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, raising concerns about their environmental impact and effects on local utility bills.

If you’ve ever used ChatGPT, Claude, or clicked “AI Mode” in your browser, you’ve tapped into the computing power housed in a data center. As AI use grows, these centers demand even more resources — training a large AI model can require billions of calculations per second, sustained for years.

To keep up, data centers rely on specialized hardware and software. One key piece of hardware is the graphics processing unit (GPU), a chip originally built to render images and video quickly, which turns out to be great at the kind of rapid math AI needs. On the software side, AI models use an approach called “transformers,” which lets a computer look at many pieces of information at once instead of one at a time — a bit like reading an entire sentence in one glance instead of letter by letter. This is what allows AI models to respond so quickly.

But that speed comes at a cost: all this computing power requires a growing amount of electricity and water to run.

Residents often express concern or opposition to data centers, especially when one is proposed in their own community. According to a March 2026 Gallup poll, “Seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area, including nearly half, 48%, who are strongly opposed. Barely a quarter favor these projects, with 7% strongly in favor.”

Many cities and towns have shied away from recruiting or approving new data center requests. For example, Denver recently enacted a one-year moratorium on new data center construction and permitting, halting the acceptance of zoning permits and site development plans while a task force drafts new regulations on energy use, water consumption, noise, and placement.

In contrast, Parker approved the Flexential data center project in 2021. The $192 million, 249,000-square-foot facility—located at 15255 Compark Blvd in north Parker—will be the largest in the Denver area and is expected to be operational by January 2027. Flexential followed the town’s standard development and public hearing process before beginning construction in late 2024. Core Electric Cooperative, an electric utility in Douglas County, will supply the facility’s power, and the Town of Parker collaborated on necessary zoning changes to accommodate the project.

Currently, Parker and Douglas County do not have restrictions or moratoriums on building data centers. All developers must still navigate local zoning codes, site development plans, building codes, and intensive reviews based on their planned development. According to 9News, the new Flexential facility will feature a 22.5-megawatt capacity and advanced, zero-water-consumption liquid-cooling systems.

This will be Flexential’s fifth data center in the Denver area. The new facility will be geared primarily towards businesses in the manufacturing, healthcare and financial services sectors based on the various contracts they will have with users of the data center.

The List of Concerns

While the list of concerns includes things like traffic, land use, and approval processes, the largest concerns about the emergence and building of data centers fall into 3 major buckets: power, water, and the environment.

Power

CORE Electric Cooperative will provide 22.5 megawatts (MW) of continuous power to the Parker data center, which is equivalent to the usage by roughly 15,750 Douglas County homes. CORE states this power is from available excess capacity. Census.gov says there are about 155,446 homes in Douglas County so 15,750 home equivalent is about 10% of DougCo’s current energy requirement - it’s a significant addition.

According to the Town of Parker, the data center will not increase electric rates for Parker residents or other CORE members. The Town of Parker also states that the data center will pay for its own infrastructure and energy.

But that’s not the case everywhere, and the differences from one jurisdiction to the next fuel concerns. As AI becomes more entrenched in our day-to-day lives, the demand for power could surge from the data centers processing AI. According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), data center power demands are contributing to higher energy bills because to cover the investments needed to accommodate the surge in data center requests, many utilities are passing on the costs to their consumers through higher monthly utility bills. According to EESI, Utilities requested more than $29 billion in rate increases in the first half of 2025, double the amount requested in the first half of 2024.

According to a study released in 2024 by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), data centers could consume up to 9% of U.S. electricity generation by 2030—more than double the amount currently used. This could create regional supply challenges, among other issues.

CORE states they purchase wholesale power from Xcel Energy and the Western Area Power Administration. They also receive additional power from Comanche Unit 3, a supercritical, pulverized coal plant located in Pueblo and operated by Xcel Energy. And this is where some of the concern lies: using coal to generate electricity.

In response to state and local legislative requirements, CORE submitted a Clean Energy Plan to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment in late 2023. The plan outlined their path to an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, from a 2005 baseline, in line with House Bill 19-1261, which was Colorado’s effort to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

Since filing the Clean Energy Plan, CORE reports that changes in the energy landscape and market have forced them to adjust their timelines and near-term expectations—in other words, they will not meet the commitments outlined in their plan. Although CORE initially secured contracts for new wind and solar projects, they now report that transmission system constraints and recent changes in federal renewable tax incentives have made these projects financially unworkable.

Ultimately, it remains to be seen what CORE’s emissions will do over time, and if they will ultimately pass on the costs of the infrastructure investments to their customers.

Water

AI data center servers produce massive heat, especially as companies increasingly integrate the advanced technologies of “transformers”, mentioned above, into their operations in addition to the large banks of computer hardware. Consider the heat a personal computer radiates after working for hours. Now multiply that by thousands of high-powered, densely packed servers conducting intense processing, 24/7/365.

Due to the high computation rate, servers must be constantly cooled, often using fresh water. If a data center also has on-site power plant facilities, water usage increases even further. EESI estimates that a 100-word AI prompt uses about one bottle of water, that large data centers can use up to 5 million gallons of water per day, or 1.8 billion gallons annually. To put that in context, Parker Water and Sanitation District currently provides an average of 7.8 million gallons of water a day to its users.

Recently, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made headlines by displaying jars of the brown, polluted drinking water from Morgan County, Georgia during a House Committee on Energy and Commerce meeting. County residents point to a data center campus and its considerable construction projects as the culprit, though Meta claims their independent groundwater study found no impacts from the center’s operation and construction.

Food & Water Watch, an organization who states their mission is to fight for safe and healthy food, clean water, and livable climate, issued an article in March 2026, titled The Top 10 Reasons Data Centers Must Be Stopped. One of their main reasons is water usage: “Data centers also use massive amounts of water for cooling their servers, which run super-hot. We estimate that by 2028, U.S. data center water needs (just for cooling) could be as high as the indoor needs of 18.5 million U.S. households.”

Data Center Cooling Options

Industry estimates show that roughly 75–90% of data centers worldwide rely on water-based cooling as their primary method.Only about 10%–25% are completely water-free

According to Connect CRE and the Denver Business Journal, the Flexential Parker data center will be using a non-evaporative, closed-loop cooling system that requires no water for server cooling. This means that, in theory, the widespread concerns about water usage, a very limited resource in Douglas County, do not appear to be a concern. It is being reported that the site’s water hookups will only be for bathrooms and water fountains.

Environmental Impacts

While it is common for tech companies to deny environmental impacts by citing independent studies, the scale and speed of the current data center buildout is unprecedented.

The World Resources Institute reports that some data centers house gas power on-site for day-to-day operations, creating continuous air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Diesel-fueled backup generators also release harmful air pollutants, including fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), linked to respiratory disease, heart disease, asthma and other serious health risks.

Noise is also an issue. Data center construction, rooftop cooling systems, and backup generators can be disruptively noisy. Smaller diesel generators reportedly reach 85 decibels, levels that can harm hearing. Larger industrial units can approach 100 decibels — equivalent to a motorcycle or jackhammer.

This noise can last for hours or days at a time.

To address this, some data center developers and local governments are beginning to use measures such as natural acoustic barriers, greater setbacks from homes, and improved insulation for backup generators.

Several sources report that the Parker data center will have backup generators, but they will only be used during a power outage, keeping noise levels low routinely.

According to Jackson Hoeke with Geddry, an independent reporting channel, many data centers provide their own power, but often through diesel generators that negatively impact air quality. One notable case is Amazon’s data centers polluting Canton, Mississippi. According to the Mississippi Free Press, the construction of a new data center led to not just noise pollution and heavy machinery keeping nearby families up at night, but significantly worse air quality due to dust and diesel fumes that caused respiratory illnesses in residents. In order to avoid the smallest disruptions in service, the Canton data centers must be powered by hundreds of these diesel generators. These generators release nitrogen oxides and benzene, among other pollutants. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) exposure to diesel exhaust can lead to serious health conditions like asthma and respiratory illnesses and can worsen existing heart and lung disease, especially in children and the elderly. These conditions can result in increased numbers of emergency room visits, hospital admissions, absences from work and school, and premature deaths. When the expansions to the Canton complex are complete, there will be over 300 diesel generators producing 240 tons of nitrogen oxide and 140 tons of carbon monoxide per year according to Amazon’s permit applications, and none of that electricity generated will go to the residents of the city.

Other Concerns

According to the Town of Parker:

• The Flexential data center will not have a significant impact on traffic volume, nor will it emit pollution that will affect nearby residents and businesses.

• Like all developments within Parker, the data center will be required to follow the Town’s noise ordinance (limited to a maximum of 60 dB between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. and 55 dB from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.). Any noise generated by this data center is expected to be limited.

Why People Want Data Centers

Among the 25% of people who support the construction of data centers, the reasons for that support vary. According to Gallup, two-thirds of those in favor of building data centers in their area cite the economic benefits, including 55% who mention increased job opportunities specifically. Others mention increased tax revenue (13%), housing and infrastructure development, and general economic benefits.

Smaller shares of data center proponents mention the potential benefits of AI to technology or themselves, personally.

According to the World Resources Institute, data center development can create real economic opportunities. Construction generates hundreds of well-paying — though temporary — jobs for technicians, electricians and other local building trade workers. There are also good-paying opportunities for full-time staff, like technicians, security staff and facility managers. But those permanent jobs typically are fairly limited. A review of more than 1,200 U.S. data centers found that even the largest employ fewer than 150 permanent workers, and sometimes as few as 25.

Colorado State Policy Backdrop

The state legislature has been active on this front. There were two competing data center bills in the 2026 Colorado legislature, and both failed — Colorado ended the session with no new statewide data center regulations at all.

HB26-1030 — Data Center & Utility Modernization (sponsored by Rep. Alex Valdez and Rep. A. Valdez)

• Industry/labor-backed bill, formally titled the “Colorado Data Center Workforce, Clean Energy, Grid Modernization, and Consumer and Environmental Protection Act.”

• Would have offered a 100% state sales and use tax exemption for up to 20 years for certified data centers on computer equipment, software, and energy systems, with a possible extension of 10 years based on satisfaction of post-certification requirements, and required operators to invest a minimum of $250 million in data center infrastructure within five years, create new full-time jobs, and meet detailed labor and wage standards. Spencer Fane

• Outcome: Postponed indefinitely. Valdez presented an amended version to strengthen environmental guardrails, then proposed it be postponed indefinitely, and the House Energy and Environment committee voted it down 11-2. Colorado Public Radio

SB26-102 — Large-Load Data Centers / Accountability measure (sponsored by Sen. Cathy Kipp and Rep. Kyle Brown)

• Consumer/environmental-backed bill. Rather than tax breaks, it would have required developers to use and develop renewable energy, pay for the full cost of their electricity and any grid investments they require and practice smart water consumption. NRDC

• It defined “large-load data centers” as a new data center with a peak load over 30 megawatts, or multiple new centers with a combined peak load over 60 megawatts, or existing centers that add that much load, and would have directed the Public Utilities Commission to determine by June 30, 2030 whether 100% hourly matching (of energy use to renewable generation) was technically and economically feasible for these data centers. Colorado General AssemblyColorado General Assembly

• Outcome: Also died. The bill was assigned to the Senate Transportation and Energy Committee, where the nine-member committee voted unanimously to postpone it indefinitely. Spencer Fane

Why both failed: Lawmakers spent nearly a year trying to negotiate a compromise pairing incentives with guardrails, but competing bills — one backed by business groups, and the other by consumer and environmental advocates — both failed to advance from committee in the final days of the session, and negotiations over a compromise measure didn’t produce an agreement lawmakers would accept. These were also among the most fought-over bills of the year — HB-1030 and SB-102 had 196 individual lobbyists registered on one or both bills, on behalf of 150 clients. Colorado Newsline

What’s filling the gap: With no state-level rules passed, local governments including Weld County, Larimer County, the City and County of Denver, and Logan County have moved forward on their own zoning ordinances, special-use permits, and moratoriums — Logan County’s rules, for example, apply to any data center facility with a nameplate capacity of 1 megawatt or more. Spencer Fane

Implications

For AI usage to expand in the U.S., data centers that can handle the necessary computing power will have to be built. The centers that have already been built are usually funded by the large technology companies seeking to offer AI services. But most Americans appear to be adopting a “not in my backyard” attitude to building additional data centers, and that attitude is especially intense, given that nearly half “strongly oppose” that construction.

Overcoming this opposition stands as a major hurdle in the expansion of AI computing. The intensity of opposition means that proposed data centers are likely to spur grassroots activism from local residents as well as legal challenges. It also indicates that AI infrastructure could become an important campaign issue in local and state elections this year, and politicians who favor data centers in their area are likely taking a politically risky stance. [Source: Gallup]

Who is Flexential?

Flexential was created in 2018 with the acquisition of Denver-based ViaWest, a national data center developer, by Charlotte-based Peak 10. The $1.7 billion purchase of ViaWest created a national company with 40 data centers in 21 metropolitan areas.

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 County and led by the Highlands Ranch Islamic Association and Holy Companion, an Episcopal Church in Sterling Ranch.

Children from kindergarten through eighth grade and 32 volunteers, dedicated one week designed to build what organizers call “meaningful relationships across generations and faith traditions.”

A Space Built on Shared Values

Sister Rida Zafar of the Highlands Ranch Islamic Association described the impact in terms that captured the spirit of the gathering. “Friendship Camp 2026 has been that beautiful safe space for the Muslim community where they have felt belonging, and been seen and cherished by their fellow faith community members,” she said. “From the daily opening ceremony, to shared lunches, team building games, and STEAM activities, everything was crafted precisely and wonderfully to help teach and encourage practice of shared values of gratitude, forgiveness, courage and respect for nature by children of all faiths.”

The camp’s design reflected this intention. Beyond the structured activities, participants were invited to explore one another’s traditions with curiosity. That kind of openness is what Rev. Lauren Grubaugh Thomas, Interfaith President and camp co-chair, believes will shape the region’s future.

A Moment of Prayer Across Faiths

Perhaps the most memorable moment came when a 12-year-old camper invited everyone present to observe the Muslim call to prayer. As his voice carried the ancient affirmations in Arabic, a tangible shift rippled through the room. From kindergarteners to adults, participants entered their own prayer traditions and meditation practice with open hearts—deepening their own faith while building respectful relationships with neighbors of other traditions.

It was the kind of bridge-building that doesn’t often happen outside carefully curated spaces.

Making It Sustainable

The camp’s success relied on genuine community investment. Just a week before camp began, Holy Companion received the news that it had been awarded a $40,000 United Thank Offering Grant from The Episcopal Church. Combined with contributions from faith communities, individual donors, and other grants, the funding ensured that every child who wanted to attend could do so and invested resources to sustain the program in years ahead.

