WOODLAND PARK — Woodland Park community members are voicing their opinions about a potential funding cut to local schools.
During a council meeting on Thursday, the Woodland Park City Council voted 5-2 to set a public hearing to discuss an ordinance that would repeal a city sales tax that sends millions of dollars to the Woodland Park School District.
The 1.09% sales tax was put in place by Woodland Park voters in 2016 to raise more money for the district to spend on educational purposes, like teacher salaries, school programs, and building improvements. Voters rejected a ballot question to repeal the sales tax in Nov. 2024. Last year, the WPSD received $3.2 million from the sales tax revenue, which is about 10% of the district's general fund.
However, several Woodland Park City Council members say the district is not following rules requiring the district to report how it's spending the sales tax money.
According to an Aug. 2024 intergovernmental agreement (IGA) between the City of Woodland Park and the WPSD, the district has to submit reports to the city showing sales tax expenditures through detailed and categorized ledgers. The last report from the district was submitted on the Jan. 31 deadline in the form of a one-page summary, which frustrated several council members. The district has since sent the city a more detailed spending report thirteen days after the due date.
This is not the first time the school district and the city have had a back-and-forth over the district's transparency of sales tax spending. Woodland Park City Council member Carrol Harvey said during the pandemic sales tax reporting from the district disappeared. Harvey said she made a push to get the reporting back up to speed after she was appointed to the council in 2023.
"It was brought to my attention by some parents in the district that they didn't know how the sales tax was being spent any longer," said Harvey. "We got quite a bit of pushback at that point from the sitting board, from a newly appointed superintendent, from the school district's attorney."
She said the city and school district finally agreed on rewriting the IGA in 2024 to include clear guidelines on how the district needed to report the sales tax spending. After last month's district report was submitted as a one-page summary, several council members said they were fed up and wanted to pull the sales tax.
Warren Dickenson, a parent of a second grader at Merit Academy, said the city council is not listening to its voters.
“People don't want to repeal the tax, so let's move on," he said, pointing to the vote in November's election to keep the sales tax. "It's kind of infuriating as a parent to have our kids every six months now seem to be going back and forth hearing about it.”
Seth Bryant moved his children out of WPSD schools after he said he had concerns about the school board's transparency. Bryant ran for school board in 2023. He said if the school district cannot meet the financial reporting standards they agreed to, then the district does not deserve the funding.
“The one thing I know that the city council didn't get, and they were very clear they wanted, was a ledger, and that's something that any financial department, accounting department, should be able to deliver pretty quick," said Bryant.
Brad Miller, the attorney for the WPSD, told News5 he could not comment about the ordinance.
A public hearing to discuss the ordinance is set for the next Woodland Park City Council meeting on March 6. Community members are invited to voice their opinions on the issue at the meeting.
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