Voters in unincorporated parts of Summit County have a measure on their ballots asking if they want to allow the Board of County Commissioners to use lodging tax revenue to fund road and bridge projects.

The commissioners voted Sept. 3 to put Ballot Measure 1A on the ballot and passed a resolution in support of it Sept. 23. The measure would not raise the lodging tax or create new revenue for the county if passed. It would add road and bridge as an area in which the county could use lodging tax revenue, joining child care and housing.

Voters approved a 2% tax on short-term lodging in unincorporated Summit County in 2022. At the time, state statute only allowed that type of tax to fund child care and housing, but the Colorado legislature voted in May to allow more uses, including infrastructure maintenance or improvements and public safety, and allow the taxes to increase up to 6%.

Commissioner Tamara Pogue said road construction has been underfunded across the state “for a long time.” She said the Highway User Trust Fund payment Summit receives from the state, which is the state’s largest contribution to county road maintenance, is $1.4 million per year.

“For scale, Swan Mountain (Road) cost us $4 million to repave 1 mile of road,” Pogue said. “This is, in many ways, simply a problem of not having enough money to actually solve the problem.”

The existing voter-approved 2% lodging tax is forecast to bring in around $2.6 million in 2026, according to Adrienne Saia Isaac, the Summit County government communications director. Colorado requires the county to spend 10% of the money on tourism education, but the commissioners choose how to split the rest of the money among the approved uses.

County staff in September suggested using around $1.2 million of lodging tax revenue to cover a shortfall in the 2026 asphalt capital project budget. Isaac wrote in an email that the amount was a hypothetical.

“No decisions on reallocation have been made as the measure is still in the hands of the voters,” Isaac wrote.

Pogue said putting lodging tax revenue toward roads and bridges would not fix the county’s problems, but it would “move the needle.” She said the constituents have told the commissioners that they want improved roads, which led to the county increasing spending on roads in 2025 and beyond.

Commissioner Nina Waters said the costs of labor and materials for road construction increasing also contributed to the board’s desire to find more road and bridge funding streams. 

She said county roads are often used by tourists who contribute to the lodging tax by booking short-term rentals.

“I think this is a way for us to kind of better match the use of our roads to a funding stream that has an outsized amount of use due to tourism,” Waters said.

If the measure passes, lodging tax funds that may have otherwise gone to child care or housing could go to roads and bridges. Pogue said the county has reserves in its Strong Future and Right Start funds, which both contribute to child care funding.

The county built reserves in those funds to build a child care center, Pogue said, but new facilities in Silverthorne and Copper Mountain have lessened the need for a county-funded project.

“It makes more sense to use some of those reserve dollars to backfill what money we could have used out of lodging tax,” Pogue said. “It’s just a question of trying to use the resources we have as efficiently and as effectively as possible.”

Waters said the board decided not to include an increase in the lodging tax in the ballot question because it did not want to put more pressure on the tourism industry. She said the board considered it, but it saw that lodging revenues have started to decrease and vacancy rates have increased.

If the measure does not pass, Waters said the board might need to reevaluate its plan for what road construction projects to pursue in the next few years. 

“All of that (road) funding comes currently from the general fund and sales taxes,” Waters said. “Those don’t seem to be increasing at the rate of which all the expenses for road infrastructure projects are.”

Pogue said that the measure would not mean the county would stop investing in child care or housing, which she said are both important to her and “important to this community.” The ballot measure gives the board “flexibility to respond” to the community’s greatest need, she said.

“Right now, it seems like the voters really want us to prioritize roads, and so having this additional flexibility would be helpful in trying to achieve that goal,” Pogue said. 

Voters will approve or deny Ballot Measure 1A during the Nov. 4 election.