Almost three in ten homes in the Lewis-Palmer school district pay a metropolitan district tax on top of the county, town, school and fire levies. For a median-value house, that one line on the bill runs from about $810 a year to more than $4,000, depending on the district. The difference comes down to debt.
Two Tri-Lakes houses at almost exactly the same price can owe their metro districts sums thousands of dollars apart. A median-value house in Village Center at Woodmoor, about $633,000, pays about $1,980 a year to its metropolitan district; one near $635,000 in the part of Jackson Creek served only by Triview Metropolitan District pays about $810. Across all the districts, the widest gap the Independent found between two houses of the same value is about $4,760 a year on the whole bill, $4,410 of it in metro taxes, between a house in Home Place Ranch and one in Walden Preserve 2, each valued at about $1.01 million.
The difference is the metro district: a local government that pays for a subdivision’s streets, water and sewer lines, drainage and parks and recovers the cost through its own property tax. A state planning report, quoted by the Colorado State Auditor in October, describes them as “created by real estate development companies.” In Lewis-Palmer School District 38, 4,260 of the 14,763 residential properties sit inside a metro district. The Independent read the state’s certification of every district’s 2025 levy, the county’s parcel and tax records, and each district’s latest audit or audit-exemption filing. What a house pays depends less on the house than on the district: how much it borrowed, how many homes share the payments, and how high its service plan lets the levy go.
A metro district operates under Colorado’s Special District Act. It can tax property and sell bonds within limits set in a service plan approved by the town or county. Its tax is set in mills, $1 for every $1,000 of assessed value. For a house in 2025, assessed value for local governments was 6.25% of market value, so each mill cost about $62.50 a year per $1 million of value. The Independent’s explainer Not an HOA: The Government That Runs Much of Monument covers how Triview, the largest district here, works.
The districts, neighborhood by neighborhood
Hover over a district for its levy; click or tap it for its debt. The same figures are in the tables below.
Metro-district property tax a home pays, in mills, on the 2025 levies billed in 2026. Districts inside Triview Metropolitan District, which reaches west of Interstate 25, also pay Triview’s 20.5 mills, and their shading includes it. Hatched districts have no homes yet. Four commercial districts with no homes, and districts that levied nothing in 2025, are not shown. Debt is at Dec. 31, 2025, from each district’s 2025 audit or audit-exemption filing. Boundaries: El Paso County GIS; roads: U.S. Census Bureau. Map: The Monument Independent.
Triview’s boundary is wider than Jackson Creek. It also takes in the Conexus development and a commercial strip along Old Denver Road west of Interstate 25, commercial lots on Baptist Road and a tract on West Highway 105. All of it pays Triview’s 20.5 mills, and the districts drawn inside it pay their own levies on top.
What each district charges
The 22 districts certified $10.97 million in property tax for 2026, about 12% of the $92 million the State Auditor counts for all 280 metro districts in El Paso County. Triview alone accounts for $4.13 million. In every one of the 22, at least 65% of the levy goes to debt service or a contractual payment rather than to the district’s own operations. Four of them are commercial districts with no houses: Pinon Pines No. 3, which covers the Falcon Commerce Center; Monument Junction No. 1; and Jackson Creek Commercial Nos. 2 and 5 (No. 5 also holds an apartment property). They certified $1.47 million between them and are left out of the tables and the map. Conexus Nos. 1 and 2 and Flying Horse North No. 2 have no houses yet either, but the El Paso County Assessor counts 195 vacant residential lots in them, so they stay in.
