A week from today, Denver voters will decide whether the city can add $378 million in debt for a new jail and courthouse downtown.
City officials have pitched the proposal as a bid to ease crowding in the city’s jail without raising taxpayers’ net burden. Opponents say taxpayers would rather pay for other pressing needs, such as schools.
The opposition campaign, Citizens for Responsible Spending, stoked the issue last week in a press conference decrying the jail expansion amid job cuts and school closures by Denver Public Schools. A press release publicizing the event chastised the city’s “upside-down priorities” of funding a new jail but closing schools.
The proponent campaign, Citizens for a Safe Denver, labels the charge a lie. Supporters point out that the city and DPS are separate entities with separate budgets. The city cannot divert funds to DPS.
“Point blank, they’re lying to the public,” Citizens for a Safe Denver spokeswoman Lynea Hansen said Monday. “These dollars would not go to public schools if they were not used for the jail.”
Bill Vandenberg, a spokesman for the opposition campaign, clarified Monday that while Denver and DPS are separate entities, the taxpayers supporting them are the same.
“If I own property in the city, my property taxes cover both things,” Vandenberg said. “Denver voters and property owners do not want to fund a palace of a new jail while our schools are suffering. We have tens of thousands of people in our city who go without health care and without housing.”
Denver voters will decide May 3 if the city can incur debt to build a justice center – including 1,500 jail beds and 35 courtrooms – on the 400 and 500 blocks of West Colfax Avenue.
If voters approve, city officials intend to issue $378 million in bonds for the justice center as older debts – such as those from the Denver Art Museum expansion, neighborhood improvements, the city auditorium renovation and a Denver Health Medical Center expansion – are paid off. As a result, Denver taxpayers would see no increase in their net property-tax bill of about $70 million.
If voters reject the plan, annual property taxes on a house worth $250,000 could drop by $93 by 2010, city officials have said. However, that assumes the city would not gain approval to fund other projects in the interim.
Even without a net tax increase, the new debt for the justice center would make it difficult for other city agencies to get funding in the future without a net tax increase, jail opponents say. For example, cash- strapped city operations that might soon ask for a property- tax boost include the Denver Public Library and Denver Botanic Gardens.
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper noted Monday that the cost of the justice center represents a fraction of what Denver taxpayers already pay to support DPS.
“Including interest, we’re at $600 million, which is about $12 million a year” over 50 years for the justice center, Hickenlooper said. “Right now, Denver Public Schools, in bond payments, is $193 million a year.”
A DPS spokesman said the district will make $193 million in bond payments this year for capital improvement projects.
Staff writer Kris Hudson can be reached at 303-820-1593 or khudson@denverpost.com.
