the selection of Stifel. A separate records request seeking exactly those documents was fulfilled by the county on April 20, 2026; the records produced in response to that request contain no correspondence detailing any competitive, public contract bid commonly known as a Request for Proposal (RFP).

Distilling the Problem

This story is driven by a timeline that has been in motion for over a year and was pieced together from a broad records request. It is also filled with technical, legal, and ethical questions. Before diving into the narrative, we want to provide a high-level overview of the issues.

Conflict of Interest: Should Douglas County be engaging a consultant to structure county debt when that consultant also works for the Sterling Ranch CAB, the entity that received a $12 million construction contract from taxpayers to build the project being financed by that same county debt? Many lawyers, financial advisors, and consultants have client entanglements that are resolved by disclosures and legal requirements. Without disclosures in any scenario, let alone on the public payroll, a situation like this one could look on its face as if the web of people involved are coordinating using taxpayer dollars to march toward lucrative profits.

No Bid Contracts: Government contracts are often awarded in a competitive bidding process, and Douglas County certainly knows how to award contracts by putting out Requests for Proposals that are publicly accessible. The theory is that governments should seek competitive bids to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars and to discourage cronyism when awarding government money. When the County issues a sole source contract, its own Purchasing Policy is to provide written justification. All sole source purchases must be approved by the County Manager. The County Commissioners appear to have engaged Stifel as a financial consultant without seeking other offers. Stifel has an existing relationship with the Sterling Ranch CAB, sat down with county officials and Sterling Ranch principals to discuss strategy, and the work Stifel did for the county will fund a contract awarded to a Sterling Ranch entity. If you are Stifel in that room, how you ostensibly serve both clients (at least one of whom if not both are heavily reliant on taxpayers) is at a minimum a complicated scenario.

Working Without Approval: Stifel appears to have conducted significant work for Douglas County for the better part of a year without a contract in place that would have clarified or safeguarded the county’s interests. Keeping the process, decisions, and information related to county government out of the public eye for months is an issue the County Commissioners are already grappling with at the Colorado Supreme Court.

Advising With Potential Motive: Until Stifel had an executed contract, it is not clear they had any fiduciary responsibility to give the county advice in the best interest of taxpayers. Nonetheless, Stifel was giving the county advice. Stifel’s own disclosures call into question how and when they intended to benefit from the deal they structured. Federal regulations prohibit scenarios that are entirely possible given the timeline of events. It’s a startling level of legal exposure for Stifel and Douglas County that could have been easily avoided by executing a contract in a timely manner with required disclosures or by selecting almost any other financial advisor.

No Competitive Bids, Rushed Into Service

The most direct evidence that the selection bypassed the county’s normal process comes from inside the county’s own Finance Department.

On March 27, 2026, the same day the Stifel agreement was submitted into the county’s agenda publishing system (Legistar) for a March 31 meeting, Director of Finance Christie Guthrie emailed Martha Marshall and Kim Hirsch, a county budget officer: “Did you post an RFP for Financial Advisory Services? I am seeing a contract in Legistar for Stifel.” Guthrie added that she understood Piper Sandler, another public finance firm, “had a conflicting interest and so we couldn’t use them,” and asked whether that had changed. “I just want to be sure we have gone back out to bid if needed,” she wrote.

No reply to Guthrie’s question appears in the records the county produced. Four days later, at its March 31, 2026 business meeting, the Commissioners approved the agreement with Stifel.

The contract fee was negotiated almost a year before the contract was approved. In a June 18, 2025 email to DeBord, Marshall described a meeting with the Stifel team about compensation: Stifel’s proposal was “$137,500 which is 50% of the price they charge the CAB for their bond issues.” The Sterling Ranch Community Authority Board (often abbreviated as “CAB”), is the government entity that issues bonds for Sterling Ranch development. Marshall added that the agreement’s “current language was phased to meet regulatory requirements in an effort to get the agreement underway as soon as possible.” Nevertheless, more than nine months lapsed before the agreement was approved by the Commissioners.

A Servant of Two Masters

The fee discussion matters for a second reason. It establishes that the firm the county hired as its fiduciary advisor had a pre-existing and ongoing client relationship on the other side of the Zebulon project: Sterling Ranch.