| District (neighborhood) | Operations | Debt | Contract | Total mills | 2026 tax |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Triview No. 3 (Home Place Ranch) | 11.543 | 57.718 | — | 69.261 | $416,583 |
| Cloverleaf | 12.186 | 54.931 | — | 67.117 | $276,840 |
| Lake of the Rockies | 12.813 | 51.017 | — | 63.830 | $423,988 |
| Willow Springs Ranch | 8.127 | 55.088 | — | 63.215 | $864,109 |
| Wagons West | 12.446 | 45.127 | — | 57.573 | $194,459 |
| Monument Junction No. 2 (Monument Junction East) | 10.200 | — | 44.111 | 54.311 | $385,403 |
| Village Center (Village Center at Woodmoor) | 15.000 | 35.000 | — | 50.000 | $719,806 |
| Pinon Pines No. 2 (Forest Lakes) | 11.133 | 38.582 | — | 49.715 | $533,432 |
| Conexus No. 1 (no homes yet) | 5.370 | 32.222 | — | 37.592 | $80,610 |
| Conexus No. 2 (no homes yet) | 5.370 | — | 32.222 | 37.592 | $2,429 |
| Pinon Pines No. 1 (Forest Lakes) | 11.133 | 22.500 | — | 33.633 | $522,332 |
| Misty Acres | 5.000 | — | 25.000 | 30.000 | $235,225 |
| Flying Horse North No. 2 (no homes yet) | 5.000 | 25.000 | — | 30.000 | $423 |
| Triview (Jackson Creek) | 7.000 | 13.500 | — | 20.500 | $4,125,193 |
| Walden No. 2 (Walden Preserve 2) | 7.049 | — | 13.000 | 20.049 | $105,587 |
| Jackson Creek North | — | 16.646 | — | 16.646 | $264,449 |
| Triview No. 2 (Promontory Pointe) | 2.000 | 6.500 | — | 8.500 | $110,539 |
| Triview No. 4 (Sanctuary Pointe) | 0.500 | 6.000 | — | 6.500 | $241,402 |
What a median-value house pays
The table below works out the bill for the median-value single-family house in each neighborhood. It uses the Assessor’s current market values, this year’s levies and the 2025 assessment rates (6.25% of value for local governments, 7.05% for the school district), with the full list of taxing entities printed on the Assessor’s record card for a median-value house in each area. Houses finished during 2025 may have been taxed on a partial value this year, so the figures show what a full year at today’s value costs, not anyone’s actual bill.
| Homes in | Median value | Without metro levies | Metro mills | Metro tax | Total bill |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home Place Ranch (Triview + No. 3) | $727,322 | $3,396 | 89.761 | $4,080 | $7,476 |
| Forest Lakes, Pinon Pines No. 2 | $938,976 | $4,350 | 49.715 | $2,918 | $7,268 |
| Cloverleaf | $835,401 | $3,610 | 67.117 | $3,504 | $7,114 |
| Walden Preserve 2 | $1,160,182 | $5,013 | 20.049 | $1,454 | $6,467 |
| Sanctuary Pointe (Triview + No. 4) | $954,321 | $4,455 | 27.000 | $1,610 | $6,065 |
| Lake of the Rockies | $666,383 | $3,111 | 63.830 | $2,658 | $5,769 |
| Forest Lakes, Pinon Pines No. 1 | $797,774 | $3,696 | 33.633 | $1,677 | $5,373 |
| Promontory Pointe (Triview + No. 2) | $786,840 | $3,673 | 29.000 | $1,426 | $5,099 |
| Village Center at Woodmoor | $632,994 | $2,955 | 50.000 | $1,978 | $4,933 |
| Willow Springs Ranch | $569,652 | $2,659 | 63.215 | $2,251 | $4,910 |
| Jackson Creek North (Triview + JCN) | $693,730 | $3,238 | 37.146 | $1,611 | $4,849 |
| Misty Acres | $727,502 | $3,143 | 30.000 | $1,364 | $4,507 |
| Monument Junction East | $553,724 | $2,585 | 54.311 | $1,880 | $4,465 |
| Jackson Creek, Triview only | $634,900 | $2,964 | 20.500 | $813 | $3,777 |
| Wagons West | $411,346 | $1,920 | 57.573 | $1,480 | $3,400 |
Why the charge varies
The levy follows the debt, and the debt per house varies widely. Two of the cheapest districts, Promontory Pointe’s and Sanctuary Pointe’s, borrowed little from the start. The district serving Promontory Pointe had a service-plan debt limit of $5 million; it sold $1.5 million of bonds in 2012, refinanced them in 2017 and owed $1.43 million at the end of 2025. The district serving Sanctuary Pointe had a $10 million limit, and the Town of Monument capped its total levy at 35 mills when it approved the plan; it sold $5 million of bonds in 2018 and has borrowed nothing since. Both neighborhoods are built out, so those payments are spread across hundreds of finished homes.
