What Parker's New Metro District Disclosure Law Actually Requires at Your Closing Table

You're under contract on a home in one of Parker's newer subdivisions, maybe Trails at Crowfoot, maybe Tanterra, maybe a fresh phase of Hess Ranch. Somewhere in the paperwork, someone hands you a link to a metro district website and tells you that satisfies the disclosure requirement. For about a year and a half, that was true. It no longer is.

Colorado has rewritten the metro district disclosure rule twice since 2022, each time because the previous version left buyers finding out about tax obligations after they'd already closed. The most recent change took effect in August 2025. Most sellers, and a fair number of agents, are still operating off the version that existed before it.

Three Rounds of Rulemaking in Four Years

The pattern is worth understanding because it tells you something the mill levy math alone won't: lawmakers kept discovering that the previous fix wasn't enough.

Starting January 1, 2022, sellers of newly constructed homes inside a metro district had to hand buyers a written estimate of the district's mill levy along with a current county tax certificate, before or at contract signing. That rule applied only to brand-new construction, which meant a resale two owners later inside the same district carried no equivalent obligation.

Senate Bill 23-110 closed that gap. Starting January 1, 2024, any seller of residential property inside a metro district organized on or after January 1, 2000, new construction or later resale, had to provide the buyer with the district's official website in writing, on the state's approved seller disclosure form or an equivalent document delivered at the same time.

House Bill 25-1219 went further still. Signed in May 2025 and in effect since that August, it requires sellers to give buyers access to the district's service plan and its annual notice to electors, a written explanation of the district's authority to issue debt and levy taxes, a property tax estimate for the closing year stated as an actual dollar figure rather than a mill count, and a written statement that certain district actions can raise costs to residents later. The same law also requires every qualifying district to keep a plain-language explanation of its debt limits, its maximum mill levy, and how a resident can run for a board seat on its own public site.

A district's website answers what it is. It rarely answers what it's planning to do with your money next year.

That's the part the 2024 fix missed. A URL tells a buyer a district exists. It doesn't tell them how much debt that district is still authorized to carry, or how close it already is to the ceiling.

The Number on the Cap Isn't the Number on the Bill

Every metro district's service plan sets a maximum mill levy, a ceiling written into its founding documents that can sit well above what's currently being collected. Parker Homestead Metropolitan District, for example, is authorized to carry up to $8.3 million in debt and to levy as much as 35 mills to repay it. Whether the district is currently levying anywhere near that ceiling, or has room left to issue more bonds and raise the rate, is exactly the kind of question a service plan answers and a website summary skips.

Context helps here. The Town of Parker's own slice of a typical property tax bill is small: on a home valued at $400,000, the town collects roughly $75 a year. The county, the school district, fire protection, and water and sanitation authorities each add their own layer on top of that, set annually and applied to every Parker property regardless of subdivision. The metro district is usually the layer with the most room to move, because its ceiling was set once, years earlier, at the time the service plan was approved.

In May 2019, Parker's Town Council voted to allow higher mill levy ceilings for developments still being built out at the time, specifically naming the undeveloped portion of Anthology and the new Hess Ranch developments. The stated purpose was to make sure homeowners in those newer phases covered their own infrastructure costs rather than shifting them onto the town. That single council vote is why two subdivisions built a few years apart in the same town can carry different ceilings on the same kind of tax.

When the Mill Levy Isn't the Only Line

Mill levies aren't the only mechanism a metro district can use, and Hess Ranch is a useful example of why that matters. In 2023, Parker's Town Council approved amendments to the service plans for Hess Ranch Metropolitan Districts 5 through 8, allowing those districts to form special improvement districts within their own boundaries and impose special assessments to finance capital projects. The town attorney was careful to draw a line here: these assessments are distinct from property taxes and from standard development fees. They're governed by the metro district board itself rather than a separate taxing authority, which means they can appear without triggering the same review a new mill levy might.

That same council session also approved a new district for the nearby Kime Ranch project. At the time, the builder anticipated close to 1,800 residential units across the full development, priced between $600,000 and $900,000, with the initial phase covering 148 units. The district agreed, under an intergovernmental agreement with the town, to remit a five-mill property tax specifically earmarked for the town rather than the district's own operations. That's three separate mechanisms stacked on one project: a base mill levy, a possible special improvement assessment layered on top, and a town-facing carve-out inside the mill levy itself. None of that shows up on a district's homepage. It shows up in the service plan and the intergovernmental agreements filed alongside it.

What To Put In Writing Before You Sign

The current law gives you the right to ask for specific documents, not just a link. Before writing an offer on a home inside a Parker metro district, request:

• The district's service plan and any amendments, which set the mill levy ceiling, the debt limit, and the repayment term
• Access to the annual notice to electors, now a required part of the seller disclosure
• A written statement describing the district's authority to issue debt, levy taxes, and impose fees
• A property tax estimate for the year the sale closes, given as a dollar figure rather than a mill count
• A current certificate of taxes due from the Douglas County Treasurer, since the number on the original listing often reflects an earlier valuation before the home was fully assessed
• Written confirmation of whether the district has formed, or plans to form, a special improvement district or similar assessment separate from its standard mill levy

For homes still in build-out, newer phases of Trails at Crowfoot, Tanterra, or anything still under construction near Kime Ranch, this paperwork matters more than usual, because those are exactly the districts most likely to issue new bonds or adjust assessments as the remaining lots sell.

Reading a service plan and a debt schedule is closer to reading a loan document than a listing sheet, and that's precisely where three decades of banking experience changes what a client walks into a Parker closing knowing. Gibbs Group works through these documents with buyers and sellers before contracts are signed, not after a tax bill arrives that doesn't match expectations.

If you're weighing a purchase or a sale inside one of Parker's newer communities and want the district paperwork read in plain terms before you commit to anything, Let's Connect.