{"id":2453247,"date":"2020-01-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-15T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=319100"},"modified":"2020-01-15T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T07:00:00","slug":"tobacco-tax-and-trustees-on-carbondale-ballot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/tobacco-tax-and-trustees-on-carbondale-ballot\/","title":{"rendered":"Tobacco tax and trustees on Carbondale ballot"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Carbondale Town Clerk Cathy Derby, left, swears in a Roaring Fork High School senior Diego Valdez, right, as student trustee, an honorary position on the town board that has been vacant for several years. \u201cI believe I can provide a different perspective, the youth perspective, to help guide decisions for the betterment of Carbondale,\u201d Valdez said. Grace Jardine, center, was sworn in as an alternate student trustee.<\/strong>
Thomas Phippen \/ Post Independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Carbondale may join towns up and down the valley in levying intense taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco-related taxes.<\/p>\n

The town will ask voters to approve a $4 tax on each pack of cigarettes at the municipal elections April 7.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to earn more money off of smokers,\u201d said Carbondale Mayor Dan Richardson at the town board meeting.<\/p>\n

The money raised will go to smoking cessation programs and other health education initiatives.<\/p>\n

Carbondale has led the region in fighting youth nicotine use, notably pushing to ban sale of flavored tobacco and e-cigarette products at town stores and raising the minimum purchasing age to 21.<\/p>\n

At the meeting Tuesday, the board\u2019s new student trustees Diego Valdez and Grace Jardine, both students at Roaring Fork High School, contributed to the discussion.<\/p>\n

Valdez said he thinks the increased purchasing age has reduced tobacco use among teens.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe age aspect has made a difference, just to make it more difficult to purchase these things,\u201d Valdez said.<\/p>\n

Jardine said she\u2019s seen a similar effect. \u201cI hear more, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m not going to buy this, I have to be 21 now,\u2019\u201d Jardine said.<\/p>\n

But if kids are going to purchase tobacco, the increased cost won\u2019t make much of a difference, Jardine added.<\/p>\n

Aspen was the first town in the state to impose a version of the aggressive tax in 2017. Basalt followed the following year, and in 2019, Pitkin County, Glenwood Springs and New Castle voters all approved the tax by wide margins.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Legislature passed a law in 2019 allowing municipalities to impose taxes, which set off a trend of towns across the state asking voters to approve the new tax.<\/p>\n

Most of the towns and municipalities approved a $3.20 tax per pack of cigarettes that will rise 10 cents a year until it reached $4.<\/p>\n

But Carbondale is asking voters to go approve the full $4 tax per pack, along with the 40% tax on all other products containing nicotine, including cigars and e-cigarettes.<\/p>\n

Under TABOR, taxing authorities must tell voters how much they expect to raise from the tax, and Carbondale put the upper limit at $700,000 annually. Town manager Jay Harrington said that number is much higher than the town actually expects to make from the tax.<\/p>\n

The goal of the tax is to dissuade people from purchasing tobacco, but that hasn\u2019t necessarily been the case so far.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost communities haven\u2019t seen a big drop-off after they put these taxes in place,\u201d Harrington said.<\/p>\n

If voters approve the tax, there won\u2019t be many places to purchase tobacco without paying the tax.<\/p>\n

The Board of County Commissioners declined to seek the new tax over concerns about legal authority to do so, meaning that between New Castle to Aspen, only a few stores in unincorporated Garfield County will sell tobacco without the new tax.<\/p>\n

The commissioners did, however, increase the minimum purchasing age to 21 and has considered restrictions on flavored nicotine.<\/p>\n

Three trustee seats also are on the ballot for the April election.<\/p>\n

All six trustees are elected and serve at-large, as there are no districts or wards.<\/p>\n

Ben Bohmfalk, Lani Kitching and Marty Silverstein currently hold the four-year terms expiring this year, and all three will be running for reelection.<\/p>\n

Anyone interested in running for a seat on the Carbondale Board of Trustees must pick up a nomination form from the town building and return the completed form by Jan. 27.<\/p>\n

tphippen@postindependent.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carbondale Town Clerk Cathy Derby, left, swears in a Roaring Fork High School senior Diego Valdez, right, as student trustee, an honorary position on the town board that has been vacant for several years. \u201cI believe I can provide a different perspective, the youth perspective, to help guide decisions for the betterment of Carbondale,\u201d Valdez […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2453247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 20:52:15","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2453247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2453247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2453247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2453247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}