Several of the most expensive districts are newer and still filling in, so their payments fall on fewer houses, with vacant lots paying part of the bill.
| District | Finished homes | Vacant lots | 2026 debt and contract tax | Per finished home | Debt mills |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Triview No. 2 (Promontory Pointe) | 256 | 0 | $84,530 | $330 | 6.500 |
| Triview No. 4 (Sanctuary Pointe) | 607 | 1 | $222,833 | $367 | 6.000 |
| Jackson Creek North | 251 | 237 | $264,449 | $1,054 | 16.646 |
| Village Center | 352 | 4 | $503,865 | $1,431 | 35.000 |
| Willow Springs Ranch | 364 | 68 | $753,018 | $2,069 | 55.088 |
| Lake of the Rockies | 153 | 0 | $338,878 | $2,215 | 51.017 |
| Pinon Pines No. 2 | 178 | 1 | $413,977 | $2,326 | 38.582 |
| Triview No. 3 (Home Place Ranch) | 96 | 68 | $347,156 | $3,616 | 57.718 |
| Cloverleaf | 50 | 90 | $226,576 | $4,532 | 54.931 |
Promontory Pointe’s and Sanctuary Pointe’s boards voted in late 2025 to begin dissolving their districts. Under both plans a director stays on to certify the debt levy until the bonds are paid, which for Promontory Pointe is 2047. The districts are dissolving; the bonds are not.
The cap can rise
A service plan sets the most a district may levy, but the cap is not always a fixed number. The State Auditor’s October audit says service plans that set a maximum levy typically allow it to be raised when the state changes how property is assessed, so that the district collects the same money. Every cap the Independent read, in the filings of four Tri-Lakes districts, works that way.
Home Place Ranch shows how far that can go. Its district’s plan, approved by the town in 2022, sets a cap of 60 mills, adjusted for every cut in assessment rates since 2006, the year the district was organized. This year it levies 69.261 mills, the adjusted maximum; its draft budget for next year proposes 73.801. Because the adjustment is weighted by the kind of property in the district, the cap rises further as vacant lots become houses. Nor will more houses lower that rate soon: the terms of the district’s 2026 bonds require the full adjusted debt levy until a smaller one would cover the payments and fill its reserve funds, and the district also owes its developer an estimated $14.7 million by the end of 2026.
