The idea was simple: Build a basketball court for the community to enjoy.

It turned into a back-and-forth ordeal without resolution.

Dozens of metropolitan districts across Colorado have for years collected hundreds of dollars, sometimes thousands, from homeowners who sell their houses, a fee assessed no matter how frequently a home is sold, according to a Denver Post analysis of how the districts function.

A portion of the collected fees is given to the district’s developers. The rest is to be used for the benefit of the community through a nonprofit of the developer’s choice.

Nearly all of the districts that assess the fee will be doing it into the next century.

But there are no requirements for anyone to divulge how the community portion of the funds is to be spent, who will manage the funds, and residents of the metro districts don’t necessarily have a say in where it goes, The Post found.

The fees are just one of many funding streams developers have created to profit from the subdivisions they build. The Post on Sunday highlighted how property taxes within metro districts can rise almost without limit to pay for a community’s infrastructure — sidewalks, streets, sewers and lighting — and how developers and builders can profit handsomely from the setup.

Metro district residents say they’re confounded by the additional fees, especially when it appears their community is to be the beneficiary, only to learn it’s not that simple.

“This is not rocket science,” said James Gertson. “A two-sided basketball court for everyone to use. Should be easy, but I gave up trying.”

For the past five years, residents of the Thompson Crossing Metropolitan District in Larimer County who sell their homes have paid the district a fee. At Thompson Crossing, the transfer fee is 0.5% of the sales price, so a house that sells for $250,000 would owe a $1,250 transfer fee to the district.

Three-quarters of that amount — or $937.50 — goes to the developer to help cover expenses for building the community.

The rest, about $312, goes into a nonprofit foundation at the metro district that is called the Thompson River Ranch Foundation.

Not too many of Gertson’s neighbors ever heard of the foundation. Neither did Gertson until he was appointed to the metro district board of directors in 2016.

“I found out that every time a house was sold in the Ranch, basically a royalty fee went to Oakwood Homes, the developer, and a tiny bit to this foundation. That money was literally just sitting there,” Gertson said. “So we thought, why not use it for the community? We were shot down. Not only that, we had no say in how it was spent or on what.”

Gertson still doesn’t know how much money sits within the Thompson River Ranch Foundation and no public record yet exists to let anyone know. Nonprofits are only required to file tax returns if their revenue exceeds $50,000 and the foundation hasn’t filed any since it was formed in 2014.

Colorado incorporation records offer no names for the foundation’s board of directors, there is no website and there are no reports offered to Thompson residents for how much has been collected.

Tax records generated when the foundation was created show a board member, Eric Montoya, is also on the board of another Oakwood Homes-associated foundation for the Green Valley Ranch community. An Oakwood Homes spokeswoman said the other board members are Amy Schwartz and company CEO Pat Hamill.

Two other Oakwood Homes executives — Bruce Rau and Brandon Wyszynski — sat on the Thompson Crossing metro district board of directors with Gertson, so he asked them about the foundation money.

“It’s like a black hole,” Gertson said. “I got stalled for months and months with no answers back, mostly that they were trying to figure out who had control and where it was.”

Wendy Aiello, a spokeswoman for the foundation, told The Denver Post it expected to file a tax return in November and would not offer any additional information about its finances, except to say it is paying for movies in the community’s park, nor would she address Gertson’s difficulty in getting any information. The foundation had not provided The Post a copy of its tax return as of press time.

That any of the transfer fee money goes to a nonprofit is a relatively new process. Until 2011, residents in nearly every metro district across Colorado were required to pay a transfer fee of as much as 3% of the sale price of their home to the metro district. The entire amount was given to the developer.

Lawsuits forced a legislative change so that developments built after October 2011 are prevented from charging any transfer fee. Districts that existed before 2011, such as Thompson Crossing, could continue to make the transfer fee assessment, but had to give a quarter of the money they collect to a nonprofit that could only use the funds to support “cultural, educational, charitable … and recreational” activities, among other things — and not necessarily in the district.

A few metro district boards, typically controlled by the developers who are building the community, created their own foundation, as Oakwood Homes did at Thompson River Ranch.

Others, such as North Creek Farms in Adams County, funnel the funds to a trustee who later is to disperse them to “one or more nonprofit” groups for the “direct or indirect benefit of the community.”

