Who owns Sierra Verde,
and who pays for the road?
214 parcels. 76 owners. 46 homes. Three ways to fund a $42,000 operating budget — each one shifts the burden somewhere different. Source: La Plata County Assessor parcel extract, March 2026.
How This Year Is Actually Funded
On July 11th, 2026 the community voted to approve a $42,000 operating budget. Based on last year's ~32 paying households and an expectation of 34–35 this year, the committee set the FY26/27 annual contribution at $1,500 per household (flat rate), with a $125/month payment plan option to ensure we fund the budget required to do this work responsibly.
See the Full Operating Budget Breakdown →Sierra Verde Estates Covenants call for a $60 annual fee per parcel. Adjusted for inflation that would be roughly $500 per parcel today.
To fund our $42,000 budget this year, it would only cost $196 per parcel if everyone paid.
Land Use & Development
Land use — all 214 parcels
Residency — the 46 developed lots
Owners hold wildly different amounts of land
Eight LLC, corporate, and partnership owners hold 46% of all parcels. Between them, those 99 parcels carry exactly one dwelling.
Owners vs. parcels held
Three ways to fund $42,000
Same budget, same road, three different definitions of who counts as a payer.
Per parcel
Every parcel pays, regardless of owner or whether anything is built on it.
Per owner
One flat annual fee per owner, however many parcels they hold.
Per developed lot
Only lots with a dwelling pay — one fee per developed lot.
A smaller group is carrying a bigger share
Because we expect only about 32–35 households to actually pay this year, each contribution has to be far higher than any of the three models above — $1,500 per household, well above even the $913 "per developed lot" figure. The fewer residents who participate, the higher the burden on everyone who does.
Distribution of costs if the funding model changes
The same $42,000, split by who carries it. This is the real trade-off in front of the community.
Today's structure is voluntary
All three figures above sit well above the $60 per site the 1969 covenants authorize. Today's structure is a voluntary contribution model: paying members receive services, and the rest of the community benefits from the road maintenance that regular participants fund.