A Regional PID: One Possible District
Our letters to associations that own their streets price a third way their roads could end up being paid for: not a town and not a Niwot-wide district, but a district covering several neighborhoods. No such district is proposed. This page shows how we priced one possible example, about 31 mills, and why the answer barely depends on which neighborhoods are in it.
Why a private-road neighborhood would be drawn in
A public improvement district’s boundary is drawn by whoever petitions for it and approved by the voters inside it. Owning your roads does not keep you out of one. The community-wide proposal for the 2025 ballot included private-road properties. Leaving them out would have raised the levy on everyone else.
That is the incentive. A PID cannot spend public money on private pavement, so a private-road neighborhood brings tax base to a district and no cost. Every neighborhood that joins pays in and receives nothing for its own streets.
Your nearest neighbors, and why their levy is not your bill
Each letter names the three neighborhoods with county roads closest to the reader, measured parcel to parcel, and quotes what each faces to repair its own roads. Those levies come from the PID cost methodology. They range from 14 to 47 mills across Niwot.
They are what the neighbors pay on their own. They are not what the reader would pay if drawn in: adding a neighborhood adds tax base, so the rate falls. Pricing the reader’s bill needs a district that includes them.
One possible district
We use the widest grouping, the one that is hardest to argue with: every Niwot neighborhood with county roads, pooled into one district.
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Neighborhoods pooled | 24, every one with county roads |
| Road need, per year | $4,108,549 |
| Assessed value | $129,450,364 |
| Rate | 31.7 mills |
The rate is the yearly road need divided by the assessed value, times 1,000. Need and value both add up across neighborhoods. A private-road neighborhood that joins adds value and no need, so each letter’s figure sits slightly under 31.7: 31 mills in ten letters, 32 in one. Need, value and financing are the same as in the PID cost methodology: 2029 road need on the county’s 2025 cost basis of $11.00 per square foot, against assessed values inflated to 2029.
Why a region costs more than a Niwot-wide district
A Niwot-wide PID, at 15 to 20 mills, spreads its cost over commercial property too, the Tech Center above all. A district made of residential neighborhoods has none of that to lean on. The difference is in the tax base, not the roads.
A Niwot-wide PID is not on offer either. It was defeated at the ballot in 2013 and withdrawn before the ballot in 2025, and no one is assembling one. It is here as the benchmark every letter prints beside it.
Does the boundary matter? We tested it
No regional district exists, so any boundary is a choice, and a figure that moved a lot with that choice would be worthless. So we pooled random groups of the 24 neighborhoods, 300 draws at each size:
| Grouping | Lowest | Median | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Any 5 of 24 | 23.6 | 32.8 | 42.7 |
| Any 8 of 24 | 25.8 | 31.6 | 39.8 |
| Any 12 of 24 | 26.4 | 31.7 | 39.3 |
| Any 18 of 24 | 28.7 | 31.7 | 36.2 |
| All 24 | 31.7 | ||
| The 5 cheapest | 21.7 | ||
| The 5 most expensive | 44.5 | ||
| A Niwot-wide PID | 15 | 20 |
Every grouping costs more than a Niwot-wide PID, including the five cheapest neighborhoods pooled together, which is the most favorable district a skeptic could draw. The median of every group size lands within about a mill of 31.7. That is why one figure can stand for a district nobody has drawn yet.
What this does not claim
- It is not a proposal. No regional district exists and no one is assembling one. It answers the question a private-road household actually has: if a district formed around us, what would it cost?
- It assumes a PID spends nothing on private pavement. That is the law as the county applies it. If it changed, so would the comparison.
- A single neighbor drawing you in would cost less. A small district’s road need is small next to the tax base you would add, so its rate can roughly halve. A region’s need is large, so your joining barely moves it. We print the region because it is the case the tests above show is stable.
The derivation is reproduced by working/neighborhood-pid/regional.py. Its --check runs on every site build and fails if a letter’s figure drifts from the model, or if the cheapest grouping ever stops costing more than a Niwot-wide PID. Questions to contact@niwot.town.