2022 Budget

It's always hard to pick a single thing but I think the keystone issue for the city needs to be transportation equity. CityPlan already says we want a city where car ownership is optional, but the reality is that for most in-town and regional trips, the burdens of decreased safety and/or convenience taken on by people who walk, bike, and take transit make all but the most dedicated users likely to use those. Changing or street engineering priorities to emphasize walking and biking safety first, and de-emphasize the focus on trying to reduce vehicle congestion could have a lot of benefits across the triple-bottom-line sustainability spectrum. Also, as those traffic engineers design the streets, it's important for them to understand who should be able to use that street (everyone). We should design the bike lanes for the six-year-old trying to get to school, or the sixty-year-old riding an adult tricycle to a doctor's appointment, not the ultra-marathoner who wears lycra to work. We should design our streets and intersections for the first grader who's parents simply can't hold down four jobs and get their kids to work, or the blind man trying to visit the corner store, not the magical, non-existent pedestrian who can see everything, is never distracted, and dresses like a proverbial Christmas tree. I hope, as part of our existing city priorities, we start building the streets for the behavior we want, which means getting over our pedestrian bulb-out allergy (it's okay to cut off right turns at intersections), and taking most of our streets down at least a size and replacing more traffic signals with roundabouts where they'll fit without significant ROW acquisition.

Focusing on slower, smaller streets means more transportation equity in our community across racial and socioeconomic lines. Slower, smaller streets mean more active transportation and a healthier, happier community. Slower, smaller streets mean less maintenance cost for our neighborhoods, leaving precious City budget dollars available to build and maintain better facilities, and fund more community programs. Slower, smaller streets mean less out-of-pocket property damage and health costs for people who are victims of traffic violence on our streets, victims of poor air quality from transportation emissions, and deprived of the opportunity to use active transportation modes. Slower, smaller streets help reduce our air quality issues by encouraging casual walkers and bikers to shift their ride, instead of limiting it to the ultra-dedicated, lycra-wearing, "urban warriors." Slower, smaller streets mean fewer people driving places and alleviating demands for parking, allowing our massive land area dedicated to surface parking to be reused for mixed-use developments and more housing in walkable areas. Slower, smaller streets leave more room to add xeriscaped green strips, bio-swales, more urban forest canopy, and other things that help slow stormwater discharge and reduce urban heat island effect (both of which we'll be experiencing more of in the coming decades). Slower, smaller streets solve a lot of problems, so I'm hoping we reverse course on some of our road expansion projects, take the opportunity to restripe and/or narrow more streets in more places, reform intersections with safer and more efficient alternatives (like roundabouts), and actually treat people who walk and bike around Fort Collins as equal citizens instead of the afterthoughts we are when we're anywhere but a handful of blocks in Old Town. Thanks for your time!

Please put more money into the Social Sustainability budget for helping to house the homeless during this dangerous covid time.

Limit growth. More people equals less quality of life.

MORE PICKLE BALL COURTS!!! PLEEEEEEASE!!!!!

Planting a large urban forest would increase air quality, decrease the urban heat island effect and lower temperatures, help control erosion, and with proper landscaping enough water will reach the trees, reduce runoff, and decrease flooding, just like they have done in Tucson.
https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/

We need good, large dog parks in North East Fort Collins!! I shouldn't have to drive 25 minutes to let my dog play with other highly active dogs. One with a great water feature like the one at Spring Canyon dog park 😀