Looking forward, Grubaugh voiced hope given the positive week that unfolded. “The young leaders nurtured by Friendship Camp will, together, be ambassadors of a kinder Douglas County, where neighbors of any or no faith will be embraced as sacred neighbors,” she said.

In a world often fractured along lines of belief, Douglas County’s first Friendship Camp offered a different model: one where children and adults discovered that their differences make space for deeper connection, not division.

About the Organizations

The Interfaith Coalition of Douglas County develops programs for children, youth, and adults, creating opportunities for people of all ages to encounter their “Sacred Neighbors” with joyful curiosity and deep respect.

The Highlands Ranch Islamic Association, founded in 2023, serves the growing Muslim community of Highlands Ranch and the surrounding area.

Holy Companion is a new Episcopal faith community in Sterling Ranch and a Special Congregation of the Episcopal Church in Colorado. The community seeks to companion one another on the journey of faith through inclusive worship, meaningful relationships, and service to neighbors.

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 is an increase in the budget of over $228 million in just 7 years.

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The population and the budget have grown and will keep growing. The one thing that hasn’t grown is the voice of the voters. This county still only has 3 commissioners. Douglas County has had the same number of commissioners since the creation of the county. With a 3 commissioner board, a majority of 2 can decide anything that comes before the board including our $650 million budget. Do you think that only 2 people should be able to decide where our $650,000,000 goes? This does not seem like fair representation for a county of over 400,000 residents.

Due to the growth in both population and budget, there is now a grassroots effort to get an initiative on the November ballot so the voters of Douglas County can decide if they want to expand from the current 3 commissioners to 5 commissioners. There is a petition circulating in Douglas County to get this on the ballot. This is democracy in action. Your signature on this petition is your voice in local matters. The voters should decide this issue.

Please learn more about this petition at 3to5Dougco.com. There is a schedule on the website that lets you know where the petition carriers will be and when. This is a nonpartisan initiative. Petition carriers are Republican, Democrat and Unaffiliated voters who want the voters to have a voice in the county.

As a resident and taxpayer, I want my voice heard. I have signed the petition and also became a petition carrier because it was that important to me.

Look for the 3 to 5 petition. We are already halfway to our goal. All signatures need to be collected by July 15th. As we approach July 4th let’s celebrate democracy by getting this on the ballot.

Kim Carroll
Parker

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-largest, serving more than 61,000 students from preschool through twelfth grade. Its annual budget sits at $965 million.

Funding sources include:

• local property and ownership taxes (~59%, or $631.8M)

• state tax dollars (~38%, or $402.8M)

• federal sources (~3%, or $31.5M) (Source: CDE Financial Transparency)

Local taxes carry the heaviest load, contributing nearly six in every ten dollars the district spends, or 59% of the total budget. State funding fills most of the gap while federal dollars, often earmarked for specific programs, represent a small slice.

Local funding tools: beyond local, state and federal funding: voter-approved dollars

On top of state and federal funds, Douglas County voters can — and do — approve additional local revenue through two distinct mechanisms: mill levy overrides and bond measures. Understanding the difference matters, because they serve different purposes.

What are mill levy overrides and bond measures?

Mill Levy Overrides (MLOs) are voter-approved increases in property taxes that provide additional local revenue for ongoing expenses

• operating expenses, such as staff salaries

• benefits

• classroom technology.

Bonds are voter-approved general obligation bonds — taxpayer-funded debt used solely for capital needs, such as:

• constructing new schools

• building repairs

• technology upgrades.

Simply put: Bonds are for building, while Mill Levy Overrides are for operations.

If voters do not approve MLOs or bonds, then the school district must make do with the funding they receive from other sources.

According to the Colorado Department of Education, Douglas County spends about $16,096 - $16,589 per student per year, against the $15,589 - $16,096 funding it receives.

This funding is:

• About 1.4% lower than the state average

• 8.5% less than Cherry Creek

• 14.5% less than Denver

• The same as Jefferson County

The per-pupil funding to spending gap has a real-world consequence: teacher pay. Despite a 9% increase in pay funded by the 2023 voter-approved mill levy override, Douglas County teacher salaries are still 7% below regional levels — a gap that has persisted for more than a decade. The district has consistently fallen behind neighboring Denver-area districts since roughly 2012, when the school board ended collective bargaining and froze negotiations.

The result has been elevated staff turnover between 19-20%, making it harder to maintain the experienced, stable teaching workforce that research consistently links to student outcomes. According to a study by the Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis on the impact of teach turnover, “results indicate that students in grade-levels with higher turnover score lower in english, language, arts (ELA) and math, and that this effect is particularly strong in schools with more low-performing and black students. Moreover, the results suggest that there is a disruptive effect of turnover beyond changing the distribution in teacher quality.”

With the 2023 increase to teacher’s salaries, the District has seen turnover fall to about 13%.

The current funding sources of local property taxes, state tax dollars, and federal sources are designed to cover the majority of the schools operating expenses, but not capital improvements or building repairs. This is where a school district can get into budget trouble: not enough funding for maintenance to existing buildings and construction of new ones.

The recent history of DCSD funding requests

DCSD has gone to voters periodically over the past two decades, with mixed timing and results. Understanding that history helps explain the bind the district finds itself in today.

2006 Bond & MLO approved: Voters approved funding to manage district growth

2006 - 2018 NO Requests: No additional funding requests were made for more than a decade. During this period, capital improvement needs quietly accumulated - deferred maintenance, aging infrastructure, and growing enrollment pressure that the base funding formula couldn’t fully address.

2018 Bond approved: Bond measure approved to resume capital improvements after the long gap

2023 Mill Levy Override approved: Voter-approved $60 million toward teacher and staff pay increases, applied retroactively to the start of the 2023 school year. Teacher pay rose 9%, though it remains 7% below market rate. The District also added 7 Security Resource Officers using MLO funds. Staff hiring and retention improved noticeably, from a 19-20% turnover rate to 13%.

2024 Bond approved: Douglas County was one of more than 30 Colorado school districts to go to voters in 2024. Voters approved a $490M bond to address a $300M backlog of capital needs - new schools in growing neighborhoods, consolidations and repurposing in older ones, security upgrades, and Career & Technical Education pathways. This bond did not raise property taxes; instead, it restructured existing debt to direct more money to the district.

This interactive map let’s users dive into how the district has been putting that money to work and drill down to school-level projects.

Colorado is still behind

According to an Education Week Quality Counts 2021 article, per pupil spending in Colorado has steadily declined relative to the US average (the blue line in the graph below). In the mid-90’s, the gap was less than $500 per student. By 2017-18, the gap increased to between $2,200 to more than $3,000.

2025 legislation rewrites the school finance formula

In 2025, Colorado passed the Colorado School Finance Act (HB25-1320), which built on a prior school funding formula (HB24-1448). The new law starts with statewide, base per-pupil funding at $8,691.80 for 2025-26. Then the state layers in additional funding based on factors that reflect each district’s demographics and characteristics, an attempt to make funding more equitable across the state over a 7-year phased-in timeline.

HB25-1320 created a roughly $380 per-pupil funding increase — with rural schools and student-centered priorities at the front of the line.

The increase is notable because it comes despite declining statewide enrollment trends. The new formula phases in gradually through the 2030–31 school year, giving districts time to plan around the changes.

Douglas County Growth: building schools where the children are

Even as the district consolidates and closes schools in some areas, two fast-growing communities are creating urgent demand for new ones: Sterling Ranch (northwest Douglas County) and RidgeGate East (Lone Tree). Both are new developments with no existing school infrastructure — and both are attracting younger families, widening the gap between where kids live and where seats are available.

Douglas County Superintendent Erin Kane has described the apparent contradiction directly: as new communities grow, and as longtime residents in established neighborhoods age in place, the district must simultaneously open schools in some places and close or repurpose them in others. Both fast-growing communities plan to open new elementary schools in Fall 2026. In addition, the District is expanding Sierra Middle School in Parker, and the Legacy Campus in Lone Tree.

Concurrently, to address declining enrollment in Highlands Ranch, six elementary schools will consolidate into three for the 2026-2027 school year.

What comes next: a projected $15 million hole — and another funding ask on the horizon?

The District is projecting a $15 million shortfall in its operating budget for the 2027–28 school year, driven by a broader state budget shortfall estimated at more than $1.2 billion. The District operates under a balanced budget mandate dictated by both Colorado state law and local school board policy.

Against the backdrop of two growing communities without schools, a teacher pay gap that still sits 7% below market, and a capital backlog that took a decade to accumulate, district leadership is now considering going back to voters with an off-cycle funding request in 2026.

The 12-year gap between 2006 and 2018 is a cautionary tale: without consistent investment, needs don’t disappear… they compound.

The Question:

For more than a decade after 2006, the district made no additional funding requests. On the surface, the quiet looked like fiscal restraint. Beneath it, a backlog was building.

Capital improvement needs tend to accumulate gradually and largely out of public view — deferred maintenance on aging facilities, infrastructure that is past its useful life, and enrollment growth that the base funding formula was never designed to fully absorb. Each year without a bond measure or MLO was another year those needs grew more expensive to address.

By the time the district came back to voters in 2018, the bill had come due. The size and scope of that bond measure, and the extraordinary funding tools that followed, reflected not just the district’s current needs but the compounded cost of more than a decade of deferred action.

So the question facing Douglas County voters isn’t simply whether to spend more. It’s whether the cost of not acting is even higher in both the short term and the long term. Does the school really require another MLO to help with these costs.

Excerpts from DCSD Presentation on Potential 2026 MLO

Click here for full presentation.

Sources & Reading

• DCSD Financial Transparency Dashboard

• Denver Gazette: DCSD Financial Future

• DCSD Annual Budget

• Colorado School Finance Law (C.R.S. 22-44-105)

• DCSD Growth & Decline Data

• Legacy Campus Addition Project

• Sierra Middle School Addition Project

• HB24-1448: School Finance Formula

• HB25-1320: Colorado School Finance Act

• DCSD Bond Projects Interactive Map

• Colorado Community Media: DCSD Education News

• Stanford CEPA: Teacher Turnover Impact

• Douglas County News Press

• Colorado Department of Education Financial Transparency

• Chalkbeat: Bond & MLO Explainer

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 meeting its efficiency standards. But the data raises different questions about the debts incurred to develop Sterling Ranch.

Aurora Water supplied Dominion Water & Sanitation District — the entity that delivers water to Sterling Ranch — a total of 533 acre-feet of water in 2025, under three separate intergovernmental agreements. With approximately 2,980 homes in Sterling Ranch by the end of December 2025, according to figures provided by the community’s developers to the Denver Business Journal, that works out to roughly 0.179 acre-feet per home, per year.

That figure is consistent with Sterling Ranch’s publicly stated efficiency target of 0.18 acre-feet per home annually, and is well below the 0.25 acre-feet per home threshold that Colorado’s Chief Engineer identified as the state’s standard of concern in a letter sent to Sterling Ranch last year.

As the Lantern reported in January 2026, that letter rebuked Sterling Ranch’s application to add 4,000 more homes beyond its current approvals, writing that it was “unclear” whether the demands associated with the expansion would meet the 0.25 acre-feet limitation. The state’s concern was about future scale. The 2025 data speaks to present performance — and on that measure, Sterling Ranch appears to be delivering on its water efficiency claims.

A note on the methodology: the Aurora Water figures represent wholesale delivery to Dominion, not metered end-use at the home level. System losses, construction water use, and any water delivered to non-residential Sterling Ranch customers sit between those two numbers. The developer-provided home sales figure, while plausible, is not an independently verified utility count; in any event it does not appear that Sterling Ranch is wildly over its water usage targets.

The More Pressing Question: Where Are the Expected New Homes?

The finding on water efficiency, however, is not the most consequential number in Dominion’s 2025 financial filings. That distinction belongs to a line item that received no public attention: tap fees.

Tap fees are one-time charges collected by Dominion each time a new home connects to the water system. They are, in effect, a direct measure of how many new homes were built and hooked up in a given year. Dominion’s 2026 budget — filed with Douglas County and the Colorado Division of Local Government as part of the district’s 2025 Annual Report — shows that Dominion collected approximately $8.3 million in Sterling Ranch water tap fees in 2025.

The budget for that year had projected $13.6 million.

That is a $5.3 million shortfall — a 39 percent miss against the district’s own projection. Sewer tap fees tell the same story: budgeted at $3.5 million, actual collections came in at roughly $1.85 million.

Combined, Dominion collected approximately $7.1 million less in new-connection tap fees in 2025 than it had planned. It is a direct measure of how many fewer homes were built and connected to the water system than the district anticipated.

Why That Shortfall Matters Beyond One Year’s Budget

To understand why a water district’s tap fee shortfall has consequences beyond its own balance sheet, you need to understand how Sterling Ranch’s infrastructure was financed — and who is on the hook if the plan does not work.

As the Lantern previously reported, Colorado’s metro district structure allows developers to finance public infrastructure — roads, water lines, sewer systems — through bonds repaid by future homeowners through property taxes. Sterling Ranch Development currently controls the metro district board, sets the debt, and issues the bonds. Residents inherit both the infrastructure and the obligation to repay it.

Sterling Ranch’s financial architecture goes further. Dominion Water & Sanitation District is not just the water provider for Sterling Ranch — it is a developer-controlled entity carrying $266 million in bond obligations through 2052, at interest rates above 5 percent. Annual debt service on those bonds alone is projected at approximately $9.9 million per year through 2052. On top of that sit three additional promissory notes, totaling more than $57 million in principal, bearing interest rates of 6.5 to 7.5 percent.

Dominion funds this debt primarily through tap fees on new homes and service fees from existing ones. It does not levy a property tax — its own 2025 Annual Report budget resolution states explicitly that “the District does not have the legal ability to certify a mill levy under its Service Plan.”

The implication is that Dominion’s ability to service its debt depends on Sterling Ranch continuing to build homes at or above the pace the district’s budget assumes. When construction lags — as the 2025 tap fee figures indicate it did — the financial cushion narrows.

The 2026 budget projects water tap fee revenue of $14.9 million, an 80 percent increase over 2025 actual collections. Whether that rebound materializes depends on whether new construction accelerates substantially from last year’s pace. Property tax payments and debt obligations do not wait on construction delays.

The Structural Pattern

This is not a problem unique to Sterling Ranch. The Lantern has documented the same basic architecture across Douglas County: developer-controlled special districts that finance infrastructure through debt, then depend on continued construction to service it. When growth slows, the pressure on the debt plan builds quickly. Parry Park Water and Sanitation District’s current high water rates are a cautionary tale about how residents pay the price when neighborhoods fail to achieve their buildout targets.

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What distinguishes Sterling Ranch is scale and the added complexity of water. Dominion is simultaneously a water utility navigating state efficiency scrutiny, a bond issuer carrying more than $250 million dollars in debt, and an entity whose board is controlled by the same family developing the land it serves.

