Critics of a recently approved deal between Manitou Springs and the Pikes Peak Cog Railway are hoping to put the plan on hold until a public vote this fall.

The 50-year pact would give the owners of the Cog Railway two tax breaks to help finance a multimillion reconstruction of the railway. Opponents are hoping to collect enough petition signature to put it on the November ballot.

The opponents said they don’t think the City Council adequately considered the long-term impacts of the deal before voting 6–1 to approve it June 26.

Manitou Springs’ city charter allows citizens to void a recently-passed ordinance by petitioning for a public vote on the measure. However, interim City Administrator Malcolm Fleming told the petition’s backers Wednesday that the city’s attorney doesn’t believe a referendum can be held on the deal.

Fleming did not explain why the deal wasn’t subject to a referendum and the statement at a community meeting on the pact surprised John Shada, a former councilman.

Shada, who has contacted the city about starting a petition drive for a ballot question, told Fleming that he had not been told that by the city clerk.

If petitioning is possible, opponents must collect 220 signatures. Shada said he’s still waiting to hear from city officials when the signatures would have to be submitted to qualify for the ballot.

If enough signatures are collected, the City Council will have to take a second vote, Shada said; a “yes” vote on the deal would mean that it goes to the ballot; a “no” vote would kill the deal.

The meeting was hosted by the Pikes Peak Bulletin, whose owner, John Weiss, proposed the petition in the July 12 issue of the community newspaper. About 150 people, including Manitou Springs City Council members and other elected officials from around the Pikes Peak region, attended the meeting, where city officials attempted to address opponents’ concerns about the deal.

Weiss emphasized that he supports the Cog Railway, but believes the deal was rushed through.

“We want a deal,” he said. “We just don’t like this deal.”

Proponents of the agreement have said it’s the best bet for Manitou Springs, which stands to lose roughly $600,000 a year in tax revenue if the Cog is permanently closed.

“I think it was a fair deal on both sides,” Manitou Springs Mayor Ken Jaray said after the meeting.

The pact is with Oklahoma Publishing Co., parent company of The Broadmoor hotel in Colorado Springs and the Cog Railway, which estimates it will need to spend $75 million to $95 million on the project, which would include reconstructing the railway, refurbishing or rebuilding the depot and buying new rail cars.

The city would waive its use tax for equipment and machinery related to the railway’s rebuilding and cap the Cog’s annual excise tax payments for 50 years. That limit would begin at $500,000 in the first three years and increase incrementally — by a percentage or dollar amount, depending on the year — to $750,000 by 2062, according to the most recent draft.

The agreement will require the Cog to pay Manitou Springs $1 million by 2019 to make up for lost tax revenue from the railway’s closure. It also would guarantee that the railway’s owners contribute at least $500,000 more to increase parking capacity for visitors and reduce traffic downtown.

Under the agreement, the Cog must help the city establish 300 to 400 new parking spots at Hiawatha Gardens, another site or a combination of sites. The railway owners also agreed to help the city mitigate future issues that might arise due to traffic or tourism brought by the attraction.

But critics of the deal say it’s unclear how much tax revenue the city will miss out on over the next 50 years because of those limits, and have criticized the city’s attempts to calculate those figures because they did not factor in inflation. They’ve also said the agreement spans too long a period of time.

Jaray told the crowd at the meeting that the city’s negotiating team originally asked for a shorter contract, but the Cog’s owners said the agreement needed to span 50 years to allow them to recoup the tremendous investment.

He added that, when the ownership group began negotiating with the city in March, it asked them to agree to the deal in a timely manner so that construction on the railway could begin this year.

Gary Pierson, president and CEO of Oklahoma Publishing Co., has emphasized that, even with approval of the deal, he’s not sure if the Cog’s reconstruction is financially feasible. International contractors, needed to supply the custom railway cars, steel for the tracks and other components, have provided quotes that surpass the project budget by nearly $40 million, he previously told The Gazette.

“We are working literally night and day spanning seven time zones to get the numbers down to what we need them to be,” Pierson said. “We may be successful; we may not.”

Oklahoma Publishing and The Broadmoor are owned by the Denver-based Anschutz Corp., whose Clarity Media Group owns The Gazette.

EDITOR’S NOTE: A earlier version of this story misspelled John Shada’s name.