The Zebulon sports complex sits on land the county acquired in a swap with Sterling Ranch. The site’s grading and infrastructure work went to SR Construction LLC (i.e. Sterling Ranch Construction) in a roughly $12 million agreement approved the same night as the Stifel contract. And calendar records from December 2025 show Stifel’s team — managing director Josh Benninghoff, director Stacey Mast, and associate Hadley Seymour — were included on a “County/Sterling Ranch call” with Sterling Ranch principals Brock Smethills and Tim DePeder, Brownstein Hyatt attorney Carolynne White (it is not clear who Brownstein Hyatt represents on the call), and county leadership. In other words: county commissioners and Sterling Ranch owners sat down with a consultant that advises multiple stakeholders in the issuance of taxpayer-funded debt for a discussion that would eventually benefit Sterling Ranch for the construction of Zebulon.

The Minutiae of Two Very Important Rules

The Dodd-Frank Act was signed into law in 2010. This legislation was designed to usher in new financial and consumer protection rules and included regulations for municipal governments. Two of those rules are related to this narrative: Rule G-23 and G-42.

The Dodd-Frank Act describes roles a firm cannot occupy at the same time. Rule G-23 prohibits the same firm from serving as both municipal advisor and underwriter on the same debt issuance. Under Rule G-42, a municipal advisor owes its government client a fiduciary duty, a legal obligation to put the government’s interests first, disclose material conflicts in writing, and recommend only what is suitable for the government client. An underwriter (the firm that sells government bonds to the market) buys the securities from Douglas County to resell them. Federal rules require firms handling one side of the transaction to make significant disclosures about their role and potential conflicts of interest.

Stifel attached disclaimers to its emails, the language stating the firm “is not acting as an advisor,” “does not owe a fiduciary duty,” and “seeks to serve as an underwriter on a future transaction.” Stifel repeatedly signaled in documents that it was wearing the hat of a firm that may benefit from selling Douglas County’s debt later while advising on how to structure that debt. Rules G-23 and G-42 seek to prohibit that.

For roughly four months, from December 2025 to February 2026, Stifel supplied the county the kind of advice a financial advisor provides, without an executed contract and while the disclaimers on its correspondence declared that no advisory duty applied and that the firm might be angling for the underwriting role to eventually sell the County’s debt. A fiduciary responsibility (under Rule G-42) did not necessarily materialize until the contract took effect on March 31, 2026…months after Stifel had already been advising the county on a major financial transaction Stifel could theoretically have benefitted from later.

Conflict disclosures attached to the executed Stifel agreement run several pages, but they are generic. They disclose that Stifel is a full-service financial institution and they do not disclose Stifel’s work for the Sterling Ranch CAB, even though the county’s own correspondence shows staff knew of that relationship when their fee was set. Whether Federal law required a more specific disclosure here is a legal question The Lantern cannot resolve; whether the county evaluated the relationship as a conflict before hiring Stifel is unknown but was not included in their response to the relevant CORA request.

The disclosures do identify one other item: a September 2024 SEC cease-and-desist order against Stifel, in which the firm admitted its personnel used off-channel communications in violation of federal recordkeeping rules and paid a $35 million fine.

Advice Given Without a Fiduciary Duty

From December 2025 through March 2026, before the Commissioners approved the agreement, Stifel was functioning, in practice, as the county’s advisor. In February 2026, Stifel produced a financing calendar and delivered repayment scenarios for a debt issuance at 20-, 25-, and 30-year terms. In March 2026, Marshall told DeBord she was postponing an internal meeting because, “I’ve been in contact with Stifel as questions arise,” indicating communications with Stifel were routinely happening before contract approval.

Yet every one of those Stifel emails carried the firm’s disclaimer under Rule G-23 that Stifel “is not acting as an advisor to you and does not owe a fiduciary duty,” is “acting for its own interests,” and “is serving as an underwriter, or seeks to serve as an underwriter on a future transaction.”

For months the county was taking debt-structuring advice from a firm that was formally disavowing any obligation to put the county’s interests first.

What The Public Is Told vs. What Documents Show

The Lantern’s examination of records provided by the county reveals that internal records diverge from public information about the financing of Zebulon in at least three ways: size of debt obligation, repayment plan, and authorship of county communications.