The Douglas County Commissioners approved Sterling Ranch to build more homes in part based on per-home water efficiency projections. Those projections are built on data that Dominion — controlled by Sterling Ranch’s developers — is responsible for tracking and reporting.

The 2025 water delivery data, at face value, suggests the efficiency model is working. But the same year’s financial data raises a different question: if home construction continues to run below projections, how long can a debt structure that is dependent on growth work?

Sources & Suggested Reading

• Aurora Water / Dominion Water Contract Usage & Billing Summary 2025

• Dominion Water & Sanitation District 2025 Annual Information Report

• “Following The Water: How Douglas County Relies On Water It Does Not Control” — The Douglas County Lantern, January 2026.

• “The Meadows of Castle Rock: $454 Million in Debt” — The Douglas County Lantern, April 2026.

• Colorado Department of Natural Resources Letter to Sterling Ranch, January 2026.

• “Sterling Ranch, master-planned community in Douglas County, CO, nears 3,000 homes sold” — Denver Business Journal, January 2026.

• “Community split on Sterling Ranch rezoning amendment” — Douglas County News-Press / Castle Rock News-Press, February 2026.

What Are License Plate Readers?

License plate readers (LPRs), also known as automated license plate readers (ALPRs), have been in use for roughly 50 years. They originated in the United Kingdom in 1976 as a tool to combat terrorism, but did not see widespread adoption until the 1990s and 2000s, when the cost of the technology dropped significantly. [1]

In casual conversation, people often call them “Flock cameras,” but Flock Safety is simply one brand among several. Other LPR providers include Leonardo/ELSAG, Insight LPR, and Axon.

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Over the past couple of decades, law enforcement use of LPRs has increased. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2020 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statitistics Survey, larger law enforcement offices were more likely to use LPR technology: nearly 90% of sheriff’s offices with 500 or more sworn deputies reported using the technology, and 100% of police departments serving > 1 million residents reported using LPRs. For comparison, Douglas County Sheriff’s Office has 638 full time equivalent officers.

LPRs in Douglas County

The Douglas County Sheriff’s office currently has 35 LPRs across unincorporated Douglas County, first installed in 2022. In addition, all municipalities within the county use them as well, adopted at varying times:

• Lone Tree: 16 cameras, first installed in 2024

• Parker: 11 cameras, initially installed in 2022

• Castle Rock: 32 cameras, installed in 2021

Some law enforcement vehicles are also equipped with mobile LPR systems capable of alerting officers to nearby license plates associated with stolen vehicles, wanted persons, or other law enforcement notifications while on patrol or conducting proactive checks of business parking lots. Many of the area law enforcement agencies began using mobile LPRs before they installed stationary ones. For example, Castle Rock began using mobile LPRs as early as 2016.

What They Capture — and What They Don’t

LPRs photograph or video the rear license plates of vehicles as they drive past the camera.

They do not photograph or record the faces of drivers or passengers. They do not use facial recognition, or capture gender or race. The data collected include a license plate image or video, along with the date, time, and location of the vehicle when the photo was taken. The Flock Safety system clearly communicates on their website what data they capture via their Usage and Privacy Policy.

How They Work

When a vehicle drives past an LPR, the camera captures a photo of the license plate. That image is then automatically compared against a series of state and national databases, including:

• NCIC — the National Crime Information Center

• CCIC — the Colorado Crime Information Center

• NCMEC — the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (including AMBER and Silver Alerts)

These databases contain what are known as “hot lists” — records of license plates associated with vehicles of interest. If a captured plate matches one on a hot list, the LPR system sends a real-time alert to a law enforcement officer. Hot list matches can include:

• Vehicles linked to stolen property

• Active crimes or felony warrants

• Missing persons (AMBER/Silver alerts)

• Significant administrative violations, such as suspended registrations

Who Uses LPRs?

LPRs are primarily a law enforcement tool, placed by government entities on streets and roadways. But LPRs can also be a valuable tool for private entities: Park Meadows Mall has cameras on its property; homeowner associations in the metro area use them to monitor who accesses their communities.

When non-government organizations use LPRs, they typically set up agreements to automatically share their LPR data with law enforcement agencies so when there is a vehicle in the area that has a hit on the “hot list,” law enforcement can quickly act on this information based on the law enforcement agency’s policies.

How Law Enforcement Acts on the Data

A match on the hot list does not result in automatic action. The LPR system notifies an officer, who then decides how to respond based on the severity of the situation and available staffing.

Because the vehicle is moving when the plate is captured, officers cannot know exactly where it is by the time they respond. As one law enforcement official put it: they at least know which part of the haystack to search.

Crucially, even after a vehicle is located, officers must independently verify all relevant information before taking any action — confirming the vehicle type and model, checking its registration, and identifying who is in the vehicle. The LPR alert is a starting point, not a conclusion.

This process is similar to the familiar practice of an officer “running a plate” during a traffic stop. What LPRs do is automate that initial check and dramatically increase its speed. The same follow-up requirements still apply.

Other Law Enforcement Uses

Finding someone with an outstanding warrant is the most common use of LPR data, but the technology has also proven valuable in solving crimes after the fact.

In one notable local case, a shooting occurred at a retail establishment, and the suspect fled in a vehicle. Law enforcement requested a list from the LPR company of all vehicles captured in the area at the time of the incident. By cross-referencing that list with other evidence, investigators were able to identify and arrest the shooter. Law enforcement said it was highly unlikely they would have found the suspect without that data.

Colorado is in the top five states for vehicle thefts per 100,000 residents [Source]. LPRs improve the chances of locating a stolen vehicle that has been reported to law enforcement.

The Numbers

The scale of LPR activity is significant. According to Castle Rock’s public dashboard, in the 30 days leading up to May 14, 2026, the city recorded 806,001 unique plate reads. Of those, 11,485 resulted in a hot list match — about 1.4% of all reads.

According to a 2025 Denver7 article, the Douglas County Sheriff stated that LPRs had helped make at least 60 arrests in the county. In a public statement, Sheriff Weekly noted that the technology had helped catch suspects in cases involving robbery, murder, kidnapping, rape, and the identification of registered sex offenders near schools.

You can see where cameras are located by accessing various online databases. An example of one of these databases is deflock.org.

Some municipalities have pages on their websites to inform their communities about their LPR usage and policies. Here is an example from Castle Rock. We did not find similar pages for Parker, Lone Tree or Douglas County. Highlands Ranch does not have its own police force since it is unincorporated; the Douglas County Sheriff patrols Highlands Ranch.

What Are the Concerns?

The primary concerns against LPRs center on privacy violations, the potential for mass surveillance, and mission creep. Critics argue that logging every vehicle’s movement creates a trackable record of people’s lives with a warrant, raising constitutional concerns.

• Mass Surveillance and the Fourth Amendment: Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union, argue that deploying expansive networks of cameras creates a dragnet that tracks innocent, everyday citizens rather than just targeted suspects. This continuous tracking risks building a “mosaic” of personal habits, which critics claim violates reasonable expectations of privacy without judicial oversight.

• Data Sharing and “Mission Creep”: Some law enforcement agencies share data with outside entities, based on their state or local laws. Privacy advocates argue this leads to mission creep - where data intended for investigating violent crimes or stolen vehicles is used by federal agencies for Immigration Enforcement, or by out-of-state jurisdictions for other civil or criminal offenses.

• Security Risks: All centralized databases are vulnerable to data breaches and cyberattacks. A database that stores millions of plate scans and vehicle images is of significant concern for exposure.

• Impacts to First Amendment Rights: The knowledge that someone’s activities are being recorded by the government can deter citizens from exercising their first amendment rights, such as participating in vehicle-based protests or visiting specific religious or political organizations.

• Accuracy and Reliability: Some critics point to historical errors in license plate recognition that can lead to false “hits,” potentially causing unnecessary traffic stops.

Because of these concerns, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 16 states have statutes that expressly address the use of LPRs or the retention of data collected by LPRs.

Using and Regulating LPR Data

LPR companies own and control the data collected by their systems, carefully limiting who can access it. For example, while a business or HOA may host license plate readers on its property, it typically does not have direct access to the collected data. Instead, the data is only shared with law enforcement when a vehicle matches an entry in a law enforcement database.

Even without direct access, these systems can still provide value to businesses and HOAs by helping law enforcement quickly identify and locate vehicles or individuals in the area that might otherwise go undetected.

LPR companies typically retain data for 30 days, after which it is permanently deleted and cannot be retrieved, unless there is a specific reason to keep specific data as required by law enforcement or a court order.

In 2024, Colorado passed Colorado Revised Statute 24-72-113, which placed a limit on the retention of passive surveillance records used by a government entity. Passive surveillance records has a broad meaning in this statute, but is focused on recording devices positioned to capture moving or still pictures or images of human activity [emphasis added] on a routine basis or for security or other purposes. This statute limited access to one year after the creation of the passive surveillance record; it also allowed access up to three years if there has been a notice of a claim filed, an accident or other incident that may cause the record to become evidence in a proceeding.

Still, the concern is real enough that Colorado’s 2026 legislative session saw the introduction of Senate Bill 26-070, which aimed to regulate how LPR data is accessed and used by government agencies. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Amabile of Boulder, framed it as a response to constituent demand: her constituents and others do not want to live in a society where their movements are constantly monitored and tracked.

The bill ultimately did not advance, largely due to strong opposition from law enforcement and a veto threat from the governor. Law enforcement’s core objection was a provision that would have required agencies to obtain a warrant before accessing LPR data older than 72 hours. The concern: to get a warrant, officers must already have probable cause — meaning they must already know enough to identify a suspect. In cases like the shooting described above, officers used LPR data precisely because they did not yet have a suspect. Additionally, not all crimes are discovered within a 72-hour window, which would have made older data effectively inaccessible in many investigations.

At the federal level, there is currently no specific legislative framework governing law enforcement use of LPRs, though existing laws and policies around law enforcement investigations do apply. [Source: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48160]

In Colorado, it remains to be seen if state legislators will try again to regulate LPR data in the future.

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Additional Resources:

• https://www.denvergazette.com/outtherecolorado/2025/10/22/curious-if-youre-being-watched-by-flock-cameras-in-colorado-map-tracks-1091-locations-statewide/

• Parker Police Department 2024 Annual Report: https://www.parkerpolice.org/DocumentCenter/View/24545/2024-Parker-Police-Department-Annual-Report?bidId=

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.

Read more

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 developer and their employees.

Across Colorado, there are nearly 2,500 metropolitan districts. Douglas County, where master-planned development has exploded the population from roughly 60,000 in 1990 to more than 380,000 today, is one of the most metro-district-dense counties in the country. Some of those districts are well-run, low-tax local governments that quietly deliver parks and trails for a fraction of what a city would charge. Others have authorized more than a billion dollars in debt that residents will be paying off long after their grandchildren are homeowners.

This is a rundown of how Colorado metro districts work, what they actually do for the communities of Douglas County, and where the model has produced both its biggest successes and significant fiscal disasters.

What A Metro District Actually Is

A metropolitan district is a quasi-municipal local government authorized under state law. They are created by petition to a county or municipality, governed by a service plan, and run by an elected board of directors. It can issue tax-exempt municipal bonds, levy a property tax on every parcel inside its boundaries, and operate public infrastructure — streets, water and sewer lines, parks, trails, recreation centers, and in some cases security and covenant enforcement.

The development case for metro districts is straightforward. New subdivisions need infrastructure before homes exist, and infrastructure is expensive. The Colorado Association of Home Builders estimates that paying for it up front would add $30,000 to $40,000 to every home. A metro district lets the developer borrow against the future tax base, build the infrastructure, and pass the cost to the homeowners who use it through a long-term property tax. In theory, growth pays its own way and home prices stay lower while property taxes on new homes subsidize the development.

A mill levy is the unit of measure. One mill equals $1 of tax for every $1,000 of assessed value. Assessed value and appraised value (what you might sell your home for) are not the same dollar amount. On a Douglas County home with an actual value of $700,000, one mill comes out to about $47 per year. A 50-mill metro district levy on that same home is about $2,345 per year — every year.

That math is where the criticism starts.

The Structural Problem

When a metro district is first organized, almost no one lives there. The developer and their associates often hold every seat on the board because they are the only eligible electors — they own the dirt. From those seats, they set the debt ceiling, approve bonds, negotiate the bond terms, hire the lawyers, and in many cases buy the bonds themselves through affiliated entities. The interest payments on those bonds are then secured by the most reliable collateral imaginable: a property tax on a piece of land a future homeowner will pay every year for decades.

State Sen. Lisa Frizell, a Castle Rock Republican who lives in The Meadows, has said publicly she has “seen a lot of kind of shady dealings by metro districts over the years.” John Henderson, who co-founded Coloradans for Metro District Reform, has put it more plainly, calling the structure “a lifetime annuity that pays out, guaranteed by the most secure source of revenue you can imagine — taxes.”

State Sen. Mike Weissman has said the authorized debt of Colorado’s metro districts now exceeds $1 trillion. About 100 new metro districts are approved every year. Most of the homeowners inside them have no idea what their service plan says, who their bondholder is, or how long they will be paying.

Three reform efforts at the state Capitol — most recently HB 25-1079, which would have brought special district board members under the Independent Ethics Commission — have died in three consecutive legislative sessions, killed in the Senate after passing the House.

Highlands Ranch: The Model When It Works

Highlands Ranch is the example metro district reformers point to when they want to argue the structure can produce good outcomes. Founded in 1981 on a 22,000-acre cattle ranch, the community is now home to roughly 100,000 residents. Because Highlands Ranch is unincorporated (no city council or mayor), the Highlands Ranch Metro District is the local government that actually shows up in the daily lives of residents.

Its 2024 mill levy is 10.110 mills — reduced from 11.205 mills the year before in response to the surge in residential property values, and well below the voter-authorized cap of 12.750 mills. For a $700,000 home, that works out to roughly $475 per year. For that, residents get 26 public parks, four dog parks, the parkway landscaping that defines the look of the community, street and infrastructure services, and operational support for the 8,200-acre Backcountry Wilderness Area, a conservation property managed jointly with the Highlands Ranch Community Association.

A few things explain why Highlands Ranch worked. The original developer, Mission Viejo Company and its successors, built infrastructure before the metro district structure became a vehicle for massive bond issuance. The community transitioned to resident-controlled boards relatively quickly. Voters capped the mill levy. And the district kept its scope to operations and parks rather than chasing the kind of compounding-interest debt structures that would later define the worst metro district stories in the county. The Centennial Water and Sanitation District (recently renamed Highlands Ranch Water & Sanitation) has been similarly disciplined, building real surface water and reuse infrastructure rather than relying entirely on the depleting Denver Basin aquifers.

