Perhaps you’ve been looking for a breakdown of your property taxes, or maybe you’ve just hiked one of Castle Rock’s beautiful trails and are curious to know how high you’ve climbed. This week, the Town of Castle Rock is launching a variety of new web features that will help answer those questions and more.

Tax calculator
Most Castle Rock homeowners pay less than $40 annually in property taxes to the Town for services such as fire, police, parks, recreation, open space, planning and code enforcement. The rest of what residents pay in property taxes – an average of $1,700 total on a $300,000 home – goes to other entities like the County and Douglas County Schools.

Now, residents can see an exact breakdown of what they pay and to which entity. The Town’s new property tax calculator is online, CRgov.com/propertytax. Simply enter your home address, and a chart will pop up, detailing where your tax money goes. It’s that simple.

Trail elevation electronic map
In Colorado, residents enjoy knowing how high they’ve climbed. Castle Rock’s new Trail elevation electronic map will give hikers and bikers that information and more for all of the trails located within Town.

To use this feature, visit CRgov.com/trailelevation and click on one of the Town’s trails, which are marked in red. Facts about the trail, such as surface type, length, construction date and the elevation at any given point on the trail, appear in a pop-up menu. An elevation profile appears on the bottom of the screen.

Town mapping catalog
Transparency is an important part of governing in Castle Rock, and the Town has undertaken many efforts to make its data available online. The newest element is a Town mapping catalog where users can access aerial imagery, zoning district maps. It is available online, CRgov.com/mapdata.

Because maps are updated often, this site will be an easy way for users to get the most current Town maps in a variety of formats, such as PDF or CAD drawing.

The effort is part of Open Colorado, a statewide initiative by public and private sector professionals to get more government information online in ways that are easy to find and simple to use.

Castle Rock joined Open Colorado in January, when the Town received a grant to fund new ways to openly share GIS data. The Town’s Division of Innovation and Technology chose Open Colorado after researching avenues for sharing information. The Town now has 32 sets of data online with Open Colorado, including fire districts, development projects, metro district maps and more. More information about the group is online, www.opencolorado.org.