Size of Debt Obligation

The executed agreement covers Certificates of Participation “estimated to be issued in the principal amount of $65,000,000.” An agenda summary, Stifel’s own models, and talking points from a March 31 presentation describe a $100 million debt obligation. Talking points drafted by Marshall on March 22 state the County Revitalization Authority’s (CRA) funding mechanisms would not be used for Phase 1 construction of Zebulon, but the county’s advisory contract expressly contemplates CRA bonds for this step in building Zebulon.

How to close the funding gap, what amount is actually needed, and what entities will be funding Zebulon are open questions.

Repayment Plan

Certificates of Participation are “not considered debt under TABOR” and therefore require no voter approval. In internal correspondence, Marshall advised DeBord that she was concerned initial payments “will need to come solely from sales tax until the facility starts generating revenue.” This suggests county staff are at least contemplating that general fund revenues will need to prop up Zebulon construction for a period of time.

The county also seems to have selected a 30-year escalating-payment structure on the expectation that “we’ll likely restructure the debt in 10-15 years...so we won’t be faced with the higher payments in the later years.” This would probably be interesting information for the investors buying Douglas County’s debt: that the County does not ultimately envision paying escalating debt payments.

The current County Commissioners are, therefore, moving taxpayers into a debt structure that they reasonably expect to be unaffordable in decades to come without refinancing. The county has also discussed relying on revenues from sales tax for a significant period of time to make the Zebulon math work.

The Quiet Part Out Loud

On April 6, Marshall asked Stifel to draft the answer to a citizen’s question — “What is the difference between a bond and COPs?” — for posting on the county’s website. The response emphasized that COPs “do not require voter approval,” and was forwarded verbatim to county communications staff. The county’s public-facing material on Zebulon financing is being written by a third party consulting firm, and it seems to admit that COPs are being used because of a hesitation to take Zebulon debt approval to voters.

The Hour After a CORA Request

One final timestamp is worth noting. The CORA request that produced these records, which specifically sought an explanation for selecting Stifel, was transmitted to the County Commissioners at 2:49 p.m. on April 30, 2026. At 3:35pm, about 45 minutes after the CORA request was filed, DeBord forwarded two documents to Marshall and Deputy County Manager Dan Avery: the June 2025 fee email and the June 2025 Stifel agreement transmittal. The timing of those forwarded documents confirms that the county knew precisely where the origin of the Stifel agreement was: not in March 2026, when the public first saw it, but the previous June. This suggests that county leadership knew they were operating without a signed contract with Stifel for months. They did not have to search deep for the records requested and, indeed, seem to have sprinted into action over the CORA request.

Questions We Need Answered

• Will general fund sales tax be used to support Zebulon construction until it generates revenue?
  

• Under what provision of the county’s Purchasing Policy was a $137,500 professional services contract awarded without competitive bids?
  

• Why did the County Commissioners delay approving a contract with Stifel for almost a year?
  

• What answer, if any, did Finance Director Christie Guthrie receive to her March 27, 2026 question about an RFP, and who decided the item would proceed to the March 31 agenda without a competitive bid?
  

• Did the county assess Stifel’s work for Sterling Ranch-affiliated entities as a conflict before retaining the firm as its fiduciary?
  

• Why does the executed agreement cover $65 million in debt plus County Revitalization Act (CRA) bonds when the county’s public materials detail a $100 million funding requirement and no CRA involvement?
  

• What was the nature of the conflict of interest that prevented Piper Sandler from participating in the RFP process?
  

• When did the Board of County Commissioners first discuss the Stifel engagement — in work sessions or executive sessions — before the sole public vote on March 31, 2026?

• Will any Federal funding benefit the Zebulon project and trigger audit requirements from a U.S. Inspector General that would press the G-23 and G-42 rules issues?

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A.I. Disclosure

The Lantern used Claude Fable 5 to review the massive documents package produced by Douglas County for our CORA request. Without it our volunteer team simply could not get through the processing, so this tool enabled us to do something we otherwise could not do. As with all Lantern writing, our drafts are peer-reviewed before publication. We are providing the entire document package to the public.