There are legitimate criticisms of Highlands Ranch — Backcountry development and the relationship between the District and the Highlands Ranch Community Association — but the district’s tax structure is not comparatively and objectively outstanding. Whatever else can be said, Highlands Ranch homeowners are getting a remarkable amount of public infrastructure for a fraction of what other Douglas County residents pay in taxes.

Highlands Ranch is the comparison case for everything that follows.

The Meadows and Founders Village: Living With Restructured Debt from the Reagan Administration

On the other end of the county, in northwest Castle Rock, sits The Meadows with roughly 7,500 homes. About a third of every property tax bill in the Meadows is servicing a debt that began as $57 million in infrastructure bonds in the 1980s and has, by the most recent accounting, grown to $454 million.

Not one dollar of original principal has been paid down in 35 years.

The mechanics of that problem are simple. The original 1986 bonds were restructured in 1991 and again in 1993. The October 1993 plan was approved by the Town of Castle Rock with a a target 30-year payoff. Two months later, in December 1993, the seven district boards — then controlled by individuals affiliated with the developer and the bondholders — entered into a separate agreement that converted the bonds into compounding-interest debt with options for no or partial payment of interest as it accrued. Castle Rock has stated, when shown the December 1993 documents by Castle Rock resident Jim Garcia, that it had not previously seen them.

Meadows homeowners have paid more than $200 million in metro district taxes since the late 1980s. The debt is bigger now than when they started. The bondholder, an entity called Castle Rock Bonds LLC, is reportedly seeking around $600 million in total tax revenue before the debt will be discharged.

The 35-mill rate on each of the seven Meadows districts is fixed and cannot be increased — a real protection for current homeowners. But the rate is also why developers across Colorado are now seeking 70-to-95-mill authorizations on new developments rather than building under Meadows-style fixed caps. After a CBS Colorado investigation in February 2025, Meadows residents organized, ran for the boards, and in May 2025 took control of five of the seven districts. The exception was District 4, the master district controlling the bond debt, where residents who tried to run were told by metro district attorneys that their properties were excluded from district boundaries and they were therefore ineligible. The newly resident-controlled boards have retained counsel and are reviewing options.

[The original version of this article stated debt owed by The Meadows would be due in full in June 2029, a corrected and clarified explanation is below]

Compounding interest on the 1993-restructured bonds is set to continue accruing through June 1, 2029. At that point, interest will stop accruing, but this is not a lump-sum payment trigger. Instead, property tax collections will continue indefinitely at the same mill levy rate—35 mills—that has been in place for the past 40 years. There will be no change to homeowner taxes on that date, but under the current bond structure, tax collections will never cease. The Meadows bonds were restructured in 1993 to collect tax revenue for roughly 100 years—meaning the debt and the taxes funding it will outlast current homeowners.

Founders Village

The other Castle Rock community living with restructured 1980s bond debt is Founders Village, governed by the Founders Village Metropolitan District and Villages at Castle Rock Metropolitan District No. 4. The district’s 2024 mill levy is 94.56 mills — the highest single metro district levy in Douglas County, and roughly nine times what Highlands Ranch residents pay. For a $700,000 Founders Village home, that one line on the tax bill is approximately $4,440 per year. After all other authorities are added in (e.g. schools), the district’s combined mill levy clears 164 mills.

The mill levy for Founders Village is computed annually under terms set by the 1991 Chapter 9 bankruptcy plan, which restructured the original 1986 bonds into a 40-year obligation. According to the district’s own public communications, the bond debt is on track to be discharged in 2031, after which the district intends to adopt a significantly lower mill levy, and residents would see a meaningful drop in their overall property taxes in 2032. That 40-year clock is the kind of dismal timeline Founders Village got stuck with in bankruptcy court decades ago; now that kind of timeline is the opening gambit for metro districts like Dawson Trails and Sterling Ranch.

Castle Pines North: Bankruptcy, Water, and Surrender

Castle Pines North Metropolitan District, established in 1984 to serve what is now part of the City of Castle Pines, filed Chapter 9 bankruptcy in 1991. After an early-1990s housing collapse left the district unable to service its debt, the district restructured under bankruptcy supervision and spent the next two decades aggressively paying their balance. Then a different problem arrived: the Denver Basin aquifers the district relied on were drawing down. Residents rejected a $49 million bond proposal in 2018 to fund renewable water infrastructure (which would have come with a $103 million repayment cost), with about 70% voting no.

In 2023, the district transferred parks, recreation, open space, and stormwater responsibilities to the City of Castle Pines under an intergovernmental agreement, dropping its mill levy from 19 to 7 mills. Today the district’s 2024 mill levy is 3.5 mills — it remains the wholesale water and wastewater provider for the area but no longer carries the parks burden.

The district is now stable. But it took 30 years of aggressive payment, a bankruptcy court, a water crisis, and eventual transferring responsibilities to the City of Castle Pines - which did not exist when the metro district was created - to arrive at something that looks like a solution.

Sterling Ranch: A New District with Old Conflicts

Sterling Ranch, the master-planned community in northwest Douglas County between Roxborough and Chatfield Reservoir, is structured under a Community Authority Board governing seven numbered metro districts. Its mill levies are some of the highest in the county for active, new construction. Sterling Ranch Colorado Metropolitan District No. 3 alone certified 33.284 mills for general operations and 62.238 mills for debt service in its most recent budget cycle — a combined 95.5 mills, before any other taxing authority is added. The marketing material describes this as the equivalent of HOA dues. The math says these levies average about $4,500 per year on a typical Sterling Ranch home, before adding other taxes for schools, the county, and other districts like fire departments.

Douglas County approved Sterling Ranch on the strength of unusually low projected per-home water use — about 0.18 acre-feet per year, well below the typical suburban 0.25-to-0.50 acre-feet. Those projections are monitored by Dominion Water and Sanitation District, which is itself controlled by the Sterling Ranch Development Company. The same people who benefit financially from approving more homes also run the government entity that monitors whether the homes can be supported by the water supply they oversee.

In a January 2026 letter, Colorado’s State Engineer wrote to Sterling Ranch saying its application to add 4,000 more units “did not provide required information” and that, based on what was submitted, “it is unclear if the… demands associated with the additional 4,000 units that are part of this Amendment will meet the 0.25 [acre-foot per year] limitation.” Aurora Water, which supplies Dominion Water through a long-term agreement, is now the primary upstream source for the Sterling Ranch development. The metro district’s financial structure only works if the new homes get built and start paying taxes. The availability of water increasingly determines whether the homes can be sustained.

Dawson Trails And The Next Generation of Metro Districts

If The Meadows is the cautionary tale of the 1980s and Sterling Ranch is the cautionary tale of the 2010s, the test of whether anything has been learned is now under construction at Dawson Trails.

Dawson Trails is a roughly 2,000-acre development on the south end of Castle Rock, anchored by an incoming Costco and a new Crystal Valley Parkway interchange on Interstate 25. The amended service plan, approved by the Town of Castle Rock on September 6, 2022, authorizes the Dawson Trails Metro Districts Nos. 1 through 7 to incur an aggregate $1,062,390,000 (call it $1 billion) in debt. The seven districts share a single mill levy number: each is currently levying 74.044 mills. That’s about 7 times what residents in Highlands Ranch pay. The Dawson Trails districts will serve 5,850 approved homes plus 3.2 million square feet of commercial space.

More than a billion dollars in authorized debt. Mill levies in the 70s. A 50-year debt-service window written into the service plan.

Interestingly, five mills per year are remitted to the town in any year debt service taxes are imposed, which gives the town a financial incentive to keep the Dawson Trails structure going. Castle Rock is more or less receiving a dividend for allowing Dawson Trails to exist.

Other newer districts are operating in the same range. Crowfoot Valley Ranch No. 2 sits at 80.47 mills. Canyons Metro District No. 2 at 71.73. Crystal Crossing, Solitude, and Lincoln Meadows are all in the 50s. These are the mill levies developers are now seeking and that the Board of County Commissioners and town councils are approving — two and three times what Highlands Ranch residents pay, and at the upper end of what The Meadows residents have been paying for four decades without any principal reduction.

Arguments For Reform Are Visible in the Data

Advocates for metro district reform want to see safeguards like 40-year bond term limits, debt mill levy caps, financial advisor certifications, and statutory transparency requirements.

This table lists selected Douglas County metropolitan districts, the city or unincorporated area they sit in, their 2024 collection-year mill levy, and a summary of the services they provide. It is not exhaustive, but it covers the largest residential master-planned communities and is a representative sample.

A few things stand out when the data are in one place. The lowest-mill districts in the county are the oldest, most resident-controlled ones with mature bond debt either paid off or close to it. The highest-mill districts in the county are either the 1986-era bond restructurings still working out from under their compounding interest, or the brand-new districts being approved with high debt and high taxes. The middle of the chart — mature suburban metro districts at 20 to 40 mills — is where the model arguably works as designed.

Buyers who do not understand which type of metro district they are buying into are at a real disadvantage. State law requires metro district disclosure on property transfers, but the disclosures are written by the industry, and most buyers never read past the dollar figure on the listing.

What the County and Town Governments Are Doing: Not Much

Douglas County’s Board of County Commissioners has reduced the county portion of the property tax bill in six of the last eight years — most recently delivering $37.8 million in tax relief by lowering the county mill levy by 3.679 mills. That is a real reduction, and it deserves to be reported as one. It is also a reduction on a portion of the bill that, in many of the affected neighborhoods, is roughly one-fifth the size of the metro district line directly above it.

The town councils of Castle Rock, Parker, Castle Pines, and Lone Tree are the bodies that approve service plans for new metro districts inside their boundaries. The Board of County Commissioners approves them in unincorporated areas. The Colorado Department of Local Affairs maintains a registry but exercises no operational oversight. State Sens. Frizell, Brooks, and Weissman have called for a performance audit of DOLA’s metro district oversight. The audit has not yet happened.

The Town of Castle Rock, when presented with the original December 1993 documents that materially altered the Meadows bond structure, responded by retaining outside counsel rather than substantively engaging with the more than 7,500 homeowners affected. It has not publicly explained its own oversight role during the intervening decades.

Questions We Need Answered

• Who actually owns Castle Rock Bonds LLC, the entity collecting the interest payments from Meadows homeowners?

• How many of the Dawson Trails bonds, when issued, will be purchased by entities affiliated with the developer Westside Investment Partners or its principals? (The same dynamic that produced The Meadows)

• What is the County Commissioners’ standard for approving service plans in unincorporated Douglas County, and how does it compare to the published policies in Aurora and Colorado Springs that cap combined debt mill levies at 50 mills?

• What happens to Sterling Ranch’s ability to service debt if it cannot build the homes it planned for due to a lack of water?

Sources & Suggested Reading

• Douglas County Assessor: 2024 Tax Districts and Mill Levies (PDF)

• Douglas County Clerk: Special District Public Notices Archive

• Colorado Department of Local Affairs — Special Districts Brief Review

• Highlands Ranch Metro District Lowers Mill Levy (Highlands Ranch Metro District news)

• Founders Village Metro District: Addressing Questions About Bond Debt (PDF)

• Castle Pines North Metropolitan District

• Castle Pines North history (Castle Pines Connection)

• Sterling Ranch Community Authority Board: Property Taxes

• Dawson Trails Metropolitan District Nos. 1–7 — Service Plan & HB25-1219 Information

• Coloradans for Metro District Reform

• Metro District Education Coalition: Knowledge Center

• CBS Colorado: The Meadows neighborhood metro district investigation

• Colorado Politics: Metro district reform bill bars developers from buying own bonds

• Colorado Capitol Watch: HB25-1079

Concerned citizens in Castle Pines are circulating the first ever citizen-led petition in their city to amend the 2019 home rule charter. The grassroots effort has come on the heels of the controversial Crowsnest annexation request that was ultimately withdrawn by the developer, Ventana Capital. That withdrawal coincided with a 120-day moratorium on annexations from the City and Council directing staff to draft a formal annexation policy for their review by July 17.

Concerns about Crowsnest led Castle Pines residents to pack their City Council meetings in February and March. Many of those same residents are now collecting signatures for a ballot initiative that would require voters to approve any future annexation. If the petition gathers enough signatures, Castle Pines voters will decide whether to approve two charter amendments when they vote in November.

What Are the Amendments?

Amendment 1: Voter Approval for Large Annexations

Amendment 1 would require the approval of registered Castle Pines voters for any future land annexation of 20 acres or more—including multiple parcels placed together.

Amendment 2: Ratification of Recent Annexations

Amendment 2 would require that any parcel over 20 acres annexed within 180 days prior to Amendment 1 going into effect would be referred back to the voters for final ratification. In effect, this amendment would close a temporary, six-month loophole and discourage developers from seeking annexations before Amendment 1 takes effect.

Why These Amendments and Why Now?

City staff has until mid-July to present the City Council with a draft annexation policy. Organizer Donna Packard, a Castle Pines resident, explained, “The timing of these petitions has been managed carefully and in coordination with the City Clerk’s office to ensure that the proposed Amendments to the city’s Charter would not trigger a special election and all the costs that would come along with that. The City Clerk’s office has been extremely helpful to us throughout this process.”

Amendment 2 was designed to ensure accountability to voters for any annexation decisions the City Council might make between the adoption of the annexation policy (as early as July or August) and the November election. Packard noted that, if there have been no annexations in the 180 days prior to voter approval, City Council could deem Amendment 2 moot.

“Castle Pines leadership is busy developing a solid, well thought out annexation policy which will guide our leaders and developers to craft annexations that are consistent with our Comprehensive Plan,” Packard said. “At the same time, we are busy making sure citizens have the ability to approve annexations that add value to our community and disapprove those that do not.”

The Amendments’ supporters argue there’s no guarantee that a formal annexation policy will address their concerns and provide the government accountability they are seeking in annexation decisions for Castle Pines. They believe the amendments will create an important check on the power of the City Council and motivate council members to be directly accountable to voters for balancing the City’s growth with its ability to provide community services (e.g., water, fire, police, schools) and maintain the City’s character.

Organizer Lorrie Ball added, “We want people to understand that these petitions are not just a response to the withdrawn Crowsnest request. That annexation proposal raised important questions. Why are there no policies and fee structures for annexations? How will annexations support our Comprehensive Plan and the strategic Economic Development Plan that is currently being developed? These Amendments are about giving citizens a voice to hold our leaders accountable for adhering to standards that can be applied to all future annexation questions.”

Packard summed it up, “This is a way for voters to weigh-in on their concerns related to thoughtful development, guided by strategic economic development plans and a comprehensive plan for the community.”

How do other communities approve annexation?

