The Town of Monument starts charging for parking at Monument Lake, freezes data centers before any developer asks, and — after another partner leaves a $200 million regional water project — withholds a check it approved only two weeks earlier.
For years the gravel lots at Monument Lake, the fishing reservoir ringed by ponderosa pines on the edge of town, ran on the honor system: turn up, park, cast a line, leave. On July 20th the town council decided the honor system had grown too costly. By a vote of 5-1 it began requiring parking permits at the lake — $50 a year for residents, a daily fee of about $5.25 for everyone else — payable at kiosks the town has yet to install.
The scheme will not make Monument rich. Staff reckon it will raise $25,000 to $60,000 a year, which, one official conceded, will not come close to covering the cost of grading the access road, emptying the trash and mending the piers, which are vandalized with dispiriting regularity. Nor does a permit buy certainty: the town has roughly 13,000 residents and far fewer spaces, and a permit, council members were reminded, guarantees none of them. Enforcement will happen when the police can spare an officer.
So why do it? A survey using cell-phone location data, staff said, suggested that many of the cars crowding the lakeside streets belong to visitors from beyond the town line. Charging for parking is thus less a revenue measure than an attempt to reclaim a local amenity from outsiders — and a first, modest answer to a question that ran through the whole meeting: as Monument grows, who pays for the things that are running short? The lone holdout was council member Kenneth Kimple, who voted against both the ordinance and the companion resolution setting the fees — the latter of which, tidily, also stripped out an exemption for town events.
From parking spaces to power
If parking was the evening’s smallest scarcity, land and electricity were the next. The council voted unanimously, 6-0, for a six-month moratorium on any permit or development application involving a data center, whether as a building’s main purpose or a sideline. No developer has actually proposed one. That is precisely the point: with data centers multiplying across Colorado’s Front Range and gulping power and water wherever they land — and local governments up and down the state rushing to pause them — Monument would rather write its rules before the bulldozers arrive than after. Dan Ungerleider, the town’s planning director, called the freeze “proactive”; Mayor Pro Tem Steve King, chairing in the absence of Mayor Mitch LaKind, said he had “a hard time seeing where it would benefit Monument.” The definition on the table was deliberately broad, spanning everything from a “mega” data center to a “storefront” one, and staff will fold the question into a wider rewrite of the town’s land-development code.
The rest of the agenda was the stuff of small-town government, leavened by the occasional oddity. Outside auditors gave the town a clean opinion for 2025, with one asterisk: because Monument spent more than $1 million of federal pandemic-relief money, it faced its first federal “single audit,” which duly turned up a “material weakness” in an accounting adjustment — a blemish the auditor was at pains to call routine.
The council also approved two contracts totaling $826,268 for the first phase of the Heart of Monument play park and its accessible parking lot. That figure is the value of the contracts, not Monument’s net contribution. Mayor Pro Tem Steve King later told the Independent that the town expects to spend about $175,000, with grants and fundraising by the local Kiwanis club covering the remainder. The town secured and will administer the grants, receive the reimbursements and take over maintenance when the park is complete. The Kiwanis club has led much of the seven-year fundraising effort — including, improbably, $1,000 raised from the sale of “zombie” licenses.
There were honors for the police, including an officer newly graduated from the FBI National Academy. And there was a grumble, familiar in town halls everywhere, about Washington: council members weighed writing to Congress to protest new federal grant rules that would burden their staff — apparently untroubled by the irony that federal money was underwriting their new parking lot and, indirectly, the very audit that had just praised them.
The loop, unlooped
The night’s weightiest decision was also its quietest. After retreating into a closed session for legal advice on “town water system planning … in light of continuing developments,” the council re-emerged and, without taking a formal vote, directed staff to withhold a $219,815 payment to the El Paso County Regional Loop Water Authority — “the Loop.” The instruction was striking because the same council had approved that very invoice only two weeks earlier, on July 6th, by a 5-1 vote, to keep Monument a paying member through 2026.
Mr. King later told the Independent that the payment was withheld because the Donala Water and Sanitation District had dropped out of the authority, leaving Monument and the Woodmoor Water and Sanitation District as its only remaining members.
