FAQ

About the County budget and property tax valuations

About the County Budget

  • Summit County’s budget runs on a calendar fiscal year starting January 1. County staff is responsible for presenting a balanced budget to the Board of County Commissioners every year. Budgets are prepared and released in accordance with guidelines from the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) and the Colorado Department of Local Affairs.

  • For the 1/3 that Summit County collects, your property and sales taxes go primarily toward the Summit County General Fund. This fund is the main pool that supports operations and programming for the community, and the staff who make it happen.

    Additionally, sales tax and mill levy dollars go toward special funds that you, the voters, chose to support. This includes the Road & Bridge Fund, the Open Space & Trails Fund, the Transit Fund, Safety First mill levy and the Strong Future mill levy. You can learn more about our mill levies here.

  • Your money is spent on both state-mandated and voter-supported initiatives, including Human Services (Medicaid, SNAP, etc.); public safety; road and bridge maintenance; clerk services (marriage licenses, vehicle titling, etc.), wildfire mitigation, affordable housing and supporting the work of over 500 friends and neighbors who work to make these services happen.

  • Summit County is a statutory county, which means it is mandated by the state to provide specific services to the community. While the towns benefit from many of the County’s services, like funding the 911 center, registering vehicles and providing for our most vulnerable families, they aren’t required to provide these services and don’t need to spend money on them. Towns can also levy their own sales taxes, while also receiving sales tax revenues from the County.

    Additionally, many state-mandated services and programs are unfunded, meaning the County must find funds to pay for these programs. Some of those include body-worn cameras for all law enforcement or remediating public documents for digital accessibility.

  • TABOR, Colorado legislation passed in the early 1990s, requires that any new taxes or mill levies must be approved by the voters. We’re grateful that Summit County voters have agreed to fund mill levies like Strong Future, which help support mental health programs, wildfire prevention, recycling services, and childcare options to our community!

    That said, we don’t get to keep every dollar of revenue. We have to give the towns portions of the County’s sales tax back to them (even though they have their own sales taxes). And even though your property taxes often go up, the state legislature chose to limit how much we can take in every year, which is helpful for many families, from local workers to second home owners.

  • Currently, the biggest chunk of the General Fund goes toward the Sheriff’s Office budget, at $16.25M for 2025.

    The next biggest departments in terms of General Fund spending is Information Systems at $2.5M and the Office of the Assessor at $2.4M.

    Other high-dollar departments include Transit and Open Space & Trails; however, those are financed by separate funds, not the General Fund.

  • Reserves are basically like a savings account - funding to hold you over in a crisis. Basically, this is money to keep the lights on during recessions or large disaster events.

    The County’s Reserve Policy is aligned with financial best practices, and requires us to have, at minimum, 25% of the total General Fund expenditures. Additionally, TABOR requires that we save 3% of annual total expenditures as well.

  • Well… you could, but it’s not smart business to do so. According to our policy (and the majority of reserve policies across industries), we shouldn’t use reserves to cover standard operating budget shortfalls.

    Do we occasionally need to do that? Yes, especially when we are in recessionary periods or experience declining revenues not forecast for the year.

    Should we be doing that? No - our departments and elected offices should be budgeting within the current realities of our financial situation.

    Reserves are meant for true emergencies. It’s not sustainable to tap into reserves every year. Just like you don’t want to tap into your savings every month.

The 2026 Budget Challenge

  • To put it simply - we have a multimillion dollar deficit going into 2026 because we have less money coming in than some offices have asked to spend. We also have lost some key reveune sources.

    The biggest issue is that, according to state regulations, we legally cannot go into 2026 with a budget deficit. So we need to close that gap!

  • It’s a confluence of more than a few factors, but here are the big ones:

    • Everything costs more, including all the materials we use to fix roads.

    • Keystone incorporation: When Keystone became its own town, the County lost about $7M in annual revenue. Ouch.

    • With all the general economic uncertainty across the nation, tourism has been down, which means sales tax reveunes have been down (let it snow!).

    • State-imposed limits on property tax collection

    • Unfunded state mandates

  • It’s a combination of a few things: reduced revenues (see previous question), new unfunded mandates from the state, increased health insurance premiums and a rise in public safety expenses.

    For the past several years, all County elected offices and departments have been asked to budget flat YOY, with only inflationary or COL increases. Although the vast majority of departments and offices have done so - and done more with less - some offices have increased their budgets significantly year over year, not in line with inflation or standard County salary practices.

  • At the beginning of budget season, Summit County started off with a forecast 2026 deficit of $7.5M. We got that down to about $3M, thanks to the following tactics:

    • Implemented a County-wide wage and hiring freeze

    • Nearly every elected office and department cut “wish list” items and reduced spending from their proposed budgets.

    • Utilized a statute that allowed us to fund some departments through sales tax revenues

    When you’re facing a budget deficit, everyone needs to pitch in and make tough choices to help the greater good.

About Property Taxes and Valuations

  • The purpose of the NOV is to inform you of any increase or decrease in your property valuation and advise you of your right to appeal. The valuation is determined by the Assessor’s Office and is a factor used to calculate property taxes.

  • For residential properties, the valuation is the Assessor’s best evaluation of the market value of the home (what it would have sold for) as of June 30, 2024. The value is derived from market sales and applied to your property based on its characteristics as of January 1, 2025 (which considers renovations, construction, etc. that existed at the beginning of the year).

  • By state law, the Assessor’s Office, an independent elected office, reappraises all properties every other year. The BOCC does not set valuations or the assessment rate. For residential properties, Colorado law requires that the “market” approach to valuation is used. The market approach determines the value of a property by analyzing the selling price and characteristics of market sales of similar properties.

  • The deadline to submit an appeal for 2025 is Monday, June 9. Statement options at summitcountyco.gov/appeals.

    If there is incorrect information about bedrooms, square footage, land size, or other factors in your valuation, the Assessor’s Office would like to know so they can review your value accordingly.

  • Yes! The State of Colorado offers exemptions for certain property owners. For more information, visit the Assessor's Exemption page.

  • Yes, the State of Colorado offers a program to defer either the full or half amount of your taxes due as a lien against your property. You can learn more about deferring your taxes through the Treasurer's Office.

  • Summit County Government represents about 1/3 of the property taxes collected. Of that 1/3, the County distributes 2/3 of those funds to support the ballot initiatives approved by voters such as mental health, open space, wildfire, public facilities, childcare, housing, and more.

  • Your tax bill includes a breakdown of the mill levy for your property’s tax area, with a list of all the taxing entities and their respective mill levies.

  • The Treasurer’s Office collects taxes in arrears, meaning taxes are collected the year after the values are assessed. Your 2024 tax bill is mailed in January 2025.