Most communities in Colorado approve annexations through local elected officials like City Councils. But there’s very recent precedent for voter approval of annexation. In September 2025, nearly 70% of the voters in the town of Palmer Lake approved a new ordinance to require voter approval for future annexations. That vote came after the town’s elected officials approved eligibility for the flagpole annexation of a Buc-ee’s and also resulted in the recall of two of those officials.

People who oppose the Amendments are skeptical that development will ever happen if it requires a vote of approval from current residents. They argue that City Councils are elected to make those kinds of decisions.

Some Colorado Springs City Council members agree. Although the mechanics of voter approval were different, the Karman Line annexation in Colorado Springs also resulted in a petition for a special election in which voters overwhelmingly reversed the City Council’s annexation approval. One Colorado Springs City Council member defended annexation approval by elected officials instead of by voters saying, “There are a lot of very important milestones and boxes that need to be checked along the way. Everything from utility infrastructure, the cost of utilities, who pays for the utility expense or infrastructure cost.”

Is Castle Pines Checking All the Boxes?

Crowsnest was the first major annexation decision since the City’s charter was adopted in 2019, and the City Council missed checking two critical boxes for making an annexation decision.

Annexation Policy

Despite having no formal policy guiding annexation decisions, the Council unanimously declared Crowsnest “eligible for annexation to the City of Castle Pines” on February 24. At their annual retreat on March 7, the Council discussed annexation. Then, at their next public meeting on March 24, they directed staff to draft an Annexation Policy after finding “that a Council-adopted annexation policy, in addition to the statutorily-required Three-Mile Plan, is necessary to provide direction to potential applicants and staff on when and how the City may want to expand its boundaries.” Just one month after declaring Crowsnest eligible for annexation, the Council decided it needed more clarification on the criteria for eligibility.

Three-Mile Plan

An annexation policy wasn’t the only thing the City was missing. There was also no current Three-Mile Plan on February 24, 2026. A Three-Mile Plan is an annexation master plan for the area in a three mile radius from a municipality’s current boundaries. According to state statute, prior to the final adoption of an annexation resolution, a municipality:

• Must have a Three-Mile Plan in place.

• That plan must be updated at least once a year.

• And it should be part of the municipality’s Comprehensive Plan.

According to the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, “The failure to have a plan prior to the completion of an annexation could open a municipality up to litigation.”

The most recent Comprehensive Plan for the City of Castle Pines was adopted on June 24, 2021. That was before many of the homes in the Canyons - an expansion of Castle Pines east of I-25 - were built. That 2021 Comprehensive Plan reports that the most recent Three-Mile Plan at that time was from 2013. There is no evidence of an updated three-mile plan on the City’s website since that date.

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The Castle Pines Planning Commission approved the adoption of an updated Three Mile Plan on April 23, 2026. That updated plan was on the agenda for presentation at the May 12 City Council Meeting.

These facts together suggest that there was no updated Three-Mile Plan in place at the time of the February 24, 2026 City Council resolution to declare Crowsnest eligible for annexation.

Citizen-Initiated Petitions

On April 7, the City Council passed Emergency Ordinance 26-05 to define procedures for dealing with citizen-initiated petitions; this was in response to citizens seeking guidance on Amendments 1 and 2. The need for the emergency ordinance suggests that when staff members received requests for information on how to set up petitions, they had no defined policies or procedures in place to guide their responses.

What happens next?

Supporters of Amendments 1 and 2 must collect 1,344 signatures to get each Amendment on the ballot. Packard and Ball say circulators are carrying petitions for both amendments and are working all over Castle Pines to collect signatures. They refer residents to FAQs and a schedule of signing events on the group’s website. August 4 is the final deadline to return petitions, and if enough signatures are verified, the Amendments will appear on the November ballot for city residents.

The questions we need answered:

• Why was there no Three-Mile Plan more current than 2013 when the City Council approved eligibility for Crowsnest on February 24?

• If the Crowsnest Annexation had received final approval without a current Three-Mile Plan, what exposure to litigation could have resulted for Castle Pines?

Related Stories

• Castle Pines considers controversial Crowsnest annexation

• Crowsnest annexation request withdrawn

Democrats and Republicans don’t agree about much in Douglas County, but the “3 to 5 Petition” has rare, bipartisan support in the county. The goal of the petition is to let Douglas County voters decide whether the Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) should expand from its current three members to become a five-member board.

Organizer Angela Thomas describes the petition as a grassroots, bipartisan effort, and says, “We have volunteer circulators who are Republicans, Democrats, and Independents working all over Douglas County to collect signatures.” Those volunteers aim to collect more than 15,000 signatures between now and mid-July. If they succeed, Douglas County voters will decide in November whether to expand the BOCC to five members — and how that expansion would work.

What would the petition allow voters to decide?

If supporters collect enough signatures, voters will have the opportunity to decide:

1. Whether the Douglas County Board of Commissioners should be expanded from a three-member board to a five-member board.

2. If so, by what method that expansion should be accomplished:

   1. Five commissioners elected by the voters of each district, OR

   2. Three commissioners elected by the voters of each district, plus two commissioners to be elected by the entire county (at-large).

Currently, each County Commissioner must reside in the district they represent, but they are elected at-large by the voters of the whole county, not just by the voters in their specific districts.

Why expand the commission and vote by district … and at what cost?

Thomas estimates the cost of the expansion at $500,000. She itemizes the costs at a total of $250,000 per commissioner, per year:

• $150,000 - the upper end of the current salary range

• $ 36,000 - additional costs of benefits, including retirement match

• $ 64,000 - travel, meals, and other incidental expenses

HB25-1265, a bipartisan bill sponsored by Rep. Bob Marshall (D), Sen. Larry Liston (R), and Sen. Michael Weissman (D), in 2025 was designed to expand county commissions of large Colorado counties. The bill did not pass, but it contained an estimated cost of “$350,000 or more” per additional commissioner, without itemized detail. A high-end estimate of $700,000 per year to add two new commissioners in Douglas County represents a little more than one-tenth of one percent (~ 0.12%) of the county’s $600+ million budget.

There would also potentially be one-time costs for redistricting. Just passed in 2026, HB26-1038 requires boards of county commissioners to appoint independent redistricting commissions to develop redistricting plans. Those redistricting committees must be “made up equally of members affiliated with the two largest political parties, and members not affiliated with a political party, to develop redistricting plans.” The estimated cost of redistricting is $75,000 to $135,000.

Why incur those costs?

Supporters say the measure would create better representation and increased accountability in a county that has grown to over 400,000 residents with a budget exceeding $600 million. “With only three commissioners,” said Thomas, “it takes only two people to agree to policy and spending decisions that impact the entire county.” She believes voting by district would give every area of the county a clear voice and make county commissioners more responsive and accessible to the people who elect them.

Former Commissioner Lora Thomas (no relation to Angela Thomas) says it would also make running for county commissioner accessible to more residents of Douglas County. According to Lora Thomas, a single countywide mailer currently costs around $20,000, and to win a county-wide election, commissioners have, in past elections, spent upwards of $250,000 on their campaigns. She reasons that replacing the current at-large elections with district-based voting would significantly diminish the financial barriers to entry for people who want to serve as county commissioners in Douglas County.

Motivated to make the commission more representative and accountable to voters, Former Commissioner Thomas says she had a front row seat to how easily a three-member board can be taken over by just two commissioners. Thomas alleges that in November 2020, shortly after George Teal won the general election, Commissioner-elect Teal called her and stated, “Abe (Laydon) and I agreed that I will back whatever Abe wants, and he will back whatever I want. We have the county covered, so there’s no need for you to even come to work.” Thomas acknowledged that on a five-member board, that kind of alliance building could still happen, but she believes the five commissioner model offers greater accountability to constituents.

Lora Thomas was one of three Douglas County residents who sued the Douglas County Commissioners in 2025, alleging that they violated Colorado Open Meeting Laws. A panel of three appellate judges ruled on April 2, 2026 that the commissioners did violate open meeting laws by holding 11 closed, unnoticed meetings between December 2024 and April 2025 in the process of deciding to hold a special election to initiate Home Rule in Douglas County.

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The appellate court also remanded the case back to the Douglas District Court to determine whether the commissioners have continued to violate Colorado’s Open Meeting laws. The County plans to appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court, and the plaintiffs have offered a settlement in an effort to prevent the County from spending additional tax dollars on litigation.

Concerns about representation and citizen input in Douglas County have increased after the Home Rule defeat in June 2025. Since then, the three sitting commissioners have ended general public comment at their biweekly Business Meetings and turned off all comments on their social media pages.

In a recent development, the Commissioners have clearly established that additional restrictions on public comment will be the norm. A May 12, 2026 Business Meeting announcement on their Facebook page reads:

How do other counties elect commissioners?

The Colorado Constitution has mandated that all counties have a minimum of three commissioners and provides for up to five-member boards. Douglas County is the 6th largest county in Colorado. Three of the top five counties — El Paso, Arapahoe, and Adams — already have five county commissioners. Two counties smaller than DougCo also have five — Weld and Pitkin.

Rep. Bob Marshall (D-Highlands Ranch) sponsored HB26-1038 in the 2026 legislative session that would have required expansion to five commissioners for any county with more than 70,000 residents. That 2026 bill, the fourth Marshall has sponsored since 2023 to expand commissioner boards in large counties, was approved in the Colorado House but did not advance from the Senate. Marshall’s argument for his repeated efforts at legislation is simple:

“Multiple Colorado counties now have populations of hundreds of thousands, with budgets in the hundreds of millions. Yet their political structures remain the same from more than a century ago: electing three commissioners at-large.

At-large voting excludes political minorities from a voice in their local government, no matter who is the political minority. Early in American history, a majority of states voted at-large to elect congressional delegations. The resulting unrepresentative political power led Congress in 1842 to mandate all states use district-based elections for Congress that we know today, over the objections of ‘States Rights’ and ‘Local Control’ made by opponents to that reform.”

Current commissioners and candidates on the ballot initiative

In a recent response to Denver 7 News, Commissioner Abe Laydon offered simply, “Things rarely improve by adding politicians.”

Conversely, Commissioner George Teal expressed his support of the petition to expand to a five-member board, rationalizing that it would “effectively eliminate term limits in Douglas County.” On that point, Teal is misinformed according to Colorado law and a clarifying Attorney General opinion.

See Teal’s statement at about 1:41 in this interview with Denver 7 News.

According to Colorado Counties, Inc. (CCI), the citizens of Colorado passed an amendment to create Article 18, Section 11 of the Colorado Constitution in 1994. Section 11 limits local elected officials, including county commissioners, to two consecutive four-year terms. It also contains a provision that allows local governments to seek voter approval to change those term limits. Some counties have made voter-approved changes, but Douglas County is not one of them, despite efforts in 2003, 2004, and 2011 to extend to a three-consecutive-term limit.

Section 11 provides a clear definition of the term consecutive:

“For purposes of this Section 11, terms are considered consecutive unless they are four years apart.”

That, together with a July, 2000 Formal Opinion issued by former Attorney General Ken Salazar, clarifies that redistricting and/or changing from at-large to district voting will not allow a term limited official to run without the four-year gap prescribed in Section 11. Salazar’s detailed opinion concludes:

Commissioner Abe Laydon is term-limited at the end of 2026, and three candidates are in the running for his vacant seat. Irene Bonham is the sole Democratic candidate on the ballot. Jake Bockenfeld and John Diak will face off in the Republican primary election on June 30, 2026 to decide which of them will run against Bonham in the November general election.

Irene Bonham

Bonham believes Douglas County has outgrown a three-member commission. “Each commissioner represents over 130,000 people…A five-member board would reduce the number of constituents each commissioner represents, allowing for more direct engagement and a deeper understanding of local issues,” she wrote in a recent blog post.

In response to our request for a statement for this story, Bonham replied,

“Yes, I support the petition to expand the Douglas County Board of Commissioners from 3 to 5 members and have signed it. Douglas County has grown into one of the largest counties in Colorado with nearly 400,000 residents and communities with very different needs and priorities. But our county government structure has not kept pace with that growth…In a three member system, two commissioners alone make up a majority of the board. That’s a lot of power…Ultimately, I see this as a good-governance issue, not a partisan one. As Douglas County continues to grow, our system of representation should evolve with it.”

Jake Bockenfeld

Bockenfeld opposes expansion of the Board. In an April 7 debate with Diak, Bockenfeld asserted that an expansion would create “voting blocs” in which “urban areas would outvote rural areas…so our rural constituents would no longer have a voice on the Board of County Commissioners.”

He concluded, “Douglas County has always had three. Why would we need more now? What’s changed other than the radicals and the Gang of Four trying to take over Douglas County?”

In response to our request for a statement for this story, Bockenfeld provided this statement.

“I do not believe expanding government is the right solution. Adding two more commissioners means adding more salaries, staff, administrative costs, and taxpayer burden. All without any clear benefit to the citizens. Before growing government, we should be focused on making the current system work more efficiently.”

John Diak

In the same April 7 debate, Diak said, “I’m open to it,” and explained, “When you have five, you have the ability to have more minds in a discussion.” He went on to describe how a larger board would make it possible for two commissioners to work together to discuss and refine ideas without violating open meeting laws so that better proposals can be brought before the entire board to achieve better outcomes for the community.

Diak did not respond to our request to provide a statement for this story.

What happens next?

Angela Thomas sums up the effort she’s spearheading this way:

“This initiative is about strengthening local democracy by ensuring Douglas County residents have better representation, more accountability, and more voices at the table as our county continues to grow. Expanding from three commissioners to five is a modest investment in better governance that gives communities across Douglas County a stronger voice in the decisions that shape their daily lives.”

She plans to submit the petition to the County Clerk in late July. “Until then,” she says, “watch for our volunteer circulators wherever you go in Douglas County.”

According to Thomas, August 3rd is the final deadline to submit signatures to the County Clerk. The Clerk then reviews signatures and determines whether the issue qualifies for the ballot. The deadline for that decision by the County Clerk is September 2nd, and, if the issue qualifies, it will appear on the November 2026 election ballot for Douglas County voters to decide.

Happy May and a belated monthly recap from The Lantern!

I want to start with suggested reading. Louviers Water District reached a major milestone in its journey to improved water quality. Meanwhile, former county commissioner Lora Thomas, Rep. Bob Marshall, and Julie Gooden dispatched a settlement offer to the Board of County Commissioners after the Commissioners were found to have violated Colorado’s Open Meeting Laws when they initiated their Home Rule election last year.

Pulse Check

The Lantern is doing very well heading into summer! We will soon announce a new addition to the writing team, we picked up our publishing pace to be more in-line with what we want it to be, and we’re working on stories and series that add a tremendous amount of value to the community discourse.

We are staggeringly close to celebrating our first anniversary and as we head into our second year it’s clear we are going to focus on county government, water, education, metro districts, and human interest stories that have a difficult time gaining traction with larger channels. Have an idea, tip, or want to write a guest piece? Email me at editor@dougcolantern.org.