I just came from the August 11th County Commissioners meeting and, like all the ones I’ve seen before, it leaves you with more questions than answers. Today I attended because Commissioners were discussing the $19 million tax incentive that they ultimately did approve for a data center in Parker.

Throughout the discussion the point was made that County Commissioners would approve any request to waive the Business Personal Property Tax (BPPT) that comes before them. That begs the question: why don’t they just eliminate the tax for everyone the way Jefferson County has already done. Jefferson County Commissioners are all Democrats by the way. Which I mention because the Douglas County Commissioners repeatedly mention their conservative, anti-tax bonafides yet their liberal peers in JeffCo are out way ahead of them on eliminating a major business tax obligation… and somehow the DougCo Commissioners can’t find their way to that solution with six hands and three microphones.

I’m sure they will now though.

If you suspend your disbelief for a moment, they’re otherwise making a good point. It is a regressive tax that is unfairly distributed. It hurts small-businesses the most and massive corporations have the most to gain from a waiver. Rather than open the flood gates to businesses in Douglas County applying for an exemption… just nix the levy. Problem solved.

If you’re not a tax accountant, a quick briefing on the BPPT. It’s a Colorado tax on machinery, equipment, furniture and other movable goods you use for commercial purposes. Counties collect their portion of the tax as do other jurisdictions. On today’s agenda the county, from their view, was just following their policy of dolling out a tax benefit if you come to them on bended knee.

Perhaps they don’t eliminate the tax because they could only take credit for that once, whereas carting in applicants to approve their waiver request allows you to give out patronage indefinitely.

Some cocktail napkin math I need to confirm says the BPPT represents about 1%-2% of the county’s overall revenue. That’s one of the reasons they can so liberally waive it. Even if that calculation isn’t quite right the BPPT clearly is not mission critical to funding county operations, but it would buy a lot of firefighting, school resource officers, and youth sports complex contamination remediation. So if you’re going to have it at all… either apply it fairly or we have ways to use it.

The Commissioners made a point to shift the blame for the existence of the data center to the Town of Parker. In that they are correct, the BOCC did not approve it and they cannot easily prohibit it. You don’t get the sense that they would stop a data center, in fact Commissioner Teal waxed at length about his role in economic development, but they would like you to know this one is not on them. If one comes to town it sure seems like they will rubber stamp a data center in unincorporated Douglas County.

Hot Topic: Public Comment

The topic of how Commissioners have curtailed public comment came up repeatedly. I want to clarify that issue for folks. The Commissioners have eliminated open public comment, which is to say your ability to comment on any topic whatsoever. Instead they limit comments to items on their agenda.

No county neighboring Douglas County does this. In Elbert, Arapahoe, Jefferson, or Teller you can come speak to any issue. That is also the case for every city or town council I have checked in Douglas County. The benefit of that is that you can put forward problems that might not be on the agenda or weigh-in on a public issue that does not happen to be on the list for discussion that day. Indeed the 1st Amendment envisions this right as the ability to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Commissioners have also plainly cherry picked who comments in the past, using sign-up sheets to usher supporters to the front of the line and then conveniently run out of time for opposition. So the playbook is this: eliminate free comment, control limited comment.

In January they also suggested they would host “office hours” for citizens to meet with them. Eight months later and no office hours.

The ability to come before your elected officials and levy your complaints strikes at the heart of what a democracy should be. If elected officials are deciding what you get to speak about… then they are controlling your speech. I don’t know how George Teal, Abe Laydon, and Kevin Van Winkle are able to reconcile their purported love of freedom with a systemic infringement on speech. Laydon took a swing and said today what they don’t allow in public comment is “political theatre.”

With as much respect as I can muster: then stop taking a picture with everyone you congratulate at your meetings. That’s political theatre. That’s using public office to stand next to people who have achieved something and share their stage. That’s the first 30-45 minutes of every meeting. You allow Zebulon “supporters” (many of them non-voting children) you cart in to bring in noisy signage against your own sign policies for… you guessed it… political theatre. Taxpayers are funding professional production videos of the Commissioners at the rodeo cosplaying as cowboys. Genuinely, if ironically, entertaining theatre.

