A dedicated sales tax for trails, open space and parks headed for a potential extension in April features a new standard for open space spending that’s sparked a debate over whether it provides long-term protection for land acquisition or allows more funds to get diverted for maintenance.

Voters will decide on April 4 whether to extend the 0.1% sales tax until 2045. The dedicated tax of 1 cent per $10 is set to expire in 2025.

The dedicated tax has funded the purchase of large parcels like Stratton Open Space and is expected to raise about $12 million in 2023, according to data provided by the city. Most of its revenues are split among parks, trails and open space. After deductions for administration and maintenance, 60% of the funds are set aside for open space, or about $6.5 million in 2023. If the ballot measure passed, 75% of the $6.5 million — or about $4.9 million — would be set aside to buy land, and the remaining 25% would be used for stewardship, such as hiring “TOPS rangers” to manage properties purchased through the program.

The city’s agreement to designate 75% of funds in the open space category was a compromise between parks advocates and city administration that advocates have praised. In the current tax, there is no designated percentage guiding how much is spent on acquiring new open space.

“A lot of us … wanted to make sure the amount of funds set aside specifically for open space was protected, and we feel that it is,” parks advocate Judith Rice-Jones said. The tax “is a really important vehicle for protecting those elements that, for many of us, sort of define what’s special about Colorado Springs,” she said.

Kent Obee, an advocate who has worked on several parks issues, said if voters approve the tax’s extension, it will ensure there is a pipeline of money available to buy new parkland.

It will also protect the city’s commitment to purchasing more green space, even as new mayors and city councilmembers, who could have different ideas for how to spend the funds, take office, he said.

“I think, frankly, it’s probably about as good a deal as we’re going to get,” Obee said.

But critics are worried the ballot language is confusing and does not fully break down how the city will spend the tax dollars so that voters can better understand how much is being spent on maintenance versus acquisition.

After 3% of the tax’s revenues are taken out for the program’s administration, and another 6% for program maintenance, only about 41 cents of every designated dollar will support open space acquisition under the proposed spending breakdown, resident Dana Duggan said.

“Voters will think 75% of the tax will go toward acquiring open space. But it isn’t 75 cents on the dollar. It’s 40.9 cents on the dollar. I think that’s a big disconnect,” she said.

Duggan and others said while they support the dedicated tax, the city’s parks department has been underfunded for years, and trails, open space and parks tax spending has been eroded for other priorities, such as maintaining city parks. Critics are concerned that even 75% of the overall budget available to buy open space is less than what the city has traditionally spent on new parkland in years past.

“This is really a municipal parks maintenance tax with a side of trails and open space,” Duggan said. “I absolutely support the open space program and acquisition. … But these pots shouldn’t be commingled. They should be separate.”

Obee said under the current trails, open space and parks tax, the city in recent years has been spending about the same amount — or 41 cents of every designated dollar — on open space acquisition. Much of the designated funds set aside for open space has been spent on stewardship efforts, like hiring “TOPS rangers,” he said.

A city auditor’s report in September found that, over the life of the tax, Colorado Springs has not yet spent the required minimum 60% of cumulative tax revenues for open space. Aggregate spending in the open space category between 1997, when the tax was first implemented, and 2021 was just over 57%, and not the required 60%, the report found.

But the city’s compliance with that minimum spending requirement is calculated over the full life of the tax, which doesn’t sunset until 2025 if voters choose not to extend it this April, the city’s Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services Director Britt Haley said. The requirement will be met at the end of the program, she said.

The next city audit will review years 2021 and 2022. It will include an additional $4 million the city used to buy the Fisher’s Canyon Open Space near Cheyenne Mountain State Park, “which will also boost that percentage,” Haley said. And in the coming weeks, the City Council will consider approving another $7.8 million to buy open space on Colorado Springs’ eastern edge, she said.

The auditor’s September report also shows that 17.4% of the city’s spending on open space between 2016 and 2021 paid for stewardship, while 82.6% was spent on open space acquisition and development.

Parks advocates and critics of the new TOPS ballot language pointed out how funding for parks was decimated when the city made deep cuts to its general sales taxes during the Great Recession around 2008 and has never recovered — a separate issue from the ballot question they say must still be addressed.

In the years since then, Obee said, the city used funding from its designated TOPS tax to pay for municipal parks maintenance that would have been paid for through the city’s general fund.

Duggan said she wants to see the city improve its tax base by expanding the general fund, which would pay for parks maintenance. Then, the city should create a tax dedicated solely to trails and open spaces, as was originally intended, she said.

Duggan said she, too, was concerned there are no provisions to ensure the city can’t later change the way the tax’s proposed spending is broken down without a vote of the people. The ballot question does not make changes to the city charter, which would require voters to approve any changes to the tax amount or how it would be spent, she said.

Steve Harris, an attorney and a member of the city’s parks advisory board, said if voters approved the tax extension, it would be laid out in a city ordinance. City-charter and city-code state ordinances adopted by a vote of the people can’t be repealed or amended without another vote of the people, he said.

The specific requirement in the ballot language stating at least 75% of the funds dedicated for open space must be used to buy new land also removes ambiguity about how open-space funds can be used, Harris said.

“I am totally confident as an attorney and as a citizen advocate that this is not going to be able to just be changed by a future City Council because they don’t like what it says,” Harris said.