The residents of Sumac Avenue agree with the City of Boulder on one thing: Their street needs work. It hasn’t been paved in decades and is riddled with potholes. When the city proposed repairs in 2019, many welcomed the prospect of a smoother road.
That changed in 2025, when residents learned the city wanted them to help pay for the project — in many cases, tens of thousands of dollars. Resident John Kelly said his estimated assessment exceeded $100,000. More recent city projections suggest assessments may now be capped at $90,000.
“Some of my neighbors have been here since the 70s and 80s, and they’re retired, and they’re scared to death,” Kelly said. “When they got that notice, they were crying.”
Resident Susanne Riis, who has lived on Sumac Avenue for 25 years, said she was told she would be required to contribute about $30,000 toward the project.
“I don’t have $30,000. I’d have to pull from my hard-earned savings to pay for it,” she said. “It feels like stealing money from us to do a project that they should be paying for.”
“Everybody doesn’t want it,” she added.
City staff have proposed creating a Local Improvement District to help fund the $8.4 million project, which would include pavement reconstruction, improved drainage, a new 8- to 10-foot-wide sidewalk, pedestrian crossings and curbs. Under the proposal, the city would collect $1.8 million from the owners of 52 homes along Sumac Avenue.
City spokesperson Aisha Ozaslan said that “during community engagement, the majority of participants supported the proposed project design and improvements.”
Residents counter that the feedback was collected before they learned they would be asked to help fund the project.
Several residents also said they never supported the scale of the proposal, which they view as unnecessary and out of character with the neighborhood.
“We definitely would like our street paved. It’s a mess,” Riis said. “But at the same time, no one [said] we want extra trees or we want a 10-foot sidewalk” on what she described as a more rural street.
Resident Adam Asnes said the project’s price felt especially difficult to justify given the city’s budget challenges.
“It’s a little weird,” he said. “One street is $8 million? Are you kidding me?”
City officials say the road has deteriorated beyond the point where simple repaving is feasible and now requires full reconstruction. Of the project’s $8.4 million cost, about $4.6 million is tied directly to rebuilding Sumac Avenue, while the remainder would fund drainage, utility, Broadway and engineering improvements paid for by the city.
The dispute now heads to city council, which must decide whether to create the local improvement district. A planned vote was recently postponed while staff conduct additional analysis.
A dispute rooted in decades-old agreements
When the area around Sumac was annexed into the city in the 1980s and 1990s, property owners signed agreements committing to help pay for future street improvements. Some also agreed not to “oppose or remonstrate against” the establishment of a Local Improvement District to fund them.
As properties changed hands over the decades, those obligations transferred to new owners. Some residents were unaware of the agreements when they purchased their homes, according to Riis.
Residents also argue the agreements are outdated.
According to a November 2025 city report on the project, Boulder had considered improvements to Sumac since the early 2000s but never pursued them because of staffing, funding and economic constraints.
When city staff revisited the issue in 2025, they initially sought individual agreements requiring property owners to cover 50% of transportation improvement costs. After several residents declined to sign, staff turned to a local improvement district instead.
Under Boulder city code, council may create local improvement districts to help fund public improvements that provide special benefits to nearby properties.
Each property’s proposed assessment was calculated using a weighted formula based on lot size and road frontage.
A city consultant concluded that the project would provide $5.7 million in “special benefit” to adjacent properties through improvements such as drainage, safety, access and aesthetics. Under that analysis, property owners could be assessed up to $5.7 million, while the remaining costs would be attributed to the project’s broader public benefit, Ozaslan said.
Residents dispute that analysis, arguing the cited benefits are no different from those provided by street projects elsewhere in Boulder. They also argue that Sumac Avenue serves as a connector road between Wonderland Lake and Crest View Elementary School, making it a public asset used by the broader community rather than a street that primarily benefits adjacent property owners.
“They just redid all of 19th Street, really changed it radically — new sidewalks on both sides, new pavement, lower speed limit with speed bumps — and they didn’t charge the residents of 19th Street,” Asnes said.
“That’s what taxes are for,” Riis said. “Those are city services available to everyone. It shouldn’t be this special benefit to us, just because our property taxes are going to go up.”
