{"id":30777,"date":"2023-11-08T02:58:49","date_gmt":"2023-11-08T09:58:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-voters-reject-tax-hike-to-boost-the-cortez-fire-protection-districts-budget\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:25:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:25:40","slug":"montezuma-county-voters-reject-tax-hike-to-boost-the-cortez-fire-protection-districts-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-voters-reject-tax-hike-to-boost-the-cortez-fire-protection-districts-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma County voters reject tax hike to boost the Cortez Fire Protection District\u2019s budget"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=0f664c4c-8322-4e95-919c-bbcea90f8cf3&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1750\" height=\"1167\" alt=\"A ballot measure to raise property taxes to fund a budget increase for the CFPD failed on Tuesday.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">A ballot measure to raise property taxes to fund a budget increase for the CFPD failed on Tuesday.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>Montezuma County voters on Tuesday rejected a ballot measure that would have hiked area property taxes in order to increase the Cortez Fire Protection District\u2019s budget by $1 million.<\/p>\n<p>Ballot Issue 6A failed by a vote of 53% to 47%. Among other improvements, the budget increase would have helped offset a salary bump for CFPD employees and allowed the department to replace critical equipment.<\/p>\n<p>CFPD Fire Chief Roy Wilkinson previously estimated the ballot measure would have resulted in citizens paying roughly $9 more in taxes per month.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you have a house fire and you\u2019re trapped in the house, I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s anybody alive that\u2019s not going to pay nine bucks for us to come in and help you or your family,\u201d he previously told <em id=\"emphasis-771a49e2a107307514b4a48d0544f936\">The Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, Wilkinson said that, should the ballot measure fail, the department would have to cut some activities, like CPR classes and visits to the area schools.<\/p>\n<p>Separately, the town of Dolores on Tuesday approved a measure to deed the land the fire station is on to the local department.<\/p>\n<div class=\"naviga-pdf-embed\"><iframe class=\"article-pdf\" src=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/HGtHEyjh3g68S1NyUmzP3qdRYpg.pdf\" style=\"width:100%;height:500px;border:1px solid #ddd\" loading=\"lazy\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/HGtHEyjh3g68S1NyUmzP3qdRYpg.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2023 Vote Count.pdf (Download PDF)<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p><\/iframe>\n<p class=\"naviga-pdf-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/HGtHEyjh3g68S1NyUmzP3qdRYpg.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2023 Vote Count.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>$1 million increase would have helped offset staff raises and with equipment repairs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[266,28,308,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-30777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-election","tag-headlines","tag-local-elections","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30777","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=30777"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81203,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30777\/revisions\/81203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30777"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=30777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}