You cannot bring the performative acts you like to town and then cry foul when the circus shows up.

Commissioners… you took a 71-29 blowout loss at the ballot box in June 2025 and burnt $700,000 of taxpayer money in the process. It’s pretty clear the reason you’re controlling public comment is that you cannot withstand opening the floodgate of criticism on any number of issues. And who knows what schemes are still to come.

The Douglas County Board of Commissioners will consider an incentive package for the Flexential data center in Parker during its regular business meeting on Tuesday, August 11th at 1:30pm. The action will be Item F on their consent agenda. Items on the consent agenda are not individually discussed under a presumption that the actions are non-controversial and no commissioners would wish to debate them; they are passed in one vote rather than individually voting on each item. Consent agendas are often used for pro forma actions like approving minor expense reimbursements or sending required correspondence.

The incentive package includes a $19,323,400 exemption from the business personal property tax (BPPT) portion of Flexential’s county tax bill spread out over a 35-year period, about $552,000 per year in benefits.

Data centers have been roundly criticized for consumption of energy and water while providing very few jobs per dollar invested. According to county documents, the Flexiential center in Parker will create about 16 jobs and therefore receive $1.2 million from county coffers per job created.

Dueling bills to incentivize and restrict data centers failed at the Colorado legislature this year. Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, recently placed a moratorium on new data centers pending extensive further reviews in his state.

Douglas County Commissioners significantly curtailed public comment for their regular business meetings earlier this year.

According to preliminary numbers, a petition to require citizen approval of annexations into the City of Castle Pines has qualified for the November 2026 ballot. Two questions will be put before voters; the major question is whether to require annexations over 20 acres be approved not just by City Council but also by voters at the next regular election. This would give the electorate of Castle Pines an effective veto over major annexations, in addition to requirements under state law and city ordinance.

The initiative began after Ventana Capital attempted to annex Crowsnest into the City of Castle Pines in late 2025. People Against Annexing Crowsnest (PAAC) formed during that attempt and went on to lead the ballot initiative to require voter approval of annexations. To qualify for the ballot, organizers had to submit 1,344 valid signatures. PAAC organized petition circulators at grocery stores, community events, and neighborhood meetings.

Ventana later withdrew their annexation application with Castle Pines. The City of Castle Pines placed an emergency moratorium on annexations and is currently developing an annexation policy. Ventana is now seeking to develop the land as part of unincorporated Douglas County. The Douglas County Planning Commission punted on the proposal at their most recent meeting.

Ventana officials have argued that the area has other planned developments similar to their proposals. Parker and Castle Rock, both officials and residents, have expressed concerns about road capacity, wildlife protection, open space preservation, and water utilities. Ventana donated $50,000 to support the failed Home Rule campaign in June 2025 and is also developing The Range development near Zebulon. Louviers Water district has indicated concerns about how negotiations between The Range and Dominion Water are negatively impacting Louviers water infrastructure needs. In 2025, Ventana sued the City of Castle Pines in a failed attempt to build a 24-hour McDonalds.

The second of two ballot questions going before Castle Pines voters would close a 180-day loophole for annexations. The window for annexations without voter approval would be created by a delay in the primary annexation question going into effect.

City of Castle Pines staff must process official certification of the petition and transmit information to the Douglas County Clerk. A majority of voters in Castle Pines must approve the questions for the citizen approval requirement to become law.

Elections will be held on November 3rd, 2026, ballots will start arriving by mail in October. For more information on the November election visit DouglasVotes.com.

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Note: Barrett Rothe, Editor of The Lantern, is a resident of Castle Pines and helped collect signatures for the ballot initiative.

Douglas County Libraries has made upgrading and replacing library facilities a priority of the past decade - and has done so entirely within its annual revenues - no tax increases or bond measures.

Guiding that work is the Library’s Facilities Master Plan, which sets maintenance standards for existing buildings and establishes design and size specifications for new construction. The plan ensures consistency across the library system and gives residents, municipalities, and community partners a clear picture of what to expect from their local library.