What the districts owe
| Neighborhood (district) | Bonds and loans | Owed to developer | Total | Final payment | Homes / vacant lots |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloverleaf | $5,689,000 | $4,351,258 | $10,040,258 | 2051 | 50 / 90 |
| Conexus No. 1 | $15,906,552 | $733,673 | $16,640,225 | 2055 | 0 / 4 |
| Conexus No. 2 | $0 | $0 | $0 | — | 0 / 175 |
| Flying Horse North No. 2 | $0 | $0 | $0 | — | 0 / 16 |
| Forest Lakes (Pinon Pines No. 1) | $6,625,000 | $48,798 | $6,673,798 | 2035 | 265 / 4 |
| Forest Lakes (Pinon Pines No. 2) | $7,831,000 | $3,705 | $7,834,705 | 2055 | 178 / 1 |
| Home Place Ranch (Triview No. 3) | $0 at end of 2025; $7.9M sold March 2026 | $190,164 | est. $22.7M at end of 2026 | — | 96 / 68 |
| Jackson Creek (Triview) | $57.5M general; $41.9M water and sewer | none listed | $99.4M | 2046; 2055 | about 2,400 / 488 |
| Jackson Creek North | $4,000,000 | $1,988,632 | $5,988,632 | 2054 | 251 / 237 |
| Lake of the Rockies | $2,785,700 | none | $2,785,700 | 2048 | 153 / 0 |
| Misty Acres | none | $3,000,000 | $3,000,000 | 2043 | 158 / 1 |
| Monument Junction East (No. 2) | none of its own; its levy is pledged to No. 1’s 2021 bonds, $14,960,681 | $0 | $0 of its own | 2051 (No. 1’s bonds) | 119 / 235 |
| Promontory Pointe (Triview No. 2) | $1,444,950 | $0 | $1,444,950 | 2047 | 256 / 0 |
| Sanctuary Pointe (Triview No. 4) | $5,055,241 | none listed | $5,055,241 | 2048 | 607 / 1 |
| Village Center at Woodmoor | $7,645,000 | none | $7,645,000 | 2038 | 352 / 4 |
| Wagons West | $2,470,806 | $1,052,573 | $3,523,379 | 2049 | 131 / 0 |
| Walden Preserve 2 | $0 | $0 | $0 | — | 81 / 31 |
| Willow Springs Ranch | $26,514,295 | $11,302,811 | $37,817,106 | 2054 | 364 / 68 |
Several entries stand out.
Willow Springs Ranch carries the largest total, $37.8 million, of which $11.3 million is owed to its developer at 6.3%. In its fiscal-health review for 2022 through 2024, the State Auditor flagged the district for falling cash, below one month of spending, and for spending more than it took in.
Village Center told the state in its 2025 filing that it is behind on principal payments on its bonds and is working with the bondholders to catch up; it reported that it is not in default. Its 2024 audit names the district’s developer as the registered owner of those bonds.
Misty Acres has paid interest on the same $3 million since 2013. Its 25 contract mills go to a 2013 reimbursement agreement for the developer’s construction of district improvements, which runs to Dec. 30, 2043. The 2025 filing lists the $3 million as a negotiated legal settlement, unchanged during the year; the levy paid $221,034 of interest and no principal.
Forest Lakes is paid for partly by warehouses. Pinon Pines No. 3, which covers the Falcon Commerce Center, sold $21 million of bonds in April 2025 and sent the net $18.2 million to Forest Lakes Metropolitan District to pay accrued interest and part of what it owed its developer. Forest Lakes still owed the developer $56.4 million plus $18.9 million of interest at the end of 2025.
Conexus and Flying Horse North No. 2 have no houses yet. Conexus No. 1 sold $16.4 million of bonds in 2025, and a house built in either Conexus district would pay 58.092 metro mills at this year’s rates, Triview’s included. Flying Horse North No. 2, with 16 vacant lots and a tax base of $14,090, reported no debt. Its filing lists $10.8 billion of borrowing authorized in 2023 and not yet issued, which its service plan limits to $400 million.
Monument Junction East’s homeowners pay another district’s bonds. Under a capital pledge agreement, their 44.111 contract mills go toward the 2021 bonds of Monument Junction No. 1, which carried $12.26 million of principal and $2.70 million of unpaid accrued interest at the end of 2025.
Home Place Ranch has the most debt per planned house. Its draft budget estimates $22.7 million owed at the end of 2026 for a neighborhood its service plan expects to reach about 300 homes, roughly $75,000 per house.
Walden Preserve 2 owes nothing. Its 13 contract mills fund a transfer to Walden Metropolitan District No. 1, $113,226 in 2025.
