Centennial is one of the largest cities in Colorado (with a population of 103K) — and one of the youngest (incorporated in 2001). After an uphill battle to be incorporated out of Arapahoe County — spurred on by neighboring Greenwood Village (“The Evil Empire”) cherrypicking all the high-yield taxable business property in the area — the next step was to vote on Home Rule.
State law in Colorado has various statutory regulations about how cities operate, and when a city incorporates, it’s as a “statutory” city. This mandates city government structure and how it operates. All sales taxes are collected by the state, then forwarded back to the city.
Most cities — and all large cities in Colorado, including many much smaller than Centennial — become “Home Rule” cities, which lets them govern themselves pretty much as they see fit. Notably, they can collect their own sales taxes (eliminating much of the “float”) and can conduct tax audits (which almost inevitably point out how the state was undercollecting).
Centennial has been going through a big Home Rule debate over the last year. On the one hand have been city boosters who’ve wanted to cut the ties to the state and forge their own destiny (sometimes a scosh over-enthusiastically). On the other hand there have been the reactionaries who see this as “Big! Government! Evil! Taxes!” (most of whom never wanted to incorporate in the first place). Much of the explicit wrangling was over the proposed charter for city government structure (Mayor vs. Manager! Elected vs. Non-Elected Treasurer!), but it really boiled down to folks who would just as soon live on a little isolated farm in the country vs. those who realize we don’t.
The special city election was held Tuesday — and Home Rule won by a margin of 2-to-1.
Huzzah!