2015.11.05 - Colo Union of Taxpayers Found V City of Aspen - 2015
2015.11.05 - Colo Union of Taxpayers Found V City of Aspen - 2015
2015.11.05 - Colo Union of Taxpayers Found V City of Aspen - 2015
Document(1)
1.
| About LexisNexis | Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Copyright 2015 | LexisNexis.
Julianna Wade
No Shepards Signal
Opinion
I. Background
Core Terms
reduction, ordinance, bags, services, trash, disposable,
funded, recycling, collected, reusable, primary purpose,
district court, grocers, City's, residents, carryout,
finance, defray
Counsel: Jeffrey W. McCoy, Steven J. Lechner,
Lakewood, Colorado, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
James R. True, City Attorney, Deborah Quinn, Assistant
City
Attorney,
Aspen,
Colorado,
for
Defendants-Appellees.
Judges: Opinion by JUDGE MILLER. Sternberg* and
Rothenberg*
Opinion by: MILLER
Sitting by assignment of the Chief Justice under provisions of Colo. Const. art. VI, 5(3), and 24-51-1105, C.R.S. 2015.
Sitting by assignment of the Chief Justice under provisions of Colo. Const. art. VI, 5(3), and 24-51-1105, C.R.S. 2015.
Julianna Wade
Page 2 of 4
2015 COA 162, *4; 2015 Colo. App. LEXIS 1722, **3
by grocers are remitted upon payment with the
business's city sales tax payment to the City's Finance
Department. Code 13.24.050(d)-(e). Fees remitted are
deposited into a special City "Waste Reduction and
Recycling Account." Code 13.24.050(d). [**3] The City's
Environmental Health Department administers the fee.
Code 13.24.050(f).
[*4] The funds deposited in the account are used for the
following projects, in the following order of priorities:
A. TABOR Background
Julianna Wade
Page 3 of 4
2015 COA 162, *11; 2015 Colo. App. LEXIS 1722, **5
[*11] As relevant here, TABOR limits the state's ability
to levy new taxes or create new debts by requiring [**6]
C. Application
Julianna Wade
Page 4 of 4
2015 COA 162, *23; 2015 Colo. App. LEXIS 1722, **9
reduction fee obtains a number of services, including
reusable carryout bags, availability of recycling
containers and waste receptacles, trash cleanup events,
and various waste reduction and recycling educational
services.
[*19] In TABOR Foundation, a division of this court
rejected the argument that to be considered a fee, a
service must be utilized only by those who pay a charge
or by all those who must pay the charge. Id. at 38-43.
The division held that a fee may be charged to persons
who may not use the services at all, so long as it is
reasonably related to the overall cost of the service and
is imposed on those reasonably likely to benefit from or
use the service. Id. at 39-40; see also Bloom, 784
P.2d at 310 (transportation utility fee was a fee and not
a tax where the fees collected were used "for the
purpose of maintaining the [**10] network of city streets
without regard to whether the city's expenditures
specifically relate[d] to any particular property from
which the fees for said purposes were collected")
(citation omitted). Accordingly, the fact that a payor of
the waste reduction fee may choose not to take
advantage of the reusable carryout bags or the
education, community outreach, or other trash and
waste reduction efforts that the charge funds does not
bar its consideration as a fee.
[*20] Like the payors of the bridge safety surcharge in
V. Conclusion
[*27] The judgment is affirmed.
JUDGE STERNBERG and JUDGE ROTHENBERG
concur.
Julianna Wade