How the levies have moved since 2020
| District | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloverleaf | 0 | 0 | 60.000 | 62.365 | 66.674 | 67.117 |
| Jackson Creek North | 0 | 3.000 | 15.000 | 15.000 | 15.740 | 16.646 |
| Lake of the Rockies | 55.664 | 55.664 | 57.365 | 59.504 | 59.354 | 63.830 |
| Misty Acres | 30.000 | 30.000 | 30.000 | 30.000 | 30.000 | 30.000 |
| Monument Junction No. 2 | 0 | 0 | 50.000 | 51.971 | 52.121 | 54.311 |
| Pinon Pines No. 1 | 42.633 | 42.633 | 42.633 | 31.633 | 33.633 | 33.633 |
| Pinon Pines No. 2 | 55.664 | 55.664 | 55.664 | 55.664 | 55.664 | 49.715 |
| Triview | 27.000 | 24.000 | 24.000 | 20.500 | 20.500 | 20.500 |
| Triview No. 2 (Promontory Pointe) | 15.407 | 15.407 | 11.000 | 9.500 | 8.500 | 8.500 |
| Triview No. 3 (Home Place Ranch) | 30.000 | 50.000 | 10.000 | 10.409 | 65.496 | 69.261 |
| Triview No. 4 (Sanctuary Pointe) | 16.915 | 16.915 | 12.500 | 9.000 | 6.500 | 6.500 |
| Village Center | 50.000 | 53.871 | 57.266 | 50.000 | 50.000 | 50.000 |
| Wagons West | 50.349 | 55.664 | 51.669 | 62.088 | 62.083 | 57.573 |
| Walden No. 2 | 30.210 | 30.210 | 30.210 | 20.049 | 20.049 | 20.049 |
| Willow Springs Ranch | 55.663 | 55.663 | 57.266 | 59.402 | 64.351 | 63.215 |
The older Jackson Creek districts have cut their levies as their neighborhoods filled in: Triview from 27 mills to 20.5, Promontory Pointe’s from 15.4 to 8.5, Sanctuary Pointe’s from 16.9 to 6.5. Several newer ones have moved the other way: Willow Springs Ranch from 55.7 mills in 2020 to 63.2, Lake of the Rockies from 55.7 to 63.8, Cloverleaf from 60 in its first year to 67.1, and Home Place Ranch’s from 10.4 in 2023 to 69.3.
What the state has flagged
The State Auditor’s June 2026 fiscal-health review of special districts flagged three Tri-Lakes districts on two warning indicators each for 2022 through 2024. Pinon Pines No. 1 was flagged because property taxes covered a shrinking share of its spending and its spending exceeded its revenue. Triview No. 4 was flagged for the same shrinking coverage and because the debt share of its levy rose each year. Willow Springs Ranch was flagged as described above. The Auditor notes that a warning indicator does not by itself mean a district is in fiscal stress. None of the 19 districts statewide that reported trouble making debt payments is in the Tri-Lakes.
The same review listed nine Tri-Lakes districts that had not filed their 2024 annual reports with the Auditor as of April 14, 2026, six months after the deadline: Conexus Nos. 1 and 2, Misty Acres and Walden Nos. 1 and 2, along with Jackson Creek Commercial Nos. 2, 5, 6 and 7. The Auditor notes that a district may have filed with the state Division of Local Government and not with its office. The Independent has not established whether those reports have been filed since.
What a buyer can check
The levy is public before a house is bought. The El Paso County Assessor’s online record card for any property lists every taxing entity on it, metro district included, with its levy. Since 2022, Colorado law has required anyone selling a newly built home in a metro district to give the buyer, before or when the contract is signed, information on the district’s debt and an estimate of the property tax. Each district’s service plan, which sets how high the levy can go, and its audits are public records. Many districts post them on their websites, and the State Auditor posts the audits and audit exemptions it receives.
Next year’s levies are being set now. Every district must adopt its 2027 budget and certify its levy to the county by Dec. 15, and those levies will be on the tax bills issued in 2027.
