The PID Proposal
A 2025 citizen-led effort to create a Public Improvement District to fix Niwot's roads — and how it converged with the incorporation effort.
The Proposal
Summer 2025
Faced with decades of deteriorating roads and no county commitment to fund rehabilitation, a group of Niwot residents took matters into their own hands. They proposed creating a Public Improvement District (PID) — a special taxing district authorized under Colorado law to fund infrastructure improvements through a property tax levy.
- Heidi Storz
- Bruce "Biff" Warren
- Chris Crangle
- Mike Keffeler
The Details
Mill levy: 12.00 mills ($93.92 per $100,000 of assessed home value annually)
Boundaries: Diagonal Highway (west), Highway 52/Mineral Road (south), 95th Street (east), Ogallala Road (north)
Included: Residential subdivisions, Monarch Park commercial area, Boulder Tech Center
Excluded: Downtown business district (2nd Avenue / LID area)
Revenue use: Road rehabilitation and maintenance; up to 5% for Niwot Master Plan improvements
The downtown business district was excluded because it already had the LID — a separate 1% sales tax district funding downtown improvements. The PID was designed to address the residential subdivision roads that the county had declined to repave since its 1995 policy change.
The Petition
July 2025
The organizers collected 237 petition signatures — well above the 200 required — to place the PID on the November 2025 ballot. The petition was submitted to the Boulder County Commissioners for a public hearing.
The Postponement
August 19, 2025
At the public hearing, organizer Heidi Storz asked the commissioners to postpone action until October 21. Community feedback had raised several concerns:
- Some farm properties to the north wanted to be excluded from the boundaries
- Residents questioned whether the 12-mill levy was the right amount
- Petition language needed refinement to avoid misinterpretation
- Some subdivisions that were excluded wanted in; others that were included wanted out
The commissioners voted unanimously to postpone. In September, the organizers pressed pause entirely, requesting that the October hearing be vacated. The PID would not appear on the November 2025 ballot.
The Niwot Community Association conducted a survey on the PID in August 2025, revealing a community divided on the approach but broadly aligned on the underlying problem: the roads needed fixing, and the county was not going to do it.
Convergence with Incorporation
The PID effort and the incorporation effort were initially independent. The PID group was focused narrowly on roads; the incorporation team was looking at a broader set of governance issues. But as the two groups compared notes through the summer and fall of 2025, a pattern became clear.
The PID was a workaround — a way to tax Niwot residents to fix roads that the county owned and had accepted responsibility for. Incorporation offered a more comprehensive solution: a town government that would have direct authority over road infrastructure, could develop a Capital Improvement Plan, and could apply for state and federal grants available only to municipalities.
One by one, the people behind the PID concluded that incorporation addressed the road problem and much more. They joined the incorporation effort, bringing with them the community organizing experience, the petition infrastructure, and the detailed knowledge of Niwot's road conditions that they had built over months of work.