As someone who has been living here for a while now, I would say Colorado moreso masquerades as a reasonable state than actually being all that reasonable.
For one, property values run everything in this state to an insane degree. Most starter size homes in the state, even in towns without a real grocery store or much of anything, will run you nearly a million dollars (if not more). Its blatantly unsustainable and yet nothing is being done to fix it.
TABOR is a stupid system that is only better than legitimate corruption, which is what people compare it to. Realistically it is worse than keeping the tax money and spending it on improving things here. I would much rather not get a few hundred dollars back in a check each year if it meant that local public services didnt have to keep jacking up sales taxes so that they can continue to function. Especially when, as stated beforehand, we could properly tax the absolutely insane property value. Even just taxing second/vacation homes would be great… and yet no one wants to do that because then the housing market might actually cool off.
Im not saying we dont have nice things. We do. But everything about how this state is run caters to millionaires and then tells everyone else to get fucked if they cant hack it. Teachers here get paid worse than almost every other state in the country, despite the fact that we should be able to have the highest quality education system anywhere. If we funded it with property taxes especially, but thats a non-starter of course.
My town’s school and fire department are both failing financially and all anyone seems to want to do to fix it is jack up sales taxes. No more taxes on property. No more taxes on lodging or STRs. No, lets just tax the working class people to death as they try to afford already inflated food prices.
This state is as stupid as it is beautiful much of the time, unfortunately. The whole thing is a house of cards type bubble just waiting to pop, and its gonna be violent when it goes