City Councilmember Mark Wallach said that while city staff could still change his mind, he remains skeptical that the project provides a meaningful private benefit.
“To me it’s a public road, it’s going to be used by the public, and ought to be paid for, generally speaking, by public funds,” he said.
Concerns about a broader precedent
Asnes said city planners told residents the Sumac proposal could serve as a model for future local improvement districts.
“If they can do it here on Sumac, they can do it everywhere else they need to repave,” he said.
Nearby streets Tamarack Avenue and Upland Avenue were annexed under agreements similar to those governing Sumac.
Ozaslan said local improvement districts can “be formed in any location where public improvements specially benefit specific properties in order to enhance the city’s ability to provide public improvements.”
What happens next?
Last fall, Sumac residents created a working group and asked council to pause the project, direct staff to reengage with the neighborhood and evaluate lower-cost alternatives.
Representatives of the group have met with Senior Transportation Planner John McFarlane, City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde and several councilmembers.
A November 2025 report projected permitting and finalization of funding agreements would be completed by the third quarter of 2026.
But after months of pushback, it’s unclear when the proposal will go to council.
On May 7, Rivera-Vandermyde canceled a request for council to hold a special meeting in early June on the creation of a Sumac Avenue Local Improvement District.
“Staff has determined we have some additional analysis to provide city council,” she wrote in an email.
A new date for the discussion has not been announced.
Division of costs, according to the city:
| 100% City-funded improvements (improvements to Broadway, subsurface drainage, utilities, and engineering and administrative fees) | $4,345,753 |
| Sumac Avenue transportation right-of-way improvements (to be shared between City, 52 property owners, and BVSD) | $4,089,552 |
| Right-of-way improvements are divided as follows: | |
| City funds | $1,953,276 |
| Property owner funds | $1,786,276 |
| BVSD funds | $350,000 |
| Total Project Cost | $8,435,305 |
Correction, June 11, 2026 11:47 am: A previous version of this story stated Ozaslan did not directly address questions about whether other streets could face similar assessments. She told Boulder Reporting Lab a local improvement district can be formed in any location where public improvements specially benefit specific properties.
The budget for police in Boulder (just the city, not the entire county) is $50,000,000. $6,000,000 of that is just for administration. This is on top of all the money they milk out of people they arrest, which is a lot. The money is there but someone has to have the guts to make the cuts.
Turn it into a toll road to raise money.
Yes.
This seems like a really strange deal. Why do Sumac residents have this liability from the annexation? Did they take this liability in exchange for lower/no property taxes? Do other parts of north Boulder annexed around the same time have this liability? Assuming there isn’t some special tax situation going on – it feels crazy that this isn’t just covered by the city like a normal street.
This is very similar to subdivision road paving issues in unincorporated Boulder County. In the mid-1990s, Boulder County created a policy that would provide for maintenance of subdivision roads but the expense of repaving was the responsibility of the property owners in the subdivision. I think if most home buyers were aware of this, they might think twice about purchasing a home on any of these streets. There should be a real estate disclosure concerning this issue so home buyers have a complete picture of their future expenses.
This is why you shouldn’t make a deal that kicks costs down the road. If an area is being annexed, but there are concerns about costs, those should be paid up front, at whatever amount the city determines would be a fair price to move forward on the same tax basis with everyone else in the city who has already been paying for our shared infrastructure. If they can’t afford an immediate lump sum, it could be spread over a few years.
That said, this is the deal they made, and if new owners didn’t know about it, they should bring it up with their title insurance company. The entitlement and lack of self-awareness here is striking. You want the community to pay for the whole project, but you don’t want public goods like trees and sidewalks. You “don’t have $30,000” and would have to take it from savings, which means you do in fact have $30,000.
This is insane. The city is now not repairing streets. Seriously???
Here’s the reality: The City of Boulder Planning department needs a complete overhaul and a special investigation by the City Council. It’s corrupt, abuses its power, and its time for the residents to demand a change!
