As a follow up to my previous article on the County Council’s levy lid lift, I watched the beginning of the San Juan County Council meeting on Tuesday, February 3, focusing on the portion of the meeting where the levy lid lift was discussed. What follows reflects how I understood that discussion.
The Council began by reviewing a draft resolution that would place a levy lid lift on the April 2026 special election ballot. The discussion was not about whether the levy lid lift should be pursued. All three Council members expressed support for moving forward, and the focus of the conversation was on how the language of the resolution should be changed and expanded to strengthen the case being made to voters.
Much of the discussion centered on how the resolution itself would not necessarily be read by very many voters, but would instead function more as a historical and legal document that future cases and arguments would be built upon. County staff brought in the attorney who helps draft the language, and the attorney stated directly that what is written in the resolution is also used to produce the official “for” argument in the voter pamphlet. From there, the focus of the conversation clearly shifted toward massaging and expanding the language in the resolution in order to better sell the levy lid lift to voters, rather than debating whether the levy itself was appropriate.
Several justifications were discussed during the meeting. Council members referenced rising costs, insurance expenses, and the reduction of other funding sources. One Council member also emphasized public safety, suggesting that without additional revenue, essential services could eventually be affected. This kind of framing will be familiar to anyone who has followed past levy campaigns, where invoking public safety is a common way to raise the emotional stakes of a funding decision.
Beneath that framing, the underlying assumption throughout the conversation was that because funding is being reduced in one place, it must be replaced somewhere else, and the way the conversation unfolded made it clear that a levy lid lift is the mechanism being relied upon to do that.
There was no discussion of austerity, program cuts, or deeper structural changes during this portion of the meeting, and no exploration of what it would mean to govern within tighter constraints rather than expand the tax base.
This dynamic was especially clear in the discussion around the language in the resolution itself, specifically the section referencing the County’s move to a 32 hour work week. Council members discussed whether including that policy in the resolution was helpful, noting that while it had saved the County roughly $2,000,000, it was not as popular with the public as expected. The focus was not on revisiting the policy decision, but on how to reframe it within the resolution as a cost saving measure, so it would read as evidence of fiscal responsibility while still advancing the levy lid lift as the primary solution to the budget gap.
The overall impression was not that the levy lid lift was a last resort, but that it was being treated as the most politically manageable option. The harder work, restructuring programs, setting priorities, and making unpopular internal decisions, was largely absent from the discussion, while raising property taxes remained the default tool.
The resolution currently under discussion is still a draft and has not yet been finalized or adopted. Council members indicated that additional language would be added before a final version is brought forward for approval. One thing that is already clear, however, is the numbers.
The draft resolution proposes a County regular property tax levy for collection in 2027 at a total rate of $0.85 per $1,000 of assessed value, and it states that this would result in approximately $4,500,000 in additional revenue for 2027. It also specifies that the dollar amount levied in 2027 would be used as the base for calculating future levy limits.
In the 2025 property tax breakdown, the relevant line item is County General, $7,952,441, which represents about 9.17 percent of the roughly $86,678,348 in total property taxes collected across all taxing districts countywide. That $7,952,441 is the current County General property tax take. The proposed levy lid lift would increase that line item by about $4,500,000 in 2027, taking County General from roughly $8,000,000 to about $12,500,000 in a single move, and then using that higher dollar amount as the base for future growth.
On its face, $12,500,000 may not sound especially large when compared to the County’s overall operating budget. But County General is not just another line item. It is the most flexible pool of property tax revenue the Council controls, and the one not already earmarked for specific purposes. Much of the County’s total budget is tied up in restricted funds, grants, dedicated levies, and pass through revenues that can only be used for specific programs. County General, by contrast, is the discretionary slice. It is the small portion of the budget that can be moved around to cover gaps, which is why it becomes the easiest place to go when other funding sources tighten, rather than doing the harder work of restructuring programs, setting priorities, or making internal tradeoffs.
For an individual homeowner, the scale of the change looks like this. The current County General levy rate is about $0.54 per $1,000 of assessed value, which works out to roughly $271 per year on a $500,000 home. Under the draft resolution, the County General levy rate for collection in 2027 would be $0.85 per $1,000, which would be about $425 per year on that same $500,000 home. That represents an increase of roughly 57 percent.
As a reminder, all other taxing districts would continue collecting their existing levies. Schools, fire, hospital, library, EMS, and other districts would remain unchanged by this measure, meaning the overall tax bill would still reflect a layered system of overlapping districts, with County General being just one of many line items.
And again, it is worth noting how the underlying system works. If this levy lid lift is not approved, the County does not lose any of its existing funding. The current County General levy remains in place, and the County is still allowed under state law to increase its total property tax revenue by up to 1 percent per year from existing properties. In other words, a “no” vote does not automatically result in cuts or a loss of current services by default. The levy lid lift is a choice to reset the County General levy rate upward to $0.85 per $1,000 for collection in 2027, and then use that higher dollar amount as the base for future growth.
At a minimum, I would urge the County Council to seriously reconsider whether a special election is an appropriate way to make a decision of this magnitude. Special elections are expensive to conduct, have narrower turnout, and place major financial decisions in front of a much smaller slice of the electorate. Ultimately, though, the deeper issue is not timing but direction. Continuing to rely on regressive property taxes as the default solution to budget pressure only further hollows out the middle class, and avoids the harder work of governing within real constraints, setting priorities, and confronting structural costs directly.
Jeremy Nash