Dozens of Castle Rock homeowners run for metro district board in Colorado to tackle $434 million in bond debt
Homeowners in Castle Rock are making progress in a fight to take over metro district leadership from a developer.
Last month, CBS Colorado's Olivia Young revealed how $70 million in metro district bond debt from the 1980s, intended to pay off infrastructure for the Meadows neighborhood, has now ballooned sixfold, despite homeowners paying property taxes to their metro district for decades.
After that report, people from across Colorado reached out with stories about their own metro districts. In the Meadows, dozens of homeowners were called to action. Many say they were shocked to learn where their taxes were going and that their community's debt nears $450 million.
Dozens of Meadows residents are now running for their metro district board, and homeowners are poised to take control of five of the seven metro district boards.
"When you pay your taxes, you typically think it's going towards community services," said John Haider, a Meadows Metro District 6 homeowner. "You don't typically think that it's going towards the profit of a developer."
When Haider learned of his neighborhood metro district's bond debt through CBS Colorado's reporting, he was shocked--but also inspired to take action.
"It moved me to want to get involved, to try and influence the board for homeowners, as opposed to the developer," Haider said.
Haider is now running for his metro district board along with 16 other District 6 neighbors.
"It's been great to see everyone kind of come together and work towards a goal of bringing more representation and transparency to the process," Haider said.
Because enough homeowners applied to run, emails obtained by CBS Colorado show two metro board members affiliated with the developer withdrew their self-nominations to run in Districts 2, 3, 6, and 7.
"It might very well be the first time that elections have ever occurred for the Meadows Metropolitan District boards," Haider said.
However, when Larry Canepa tried to run in District 4, the master district that residents say controls the bond debt finances, he hit a roadblock.
"That definitely inspired me to want to get involved, and then to receive a letter from the attorney for the metro district saying that none of the homeowners were eligible was very upsetting," Canepa said.
Canepa and other District 4 homeowners received an email from metro district attorneys stating, "Your property was excluded from Meadows Metropolitan District No. 4 by a Court order entered many years ago."
The county assessor's office told CBS Colorado that a 2007 court order excluded all of District 4 except for one parcel, owned by the developer. Despite this, excluded homeowners still pay taxes to the metro district.
"A third of our property taxes go to Metro District Four, and to not have any representation on that tax kind of sounds like 1776 all over again," Canepa said.
Metro district attorneys never responded to multiple inquiries about District 4 or general requests for comment. The developer, Castle Rock Development Company, also did not respond to a request for comment.
Homeowners in District 5 who tried to run for the metro board received an email stating their candidacy was insufficient because "they were not registered to vote at their identified residential addresses."
"It is concerning that we may not be able to control those [districts], but my hope is that if we control enough of them, they'll be more receptive to listening to homeowners in those districts," Haider said.
Homeowners say they won't stop pursuing transparency.
"I'm not really sure what we can do, but we need to start talking about it. And the problem is, it's all been hidden," Canepa said. "You see people wanting to have a say in where their tax dollars are being spent."
This May, elections will be held in Districts 2, 3, and 6, where numerous homeowners are running. In District 7, only five homeowners sought election for five seats, so homeowners will take control of that board without an election, according to residents.
District 1 was already resident-controlled and will remain that way, with two homeowners leaving the board and two homeowners replacing them.
It appears Districts 4 and 5 will remain controlled by the developer, as residents say no homeowners were able to successfully run. It is unclear if those districts will hold elections or how any of the elections will be conducted. The metro board elections will take place on May 6, 2025.
Next week, CBS Colorado will take a closer look at what Colorado lawmakers are doing to increase special district oversight.
The Metro District Education Coalition shared the following statement after the original publication of this article:
"While we are not privy to all the details occurring in the Meadows metro districts, we can proudly say that there have been a number of taxpayer protections enacted since the 1980s when the original Meadows bonds were issued. These protections include the adoption of TABOR, debt mill levy caps, limits on who bondholders can be, and requirements to provide public information through various means, such as annual town hall meetings, websites with district information, and more."
