Colorado’s Front Range rail district would shrink under new bill
Chase Woodruff
(Colorado Newsline) Colorado lawmakers are advancing legislation to dramatically narrow the scope of the state’s Front Range Passenger Rail District ahead of an expected vote in November to fund the long-awaited intercity line.
Senate Bill 26-172, which won approval from the Senate Transportation and Energy Committee on Monday, would shrink the district’s boundaries to align with the municipal borders of a few dozen Front Range cities most directly served by the proposed route. Voters in the redrawn district could be asked to approve a sales tax hike to fund the newly christened Colorado Connector service later this year.
Bill sponsor Sen. Cathy Kipp, a Fort Collins Democrat, said in a statement that the new boundaries “create a strong foundation for this project to advance with accurate boundaries and community input.”
“Families in Fort Collins want an affordable, eco-friendly, and convenient way to travel along the Front Range,” Kipp said. “These communities are highly interconnected and our infrastructure should match how Coloradans live, work, and travel every day.”
The Legislature first created the rail district in 2021 to oversee the planning, construction and operation of the passenger line, granting it the authority to refer a sales tax measure to the ballot. The FRPRD is currently the largest special taxing district in the state, consisting of all or part of 13 counties along the Interstate 25 corridor between the Wyoming and New Mexico borders.
Under SB-172, the district would be redrawn to a fraction of its current geographic size and shed about 40% of its population, shrinking to 2.6 million residents from 4.4 million.
The realignment is backed by the FRPRD’s board, which says it makes sense to redraw the district’s boundaries after the selection of the service’s preferred route, which envisions nine stops between Fort Collins and Pueblo, including Denver, Boulder and Colorado Springs.
“We looked at lots of different iterations and lots of different considerations for different map sizes and district alignments,” district general manager Sal Pace told lawmakers.
“Of the scenarios that we explored, (this) has some of the highest — but not the highest — tax base, to be able to pay for what we’re proposing to pay for while keeping the tax rate relatively low,” Pace added. “And that’s an important consideration.”
Carveout for Northglenn
Aside from several stops on two long-haul Amtrak routes, the California Zephyr and the Southwest Chief, Colorado hasn’t had regular intercity passenger rail service since the 1970s. Along with developing the Colorado Connector service, the state has also partnered with Amtrak to revive the ski train to Winter Park for several months a year, and plans to support daily “Mountain Rail” service between Denver and Granby, slated to launch in November, with future expansion planned as far as Steamboat Springs.
A total of 30 municipalities, along with the Sterling Ranch metropolitan district in unincorporated Douglas County, would be included in the Front Range rail district under SB-172. The bill would allow other municipalities and metro districts to join the district through voter or board approval in the future.
The bill would also enable the creation of subdistricts, to refer additional taxes for approval at the local level to fund station improvements and other infrastructure.
Before advancing the bill on an 8-1 vote — Sen. Mark Baisley, a Republican from Sedalia, was the lone no vote — senators on the transportation committee approved an amendment to exclude the city of Northglenn in Adams County from the redrawn district. Democratic Sen. Kyle Mullica, who represents the area in the Senate, introduced the amendment at the request of Northglenn’s city government.
“They don’t want to be part of the taxing district, and I think they have a reason not to be,” Mullica said. “Adams County doesn’t have a stop.”
District officials and SB-172 sponsors said they had drawn the new boundaries according to a set of objective criteria, including whether 20% of a municipality’s population is within five miles of a planned stop. Northglenn meets that criteria because of its proximity to the service’s planned stop in Westminster, they said.
“Like any line-drawing exercise, it’s not perfect, but appeared to be the fairest one that we were able to come up with,” Pace said.
The committee adopted Mullica’s amendment on a 5-4 vote. Kipp warned against exempting communities in such an ad-hoc fashion, which she said “could endanger the entire project.”
“People have wanted Front Range Rail for a long time,” she said. “Eventually, this line is anticipated to go from Wyoming to New Mexico. It will serve us — it will serve east to west, it will serve north to south. And endangering an entire project over a carveout is really a problematic way to go.”
SB-172 will be heard next by the Senate Appropriations Committee before heading to the full Senate. The Legislature is set to adjourn May 13.