Monument taxes construction materials at 2 percent, a lower rate than any of ten Front Range towns of similar size. Nine of those ten set that tax at the same rate as their sales tax. Ballot Issue 2B would raise Monument’s to 3.5 percent, put the town in the middle of the group, and send more money to road and drainage work while the general fund is forecast to run short.
A homeowner who buys a sheet of plywood at a store in Monument pays the town 3.5 percent in sales tax. A contractor building a house in Monument pays the town 2 percent on the same plywood. The contractor pays it as a deposit when the permit is issued, then shows the permit at the counter instead of paying the sales tax.
On November 3rd Monument’s voters will decide whether to close that gap. The question the Town of Monument has put on the ballot, Ballot Issue 2B (Ordinance No. 19-2026), would raise the use tax on construction and building materials and construction equipment from 2 percent to 3.5 percent, starting January 1st 2027. The town estimates the increase at $2,272,500 in its first year, and the revenue would go to capital projects, including streets, roads, bridges, sidewalks and stormwater. The Independent compared Monument’s taxes with those of the ten Front Range towns whose populations are within a quarter of its own. Monument’s rate is the lowest of the eleven, and 2B would move it to the middle of the group. On the record, the case for it is a reasonable one. The open questions are about how much it will raise and how tightly the money is held to roads.
What 2B does
A use tax stands in for a sales tax that was never collected. It applies when something is bought outside a town, or bought without the town’s sales tax, and then used inside it. Monument’s use tax on construction materials is collected through the building or right-of-way permit, and it is 2 percent today. The town has no general use tax on, say, furniture ordered online, although its own explainer page uses exactly that as its example.
Ordinance 19-2026, which the Town Council adopted 6–1 on August 17th, sends the question to voters. If they approve, the rate rises to 3.5 percent on construction and building materials and construction equipment from January 1st 2027. The increased rate applies only when a permit is pulled, and only where a municipal sales tax of 3.5 percent was not collected where the materials were bought.
The gap dates from 1990. The state’s record of local taxes shows Monument added building materials to its 2 percent use tax on January 1st 1987, when its sales tax was also 2 percent. In 1990 the town raised its sales tax to 3 percent, “sales tax only,” and the use tax stayed where it was. The sales tax rose to 3.5 percent in January 2022, after voters added half a point for the police.
The mechanics follow the town’s taxation rules. The permit applicant pays a deposit on half the project’s valuation or on the full declared cost of materials, whichever is greater, and the town reconciles and audits it later. On a new house with a $500,000 permit valuation, the town counts $250,000 as materials, so the deposit is $5,000 today and would be $8,750. On a $60,000 kitchen remodel, $30,000 of materials, it would go from $600 to $1,050. Those figures are the town’s share only; El Paso County collects its own 1.23 percent construction use tax through the same permit, and 2B does not change it. It is usually described as a tax on developers, but anyone pulling a permit pays it, including a homeowner adding a deck. The tax has no end date, and runs until a future council repeals it.
How Monument compares
The Independent took every incorporated town in the Front Range counties from Pueblo to Larimer and Weld whose population, by the Census Bureau’s estimate for July 2025, is within a quarter of Monument’s 13,813. There are ten. Their tax rates come from each town’s own code, budget or tax page, checked against the state’s rate tables.
