At this week’s regular council meeting, State Representative Elizabeth Velasco visited Town Hall to discuss legislative developments pertinent to District 57 following the adjournment of Colorado’s 74th General Assembly.
Mayor David Knight asked Velasco for an update on tax relief for senior citizens and those with fixed incomes. The Capital has passed on the Colorado Property Tax Revenue Cap Initiative for the voters to decide on the November 5 ballot. If passed, it would amend the state constitution to cap property tax revenue at 4% growth above the total statewide property tax revenue collected in the previous year.
Velasco described the Initiative as a “difficult decision,” and expressed concerns that this statewide limit could negatively affect smaller communities like Basalt, because such revenue funds local community services like fire departments, libraries and schools.
Velasco relayed that the state will expand the Homestead Property Tax Exemption, which provides a property tax exemption to qualifying seniors and veterans with disabilities equal to 50% of the first $200,000 of their property value should they also have had that property for the past 10 years. While the exemption is planned to be made “portable,” meaning that it can be transferred to a new property should a current recipient decide to downsize, Velasco said that in areas like Basalt, where property values have risen to millions of dollars, a $100,000 tax exemption may still not be enough.
Confluence Park
While improvements have been made for the pedestrian experience outside of Basalt Elementary, Pitkin County Open Space and Trails (PCOST) is planning more substantial improvements at the Two Rivers Road and Cottonwood Drive intersection.
Such improvements include larger pedestrian crossings, flashing stop signs and a signaled crosswalk closer to the Elementary School’s driveway. Additionally, landscape architecture firm Design Workshop collaborated with Girl Scout Troop 17080 to draft design recommendations for an improved parklet beside the river.
PCOST plans to create a budget and a construction plan over the next nine months before implementing it in 2025.
Basalt Center Circle
A first reading of updates to a planned housing development, the Basalt Center Circle (BCC) project, which is to include 65 residential units at the Midland Ave and Two Rivers Road intersection — formerly Clark’s Market — was presented to the council.
Approved in 2022, the BCC project is mixed-use, providing a space for Jimbo’s Liquor Store as well as, potentially, a new grocery store on the ground floor. In the initial 2022 approval, the applicant agreed to maintain ownership of all of the units as rentals.
In this hearing, the applicant requested to condominiumize the units and sell them to employers to rent to their employees. In addition, the applicant drafted a priority list to determine which entities would have first pick of the units, starting with the Town of Basalt and on-site commercial operators, respectively, and followed by the Roaring Fork School District, local emergency response units and hospitals (all of which would have equal priority in purchasing a unit).
Council members voiced concerns over how employer-owned housing would be regulated, as the goal for the project was to provide housing for those working within Basalt. If an employer has multiple locations, council argued that it would be too difficult to monitor where tenants were actually working.
This first reading was approved 6-1, with Ryan Slack dissenting.
“Someone who can afford to rent in this building is different than someone who can afford to own in this building,” said Slack. “Individual ownership of individual units is not what I was sold on.”