What Happened to Lakewood’s TABOR refund?

In recent years our robust economy has resulted in the City taking in more revenue than it is allowed to keep under TABOR.  This Lakewood surplus is separate from the state surplus.  The standard rule in politics is never give back money they have squeezed out of taxpayers.  For politicians it is imperative to find a legal way to keep this windfall.  Colorado is going to a ballot issue to request permission from the voters to keep their excess.  Lakewood is far more clever than the state.  The City has realized they can (they believe it is legal) raises”fees” without a vote and then use the TABOR refund as a credit against those fees.  The way it works is the City takes the amount of the individual’s TABOR refund and applies it as a partial payment of their stormwater fee.  For 2015 the TABOR refund of $14.92 was applied as a credit against the annual $23.76 stormwater fee to yield a net fee of only $8.84.  What taxpayer is unhappy with the fact their stormwater fee dropped?  The problem is next year (2016) the TABOR refund is slated to be even larger than the $23.76 annual fee.  What to do?  The City wouldn’t be collecting any additional revenue from the stormwater fee and would now have to really make a refund.  The answer?  Raise the storm water fee and then take new higher TABOR refund against the new higher fee.  The result – City continues to collect additional revenue from the stormwater fee AND it gets to keep the whole TABOR refund without a vote of the people.  And the taxpayers don’t mind because they think are paying less fees and they don’t realize they lost their refund.  BRILLANT!  City Council deserves a pay raise for coming up with this scheme.