Some Niwot residents want to incorporate the town — here’s what that would mean

Over the past few months in Niwot, there’s been a rekindling of the discussion about whether to incorporate the town.

Leading the charge to incorporate is Niwot resident and business owner Nick Little, along with two dozen other Niwot residents, has formed a group called the Niwot Incorporation Committee. The group has so far raised $150,000 to support the campaign.

Little said he feels that incorporating would give Niwot more control over things like fixing roads, which it currently depends on the county for.

“When we look at these kind of key problems that we have, what we discover is that they’re actually all symptoms of one greater problem. And that we have no sort of voice in electing the County Commissioners,” said Little. “We’re being governed. But you know, NWA is about 1.4% of the population of Boulder County. So we have no meaningful way of impacting the vote of the County Commissioners. we want to incorporate is so that we can, at the end of the day, we can have a government that fits our scale.”

Ari Adler, also a Niwot resident, isn’t so sure. He’s organizing a group of Niwot residents who don’t want to incorporate.

“If we’re going to fix the roads, that’s fine. We can talk about that. But this is creating a whole new level of government just for fixing potholes, and this layer of government is going to have a lot of other consequences, including increasing taxes,” said Adler.

The incorporation proposal includes a 4-mill property tax and a 2.5% sales tax.

“It adds a lot of taxes and a lot of unknowns,” said Adler. “They’re painting a pretty rosy best case scenario about the budget, and what we’d be expected to pay in terms of taxes, which is concerning to me because I see similarly sized areas like Nederland and Lyons are paying twice as much in sales taxes.”

Lyons has between 2,000-3,000 residents and Nederland even fewer, around 2,000. Both of those towns incorporated 140 years ago.

Little argues that based on Niwot’s size, incorporation would be “well within the range of normal limits of self-governance.”

“I thought it was a town when I moved here,” he said. “I didn’t realize that we actually didn’t have a government. We have a downtown, we have a little main street, we have a prosperous business district, but technically we’re unincorporated.”

Ultimately, Adler’s message is that incorporation may have unintended consequences. “It can really create a “feed the beast” mentality for revenue, because it is an expensive thing to do for a community,” said Adler. This raises concerns about increasing Niwot’s commercial tax base, by adding large businesses, which could contribute to sprawl.

Both sides agree that they want to maintain Niwot’s small-town charm.

“One of the things I love most about Niwot is how you go out the door and you run into all your friends and your neighbors. It has a great feel. You feel at home, and I do wanna keep that,” said Adler. “We both just want to see this community thrive. It’s just the mechanism to do that I think is not incorporation.”

If voters approve the incorporation petition this November, Niwot would become incorporated in August 2027.

“It’s really about are the people of Niwot gonna choose their own future,” said Little. “That’s what it really, really is about.”

Special thanks to the Left Hand Valley Courier for their continued reporting on this story.

This story aired on the Morning Magazine, KGNU’s weekday morning show featuring in-depth discussions on local news issues. Click here to listen to other episodes of the Morning Magazine.