Denver voters had the good sense Tuesday to turn down a ballot proposal that would have raised rent throughout the city in order to fund a service – legal representation in an eviction – the city already provides for the needy.

As we noted here not long ago in urging a “no” vote on Initiated Ordinance 305, rent has never been higher in the Mile High City. The last thing the community needs is a policy driving rent even higher – in the name of helping renters.

Dubbed the “eviction tax,” it would have been a $12 million-a-year tax increase, placing a $75 annual excise tax on nearly every rental apartment, townhome, mobile home and house in the city. It would have increased every year because the tax was indexed to inflation. The added cost would have been factored into the rent of every tenant, just like any other cost of doing business that property owners must account for.

And for all its expense and bother, it attempted to address a problem that simply doesn’t exist. Denver’s Department of Housing Stability provides support and funding for legal representation to Denver residents facing eviction if they earn 80% of our area’s median income or less. Meanwhile, evictions in Denver were down 37.5% in the first half of 2022 from the same period in 2019, the year before the pandemic. In other words, there is no eviction crisis.

So, Denver dodged a bullet.

If only it were so for some other ill-conceived proposals on Denver’s local ballot Tuesday.

Voters gave the nod to Referred Question 2I, raising Denver property taxes a total of $36 million a year for the Denver Public Library. The proposal, placed on the ballot by the Denver City Council, promises the extra funding will “maintain existing services and meet the increased demand for additional services…” It’s a pretty broad and squishy goal whose return on investment will be hard to measure.

But there’s a more fundamental problem with the measure. However much we all love our public libraries and might support investing more in them, this proposal raises the extra cash in the wrong place. It will make taxpayers dig even deeper into their pockets when it should have sought more library funding from what taxpayers already must fork over for the city’s overall, $1.49 billion budget. District 8 Councilman Chris Herndon – the only council member who voted against referring the tax hike to voters – said as much.

Among other problematic proposals approved by Denver voters were Initiated Ordinances 306 and 307. Initiated Ordinance 306 micromanages recycling and composting by apartments, condos and non-residential structures in the city. The convoluted measure accomplishes nothing of benefit but now can be counted on to add to the cost of renting an apartment, running a neighborhood eatery – or building a new home; yes, even construction debris would be covered by the mandate.

Meanwhile, 307 will assess property owners a fee to repair the city’s sidewalks. There certainly are plenty of sidewalks in the city that need attention, and there’s no entirely fair way to pay for repairs. At present, at least in theory, the homeowner or business owner whose property borders the sidewalk is liable. But there’s already modest city funding to pay for sidewalk repairs on a piecemeal basis. That beats saddling property owners with yet another de facto tax – atop already-soaring property taxes in the city.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board