{"id":15269,"date":"2025-11-27T01:06:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T08:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-city-manager-says-full-autopsy-on-overcollected-sales-tax-will-be-shared-dec-9\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:46:50","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:46:50","slug":"cortez-city-manager-says-full-autopsy-on-overcollected-sales-tax-will-be-shared-dec-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-city-manager-says-full-autopsy-on-overcollected-sales-tax-will-be-shared-dec-9\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez city manager says \u2018full autopsy\u2019 on overcollected sales tax will be shared Dec. 9"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The Cortez Recreation Center was funded by a sales tax established in 2001 to build and operate the facility. Voters approved a 2018 measure to extend the tax at a lower rate, but city officials recently discovered the higher rate continued to be collected. (Benjamin Rubin\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Cortez City Manager Drew Sanders told City Council on Tuesday that staff will provide a full timeline and accounting at the Dec. 9 meeting to explain a sales tax overcollection mistake revealed weeks ago.<\/p>\n

Sanders said in mid-October that the collection rate of 0.55% \u2013 meant to be reduced to 0.35% in 2018 \u2013 had gone unnoticed for years. All money has been used for its original purpose of sustaining the recreation center. \u201cWe have been collecting at the 0.55% rate all along, unbeknownst to any of the current staff or the current council,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

City Council voted unanimously on Nov. 12 to restore the sales tax collection rate to its original 0.35%.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as it was brought to our council\u2019s attention, the direction was fix it now,\u201d said Councilor Robert Dobry during the Nov. 12 meeting. \u201cDon\u2019t wait through the end of the year. Don\u2019t wait through anything. And our goal is to fix it as soon as possible and then we\u2019ll figure the rest out from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not fully ready to provide a full review, as it were, about what occurred,\u201d Sanders said.<\/p>\n

Sanders said City Council needed to pass an ordinance fixing the mistake before investigating what happened and how much was overcollected.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first prong, as it were, we had to get the future tax collection corrected. And so that involved getting that ordinance passed.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the ordinance, it takes at least 45 days for the finance department to work with the state and businesses to implement the new rate, Sanders said. He said sales taxes can be changed only on Jan. 1 and July 1.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow that that is in progress, it\u2019s time for us to pay attention to the back end, which we\u2019ve done. We think we\u2019ve got the body of information that we need. Now we just need to compile that into an understandable mass that we can deliver to you, and by extension, the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanders said city staff are \u201crelatively certain at this point that we really only have a couple of options.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those options will be addressed at the Dec. 9 regular City Council meeting, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDepending on what council chooses to do with it, we may have to take future action in January.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

not yet ready to clarify backstory to overcollection<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-15269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15269"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19568,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15269\/revisions\/19568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15269"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=15269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}