Privacy Policy

How the Niwot Incorporation Committee collects, uses, and shares information through this website.

Last updated: September 10, 2026

In this policy, “we,” “us,” and “the Committee” mean the Niwot Incorporation Committee. This policy covers niwot.town and its subdomains, the volunteer hub at niwot.town/app, our API at api.niwot.town, and email sent to contact@niwot.town.

Information You Give Us

We only receive personal information when you choose to send it:

• Questions and messages. The form on our contact page accepts an optional name, an optional email address, a topic, a subject line, and your message. Only the message is required — you may ask a question anonymously, though we cannot reply if you do.
• Email. Messages sent to contact@niwot.town are delivered into the same system, including your email address, name as it appears on the message, subject, and body.
• Ask Niwot chat. If you use the chat assistant, we store the conversation and the page you were on when you started it, so we can see which questions residents are asking and where our published materials fall short.
• Email updates. If you opt in, we store your email address and name to send campaign updates.
• Event RSVPs. If you respond to an invitation, we record your response, the session you selected, and your party size, and we let you correct the contact details we already have for you.
• Volunteer accounts. Committee volunteers have accounts in the hub with a name, email address, and role.

Information Collected Automatically

• Site analytics. We use Plausible Analytics, which is cookieless and reports in aggregate — page views, referrers, country, and device type. It does not build a profile of you and does not follow you to other sites.
• Advertising measurement. We include Google’s advertising tag on every page. See Advertising below.
• Server and delivery logs. Our hosting and API providers record standard request logs — IP address, user agent, time, and the resource requested — which we use for security, abuse prevention, and troubleshooting. These are retained for a limited period and are not combined with the information you give us.

Advertising

We do not sell or host advertising space on niwot.town. No third party buys ads on this site. What we do is the reverse: we buy ads on Google to bring Niwot residents to this site, and we measure whether those ads work.

To do that, every page on this site loads Google’s global site tag (gtag.js) for our Google Ads account. Google may set or read cookies and similar identifiers in your browser to:

• measure conversions — whether someone who clicked one of our ads went on to read a paper, use the tax calculator, or sign up for updates; and
• support remarketing — showing our ads on Google properties and partner sites to people who have already visited niwot.town.

We receive only aggregated reports from Google. We do not receive your name, email address, or any other identifier from Google, and we do not combine Google’s advertising data with the questions, messages, or subscriptions you send us.

You can limit or turn this off at any time:

• Google’s Ads Settings controls personalized advertising across Google.
• The Digital Advertising Alliance opt-out covers participating advertisers, including Google.
• Your browser’s cookie controls can block third-party cookies outright.

Google’s own explanation of how it uses data from sites that use its advertising products is at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

Tools That Run in Your Browser

Two tools on this site handle addresses, and they behave differently:

• Property tax calculator runs entirely in your browser. The property data file is downloaded to your device and searched there. The address you type and the home value you enter are never transmitted to us and are never stored.
• Boundary checker sends the address you type to OpenStreetMap’s Nominatim geocoding service to turn it into map coordinates. That request is subject to the OpenStreetMap Foundation privacy policy. The comparison against the proposed boundary then happens in your browser. We do not receive or store the address.

How We Use Information

• To read and answer your questions, and to route them to the right volunteer.
• To send the updates you asked to receive.
• To plan, staff, and follow up on public meetings and events.
• To understand which questions residents are actually asking, so we can improve our published papers, FAQ, and handouts.
• To measure whether our advertising is reaching Niwot residents.
• To operate the volunteer hub and keep it restricted to authorized volunteers.
• To protect the site against spam, abuse, and attack.

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information.

Drafting Assistance

When a question arrives, we use an AI model from Anthropic to classify it by topic and draft a candidate reply, and the Ask Niwot chat assistant is built on the same service. The text of your question is sent to Anthropic for that purpose. A volunteer reviews and approves every reply before it is sent — no automated response is emailed to you without a person reading it first.

Who We Share It With

We share information with service providers only to the extent needed to operate this site and answer you:

• Amazon Web Services — hosting, content delivery, inbound and outbound email, and volunteer authentication.
• Neon — the database where questions, contacts, and RSVPs are stored.
• Anthropic — topic classification, reply drafting, and the Ask Niwot chat assistant.
• Mailchimp (Intuit) — email updates to subscribers.
• Google — advertising measurement and remarketing, as described above.
• Plausible Analytics — aggregate site analytics.
• OpenStreetMap Foundation — geocoding for the boundary checker.

We may also disclose information if we are required to by law, or where we reasonably believe it is necessary to protect the safety of a person or the integrity of the site.

Questions Published on This Site

Our open questions page publishes questions residents have asked that we have not yet answered, so the process is visible. Names and email addresses are stripped before publication — only the subject, topic, and body of the question appear. Please do not include anything in the body of a question that you would not want published. If you would prefer your question not be published at all, say so in the message or email us and we will honor it.

Outreach Mail and Public Records

The Committee mails printed material to Niwot-area households. That mailing list is built from public records — Boulder County Assessor property records and the Colorado voter file — not from this website, and not from anyone who contacts us. If you would rather not receive our mail, email contact@niwot.town and we will remove your address from the list.

How Long We Keep It

• Questions and correspondence are retained for the duration of the incorporation effort as part of the Committee’s record of public engagement.
• Chat transcripts are retained so we can see recurring gaps in our published materials.
• Subscriber records are retained until you unsubscribe.
• Analytics are aggregate and contain no personal information.

Your Choices

• Unsubscribe using the link at the bottom of any update email, or by emailing us.
• Ask what we have. Email contact@niwot.town and we will tell you what information we hold about you, correct it, or delete it. We aim to respond within thirty days.
• Opt out of advertising cookies using the controls listed above.
• Browser signals. Plausible does not track individuals regardless of browser settings. We do not otherwise respond to Do Not Track signals at this time; Google’s tag honors the preferences you set in your Google Ads Settings.

Children

This site is intended for adult residents and property owners considering a municipal question. It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has sent us personal information, email us and we will delete it.

Security

Traffic to this site and our API is encrypted in transit. The volunteer hub requires authentication, credentials are held in managed secret storage, and access to resident contact information is limited to volunteers who need it. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Changes to This Policy

If we change how we handle information, we will revise this page and update the date at the top. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the revised policy.

Contact Us

Questions about this policy, or about information we hold, should go to contact@niwot.town, or by mail to the Niwot Incorporation Committee, 7960 Niwot Road, Niwot, Colorado 80503.

See also our Terms of Service.