What it costs
About $40 a month to take care of our own town.
That’s the price of a couple tanks of gas — to finally fix our own roads and stop asking Boulder for permission.
Here’s the honest math. Incorporation adds two things: a 2.5% town sales tax and a 4-mill property levy. For the median Niwot home — about $1.1 million, using the Boulder County Assessor’s own 2025 values — that comes to roughly $480 a year — about $40 a month. Not a penny of it leaves town. It stays here, spent on the streets you drive every day and the town you actually live in.
And a good share of it isn’t even paid by you. A town collects sales tax — so every shopper and visitor who spends a dollar in Niwot helps pay for Niwot. A roads-only special district (a PID) can’t do that; it loads the whole bill onto homeowners. Same roads, higher cost, and none of the say. That’s the roads argument, in dollars.
By home value
Find your home. That’s the property part.
The 4-mill levy is the fixed part — it’s tied to what your home is worth, not what you spend. Here’s the whole range, so you don’t have to do any math to find yourself on it.
| Home value | 4-mill property portion | ≈ per month |
|---|---|---|
| $340,000 | $91/yr | ~$8 |
| $500,000 | $134/yr | ~$11 |
| $750,000 | $201/yr | ~$17 |
| $1,000,000 | $268/yr | ~$22 |
| $1,095,200 (median home) | $294/yr | ~$24 |
| $1,250,000 | $335/yr | ~$28 |
| $1,500,000 | $402/yr | ~$34 |
| $2,000,000 | $536/yr | ~$45 |
Plus 2.5% on what you spend in town — and a big share of that is paid by shoppers and visitors, not you. A roads-only special district (a PID) can’t do that; it puts the whole bill on your house.
See your own number
Don’t take our word for it. Run your own.
Put in your home’s value and what you spend in town, and see what incorporation would actually cost you.
Groceries, gas, dining, shopping — the part of your spending that happens here.
Your estimated cost
$40 a month
about $481.01 a year — the two new taxes combined
- Property tax — 4-mill levy on 6.7% assessed value
- $294/yr
- Sales tax — 2.5% on what you spend in town
- $188/yr
A simplified estimate of the two new taxes, using the figures published on niwot.town. Your actual amount depends on your assessed valuation and how much of your spending happens in town.
You decide
What does $40 a month buy?
Roads repaired on a schedule instead of whenever the county gets around to it. A council of neighbors you can call by name. A downtown that can invest with confidence. A say over what gets built here — and the power to say no when it doesn’t fit.
Now ask the other question: what does doing nothing cost? The roads get worse every year. The decisions keep getting made twenty miles away. “Fine” is just slow drift — and it isn’t free either.
This is your call, not ours. You approve it at the ballot box. About $40 a month, and Niwot finally takes care of itself.
Make it count