{"id":67056,"date":"2016-08-02T01:04:26","date_gmt":"2016-08-02T07:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/commissioners-take-sales-tax-question-off-november-ballot\/"},"modified":"2016-08-02T07:04:26","modified_gmt":"2016-08-02T07:04:26","slug":"commissioners-take-sales-tax-question-off-november-ballot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/commissioners-take-sales-tax-question-off-november-ballot\/","title":{"rendered":"Commissioners take sales tax question off November ballot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image naviga-align-left alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=acddc535-e7ba-46fe-a5ef-32e2e43c3c6b&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"631\" height=\"1072\" alt=\"Light emits out of the end of a fiber optic line being installed by Fast Track in 2015.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Light emits out of the end of a fiber optic line being installed by Fast Track in 2015.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>Montezuma County commissioners decided Monday to delay asking voters if they want a 1 percent sales tax to finance a $39 million broadband project for high-speed internet services.<\/p>\n<p>County commissioners initially planned to have the sales tax question on the November ballot, along with a question to form a broadband authority to build and manage the new internet infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>But they learned last week they would miss a July 31 deadline to submit the project\u2019s tax-supported financing plan to the Colorado Department of Revenue.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need more time to figure out the details,\u201d said commissioner Keenan Ertel.<\/p>\n<p>However, a question on whether to opt out of Colorado Senate Bill 152 will still be on the November ballot. Opting out of the state law would allow the county to build telecommunication infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe will back off the tax question and focus on SB152, because we can\u2019t move forward without opting out,\u201d said Jim McClain, information technology director for Montezuma County.<\/p>\n<p>The commissioners are considering holding a special election in 2017 for the sales tax and broadband authority questions.<\/p>\n<p>Officials said delaying the ballot question gives them breathing room for project planning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis will give us time to educate the public on what we are trying to accomplish,\u201d McClain said.<\/p>\n<p>Commissioner Larry Don Suckla also backtracked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaybe we have not looked at all the options,\u201d Suckla said. \u201cThis gives us time to think it over. Putting it out there like we did was worthwhile because it got people talking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>considers special election after missing state deadline<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":67057,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,13,275,60,109,2068],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-67056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-internet","tag-montezuma-county","tag-montezuma-county-commissioner","tag-telecommunication-equipment"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67056","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=67056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67056"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=67056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}