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In September of 2022, the Library Board adopted the updated 2030 Facilities Master Plan identifying a new DCL-owned building in the Roxborough/Sterling Ranch area as the next priority for library service. Completion of this building would achieve the goal of bringing all facilities up to current practice standards, ending the current lease situation at the Roxborough library location, and right-sizing library service for the growing population in northwest Douglas County. [Note: see pages 29-63 of the January 29, 2025 Board Business Meeting Packet, and pages 25-29 of the January 28, 2026 Board Annual Business Meeting]

In January 2025, Executive Library Director, Bob Pasicznyuk, presented the Board of Trustees with the plan’s priorities for new construction, identifying three communities slated for expanded library service:

1. Northwest Douglas County in or near the Sterling Ranch development

2. Lone Tree’s Ridgegate East community

3. The Canyons area east of I-25 in Castle Pines

The top priority: a new library for Northwest Douglas County.

Why a New Library Is Needed

The current library serving the northwest part of the county is a roughly 5,200 square foot, second-floor rental space in the Roxborough Safeway retail strip. It has served the community for approximately 19 years.

By the numbers, it is the most undersized library in the county. The facility provides just 0.29 square feet of useable library space per person - about 30% less than the next smallest branch, the Castle Rock library, which offers 0.41 square feet per person, based on the population in the area.

The gap is expected to widen significantly. Population in Northwest Douglas County is projected to increase between 50-100% by 2040. If that growth materializes and no new facility is built, the usable space per person at the current Roxborough branch would drop to about 0.15 square feet - making an already constrained facility far less able to service its community.

Beyond space limitations, the facility does not meet the standards the Board of Trustees has established for library facilities in the district, as it does not offer things like large-scale event hall rentals, audio/video recording studios, Adobe Creation Stations, in-house laptops, and exam proctoring, based on the offerings at each location identified on the Library’s website.

Square Feet of Library Per Capita

The Plan

The Board approved a plan to construct a new 16,000-square-foot library in the Sterling Ranch development in January 2025. The new facility would be more than three times the size of the currently leased facility in Roxborough - and the new building would be owned not leased.

The new building would offer a 2-story structure, and include amenities and services consistent with other Douglas County Library branches, many of which are not currently available to northwest county residents.

The site - just under 3 acres located near Titan Road and across from the first planned Sterling Ranch elementary school - was donated by Sterling Ranch developers. It is large enough to accommodate a future expansion to 30,000 square feet if community growth warrants it. The design also allows for phased additions, so capacity can be added as population and resources allow.

The library’s capital reserves are sufficient to fund the project. When the plan was approved in January 2025, construction was planned for 2026, with the anticipated completion and opening in 2027 at a cost of $21.65 million.

At the January 2025 Board meeting, the Board approved the project, scope, timeline and budget.

The Site Selection Process

The January 2025 annual board meeting included public comment on the new library. Two community members expressed support for the new, larger library, without preference on location. One community member asked that the library maintain a presence in Roxborough and offered to donate a different plot of land through the Chatfield Farms HOA that could be used for a new location in Roxborough.

The Board asked for an independent comparative evaluation of both sites: the planned Sterling Ranch location and the newly offered Roxborough alternative. That evaluation was completed by Fransen Pittman, and reported at the February 2025 board meeting.

Staff identified several concerns with the newly offered Roxborough site:

• The land is currently zoned as a drainage site, and had stormwater containment requirements

• It was inconveniently located

• Accessibility was poor, as the only access point was through the Safeway shopping area

• Parking would have been a challenge

Based on those findings - and the fact that the projected population growth is more concentrated around the Sterling Ranch area - staff recommended proceeding with the Sterling Ranch site. The library board was grateful for the generous offer from the Chatfield Farms HOA, but the results of the study confirmed it would not be an ideal location.The Board voted unanimously to move forward with the original land, and entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Sterling Ranch developers for the land donation.

What This Means for Roxborough Residents

In September, 2025 the Board approved an extension of the current lease for the Roxborough location to account for the time to build the new Sterling Ranch facility. Once the new facility is open, DCL plans to transition all operations in northwest Douglas County to the new location.

Learn More: Attend A Library Board Meeting

The Library Board is a member of the Partnership of Douglas County Governments and participates in their meetings.

Library Board Business Meetings are held the last Wednesday of each month (excluding July and November) in Lone Tree, 5:30PM. Public comment is welcomed.