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At the April 21st meeting of the Douglas County Board of Education, Directors considered a proposal from the Douglas County Commissioners to provide:

• $347,300 in first-year funding for two new School Resource Officers (SROs) to serve Larkspur Elementary and Cherry Valley Elementary in Franktown

• Nearly 10 times that amount, just over $3 million, to share costs for Evolv entryway security equipment for ten DCSD schools

The Douglas County Commissioners’ proposal specified the vendor (Evolv), the specific equipment setup for each of 10 DCSD schools, and a 48-month lease term. Commissioners invited Evolv representatives to a presentation with the District’s Safety and Security Committee and high school principals.

The proposal from the County Commissioners did not cover three critical points:

• The evidence for the effectiveness of entryway security systems in schools

• The costs of staffing those systems

• How entryway security systems would fit into DCSD’s existing, comprehensive approach to safety and security

A multilayered approach to safety and security

Douglas County School District has prioritized security for years. Director of Safety and Security Jonny Grusing is a nationally recognized expert in his field who leads a comprehensive, multilayered strategy for the District’s safety and security. Many DougCo residents first heard Grusing’s name when he conducted a Safety and Security Forum for the community in the wake of the September Evergreen High School shooting. But Grusing has spent 5 years with DCSD and comes with over two decades of FBI service.

DCSD’s current annual operating budget for safety and security is $10 million; the District serves 61,535 students. (For reference, Cherry Creek School District (51,844 students) budgets $12.7 million for District Security and JeffCo Public Schools(74,177 students) budgets $13.1 million for Security and Emergency Management.) Grusing directs DCSD’s safety and security budget and has overseen the use of an additional one-time sum of $16 million approved by voters in 2023 and 2024. Those dollars were earmarked for capital improvements (e.g., secure vestibules, door hardware, camera systems, and fire systems) and human capital investments (e.g., SROs, Campus Security Specialists, and evening security at high schools).

In a presentation to the school board, Deputy Superintendent Danelle Hiatt emphasized the District’s focus on creating inclusive culture, a sense of belonging, community engagement, and strong relationships within schools as the foundation for school safety and security. Counselors, school psychologists, nurses, school social workers, and administrators are another key component in DCSD’s approach to supporting and ensuring the safety of all students. DCSD boasts that its 298:1 student to counselor ratio is one of the best in the region. However, it does not meet the 250:1 ratio recommended by the American School Counselor Association.

Grusing noted that DCSD has more SROs and Campus Security Specialists than any other area school district. Douglas County Schools have also added night security at all comprehensive high schools, starting after school and continuing until buildings close at 10pm. Grusing pointed to these human resources and several other capital improvements, including stadium security measures, as critical elements of the District’s overall safety and security strategy.

What does the evidence say?

Entryway security systems - and the security personnel required to operate them - provide visible and tangible evidence that school leaders are doing something to address safety issues. However, critics suggest security companies have a profit motive to prey on fear.

Much of the evidence for the effectiveness of entryway security systems comes from the vendors themselves. In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission took action against one of those vendors over “allegations that the company made false claims about the extent to which its AI-powered security screening system can detect weapons and ignore harmless personal items, including in school settings.” That vendor was Evolv, the vendor the Commissioners selected in 2025 for their proposed partnership with the school district.

Grusing confirmed that entryway metal detectors in schools have never been recommended as an additional safety measure by Douglas County Sheriff’s Office or other law enforcement partners. In response to a question from Director Brad Geiger about evidence that metal detectors reduce violence in schools, Hiatt answered, “The evidence of effectiveness is inconclusive.”

While the evidence for reducing violence and preventing shootings in schools is thin, researchers consistently report that “measures intended to combat school violence – such as the placement of school officers and the use of metal detectors – may also negatively affect the well-being of students and their sense of safety.” Given the data, school officials must carefully consider both the costs and the benefits of entryway security technologies and other investments in safety and security.

What are the costs?

Jonny Grusing estimated that the costs of staffing entryway security systems in ten DCSD schools would exceed $9 million per year — and that would not include the cost of the equipment itself. Grusing noted that the purpose of entryway security is to detect weapons so it must be staffed by armed security; in DCSD that means an SRO plus 2-4 additional security staff members for monitoring and search management.

Superintendent Kane noted that the total annual cost of $10.5 million for the security and equipment would be equivalent to over 140 DCSD staff positions. Devoting $10.5 million just for entryway security would require the District to more than double its current annual general fund operating budget for all safety and security. To afford these entryway security systems, the District would need to make $10.5 million in cuts to other programs, and Kane noted those cuts would be in addition to $15 million in cuts the District is already expecting for the 2027-2028 school year.

Where should schools invest…and who should decide?

Feedback from building-level leaders (like principals) revealed an extensive list of concerns about the installation of entryway security systems in DCSD high schools. Impacts on school culture, climate, and perception of safety, student wellbeing, staff workloads, and financial constraints were all concerns. Leaders also provided alternative ideas for investments in their individual schools’ safety. Ultimately, not one building-level administrator wanted to bring an entryway security system into their school — despite the Commissioners’ offer to pay the cost for any single school that requested one.

Data from KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation) suggest that less than 1 in 1,000 students in Colorado will be exposed to a school shooting. That’s too many. But for comparison, about 1 in 4 students in Colorado have one more more diagnosed emotional, behavioral, or developmental conditions. And over 50% of students age 12-17 report difficulty accessing mental health care. When mental health concerns go unaddressed, their impact grows and worsens.

Many educators argue that school shootings become more likely as students feel more disconnected and disaffected at school — and as the adults around them lack the time and resources to address that disconnection and disaffection. This is the evidence-based rationale behind DCSD’s priority for relationships, belonging, inclusivity, and engagement.

Children who have one or more emotional, behavioral, or developmental conditions in United States

As the Board of Education deliberated on a response to the Commissioners, Director Geiger expressed appreciation for Commissioner Laydon’s concern for DCSD students, noted that MLO and Bond funds could not be spent on this project, and in light of expected cuts proposed that both the effectiveness of the proposed Evolv equipment and current budget constraints make it impossible to accept the Commissioners’ cost sharing offer.

Directors unanimously passed a motion directing Superintendent Kane to draft a letter to the Commissioners thanking them for their generous offer and their commitment to school safety, and inquiring if they would be willing to redirect the $3 million from the Evolv technology to help fund secure vestibules in all DCSD middle schools and increase SRO coverage for DCSD’s most rural schools.

Questions we need answered:

• Will the Douglas County Commissioners redirect their $3 million offer to help DCSD address its most critical needs for ensuring school safety and security?

• In the face of looming budget cuts, how will DCSD prioritize investments in the student support they describe as the foundation for school safety — particularly with respect to student-to-counselor ratios and ensuring access to mental health support for students who need it?

To learn more about DCSD’s approach to safety and security, view the September 2025 Safety and Security Forum:

Related Articles:

Additional Reading:

Examining School Shootings at the National and State Level and Mental Health Implications

Youth Mental Health Statistics - Annie E. Casey Foundation

FTC Takes Action Against Evolv Technologies for Deceiving Users About its AI-Powered Security Screening Systems

As More Schools Turn to AI Weapons Detection, Questions Persist

Located in northwest Castle Rock, The Meadows neighborhood is a tranquil scene of suburban Colorado life. Over the course of four decades, a quiet fiscal problem has grown into a massive outlier. In most communities, property taxes pay for schools, roads, public safety, and county or municipal operations. But in the Meadows, about a third of residents’ property tax bills fund something else: paying off a debt that was created before most of the neighborhood existed. That debt, originally $57 million, is nearly half a billion dollars today, despite decades of taxes collected to repay it.

How did $57 million in infrastructure bonds from the 1980s balloon into a $454 million obligation? Because not one dollar of the original principal has been paid down. Now, after 40 years, residents are starting to do something about it.

The Meadows & Colorado Metro Districts

To understand The Meadows, you first need to understand how metro districts work in Colorado. There are nearly 2,500 metro districts across the state, and they quietly shape property taxes for hundreds of thousands of residents.

A metropolitan district is a form of local government created under Colorado law. Developers create metro districts to finance public infrastructure — roads, sewer lines, water systems, and more — before homes are built and before there are any residents to pay taxes. The district issues municipal bonds to cover construction costs. Those bonds are then repaid through a dedicated property tax charged to every homeowner within the district’s boundaries over the life of the bond, typically 20 to 30 years.

The benefit to homebuyers is straightforward: spreading infrastructure costs over time keeps home prices low upfront. According to the Colorado Association of Home Builders, public infrastructure typically adds $30,000 to $40,000 to the price of a new home if paid without a bond. Metro districts, in theory, solve that problem by deferring the cost over the life of a loan.

Colorado’s property tax assessments are filled with terms most people do not need in everyday life, but a “mill levy” is a good term to know. One mill equals $1 per $1,000 of assessed value. Assessed value is a percentage of a property’s actual value, what a property would sell for on the market. When stacked on top of county, school district, and other taxes, metro district taxes often represent a significant portion of a total property tax bill.

The tax structure for metro districts has a critical problem: developers often control a metro district’s board of directors from the moment the district is formed, long before a single home is built or a single resident moves in. The developer sets the debt ceiling, issues the bonds, and in some cases purchases the bonds they vote to issue — collecting interest payments from the very homeowners whose property secures the debt and to whom they just sold a home.

State Sen. Lisa Frizell, who represents Castle Rock and lives in The Meadows, has said she has “seen a lot of kind of shady dealings by metro districts over the years.” Reform advocates have been more direct. John Henderson, who co-founded Coloradans for Metro District Reform, describes the structure as “a lifetime annuity that pays out, guaranteed by the most secure source of revenue you can imagine — taxes.”

How Money For Roads Became A Billion Dollars In Debt

The Meadows is the largest master-planned community in Castle Rock, located due south of Castle Pines Village across Highway 85 and southwest of the Castle Rock Outlets. Development began in the mid-1980s, when the community’s seven metro districts issued approximately $57 million in bonds to build the roads, sewer systems, and other infrastructure that made the neighborhood possible.

The original debt plan was manageable. Bond terms from 1991 projected a full payoff between 2006 and 2021 — a 15-to-30-year timeline that would have freed thousands of homeowners from the excess tax obligation long before now.

That plan changed in 1993.

In October of that year, facing tax revenue shortfalls as the development built out more slowly than projected, the debt was reorganized to approximately $86 million and approved by the Town of Castle Rock, with a “bond sinking fund” designed to retain up to $10 million in reserves. A bond sinking fund is a kind of reserve account that helps pay off large debts. Then, just two months later, in December 1993, the seven metro district boards entered into a separate agreement with bond holders that materially changed the terms of what Castle Rock had just approved.

According to documents uncovered by Castle Rock resident and real estate agent Jim Garcia, who has spent years digging through filings from the 1980s and 1990s, those December changes converted what was intended to be a new 30-to-40-year payoff into a structure that could extend more than 100 years. Bond terms were restructured so that interest would compound without principal reduction for decades. Bonds were issued with options to allow no payment and partial payment when due, meaning the districts were not required to reduce principal…only to service the compounding interest.

The result, as Garcia’s accounting firm documented through a formal financial review, is stark:

• $70,000,000 — Current principal outstanding (of the original 1993 amount)

• $383,832,189 — Unpaid accrued interest as of December 31, 2024

• $453,832,189 — Total outstanding balance as of December 31, 2024

• $202,028,801 — Total interest already paid by homeowners, 1988–2024

Meadows residents have collectively paid more than $200 million since the late 1980s, and the debt has grown — not shrunk — to more than $450 million. In 2023 alone, the seven districts collected nearly $14 million in property taxes plus more than $1 million in car registrations, but the outstanding debt still increased by more than $20 million that year.

The bond holder is an entity called Castle Rock Bonds LLC. According to Garcia’s research, the bond holder is seeking roughly $600 million in total tax revenue before discharging the debt. So a $57 million infrastructure project from the 1980’s is on pace to cost taxpayers more than $1 billion.

Compounding interest on the 1993-restructured bonds is set to continue accruing through June 1, 2029. At that point, all principal and accrued interest must be paid in full to discharge the debt. The final figure is still unknown, but with five more years of compounding between now and then, the number will be substantially larger than the $454 million outstanding today.

Who Approved The Debt

Metro districts are governed by publicly elected boards. But when a district is first formed, the developer and their associates typically hold all board seats; they are often the only people eligible to vote and run, since no residents exist yet. As a community builds out, residents become eligible to join those boards. In most districts, that transition happens naturally. In The Meadows, it largely did not.

For more than three decades, boards for Districts 2 through 7 were controlled by individuals affiliated with the developer and the bond holder. The same names appeared repeatedly across multiple boards. District 1 was the only board that had transitioned to partial resident control. District 4, described as the master district that controls the bond debt finances, remained entirely in developer hands.

Residents who tried to run for District 4 in 2025 were told by metro district attorneys that their properties were excluded from the district’s boundaries and they were therefore ineligible — despite living within The Meadows and paying the tax.

“That definitely inspired me to want to get involved,” said Larry Canepa, one of those rejected candidates, “and then to receive a letter from the attorney for the metro district saying that none of the homeowners were eligible was very upsetting.”

For 35 years, while homeowners paid their property taxes, the boards overseeing where the money went were controlled by the very parties receiving the funds.

Residents Take Control, And Lawyer Up

That changed on May 6, 2025.

After CBS Colorado published an investigation in February 2025 revealing the full scope of the debt, dozens of Meadows residents organized to run for the metro district boards. More than 200 people expressed interest in candidacy. In Districts 1, 2, 3, 6, and 7, enough residents ran that they took control of those boards. Districts 4 and 5, where residents say they were blocked or deterred from running, remained under the control of developers.

For the first time in the community’s history, property owners now control a majority of the seven district boards and the bank accounts that flow through them.

Jim Garcia, who had been researching the debt for five years before the CBS investigation, was elected president of the District 1 board — the district carrying the highest individual share of the outstanding debt.

The newly resident-controlled boards moved quickly. By the end of May 2025, District 1 had contracted with a team of attorneys specializing in Colorado metro bond law and litigation. The legal team spent more than three months reviewing original bond documents, intergovernmental cost-sharing agreements, and decades of financial records.

As of the most recent public update, the legal team has eliminated some past legal strategies, identified a limited number of avenues to fix the debt problem, and requested more time to work the problem. Garcia has been clear that all bond payments will continue without interruption while the legal review proceeds. The goal is to understand whether any legal mechanism exists to restructure, reduce, or accelerate the payoff of the debt. On its current trajectory, it will not be discharged in the lifetimes of most current homeowners.

The Metro District Inside the County Seat

The Town of Castle Rock’s role in this situation raises its own questions.