Ask ANYONE who has dealt with Planning, in any capacity, and the response is they are notoriously awful. Residents are adversaries (goes for County Planning Department too). And how the City Council and Planning can ignore the simple fact it has drawn property taxes from these homes for decades, yet puts this cost back on the residents, is beyond understanding and why Boulder is swirling with 30 percent office vacancy downtown (worse on the outskirts), dropping home values, loss of who we are, the list goes on.
Meanwhile, regarding annex-able land, there are 100 of acres that can be annexed from County to City to help take the pressure over housing. The BVSD Comp Plan calls for that annexation. But the city makes it financially impossible and unaffordable, and instead wants to use 100 of acres of “emergency” land in North Boulder, devastating that open space.
Bottomline: We need a new generation of city leaders. The current class is failing us and it may take decades to recover.
Exactly.
totally agree w/ this assessment
If it was part of the annexation agreement, homeowners should have done their due diligence. But Sumac isn’t a minor side street but a significant connector and also feeds Crest View Elementary. The best path forward is moving forward with the construction and the city should put a lien on the houses that can’t pay their obligations.
I’m perplexed.
When did the city — any city — lose responsibility for city streets? Especially streets that are “significant connector(s)” and home to a school?
If you pay city property taxes (for decades!), and those dollars go into a city budget that in part is to maintain city streets, why do the Sumac folks get screwed for this universal basic city service? Do they get a property tax discount because they don’t this service?
If the argument is because they ‘agreed’, agreements can be flawed. And I guarantee, there was a water or sewage issue on Sumac back in the day that made ‘agreeing’ to whatever the city wanted, so to get annexed and life-sustaining services (which I’m sure the residents paid to install).
And if the argument is that it was still Sumac’s “choice” to annex, there is no “privilege” to annex, thus giving up other collective benefits. Annexation of areas like Sumac to this day are in the Boulder Valley Comp Plan as a top priority. But the city makes it nearly impossible and treats its residents (current and future) like sh*t.
Honestly, I hope Sumac residents sue the city and teach it a lesson. The Planning Board and current council have lost touch. Homelessness, busted streets, no real wildfire mitigation, fleeing businesses, empty offices — these city bureaucrats and leaders are failing us. More interested in virtual signaling than balanced budgets and efficient, world-class operations. Even the state of Colorado in 2024 had to force both city and county hands on allowing ADUs, while leaders of both gov’ts complained about a housing crisis.
And now our neighbors are literally being asked to pay for asphalt.
agree
I work in this industry, its really not known, but makes sense when you break it down so I will try and help explain. It is standard practice for a City to be unwilling to take assets (streets in this instance but it could be anything to be publicly owned and maintained) that are in poor condition or not to their standards in an annexation, as it places a cost burden on existing residents for a street that was county owned and not their responsibility in the first place. For example sumac. It was previously a county road, paid for by the much bigger county property tax levy and at the time all boulder residents could use it but didnt have to pay for it. Towns in Colorado get very little of our low property tax rates. It largely goes to counties, and special districts. Towns get a portion of sales tax and thats where almost all the money comes from. Therefore they make very little adding new residents, but absorb cost to serve them. These individuals would still spend the same amount on boulder businesses if they stayed in the county as if they were technically Boulder residents. So the annexation benefits them much more than the City by taking them, and if the City pays for the road improvements it means the annexation functions like a tax on all Boulder residents that they never would have had to pay for almost no benefit.
So all Colorado towns have provisions saying annexations can be given ANY requirements to be accepted. They dont have to accept them. Doing so is up to the City and they have to look out for current residents. It almost always means two routes are taken. Either all public assets are to be repaired or brought to City spec before annexation acceptance, or, you agree to pay a bigger portion when it is repaired to reduce the burden on the rest of the tax payers. All owners have to sign and agree, if they dont they can stay in the county. They werent tricked. This shows up on a standard title comitment required to purchase a home. So it is hard to say they couldn’t be expected to be aware. But the solution is metro districts, a tax taken slowly overall long time so owners dont have to pay it all at once. If they dont like it? They can sell. The tax stays with the property. Its a choice to delay improvements and this is the result. I understand it can sound unfair but they benefitted by annexing and the people of Boulder pay unfairly for it without this process for a road they always previously use for free and now have to chip in 2 million for.
