{"id":24262,"date":"2024-12-25T22:52:16","date_gmt":"2024-12-26T05:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/where-does-the-cortez-fire-protection-districts-sales-tax-apply\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:51:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:51:04","slug":"where-does-the-cortez-fire-protection-districts-sales-tax-apply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/where-does-the-cortez-fire-protection-districts-sales-tax-apply\/","title":{"rendered":"Where does the Cortez Fire Protection District\u2019s sales tax apply?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=266a871b-9fe1-5724-9c2c-ce8489195f1d&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1406\" alt=\"Firefighters, police officers and neighbors at the scene of a fire Tuesday morning at 214 W. Coronado Ave. in Cortez. (The Journal)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Firefighters, police officers and neighbors at the scene of a fire Tuesday morning at 214 W. Coronado Ave. in Cortez. (The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>The Cortez Fire Protection District put a sales tax on the ballot in November, and it passed with 54% of voters in favor of it.<\/p>\n<p>Only those within their district voted on it, as the tax only applies to them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think people are confused about that. The sales tax is only going to be collected within our fire protection district, it is not a county-wide tax,\u201d said Cortez Fire Battalion Chief Rick Spencer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019ll be only collected within the 169 square miles of the Cortez fire district.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Business-wise, that means it applies to the city of Cortez and roughly a mile radius around that, though \u201cit is the entire district where the sales tax will be collected,\u201d Spencer said.<\/p>\n<p>The 0.54% sales tax will be effective July 1.<\/p>\n<p>It excludes things like diapers, feminine hygiene products and groceries.<\/p>\n<p>And it costs consumers less than a penny on the dollar; for every $100 someone spends, 50 cents will go to the Cortez Fire Protection District.<\/p>\n<p>It may not seem like a lot, but it\u2019ll add an estimated $3.3 million to the department\u2019s budget, and make it so Cortez Fire can provide services as its call volumes rise.<\/p>\n<p>To date, the department is 140 calls above the total number of calls for 2023 and sold a fire station to curb costs; \u201cwe\u2019d be going down a completely different road right now if it didn\u2019t pass,\u201d Spencer said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s a district-wide tax, not a county-wide one <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24263,"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-24262","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\/24262","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=24262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78461,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24262\/revisions\/78461"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24262"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}