Eagle County property tax bills surge as state discount expires, school rates go up

Eagle County homeowners have started receiving their 2025 property tax bills, and the early returns have been a little eye-popping. Increases of around 10% or more are not uncommon, with the rate of increase varying depending on where you live and your local mill levy rate.

Eagle County Assessor Mark Chapin said he hasn’t seen an abnormal surge in phone calls or appeals, largely because property owners here in the High Country seem to understand their property values have gone up, while other parts of the state are flat or declining.

“In Eagle County, our property values have consistently been going up the last few years,” Chapin said. “So, for example, with this latest reappraisal that went into effect for 2025, taxes payable this year, we saw immediate increase in residential property of 8%.”

Also, property tax rates are essentially going up after the expiration of a temporary tax relief discount of $55,000 passed by the Legislature in 2024. That, and the rate paid to schools increased, with the rate paid to all other service districts going down slightly.

“The state offered to backfill the $55,000 adjustment in ’24, which kind of gave a false impression to many people,” Chapin said of the state bill that lowered residential property values by that amount for the purpose of taxes. The expiration of that post-COVID discount comes as school assessment rates were raised to 7.05% from 6.7%, and all other governments dropped to 6.25% from 6.7%.

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“The nuances and all the legislative changes that have occurred since COVID, actually, in Colorado, have our heads spinning, and this is our profession,” Chapin said. Throw on top of that widely varying mill levy rates (a mill is $1 for every $1,000 of assessed value), and the calculations get even more dizzying.

“The metro districts add another element to property tax that’s much different than, for example, if you’re in unincorporated areas or in Vail or even Beaver Creek, where the mill levees in their entirety, the basis in which taxes are calculated, are lower,” Chapin said of the mechanism metro district use to fund services ranging from roads to water to sewers.

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Areas with more value don’t need to command as much from each property owner, Chapin said, adding the average levy is around 65 mills in Eagle County, with mill levy rates in some metro districts are as high as 125 in the Buckhorn area of Gypsum, for example.

“So you have all those things that come into play. There are all those moving pieces for the distribution of the revenue that, honestly, we start getting confused in my office. It’s like a moving target every year, and it complicates things a bit,” Chapin said.

“They put a bandage of a fix on it,” Chapin said of the discount that is expiring. “It helped to some degree, and that’s great, and the legislature is going to continue to look for ways to help property owners with property taxes, but also realizing that the state’s in deficit. And so given that, the state needs to find other ways to generate revenue … it’s like the perfect storm.”

Federal COVID dollars, a one-time injection of money that Colorado spent on ongoing costs that keep going up — especially on Medicaid spending — is going away just as the feds are slashing spending in the states overall.

“That has ripple effects to everything else,” Chapin said. “So it impacts us all in some form. And the push from the federal side is that they want the states to pick up more and more, which, of course, then that all just flows down to the local government level, and the local government has to make up that difference.”

Still, Colorado does have some of the lowest property tax rates in the nation, although they may not stay that way long-term.

“My crystal ball doesn’t tell me where it’s going to go in the future, but probably not down as far as property taxes,” Chapin said. “We’re low as far as property taxes compared to other areas throughout the country, but we also have some of the highest valuations because of where we live and it’s such a desirable place to be.”

Whatever happens, it will be somebody else’s problem to deal with after this year. Chapin’s seat is open in the November election because he’s retiring after first getting elected in 2006. Before that, he worked as deputy assessor, chief appraiser and commercial appraiser in the Eagle County Assessor’s Office starting in 1991 after working for 15 years for the La Plata County Assessor in Durango.

For more information on how to appeal your property tax bill, go to the Eagle County Assessor’s Office website or call them at 970-328-8640.