I hope this helps explain. Butbthese are everywhere. Look at any new large townhome development on realtor. Their taxes are much higher per the value than the house next door. Its because they are paying metro district fees to reimburse the developer for setting uo the infrastructure. No one is mad about this, it shows up on a title and taxes. But no one is mad about it. Its the same here. 100 a month for a long time. Not a bankruoting 100k on the spot. Itll be fine.
Yikes! My BP shot up just reading this and I don’t even live on Sumac. Well, here’s a good first potential use of the new city Transportation Maintenance Fee, expecting $6.4 million revenue for a full year per the city website. And I don’t want to say BVSD’s contribution listed in this story is nothing, but I’d like to see a comparison between weekday traffic attributable to Crestview I’ve seen at 19th & Sumac and what the residents living along the rest of Sumac, mostly in quite the opposite of housing density, generate.
The cost spread over 52 lots is about $34,000 each (understanding that frontage, etc. can change this average). But, larger frontage suggests a more valuable home. And, won’t the City spread the assessment over, say, 10+ years?
For perspective, a new hail-resistant roof can be $20,000; HVAC $20,000; etc. Houses involve expenses at the outset and thereafter, including taxes and insurance.
I get the private vs. public benefit distinction and the scope of work issue, but that is how $8 million is reduced to $1.8 million.
I have paid for curb/sidewalk repairs on two Boulder homes, and I read the title company recorded documents before buying which did not flag that.
We and 3 other homeowners live on Scenic View Court off 55th and Arapahoe. We own and maintain the street through the annexation agreement that was put in place after the homes were built on then county property. It runs us about $1000 a year so this is comparable to what these homeowners are being asked to pay. We were informed of this when we bought the house in 2021.
Everything Jennifer said I agree with. If you bought the house you should have read the fine print.
Joe and Jennifer, our agreements actually don’t say we’re responsible for a greatly expanded project. Each of our agreements are different. Mine is from 1987 and says I’m only responsible for the surface paving of half of the pavement that would be between my property lines. The road is also defined as narrower and far less enhanced than what the planning department has in store. We literally haven’t been repaved in over 40 years. That’s a good argument that the city gave up it’s paving funding argument, as an annexation agreement obligation that old likely won’t even hold up. The project is way out of character and even the City’s estimate for just repaving including bringing the roadbed to code is a fraction (a little over $500K) of the +$8M the planning department put forward. The street is used heavily by school traffic, which is fine, but it’s not like paving it brings some unique benefit to us residents.
Idk, this seems grossly unfair to me. Who knew back in the 1980s that the city would allow the streets to deteriorate to the point that they need to be completely replaced? And who knew costs would balloon to $8M? Why did the city kick this can down the road until it was a major project? A previous commenter said they should have worked out a payment plan when the city annexed the area which at least makes sense. A payment plan could have been worked out and paid long ago when costs were reasonable, and perhaps the city would have maintained the streets properly. Fifty percent of that inflated cost on homeowners seems unreasonable now. Is this how they plan to annex Area III as well by pushing half the cost onto homeowners?
Yet the city still is striving to move forward with the massive, expensive project to turn Iris into a two lane road that no one in the area wants. Hmmm, what would be the rational solution here?
Yes, great points. I lived in the area a couple years ago and often walked Sumac on my way back from Wonderland Lake Trail. It’s a lovely peaceful walk but the street is in bad shape. I don’t see any public or private benefit at all to changing the street in the way the city is suggesting. Just do what’s needed.
Sounds like there’s a review of annexation agreements that needs to be gone over. I’m with other commenters that feel that the agreements were in bad faith if the property owners don’t want to pay anything. I’m not saying it should be whatever bill the city presents but I think it should be something.
Also why aren’t these residents suing the former owners or realtors who did not disclose they would be financially responsible for the street?
I’m guessing it’s because they knew, but when the bill comes they’d like to pay $0.
Follow the money…
Has a contractor been awarded the contract yet?
From the cheap seats i.e. Google Maps there are numbers of streets parallel to Sumac Ave. that appear to be same shape.
What about the cross streets?
Is the City going to require all others to pay too?
Great work if you can get it.