There is no requirement to let anyone know where their money went.

As with Thompson, The Post could not locate any information about funds sent to the Florida-based trustee named in North Creek’s transfer-fee documents, CovenantClearinghouse.com. Its website only says what the fees are for, not where the nonprofit portion of those fees is to go. Efforts to reach the trustee were unsuccessful.

“There’s an issue of accountability, of basic transparency of where the money is going, what it’s used for, who makes the decisions or anything else,” said Charles Wolfersberger, an accountant who manages several metro districts.

One of the districts he manages, Potomac Farms in Adams County, charges a 1% transfer fee for any home sale on the property for the next 99 years and sends it to CovenantClearninghouse.com, Wolfersberger said.

“Although the developer created the metro district and developed the land within the district, the transfer fee was set up and attached to the land by the developer, not the district,” Wolfersberger said. “So the district is unable to undo that.”

One Colorado nonprofit — Green Valley Ranch Foundation — receives transfer fee money from several metro districts built by Oakwood Homes, according to the foundation’s tax filings reviewed by The Post.

According to its most recent tax filings, the Green Valley Ranch foundation in 2018 received nearly $150,000, though it’s unclear how much came from transfer fees. If all of it did, then developer Oakwood Homes was able to keep three-quarters of the total, or $450,000.

Records show the Green Valley Ranch foundation donated $46,000 in 2017 to a variety of programs and $129,828 in 2018 including:

$1,000 to Denver School of Science and Technology

$25,000 to First Tee program at Green Valley Ranch Golf Course

$13,000 to Cleo Parker Robinson Dance

$23,400 to Martin Luther King Jr. Early College

$30,000 to Swallow Hill Music program

Foundation board member Amy Schwartz, who does most of its work, said not having residents be a part of the organization’s decision-making process for grants “is just kind of the way we’ve done it” and isn’t really necessary.

“I think we feel pretty engaged with the community and really confident of our relationship with them,” she told The Post. “I’m in the unique position to understand because that’s my job.”

ASK A QUESTION Have a question about our Debt & Democracy investigation? Submit it here and reporter David Migoya could answer it in a coming story.

Following the 2011 lawsuit ruling, some metro districts chose to do away with anything called a transfer fee rather than set up a foundation or use a charity trustee. They simply call it something else.

At Amber Creek Metropolitan District in Thornton, its board charges a flat $250 fee on the sale of any home and calls it an “account administration fee,” and the funds remain with the district for operational expenses. In Buffalo Highlands Metro District in Commerce City, residents who sell their home are charged a $500 “working capital fee” that’s kept by the district to defray its operational expenses, records show.

Wolfersberger, whose management firm handles the operations at Amber Creek and Buffalo Highlands, said the costs associated with changing ownership on legal paperwork are built into the flat monthly billing he charges the district.

“But these fees were established before we worked with the districts and were passed when each district’s board was comprised of employees and owners of the builders and land developer,” he explained.

Other districts have developed an array of fees that largely go to the developer.

In the Sterling Ranch Metropolitan District, there are a number of different “development fees” assessed on single-family lots that, in total, are expected to generate more than $21 million, all of it for refunding the developer for infrastructure costs, district records show.

In the Pradera subdivision in Parker, new buyers are assessed a one-time “marketing fee” of 0.75% on the sale price of the home, also to be kept by the developer.

The Anthology West Metropolitan District in Parker assesses a $2,000 “capital facilities fee” on a residential home that is issued a certificate of occupancy. And the Wheatlands Metropolitan District in eastern Aurora imposes a “working capital fee” of $150 anytime a home is sold, of which $50 is kept for operating costs and $100 goes into a park fund.

The length of time the fees, transfer or otherwise, remain in effect ranges from 50 to 99 years.

“At the minimum, you would think there would be some community input on how this gets used,” Gertson said.

Learn more To find information about individual metro districts, including budget documents, director and election information, and service plans, go to the Colorado Department of Local Affairs website

Citations Colorado Department of Local Affairs, special districts. https://dola.colorado.gov/lgis/ Nonprofit 990 tax returns at GuildeStar.org. https://www.guidestar.org/