In 1993, the Town approved reorganization of the metro district debt. But when Garcia provided town officials with original legal documents he had uncovered — including the December 1993 agreement that changed the bond terms — Castle Rock stated it had not previously seen or reviewed those documents. The town, which would have been a party to the October 1993 Plan, was apparently unaware of the subsequent modification that brought the current situation to bear.

After conversations with Garcia in late 2024 and early 2025, the Town of Castle Rock retained an outside legal firm rather than engaging substantively with residents on the underlying debt questions. The Town has not publicly explained the 1993 restructuring, its own oversight role during the intervening decades, or what, if anything, it can do now to support the more than 7,500 homeowners in The Meadows.

Colorado Grapples with Metro District Reform

The Meadows is not an isolated case. It is, as John Henderson of Coloradans for Metro District Reform put it, “the poster child” for what can go wrong when metro district structures lack accountability.

According to state Sen. Mike Weissman, authorized but unissued debt by metro districts across Colorado exceeds $1 trillion. About 100 new metro districts are approved every year, and there are nearly 2,500 currently operating statewide.

At the Colorado State Capitol, The Meadows situation drew attention in 2025. State Sen. Lisa Frizell and Rep. Max Brooks, both Castle Rock-area Republicans who sit on the Legislative Audit Committee, pushed for a performance audit of the Department of Local Affairs’ oversight of metro districts. Weissman, a Democrat, also called for an audit.

Rep. Dafna Michaelson Jenet introduced HB 25-1079, which would have expanded the jurisdiction of the state’s Independent Ethics Commission to cover special district board members and their direct hires, creating a formal avenue for ethics complaints. The bill passed the House but was killed in a Senate committee in May 2025 — the third consecutive year a similar measure failed to become law.

Industry representatives say significant reforms have been enacted since the 1980s, including TABOR protections, debt mill levy caps, and new transparency requirements. Kyle Thomas, a managing director at D.A. Davidson Development Finance, acknowledged that “you wouldn’t see that same scenario as The Meadows” under current law — but noted that for existing debt structures, the most realistic path forward is negotiation with the debt holder.

What Homeowners in The Meadows Should Know

A few points that Garcia has emphasized publicly are worth clarifying for current and prospective residents:

• The 35-mill tax rate is fixed and cannot be increased. Developers across Colorado are currently seeking mill authorizations in the range of 70 to 95 mills for new developments — two to three times the cap on what Meadows residents pay.

• No special assessments can be levied on individual properties under the current bond agreements.

• And the metro district boards are entirely separate from The Meadows HOA, which manages community events and shared amenities. The HOA has no role in the bond debt.

What is uncertain is when, or if, the debt will ever be fully discharged. If the legal team finds no viable remedy and no negotiated restructuring occurs, the outstanding balance will continue to grow until the 2029 interest-stop date, at which point the remaining debt must be paid in full. Given that the 7,500 properties currently generate roughly $20 million per year in metro district tax revenue, a lump-sum payoff at that scale is not feasible without some form of restructuring.

The Questions We Need Answered

• Who is receiving the massive interest payments secured by taxpayers?

• Did the metro district boards agree in December 1993 to materially change the bond terms approved just two months earlier by the Town of Castle Rock without Castle Rock’s knowledge?

• Why has not one dollar of original principal on the bond issue been reduced in more than 35 years of property tax payments?

• Why were residents in District 4 — the master district that controls the bond finances — ruled ineligible to run for the board?

• What is the Town of Castle Rock’s current legal position on its responsibilities to Meadows homeowners?

Sources & Suggested Reading

• “The Meadows Metro Bond Property Tax,” Jim Garcia Homes

• “The Meadows Metro Bond Tax Fiasco,” Jim Garcia Homes

• “Meadows neighborhood carrying hundreds of millions in bond debt,” CBS News Colorado

• “Dozens of Castle Rock homeowners run for metro district board to tackle $434 million bond debt,” CBS News Colorado

• “State lawmakers weigh metro district oversight bill,” CBS News Colorado

• “Residents of master-planned community win majority control of metro district boards,” CBS News Colorado

• “Special district oversight legislation advances as advocates push metro district reform,” CBS News Colorado

• Special Districts: A Brief Review for Residents, Colorado Department of Local Government

• HB22-1363, Colorado General Assembly

• HB25-1079, Colorado Capitol Watch

• Metro Districts Overview, Home Builders Association of Metro Denver

• Metro District Reform, metrodistrictreform.org

• “Metro district reform bill bars developers from buying own bonds,” Colorado Politics, April 2022

The April 15th meeting of Perry Park Water and Sanitation District (PPWSD) focused on clear communication with residents. Covering a wide range of topics, the meeting ran over two hours, and attendees were encouraged to provide feedback and ask questions. Some of the biggest and most important questions for the District were not addressed.

Residents of Perry Park are facing steeply increasing fees for water and sewer service. On the heels of a Sewer Capital Fee approved in March, Directors announced this week that fee will soon double.

Perry Park is left wondering: Why the additional increase only one month later? And will that be the last of the increases?

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Long Term Capital Improvement Plan

The Sewer Capital Fee of $45 every other month that Directors approved in March was actually an error. They explained that the increase was intended to be $45 per month ($90 on customers’ bimonthly bills), but the lower amount was noticed to the public and approved by the Board as a result of a typo. Directors will restart the mandatory public notice process, and customers can expect to begin seeing the correct $90 fee on their bimonthly bills by the end of summer.

The Sewer Capital Fee is intended to pay the costs of an $8.25 million certificates of participation agreement with a 20-year term for improvements to the Waucondah Waste Water Treatment Plant — that project is already under construction. (The total cost of the project is over $9 million, and the District is funding the difference with cash reserves.) The District has set no end date for that $90 Sewer Capital Fee.

PPWSD Directors shared their Capital Improvement Plan at the April meeting, as part of an effort to maximize transparency with residents. However, a detailed look at the plan raises significant questions about how future improvements will be funded. Those questions did not come out at the April meeting.

Although it was not discussed at the April 15 meeting, the District’s next large capital outlay ($11.5 million) is scheduled to begin in 2032 for the Sageport Wastewater Treatment Plant. That $11.5 million project would begin in year six of the District’s 20-year term on the certificates of participation for the current Waucondah project. If the $90 fee per billing cycle is covering only the Waucondah improvements, where will the funding for the even greater cost of the Sageport improvements come from?

Castle Rock Water Discussions

Directors confirmed that discussions are ongoing for the possibility of selling or leasing the District’s excess renewable water to Castle Rock Water. Due to lower-than-average snow pack, stream flows of that renewable water are currently at about 30% of normal flow, raising questions about whether there will be any excess water available to sell this year.

In years with average stream flows, PPWSD has rights to more renewable water than its current water treatment plant (Glen Grove) is capable of processing. Directors explained this as one reason for exploring the possibility of selling excess water to Castle Rock. Closing any deal with Castle Rock for that water would likely require a trip to water court.

The District’s Capital Improvement Plan includes no scheduled expenditures to increase the capacity of its Glen Grove plant before 2045, and the current estimate for 2045 improvements is nearly $8 million. That project is scheduled to start two decades from now — 13 years after the Sageport project. Meanwhile, the District will continue to add wells as needed and draw from the aquifer groundwater rather than increasing the use of renewable water to meet the District’s needs.

Drought, Water Restrictions, and Wildfire Risk

The 70% reduction in stream flows PPWSD is experiencing is not unique. However, Director Arthurs noted that municipal reserves in Douglas County remain stable for now. Directors discussed increased wildfire risks and various water restrictions and incentives, including Castle Rock’s water rebates to encourage conservation efforts ranging from landscaping and irrigation choices to toilet upgrades. The board asked for feedback from attendees on how to communicate with residents about water conservation and did not take action to initiate incentive programs or restrictions, noting that there have never been water restrictions in the District before.

Perry Park LIDS (Local Improvement Districts)

Although not on the agenda, a brief discussion of Local Improvement Districts (LIDs) occurred in response to a resident question about development and how it affects PPWSD. There are three separate proposals in process with the county that would affect 128 lots in Perry Park designated as “currently unbuildable parcels.” Owners of those parcels have worked together to petition Douglas County to assist in the building of roadways, storm and sanitary sewers, and gas and electric lines to benefit those owners — and to be funded by those owners. This would add users to PPWSD, helping to spread out costs among a larger number of ratepayers, but without cost to the District itself for constructing the necessary infrastructure.

Other Water News in Perry Park

Water Meter Replacement

Concerns about unaccounted for water, possibly due to outdated meters, have prompted the District’s $1.5 million meter replacement project. However, communication issues are slowing that effort, especially for residents with inside meters. Perry Park water customers can contact Flush Plumbing to schedule installation.

Board Vacancy Filled

Directors appointed longtime Perry Park resident, geophysical engineer, and environmental consultant Maggie Bierbaum to fill the vacancy created by the March resignation of Jim Maras. The board noted that the next election will be in May 2027 for three seats; current Directors Gary Peterson and Brian Arthurs will be term limited, and Bierbaum will be eligible to run to retain her appointed seat.

Questions we need answered about PPWSD’s future:

• What risks to PPWSD’s water rights could be associated with going to water court to contract for the sale or lease of excess renewable water to Castle Rock Water?

• What plans does the District have for funding the capital improvements of Sageport Water Treatment Plant ($11.5 million) that are scheduled to begin in 2032?

• What additional fee increases can Perry Park residents expect to fund future capital improvements for the District?

Related Articles:

Colorado is having its worst snowpack year on record. That is not a local quirk or a bad season — water officials are calling it “exceedingly grim,” and the conditions that produced it are unlikely to be a one-time event. For Douglas County, this drought is more than a lawn-watering inconvenience. It is a stress test for a water system that already supports substantial growth in the arid American West, and it is raising urgent questions about whether the county’s development machine is built for a drier future.

Facts On The Ground In April

Colorado’s 2025–2026 snowpack peaked nearly a month early and came in as the lowest on record — worse than anything state water managers have tracked since at least 1941. The South Platte River Basin, which supplies the eastern half of the state and serves as the primary renewable water source for much of Douglas County’s long-term planning, is sitting at roughly 42% of normal. An unusually warm spring has accelerated snowmelt, meaning that thin snowpack is evaporating faster than it can be captured and stored.

State water officials convened an emergency session of the Colorado Water Conservation Board in January. By March, Denver Water — which serves 1.5 million people, including portions of Douglas County’s northern corridor — declared its first Stage 1 drought restrictions since 2013, asking customers to cut use by 20% and limiting outdoor watering to two assigned days per week. It was the utility’s fifth-ever drought declaration.

Aurora Water, which is the primary water supplier for the rapidly growing northwest Douglas County region through its arrangement with Dominion Water, formally declared Stage 1 drought restrictions in early April, targeting the same 20% reduction. Aurora’s reservoirs were sitting at approximately 68% capacity as of late March — representing only about 1.5 years of usable supply, with officials warning that Stage 2 restrictions requiring 35% reductions could follow if goals are not met.

The drought is already generating real costs for households. Denver Water imposed drought surcharges in April that will add anywhere from $7 to $76 to a summer bill depending on how much outdoor water a customer uses. Castle Rock Water is preparing its own tiered surcharges subject to town council approval, starting at roughly $6.91 per thousand gallons and rising to $10.31 if conditions worsen. One economic reality behind these fees: when utilities ask customers to use less water, they collect less revenue — Denver Water estimates a potential $30 to $70 million loss in revenue this year — and they pass some of those operating costs back to ratepayers through drought pricing. Customers are asked to conserve, and then asked to pay more for reduced use.

How Drought Restrictions Work, and Who Decides

Douglas County has no single water utility. Water is delivered by a patchwork of more than 20 entities — municipal departments, special districts, and metro districts — plus roughly 10,000 homes are on domestic wells. Each provider sets its own drought response policy, triggered by its own standards, approved by its own governing body. There is no countywide switch that someone flips.

The three largest providers — Highlands Ranch Water, Parker Water & Sanitation District, and Castle Rock Water — together serve about 70% of county residents. Each has a drought response plan structured in stages, with increasingly restrictive mandates at each level:

A Drought Watch is the earliest stage — voluntary conservation, public outreach, no mandatory restrictions. Highlands Ranch Water declared a watch on March 1, citing severe drought and predicting customer demand 22% above normal. Parker Water and Castle Rock issued conservation advisories around the same time, recommending customers delay sprinkler activation until mid-May and fix leaks before the season begins.

A Drought Stage is mandatory. Stage 1 typically means outdoor watering is limited to two or three assigned days per week with restrictions on what hours of the day water can be used on lawns. Stage 2 escalates cuts further, often requiring a 25–35% overall reduction, with commercial customers included. Castle Rock Water is preparing a Stage 1 request for council approval. Highlands Ranch is expected to watch conditions through spring before deciding.

The key variable is reservoir storage — specifically, how many months of usable supply a utility currently holds. Aurora Water’s threshold for Stage 1 is a 19- to 24-month supply. Denver Water’s is measured similarly. When a utility’s board or council votes to declare a drought stage, that action triggers mandatory rules. Violations can result in fines.

For homeowners on domestic wells, who are almost entirely unaffected by utility drought rules, the picture is different — and in some ways more precarious. Wells that draw from shallow aquifers can see yields drop significantly in drought years. Homeowners on wells are largely on their own.

How Douglas County Sources Water and Plans Ahead

To understand how drought hits Douglas County, it helps to understand that the county draws from two fundamentally different kinds of water, each with its own vulnerability.

Non-renewable groundwater from the Denver Basin aquifer system was the original backbone of Douglas County’s explosive growth. These deep bedrock aquifers sit beneath the Front Range from Greeley to Colorado Springs. They are non-renewable in the sense that the water that fills them fell as precipitation thousands of years ago and replenishes on geologic timescales, not human lifetimes. Pumping them is mining. Each well draws from a finite pool. As that pool shrinks, wells must go deeper, pumps work harder, and costs rise.

The good news is that deep Denver Basin groundwater is largely insulated from the current drought. You can’t fill it back up with a wet winter, but you also can’t drain it with a hot, dry summer. For utilities that still rely heavily on groundwater pumping — particularly smaller metro districts serving newer developments — this year’s drought is not an immediate crisis at the tap because they rely heavily on pumping groundwater, not siphoning off rivers.

Renewable surface water is the other half of the story, and it’s where drought lands hardest. Over the past two decades, Douglas County’s major providers have been working to shift their supply portfolios toward renewable sources: South Platte River water stored in reservoirs, recycled water for irrigation, and regional exchanges like WISE (Water Infrastructure and Supply Efficiency), which enables traded water deliveries among Aurora Water, Denver Water, and suburban partners.

Renewable water sources have tremendous upside for cost and sustainability, but are vulnerable to drought, climate change, and disasters. The South Platte River’s yield is near zero in dry years. The river’s flow, and therefore its yield, can swing from near nothing in drought years to 55,000 acre-feet in a wet year. Planning around flow variability requires substantial reservoir storage as a buffer.

