Colorado’s high country towns are cutting budgets after a slow winter pinched critical sales tax revenue.
Spending in 18 Colorado mountain towns fell in the winter of 2025-26, reaching a four-year low. It’s the second winter in a row that the 18 communities have seen wintertime declines in net taxable sales tracked by the state. The decline in spending is a national trend, but in communities that rely heavily on sales tax revenue, even small dips in taxable revenue can have large impacts.
It could have been much worse. The small slowdown in spending does not compare to the historic drop in visitation in 2025-26, which saw Colorado’s ski resorts host the lowest number of visitors since the early 1990s. That disparity between spending and visits reflects a resiliency in mountain towns that are weaning themselves from a long history of dependency on tourists. That weaning includes support for a growing population of remote workers and transitioning from a tourism economy to an amenity economy.
“Last year would have been an earthquake a decade ago,” said Ian Billick, the mayor of Crested Butte, which saw a mere 3.4% decline in spending for the six-month 2025-26 winter, when snowfall at Crested Butte Mountain Resort measured only 60% of average. “But financially, for the town, it was barely a speed bump. I think there’s a lot less panic around this.”
Read the full article on The Colorado Sun's website.