The Loop is an ambitious, roughly $200 million regional scheme to pipe treated and recycled water northward through El Paso County, shoring up towns whose Denver Basin wells are steadily declining. Monument — which in 2024 drilled what it hopes were its last wells and is now bracing residents for years of water-rate increases — once shared the project with Woodmoor, Donala, and the Cherokee Metropolitan District. Cherokee Metropolitan District, walked away in 2025 after securing water elsewhere and balking at the cost. According to Mr King, Donala has now followed it out.
That departure changes the arithmetic sharply. With only two participants left, the remaining communities face a larger share of the cost of a pipeline unlikely to deliver a drop before 2030. Withholding one budgeted payment — while stopping short of formally withdrawing — allows Monument to pause before committing more money to a project whose membership and financing have continued to erode.
Council member Marco Fioritto, directed staff to push ahead with other water-supply options. What those alternatives might be was discussed behind closed doors, with a fuller public airing promised for August 3rd. Monument, in other words, is doing precisely what it will soon ask of its lakeside visitors: pausing at the kiosk, and wondering whether the price is worth paying.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage
- What the Garden of the Gods Data-Center Fight Means for the Tri-Lakes — why a data center near Monument would be the county’s call, and the water and power stakes behind the town’s moratorium.
- Monument Town Council Meeting: June 15, 2026 — the previous meeting, where the council first leaned against data centers and steered the road-tax measure toward the ballot.
- Woodmoor, Explained — the Tri-Lakes water picture and “the Loop,” the roughly $200 million regional reuse project Monument shares with the Woodmoor and Donala districts.
Methodology
Background on the Loop draws on Colorado Public Radio’s reporting on the project’s design phase, cost and membership, including Cherokee Metropolitan District’s withdrawal; the Loop Water Authority; and Our Community News’s coverage of the authority’s finances. The July 6 approval of the $219,815 invoice is documented in OCN’s July 6 council highlights and the meeting video. Monument’s groundwater position comes from the Colorado Springs Gazette’s 2024 reporting on the town’s wells, and the looming rate increases from the Gazette’s April 2026 account. The statewide data-center context draws on The Colorado Sun and the Gazette, with local-moratorium context from The Colorado Sun; the moratorium vote and Planning Director Dan Ungerleider’s “proactive” characterization also appear in the Gazette’s same-night coverage.
Following publication, Mayor Pro Tem Steve King told the Independent that Donala Water and Sanitation District had dropped out of the Loop authority, leaving Monument and Woodmoor as its remaining members. King also clarified that council member Marco Fioritto directed staff to pursue other water-supply options. Regarding the Heart of Monument project, King said Monument’s contribution is approximately $175,000, with grants and Kiwanis fundraising covering the balance of the approved construction contracts. The town secured and will administer the grants, expects to be reimbursed for the covered expenses and will maintain the park after completion.
This account of the July 20, 2026 Monument Town Council meeting — the parking-permit ordinance (13-2026) and its companion fee resolution (33-2026), both approved 5-1; the 6-0 data-center moratorium (18-2026); the 2025 audit presentation; the Heart of Monument play-park and parking-lot contracts; the town manager’s report; and the post-executive-session direction on the Loop — is drawn from the recording of the meeting. Dollar figures and vote counts are as stated on that recording; the identification of council member Kenneth Kimple as the lone “no” on the two parking measures is confirmed from the meeting recording. The 5-1 parking-permit tallies were also reported the same night by KRDO. Because the Loop payment was discussed in executive session and then acted on only as “direction to staff” rather than a recorded public vote, the description of that decision reflects the council’s own open-session summary; the Independent has not independently confirmed that the withheld sum is identical to the $219,815 invoice approved on July 6.
Corrections and additions welcome via the Independent’s corrections page.
Correction note
Correction, July 21, 2026: An earlier version of this article described Donala Water and Sanitation District as a remaining member of the Loop Water Authority and attributed the direction to pursue other water-supply options to Mayor Pro Tem Steve King. King subsequently told the Independent that Donala had dropped out, leaving Monument and Woodmoor as the remaining members, and that council member Marco Fioritto gave the direction to pursue alternatives. The article also did not clearly distinguish the total value of the Heart of Monument construction contracts from the town’s contribution. According to King, Monument will contribute approximately $175,000, with grants and Kiwanis fundraising covering the remainder. The article has been updated.