The Platte Valley Water Partnership, a $780 million project anchored by Parker Water and recently joined by Castle Rock Water, is designed precisely for this problem: capturing high-flow South Platte water in wet years, storing it in northeastern Colorado reservoirs, and piping it south for use in Douglas County. That project is still years from completion.

The Aurora Water Connection: A Critical Vulnerability

One of the least-discussed but most significant water dependencies in Douglas County runs through the City of Aurora. Aurora Water is the primary supplier for Dominion Water & Sanitation District, the entity that provides water to Sterling Ranch — one of the fastest-growing master-planned communities in northwest Douglas County, and a development with new approvals to build thousands of additional homes.

Sterling Ranch is growing, it is served by Dominion Water, and Dominion Water depends on Aurora. Aurora Water just declared Stage 1 drought restrictions, with officials warning Stage 2 could follow.

This chain of dependencies is a structural vulnerability in Douglas County’s growth story. Aurora Water’s general manager told city lawmakers in March that the utility had “about a year and a half worth of usable supply” in its reservoirs — a thin margin that leaves limited room for error. Aurora’s supply portfolio draws from mountain watersheds that are all being battered by the same historic drought affecting every other Front Range water utility.

Douglas County’s draft 2050 Water Plan does not squarely address what happens if Aurora Water, under pressure from its own growth and drought conditions, is unable or unwilling to expand deliveries to Dominion on the timeline that Sterling Ranch’s development projections require. It is an open question that the county has not yet answered when granting approvals for new development.

How Douglas County’s Water Supply Has Changed in the Last Decade

Ten years ago, a larger share of Douglas County’s water came from groundwater pumping. That has changed as utilities invest in renewable sources and reuse initiatives.

The major providers have made real progress. Castle Rock Water now operates one of the most diverse supply portfolios on the Front Range, combining local surface water, recycled supplies, regional imports, and strategic groundwater reserves. Highlands Ranch Water has built a system that treats groundwater largely as an emergency backup rather than a primary supply. Parker Water has invested heavily in renewable supply infrastructure, including its WISE partnership and its participation in the Platte Valley project. These are meaningful shifts, made over years of sustained investment and multi-jurisdictional cooperation.

The picture is murkier with smaller water providers — metro districts that often serve newly approved developments. Many of these districts still rely primarily on Denver Basin groundwater, and the county’s approval of new developments frequently depends on water commitments from districts that have not yet secured long-term renewable supply. The 2050 Water Plan acknowledges this dependency but does not establish a clear threshold at which groundwater reliance becomes too high to justify new development approvals.

The other major change in the last decade is efficiency. Per-home water use across the county has declined as newer homes are built to tighter standards and as utilities have invested in smart irrigation, rebates for turf conversion, and tiered pricing that penalizes heavy use.

All in, water is the currency for growth in Douglas County.

What Drought Means for Growth

If droughts like this one become the norm rather than the exception, at what point does water availability constrain growth? The draft 2050 Water Plan does not treat that as a question worth asking. Growth is assumed and treated as a constant — roughly 150,000 new residents and nearly 70,000 new households by 2050 — water is a variable, and water planning is framed as the exercise of finding a way to approve growth plans, not a question to answer before beginning construction. The plan’s own numbers show the buffer between supply and demand shrinking: demand up 30%, supply up only 12% through 2050. That math works today, but not if dry years reduce renewable surface water deliveries and increase the cost of groundwater alternatives at the same time.

The 2026 snowpack illustrates what a supply squeeze looks like. When snowpack collapses and renewable water deliveries fall, utilities that depend on those deliveries have two options: pull more from groundwater reserves (which pushes up costs and accelerates depletion) or tell customers to use less. Both options cost money. Both options make water more expensive. And more expensive water is a cost that ultimately falls on ratepayers.

For housing development to continue at its current pace under increasingly dry conditions, Douglas County would need one or more of the following: much larger reservoir storage to buffer renewable supplies, faster completion of projects like the Platte Valley Pipeline, efficiency standards that are enforced, and for climate conditions to hold steady.

The 2050 Water Plan calls the approach it recommends “sustainable.” The Drought of 2026 is a preview of what it will look like when optimistic math gets tested in reality.

The Questions We Need Answered

• How are Douglas County’s utilities coordinating their drought responses with Aurora Water and Denver Water, given how many county residents depend on those external providers?

• What are the water conditions under which Douglas County would halt or slow new housing development approvals?

• If Aurora Water restricts deliveries to Dominion Water during a Stage 2 or Stage 3 drought, what does Sterling Ranch do?

Part One of our water series: “Following the Water: How Douglas County Relies On Water It Does Not Control.”

Part Two: “Following the Water: The County’s Draft 2050 Water Plan.”

Sources & Recommended Reading

• Colorado Water Conservation Board meeting, January 27, 2026 — Michelle Garrison, state water resources specialist: “Things are looking exceedingly grim.” YouTube recording

• Colorado Sun, “Colorado water officials plan for ‘exceedingly grim’ drought forecasts, low reservoir levels,” Shannon Mullane, Jan. 28, 2026. Link

• Colorado Sun, “Front Range water utilities impose restrictions and push conservation to combat drought this summer,” Shannon Mullane and Michael Booth, Mar. 25, 2026. Link — Highlands Ranch Water drought watch; Castle Rock Water Stage 1 consideration; Parker Water’s Ron Redd: “Using water wisely is something we can all practice every year.”

• Colorado Sun, “Even if Coloradans slash their water use, their bills will likely rise during drought,” Jerd Smith, Apr. 3, 2026. Link — Denver Water $30–$70M revenue loss estimate; Castle Rock surcharge rates ($6.91–$10.31/thousand gallons); Aurora Water spokesperson Shonnie Cline: “We always thought that 2002 was the worst possible year, but we are expecting something worse this year.”

• Colorado Sun, “Denver’s lawn-watering costs are going up for the drought. Here’s how much,” Michael Booth, Apr. 9, 2026. Link — Denver Water surcharge tiers; average customer cost $45–$52 extra; “hopes for a Miracle May snowstorm are dimming.”

• Sentinel Colorado, “When In Drought: Aurora prepares for a year of severe water restrictions,” Mar. 25, 2026. Link — Aurora Water General Manager Marshall Brown: “We have about a year and a half worth of usable supply there.” Aurora reservoirs at ~68% capacity.

• Denver7, “Douglas County residents question if county has the water to sustain growth,” Mar. 2026. Link — Highlands Ranch Water Sam Calkins on conservation value; Parker Water Ron Redd on demand increasing 5x in summer; Parker resident Kristin Ionga: “We’re not concerned for our lawn or anything like that, but we’re concerned more about the growth of our area.”

• CPR News, “What to know about water restrictions across Colorado,” updated Apr. 16, 2026. Link — Statewide restriction tracker; South Platte Basin at 42% of normal; Colorado River Basin at 55% of normal.

• KDVR FOX31, “Mandatory watering restrictions ordered for Denver amid drought.” Link — Denver Water spokesperson Todd Hartman: “We are in a really tough spot, we aren’t trying to alarm people but they need to realize this is a record low snowpack.” Denver’s 2026 declaration is its fifth-ever Stage 1.

• City of Aurora, Stage 1 drought declaration, April 2026. Link

• Denver Urban Gardens / Water Conservation FAQ, updated April 1, 2026. Link — Regional drought restriction summary; Douglas County status as of April 1.

• Douglas County Draft 2050 Comprehensive Water Plan. Douglas County Water Plan page — Supply/demand projections (77,000 to 100,000 AFY demand; 143,000 to 160,000 AFY supply through 2050); quote: “if water is used in the same ways and at the same levels that it has been in the last 25 to 50 years, it elevates the risk that sufficient supplies may not be economically available to fully meet demands.”

• Platte Valley Water Partnership project overview. Link

• Water Infrastructure and Supply Efficiency (WISE), Denver Water. Link

“A hot mess, in a dumpster fire, on a train wreck.”

That was the text message one of my fellow delegates showed me as we stood in line for nearly four hours waiting to get into the Colorado Republican State Assembly in Pueblo. I didn’t read about this online. I was there—as a returning delegate—and from the moment I arrived, it was clear something wasn’t right.

More than 2,000 delegates from across the state gathered to nominate candidates for the primary ballot. I arrived at 8:30 a.m. for a 9:00 start and found a line stretching roughly half a mile. Word filtered back that internet connectivity had failed, and the credentialing process—the system used to verify delegates—was being adjusted in real time.

Ironically, that raised an immediate question in my mind. Manual processes weren’t new. In fact, similar assemblies had used paper-based credentialing in the past without issue. Why the sudden dependence on a system that couldn’t function without connectivity?

Eventually, around 1:30 p.m., the assembly began.

Where Things Broke Down

For those unfamiliar, the assembly process starts with credentialing—verifying that each delegate is authorized to vote. Delegates present identification, receive credentials, and are processed into the system. That count becomes the baseline for how many votes should ultimately be cast.

Inside the venue, the process appeared orderly. Delegates voted using paper ballots, deposited into sealed containers, and monitored by volunteers and campaign observers.

But when votes were tallied, a problem emerged: the number of ballots exceeded the number of credentialed delegates. The number circulating among delegates was 87.

At first glance, that sounds alarming. But here’s an important distinction: discrepancies like this are not uncommon in large assemblies. They don’t automatically indicate fraud—they indicate a reconciliation problem.

In previous assemblies I attended, similar discrepancies were resolved by going back to paper records—signature logs or manual credentialing sheets—and verifying the count. In those cases, the issue wasn’t extra ballots. It was an undercount in credentialing.

That option didn’t exist here.

Because portions of the credentialing process relied on electronic scanning—and because some delegates who had technical issues were processed manually without being scanned—the system lacked a complete, auditable backup. When the discrepancy appeared, there was no reliable way to reconcile it in real time.

And that gets to the real crux of the issue.

The Real Issue: Voting Machines vs. Vote Counting

Much of today’s political debate centers on “machines,” but that term is often used too broadly.

There is a critical difference between:

• Voting machines that record votes electronically without a paper trail, and

• Technology used to count or process paper ballots

The concern is not the use of technology itself. In fact, technology—like optical scanners—can dramatically improve speed and consistency in counting.

The concern is auditability.

Systems that replace paper ballots or fail to produce a verifiable record make it difficult—or impossible—to independently confirm results. That’s why election experts across the political spectrum emphasize the importance of voter-verifiable paper ballots.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, systems that rely on paper records allow for meaningful audits and recounts, while purely electronic systems without such records do notⁱ.

Similarly, the National Conference of State Legislatures notes that post-election audits depend on physical ballots or records to verify outcomesⁱⁱ.

What happened at the assembly wasn’t a failure of “machines” in general—it was a failure to maintain a system that could be independently verified when something went wrong.

The Debate That Followed

A few days later, I listened to the Jeff & Bill Show on KNUS 710 AM, where gubernatorial candidate Maria Orms and a host discussed what had happened.

The conversation eventually turned to vote counting accuracy.

One claim suggested that hand-counted ballots are more accurate than machine tabulation. Another claimed that hand counting could be off by as much as 25 percent.

Both statements sounded authoritative. Both couldn’t be right.

So I went looking for the data.

The Real Problem: Defining “Accuracy”

What I found is that most debates about election accuracy are built on a misunderstanding: people are talking about different things.

“Accuracy” in elections can refer toⁱⁱⁱ:

• Machine tabulation precision

• Human counting reliability

• Recount differences

• Final certified outcomes after audits

Without clarifying the metric, statistics can easily be misinterpreted.

What the Data Actually Shows

Across multiple studies and election audits, a consistent pattern emerges^iv:

• Machine tabulation systems, especially optical scanners, are highly accurate under federal testing standards

• Hand counting tends to introduce more variability at scale due to human factors

• Recounts typically show small differences—often tenths of a percent—driven by interpretation, not systemic failure

• Audits consistently confirm that final outcomes are accurate within very small margins

The takeaway is straightforward:

The system is not perfect—but it is designed to detect and correct imperfections.

How Election Accuracy Actually Works

Election integrity depends on layered safeguards:

• Paper ballots create a verifiable record

• Machines provide efficient counting

• Audits verify results

• Recounts resolve close contests

Accuracy doesn’t come from one step—it comes from the system checking itself.

In Pueblo, that redundancy broke down—not in the voting itself, but in the inability to verify credentialing when something went wrong.

Why This Matters Locally

For voters in Douglas County and across Colorado, confidence in elections matters as much as the mechanics themselves.

Even when discrepancies are explainable, visible confusion can erode trust. And when trust declines, participation often follows.

That’s not a partisan issue. It’s a civic one.

Why It Matters Even More to Gen Z and Young Voters

This issue carries particular weight for younger voters.

Gen Z has grown up in a world filled with competing narratives and constant information flow. They are more skeptical of institutions—and more likely to question systems they don’t fully understand.

In my recent book, The Next Greatest Generation: A Fatherly Conversation Between a Gen X Dad and the Men of Gen Z, I argue that rebuilding trust in institutions will be one of the defining challenges for this generation.

But trust requires clarity.

Election integrity isn’t just about whether votes are counted correctly—it’s about whether people believe they are.

Final Thought

The events in Pueblo were frustrating. Disorganized. At times, chaotic. But they were also instructive.

Because what felt like a “hot mess, in a dumpster fire, on a train wreck” wasn’t proof of a broken system.

It was a reminder of something more important: when systems fail, the ability to verify them matters more than the failure itself.

And next time, hopefully, we can do it without the four-hour line.

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Dr. Jeff Hogan is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel with more than three decades of experience in operations, analysis, and defense contracting. After his military career, he spent over a decade developing technical papers, proposals, and strategic assessments for Department of Defense programs. His background in systems analysis informs his writing on public policy, governance, and economic trends. A Colorado resident since 1990, he currently lives in Parker, Colorado.

Footnotes

i Brennan Center for Justice. “Voting Machines at Risk in 2022.”
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-machines-risk-2022

ii National Conference of State Legislatures, “Post-Election Audits,”
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/post-election-audits

iii U.S. Election Assistance Commission, “Voluntary Voting System Guidelines,”
https://www.eac.gov/voting-equipment/voluntary-voting-system-guidelines and U.S. Election Assistance Commission, “Complete Logic and Accuracy Testing Manual,”
https://www.eac.gov/sites/default/files/eac_assets/1/28/Logic_and_Accuracy_Testing_Manual_Final_v1.4.pdf

iv Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Error rates in election audits for the 2020 U.S. election,”
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2419633122 and Brennan Center for Justice, “Post-Election Audits: Restoring Trust in Elections,”
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/post-election-audits-restoring-trust-elections

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