What Does the 2026 Ballot Cost Your Douglas County Household? A Calculator for 5A, Amendment 87, NN and 137

Fourteen statewide measures, a school override and three county questions is a lot of ballot. Only four of those lines change what your household pays, and they do it in four different ways: one is a property tax, one is an income tax, and two are reductions in the TABOR refund you would otherwise get back. Nobody adds them up for you. This does.

How each line is calculated

Ballot Issue 5A is the Douglas County School District's $54 million mill levy override. The district's figure is $33.70 a year per $100,000 of your home's actual value, starting with the tax bills that arrive in January 2027. A $700,000 house pays about $236 a year. It applies to property owners; renters carry it indirectly through rent. Full page on 5A.

Amendment 87 replaces the 4.4 percent flat income tax with six brackets on Colorado taxable income, starting in 2027: 3.7 percent to $25,000, 4.2 to $100,000, 4.4 to $500,000, then 7.4, 7.9 and 8.4 percent above $500,000, $750,000 and $1 million. The calculator applies those brackets to the taxable income you enter and compares the result with 4.4 percent of the same figure. Below $500,000 the result is always a cut, capped at $325. Above it, the increase is steep. Taxable income means what is left after your deductions, roughly $30,000 less than gross for a married couple taking the standard deduction. Full page on 87. Proposition 136 would cancel 87; if you expect 136 to pass with more votes, uncheck 87.

Proposition NN lets the state keep revenue above the TABOR cap for schools instead of refunding it. The Blue Book's example is a $100,000 earner losing about $28 of the 2027 refund, $56 for a joint filer, and $68 and $96 of the 2028 refund. The calculator shows that example figure for your filing status; your actual amount depends on the refund tier your income falls in and grows in later years as the retained amount grows. Treat it as an order of magnitude. Full page on NN.

Proposition 137 dedicates about $175 million a year of existing sporting-goods sales tax to conservation and wildfire work. In years the state is over its TABOR cap, that comes out of refunds; the Legislative Council's range is $26 to $83 a year per single filer, which the calculator doubles for joint filers. In years under the cap it comes out of the general fund and costs you nothing directly. Full page on 137.

What it does not include

Proposition 136 (it caps the rate at 4.4 percent, so on its own it costs nothing). The Larkspur fire district's 6A and 6B, which apply only inside that district. Sterling Ranch's 7A rail tax, which applies only there. And the commission-expansion questions 200, 201 and 1A, whose cost is a county budget line, not a household one; the ballot title's $760,000 to $1.3 million figure works out to a few dollars per household per year however you split it.

Why the total matters

Because the four lines are debated separately by four different campaigns, and nobody running any of them wants you to see the sum. For a typical Douglas County household, a $700,000 house and $120,000 of taxable income filing jointly, the sum if everything passes is a few hundred dollars a year, most of it 5A, with 87 pulling the other direction. For a household with $1 million of taxable income, 87 alone is nearly $16,000 more. The calculator is here so you can see which kind of household yours is before you vote, rather than after the bill comes.

All figures are estimates from the published sources linked above; the Blue Book carries the official fiscal analysis for each measure. More: all 14 statewide measures for Douglas County and every race and measure on your ballot.