For a little over seven in ten homes in the Lewis-Palmer school district, the metro line on that bill is blank.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage: Not an HOA: The Government That Runs Much of Monument (how Triview works) · Home Place Ranch: The Investigation (the series on one neighborhood and its district)
State records: Colorado Division of Property Taxation, annual reports (2025 report, certification of levies) · Colorado State Auditor, Metropolitan Districts performance audit, October 2026 · Colorado State Auditor, Special Districts Fiscal Health Analysis, 2022–2024 · Senate Bill 21-262, Special District Transparency (the buyer-disclosure requirement)
County records: El Paso County Treasurer, mill levies · El Paso County Assessor
Town records: Town of Monument Resolution 53-2022 and the Triview Metropolitan District No. 3 amended service plan
The districts: Triview Metropolitan District · Triview Metropolitan District No. 2 · Triview Metropolitan District No. 3 · Triview Metropolitan District No. 4 · Jackson Creek North · Village Center · Willow Springs Ranch · Lake of the Rockies · Wagons West · Monument Junction Nos. 1 and 2 · Cloverleaf · Misty Acres · Forest Lakes and Pinon Pines Nos. 1–3 · Conexus Nos. 1 and 2 · Flying Horse North Nos. 1–5 · Jackson Creek Commercial Nos. 1–7 · Walden Nos. 1 and 2 (no website found)
Other: Tri-Lakes Monument Fire Protection District · Town of Monument
Methodology
Which districts. A metro district is counted here if most of its area lies inside Lewis-Palmer School District 38 or the Tri-Lakes Monument Fire Protection District, measured on El Paso County’s own district boundaries. Thirty-three districts qualify; 22 certified a levy above zero for tax year 2025. Four of the 22, Pinon Pines No. 3, Monument Junction No. 1 and Jackson Creek Commercial Nos. 2 and 5, are commercial districts with no houses; they are counted in the totals and left out of the tables and the map. Flying Horse North Nos. 1, 3, 4 and 5 lie mostly outside both and are left out.
Levies and tax. Levies and each district’s 2026 tax are from the Colorado Division of Property Taxation’s 2025 annual report, checked against the El Paso County Treasurer’s levy table. Debt and contract levies are as each district certified them.
Homes and values. Homes are residential parcels whose center falls inside a district boundary, joined to the Assessor’s parcel file of Nov. 3, 2026; vacant lots are parcels the Assessor classes as vacant residential land. Medians are for single-family homes only. Median values are current market values, which for houses finished during 2025 may exceed the value taxed this year.
Bills. Each total bill uses the full list of taxing entities on the Assessor’s record card for a median-value house in that neighborhood, with the school levy applied at 7.05% of value and all others at 6.25%, the 2025 rates. Some houses in the same district sit in a different tax area and pay a few mills more or less.
Same-price pairs. The widest gap in the opening paragraph comes from matching single-family houses in different neighborhoods from the median-house table whose Assessor market values are within $1,000 of each other, priced the same way as the table. Of every such pair, a Home Place Ranch house and a Walden Preserve 2 house show the widest gap; part of it is the Town of Monument’s levy, which Walden Preserve, outside the town, does not pay. Both houses were checked on their record cards. To protect the owners, the article gives rounded values and no addresses.
Debt. Debt is as each district reported it at Dec. 31, 2025, in its 2025 audit or application for exemption from audit. Per-home figures divide a district’s debt or debt tax by its finished homes or, for Home Place Ranch, the roughly 300 homes its service plan foresees; they are The Monument Independent’s calculations.
The cap. The Home Place Ranch adjustment was reproduced from the service plan’s definition: the change in assessment rates since 2006 (7.96% to 6.25% for homes, 29% to 27% for other property), weighted by the district’s 2025 tax base, gives the certified 57.718 debt mills.
Map. District boundaries are from El Paso County GIS, roads from the U.S. Census Bureau, simplified for display. Where districts overlap, each is drawn as its own area; districts inside Triview are shaded with Triview’s levy included. Triview’s boundary includes land outside Jackson Creek, so the map shows it in pieces; the homes counted for Triview are all in Jackson Creek. Districts that levied nothing in 2025, and the four commercial districts, are not shown. Hatching marks districts with no homes yet.
Using this reporting? Credit The Monument Independent and link to this article: https://monumentindependent.com/government/tri-lakes-metro-district-taxes/. Our guidelines are at Using Our Reporting.
