ALAMOSA — During Wednesday night’s regularly scheduled meeting, members of Alamosa’s city council revisited a measure on the November ballot where voters decide if the sale of recreational and/or medical marijuana and a related tax amount should be allowed within city limits.
Council members were tasked with deciding how the question should appear on the ballot. As explained by City Attorney Erich Schwiesow, within the questions, the proposed resolutions have to be completed with the sales tax rate that will be applied to medical and recreational.
Also, Schwiesow said, due to the Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), the wording must include the maximum estimated revenue from the sales taxation. Should more revenue be generated from the sales tax than is reflected in the ballot measure, that amount of money would have to be returned to the taxpayers.
After being presented with three different versions of what wording could appear, council agreed that voters should be presented with two questions where legalization and tax rates are considered together.
More specifically, the wording of the first question will ask the voter if the sale of medical marijuana at a 2% tax rate should be allowed within city limits? The second question will read somewhat the same – should the sale of recreational marijuana at a 5% sales tax rate be allowed within city limits? Council set the maximum amount of revenue to be collected at $300,000 for both medical and recreational sales.
Schwiesow further told the council that the amount of sales tax collected by the city is not the only revenue stream generated by marijuana sales. The state of Colorado already levies a15% sales tax rate with 90% retained by the state and the remaining 10% of tax revenue distributed to the local jurisdictions that allow marijuana sales.
This is not the first time voters have been presented with whether marijuana should be sold within the city.
In 2017, a similar question was voted down by the voters. But after a number of council members had been approached by constituents asking for another vote to be held, council took up the issue at their July 17 meeting.
Following a long and, at times, heated discussion that began with a number of members of the public voicing their opinion, the decision to place the measure on the ballot passed with a split vote of 4-3. Such a split is uncommon for Alamosa’s city council, suggesting that there were strongly held beliefs on both sides.
Wednesday night, after Councilor Vigil made the motion to pass the resolution with the wording decided on by council, the vote was 5-1. Mayor Coleman was the sole vote against the resolution, reflecting the opposition he expressed in July to the measure appearing on the ballot, at all.
“I voted no because I think the voters already expressed their feelings when marijuana was voted down in 2017,” he said.
The wording adopted by council – which will ultimately be more extensive than it appears here – will be certified by City Clerk Holly Martinez who will then pass it on to the Alamosa County Clerk and Recorder’s Office for inclusion on the ballot in November.