Board Study Sessions: 4:00pm before Board business meetings, as needed.

Executive Committee Meetings: Monthly, typically the Thursday two weeks prior to Board Business meetings in Castle Pines at 8:00am.

Data centers are increasingly at the center of public debate, as they power the artificial intelligence (AI) technology weaving itself into nearly every aspect of our lives—from business and shopping to web searches. These facilities require vast amounts of electricity and water, …

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Last week, a remarkable youth faith event happened in Douglas County. Representatives from seven faith traditions—Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, and Brahma Kumaris communities—gathered to launch the region’s first Friendship Camp, a collaborative initiative born from the Interfaith Coalition of Douglas …

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This week’s study session agenda for the County Commissioner’s includes the line item, “Follow Up for a Potential Feasibility Study of Small Modular Reactor Nuclear Sites in Douglas County.”

The Lantern has heard rumors of this topic for about a week, and the release of this week’s study session agenda confirms them. It should be noted this agenda item is for a “potential feasibility study” and not a final approval of a new, nuclear power initiative from the Commissioners.

This week’s agenda follows a trend of the Board of County Commissioners saving controversial items for holiday weeks - when it is harder for the public to attend. The agenda also includes a provision to provide funding for a charter school in Sterling Ranch and to approve funding a firework celebration in Highlands Ranch after local governments there nixed plans due to wildfire risk during a drought.

Small, modular nuclear reactors have been proposed as a solution to the rising demand for data centers. Data centers would have their own nuclear reactors, much smaller than typical nuclear power plants, and be effectively independent from the main power grid. The debate about the pros and cons of nuclear power have been raging since the discovery of atomic energy. Nuclear power provides an emissions-free source of reliable electricity and requires less land to produce a larger amount of power than other fuels. The downsides include larger upfront costs, toxic waste production, and the potential for massive disasters.

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As a 20 year resident of Parker, I have watched Douglas County grow and prosper over that time. My sons went to school here and my husband and I are now retired here. The population of Douglas County has grown from 260,870 in 2006 to 405,741 in 2026. In 2019 the budget for the county was $421.1 million. In 2026 the budget has grown to $650 million. That…

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Most of us have heard that “public schools are funded through taxes” — but few have ever looked closely at what that actually means. When DCSD says it can’t afford competitive teacher salaries, or that programs have waitlists, what’s really going on?

DCSD at a glance: a nearly $1 billion operation

The Douglas County School District is Colorado’s third-lar…

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A question hanging over Sterling Ranch has been whether the community’s signature promise — building homes that use dramatically less water than standard Colorado suburban development — was real or just a developer’s marketing claim.

New water delivery records obtained by the Lantern from Aurora Water suggest that, at current scale, the development is me…

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Correction on The Meadows!

Before we go any further I want to lay out an important correction with regard to The Meadows in an article I wrote on Metro Districts in Douglas County. The original version of the article implied a total bond debt (about $454 million) would be due in full in June 2029. That is wildly not correct. I misinterpreted what actually happens for The Meadows bonds; in three years the interest stops accruing for the bonds, the bonds themselves do not mature and become due at that time. There should be no significant impact to homeowner tax bills, but they will continue to pay for a bond debt that is structured to last beyond most of our lifetimes.

The issue and mistake is really about “is there going to be a huge payment due in June 2029?” The answer is no. Simply put: I alone misunderstood what I read and assumed that if interest stopped accruing, the bond matured and became payable.

I am embarrassed about making that mistake but, notably, this is the first substantive correction we’ve needed to send for The Lantern in our first year of existence. (I also mis-identified which commissioner district belonged to an open county planning commission months ago - and it haunts me - but we caught it quickly.)

A Quick Plug

Check out this local newsletter covering Douglas County hosted on Axios. Longtime local journalist Robert Sanchez is running it and we at The Lantern like it a lot. Are we competitors? Perhaps. But I like to think more, quality, local journalism is great for the whole ecosphere.

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If you live in a master-planned neighborhood in Douglas County, the largest single line on your property tax bill probably isn’t the county. It isn’t the school district either. It is, in many cases, a metropolitan district that you have likely never voted for, that was created before your home was built, and whose original board members were the develo…

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