| Town | Population (2025) | Median household income | Construction use tax | Use tax on a $500,000 permit | Town sales tax | Town property tax (mills) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monument now | 13,813 | $128,816 | 2.0% | $5,000 | 3.5% | 5.560 |
| Lone Tree | 15,278 | $123,741 | 2.5% | $6,250 (a) | 2.5% | 0 |
| Berthoud | 14,080 | $119,385 | 3.0% | $7,500 | 4.0% | 9.538 |
| Greenwood Village | 15,323 | $149,029 | 3.0% | $8,895 (b) | 3.0% | 2.932 |
| Severance | 11,841 | $124,572 | 3.0% | $7,500 (a) | 3.0% | 12.635 |
| Wellington | 12,169 | $107,017 | 3.0% | $7,500 | 3.0% | 12.439 |
| Monument if passed | 13,813 | $128,816 | 3.5% | $8,750 | 3.5% | 5.560 |
| Castle Pines | 15,583 | $191,229 | 3.75% | $9,375 | 3.75% | 16.500 |
| Superior | 13,637 | $159,434 | 3.775% | $9,437.50 | 3.775% | 13.627 |
| Federal Heights | 14,075 | $56,597 | 4.0% (c) | $10,000 (c) | 4.0% | 0.680 |
| Fort Lupton | 10,402 | $80,889 | 4.0% | $10,000 | 4.0% | 42.931 |
| Timnath | 11,600 | $178,257 | 4.25% (d) | $10,625 (d) | 4.25% | 6.688 |
Three things stand out. Monument’s 2 percent is the lowest construction use tax of the eleven, half a point below Lone Tree’s. Nine of the ten peers tax construction materials at the same rate as everything else; only Berthoud, at 3 percent against a 4 percent sales tax, keeps a gap like Monument’s. At 3.5 percent, five of the peers would have higher rates than Monument and five lower.
The rest of Monument’s taxes are modest. Its 3.5 percent sales tax is below the middle of the group, where six towns charge more. With the state’s 2.9 percent and El Paso County’s 1.23 percent, a shopper in town pays 7.63 percent, or 8.63 percent at addresses inside the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority, against a range of 5.9 percent in Severance to 9.11 percent in the Boulder County part of Superior. The town’s property tax, 5.56 mills, raised about $2 million on the 2025 assessment. Seven of the ten peers levy more.
Income does not line up neatly with any of it. Monument’s median household income, about $129,000, is fifth of the eleven. The two highest-income towns, Castle Pines and Timnath, both tax construction at 3.75 percent or more. The lowest, Federal Heights, levies almost no property tax at all.
How towns with no property tax pay their bills
Two of the ten levy little or nothing on property, and they get there by different roads.
Lone Tree levies none. Its adopted 2026 budget says so in a sentence: “The City does not assess a mill levy for the collection of property taxes.” Sales tax brings in $38.8 million of the general fund’s $60.4 million, about 64 percent, from a 2.5 percent rate. The reason is Park Meadows, along with RidgeGate and City Center. By the Census Bureau’s count, retail sales in Lone Tree ran to about $269,000 per resident in 2022, more than seven times Monument’s $37,000. The city does take in about $300,000 from a metropolitan district’s property levy under an annexation agreement. And it budgets $8.0 million this year simply to reimburse sales tax to the Park Meadows Business Improvement District. That reimbursement alone is close to the $8.4 million Monument’s general fund expects from its entire sales tax in 2026.
Federal Heights is a different case. Its 0.68 mills raise about $100,000, roughly half of one percent of an $18.0 million general fund. Its general sales tax brings in $11.3 million, about 63 percent. On top of its 4 percent rate, the city’s marijuana shops carry an extra 5 percent. The budget also counts on $1.4 million in court fines this year, which its budget letter links to the city’s recently added speed cameras. Per resident, Federal Heights’ retail sales are almost identical to Monument’s, at about $37,000. Its median household income is the lowest in the group, at about $57,000. Its own budget letter notes that its sales tax revenues “are dependent upon a few large businesses that could potentially leave the City,” and that lower revenue will mean “some use of the general fund reserve balance in the near term.”
Monument already leans on sales tax almost as hard as either. The draft 2027 budget expects $9.6 million of the general fund’s $16.3 million from sales tax, about 59 percent, and $2.2 million, about 13 percent, from property tax. What Monument lacks is a Park Meadows. Measured per resident, Lone Tree’s general fund collects about $2,540 in sales tax at 2.5 percent. Monument’s three sales-tax funds together collect about $945 at 3.5 percent.
A town in this position cannot simply switch to property tax. Since 1992 the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights has required a vote in advance for any new tax, any rate increase or any “mill levy above that for the prior year.” Raising the same $2.27 million from property would take about 6.2 more mills, more than the town’s whole levy today. It would need an election just the same.
Where the money would go
2B would spend the money on capital projects, and the list is not short of candidates. The draft capital plan prices the southbound lanes of Jackson Creek Parkway at $8 million, schedules construction for 2029 and leaves the funding lines blank. Town Manager Madeline VanDenHoek has pointed to more than $30 million in stormwater improvements and a possible bridge repair, according to Colorado Politics.
The general fund, which pays for police, staff and day-to-day services, will not get the money. The ordinance restricts it to capital projects. That matters, because the general fund’s own forecast is for deficits. The five-year forecast in the October 5th budget packet has the fund spending more than it takes in every year from 2027 through 2031, by $656,209 in the first year and $1.88 million in the last. Its unreserved balance falls from 38 percent of a year’s spending at the end of 2027 to 6.2 percent by 2031, on a table whose bottom row reads “Minimum % Required = 20%.” The use tax would not fix that. What it would do is add to the money the use tax already sends to capital projects, at a time when the general fund has little room to pick up the difference.
The objections
The strongest case against 2B is about who ends up paying and how much it will raise.
The builder pays at the permit and can build the cost into the price. On a project with a $500,000 permit valuation, the increase is $3,750; how much of that reaches a buyer depends on the market.
The revenue estimate is ambitious. The use tax brought the town’s capital fund $778,775 in 2025 and $1.05 million in 2024. The $2.27 million first-year figure implies about $3 million a year at the current rate, roughly four times last year’s take. The draft 2027 budget, presented in October, expects $3.53 million at the current 2 percent, which staff attribute to expected development. At 3.5 percent that same base would bring in about $2.64 million more, some $370,000 above the figure on the ballot, which was fixed in August. The documents the Independent reviewed do not explain the difference. Finance director Jennifer Phillips told the council in August that the number depends on what gets built. If Legacy at Jackson Landing and the rest of the pipeline slow, the money will slow with it.
The county’s TABOR notice for 2B shows the town’s own spending rising from $14.8 million in 2022 to an estimated $24.2 million in 2026, an increase of 64 percent. No one filed a written comment for or against 2B in time for that notice.
The fence around the money is lower than the town’s own polling implied. In a survey for the town in May, the most persuasive argument, moving 68 percent of respondents toward yes, was that the money could be spent only on roads. 2B’s ballot language says capital projects “including” roads and stormwater, a word that does not shut out other capital spending. The town’s own educational page, asked how the revenue would be used, lists only street maintenance and repairs and road projects. The ordinance’s own amendment to the code says only that revenue “shall be used for capital projects.” An older section of the code, which the ordinance leaves in place, already confines construction use tax to streets, roads and rights-of-way. How those two sentences sit together is a question for the town attorney, and it is one a voter is entitled to have answered before November 3rd.
What the comparison shows
None of these objections changes what the comparison shows. Monument is not asking for an unusual tax. It is asking to bring an unusually low rate up to the common one, at a time when its general fund balance is forecast to shrink and the southbound lanes of Jackson Creek Parkway have no funding identified. Most towns its size along the Front Range already charge builders what they charge shoppers. Most of them levy more on property too.
If 2B passes, the contractor and the homeowner in the plywood aisle will pay the town the same rate from January 1st. If it fails, Monument keeps the lowest construction use tax in the group. On October 19th the council voted 7–0, on a motion by Mayor Mitch LaKind, for Resolution 77-2026, which expresses its support for 2B and leaves the decision to voters. Ballots must reach the county clerk by 7 p.m. on November 3rd; the clerk advises against mailing them after October 26th.
Updated Oct. 20, 2026: Adds the result of the Town Council’s October 19th vote on Resolution 77-2026, which had not been held when this article was published.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage: Monument Town Survey: What the Words Are Worth (the town’s May polling on the use tax, including the roads-only message that tested strongest) · Monument Town Council, August 17, 2026 (the 6–1 referral and the revenue estimate) · Six Candidates, Five Seats, One Contested Race (the certified ballot title in full) · Monument Town Council, October 5, 2026 (the draft 2027 budget and the southbound lanes) · Monument Town Council, October 19, 2026 (the 7–0 vote on Resolution 77-2026).
Town record: Elections page and official ballot title · Taxation · Use Tax vs Sales Tax · Use Tax Educational Campaign · Ordinance No. 19-2026 and the August 17, 2026 packet · Monument Municipal Code, Title 3 · October 5, 2026 council packet: draft 2027 budget, five-year forecast and capital plan · Resolution No. 77-2026, October 19, 2026 agenda.
Peer towns: Lone Tree 2026 budget · Lone Tree taxes · Federal Heights 2026 adopted budget · Superior sales, use and property tax · Timnath sales tax FAQ · Greenwood Village fee schedule · Federal Heights building use tax · municipal codes for Castle Pines, Greenwood Village, Lone Tree, Berthoud, Federal Heights, Superior, Wellington, Severance, Timnath and Fort Lupton, as published on Municode.
State and federal data: Colorado Department of Revenue, location codes and tax rates · Division of Property Taxation annual reports · Census Bureau QuickFacts and population estimates · Colorado Department of Revenue, History of Local Sales/Use Taxes (DR 1250, July 2013) · El Paso County TABOR notice, Town of Monument Ballot Issue 2B · Colorado Constitution, Article X, Section 20 · El Paso County Clerk and Recorder, ballot mailing and return deadline.
Other reporting: Colorado Politics, “Monument seeks increase for use tax on construction materials,” Oct. 4, 2026.
Methodology
The peer group is every incorporated municipality in the Front Range counties along Interstate 25 whose July 1, 2025 population estimate (Census Bureau, Vintage 2025) is within 25 percent of Monument’s: Pueblo, El Paso, Douglas, Arapahoe, Denver, Jefferson, Adams, Broomfield, Boulder, Larimer and Weld. Cañon City falls in the size range but is in Fremont County, off the corridor, and was left out. Size is the only matching test, so the group includes commercial centers such as Lone Tree and Greenwood Village alongside farm towns.
Tax rates were read from each town’s municipal code, in the imposition and rate sections, and checked against the Colorado Department of Revenue’s rate spreadsheet for July to December 2026. Where they disagreed, the town’s own page, fee schedule or budget was used. The state’s table gives Lone Tree’s rate as 2.8125 percent; the city’s code and website say 2.5 percent. The state’s table rounds Superior’s rate to 3.78 percent; the town gives 3.775 percent, which puts its Boulder County combined rate at 9.11 percent. Federal Heights’ code is inconsistent with itself on whether residential construction owes the tax, and the table follows the city’s published guidance. Timnath’s code still shows 3 percent after a 2025 vote raised its rate. Timnath’s use tax on construction is taken as 4.25 percent because the measure voters approved raised sales and use tax together; the implementing ordinance was not read. Property tax levies are the total municipal levy for tax year 2025 in the Division of Property Taxation’s 2025 annual report, and leave out school, county, fire and metropolitan district levies, which in many of these towns, Monument included, are larger than the town’s own. Median household income is the 2020–2024 American Community Survey estimate, which for towns this size carries a margin of error of several thousand dollars. Retail sales per resident are from the 2022 Economic Census as published on QuickFacts. The rate history is from the Department of Revenue’s “History of Local Sales/Use Taxes” (DR 1250, July 2013 edition, as archived by the State Publications Library), whose Monument entry records the 1987 and 1990 changes; the 2022 increase is from the town’s taxation page. The ballot designation, 2B, the town’s fiscal-year spending for 2022 through 2026 and the absence of written comments are from the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder’s TABOR notice.
The permit deposits, the per-resident sales tax figures (2026 budgets, divided by the 2025 population estimates) and the mill-levy equivalent ($2,272,500 divided by Monument’s 2025 assessed value of $364.5 million) are the Independent’s calculations. Monument’s sales tax per resident includes the town’s general, police and water-and-infrastructure funds, before the share the town passes to the Triview Metropolitan District. The implied $3 million a year at 2 percent is derived from the ballot figure; the town has not published it. The comparison with the draft 2027 budget assumes its capital-fund use tax line ($3,525,000) is construction use tax only, as the town code’s dedication of that revenue suggests; the budget does not say so. Budget figures are from the adopted 2026 budgets of Lone Tree and Federal Heights and from Monument’s draft 2027 budget as presented on October 5th, read from the packet and, for the forecast and the capital plan, checked against the rendered pages. On October 15th the Independent asked the town’s finance director how the estimate was built and why it differs from the draft budget. She had not replied by publication.
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