The quality of life for neighbors in North East Fort Collins is not at parity with much of the rest of Fort Collins. Beyond missing sidewalks, bike lanes, and trails that connect nearby neighborhoods to each other, schools, and the rest of Fort Collins, City services are harder to access, there are fewer parks-per-neighborhood, and car travel is required to commute to the places neighbors work, learn, shop, and play. Not only does this impose an extreme burden on single-car, dual-income families, the added pressure on overtaxed roads leads to slower response times and lower access to essential services like fire, police, and emergency medical in addition to lower access to daily needs like groceries, libraries, doctors, and dentists. Until Lemay is completed, every route into North East Fort Collins requires traveling over a train track with 10+ minutes of additional travel time required between options depending on which side of the road you're on. Once Lemay is completed, additional burden will be placed along Country Club road to handle not only Tavelli school traffic, but also daily traffic into other areas of Fort Collins which was balanced over all other available routes (all with an equally likely chance of a train). Moreover, many useful city services (like City Traffic Services) and grants (XIP) are inaccessible to residents in North East Fort Collins, placing more safety and financial burden on neighbors. Increased collaboration between the City, County, and State governments as well as Poudre School District, small business partners, and neighbors is required for the best possible outcomes.

Transportation equity and sustainability. Like most American cities, our transportation system is still rigged to prioritize convenience of drivers over safety of any road users, especially the most vulnerable. We need to re-engineer our streets to be slower and smaller so people can just walk around their neighborhoods safely and conveniently, whether they are doing so by choice or because they can't afford another option. Doing so would go a long way in meeting the city's triple-bottom-line sustainability goals, but requires significant funding to engineer better streets focused on walking and biking (with transit as an extension of walking and biking). If we keep widening streets and focusing on keeping cars moving fast, we're going to keep losing ground on economic, social, and environmental sustainability and our most vulnerable residents will pay the steepest price in both economic opportunity and lives lost.

We need an aggressive program to move homeless people into living spaces (not shelters) and provide them access to heath and job hunting services. The fact that we have people begging all over the city is disgraceful and says a lot about how we prioritize new flower plantings over the needs of our most desperate people. We need to get them off the street and into programs that will allow them to return to living with dignity. What happened to Homeless 2020? Cities all over the country have done significantly more than we have for the homeless.

Just this evening I took a look at the National Weather Service weather map and saw that Larimer and adjoining Weld and Boulder counties are lone places in the country having air quality alerts.

So what's new? Frankly, I am sick (literally with asthma) of this situation.

Here in Larimer we have had air quality problems for years and consistently nothing effective has been done that corrects this. So, please act to budget for air quality monitoring so that we can show the real contributions of (including large increases from oil and gas development) to our bad air and to impress on people that they are risking their health to by continuing to allow this situation to continue.

We know from the work that Detlev Helmig did in monitoring at Boulder Reservoir, that he could differentiate the types of VOC's and sources of pollution of our air. If we monitor here in Fort Collins, we can educate our residents about the many health effects from the level of pollution we are allowing. We can't ​call ourselves a "choice city" if it's unhealthy to live here

Also, air quality monitoring should funded by Northern Colorado cities because the State and industries have shown they will not do it. So cities need to step up to protect their residents. Thank you.

There is a critical need for comprehensive regional air quality monitoring, particularly in regard to the various pollutants coming from oil and gas development in Weld County, let alone any potential oil and gas projects in Larimer County in the vicinity of Fort Collins. I have been part of a group advocating for more stringent site specific air quality monitoring at the County level, but the regional issue is more than can be handled by county regulation which can only focus on the specific project sites. Our region's air quality has been getting an "F" Grade from the the American Lung Association for some time now, and there are any number of emissions from poorly maintained and regulated oil and gas operations that play a significant part in that failing grade. Comprehensive regional monitoring that is capable of measuring specific elements within the atmospheric reading can help home in on the problems that are being caused, and perhaps lead to better regional enforcement against offending operators. These kinds of readings have been taken and analyzed for a number of years now by Boulder Air, which conducts such screening for the County of Boulder, City and County of Broomfield, and City of Longmont among others. While expensive, it would seem an appropriate use of some of the funds generated by the State Severance Tax and the Federal Mineral Leasing Distribution to Fort Collins. The prospect of doing this collaboratively with Larimer County government and other municipalities therein also seems like a viable approach. Information on the technology can be found at https://bouldair.com/. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Ed Behan, Fort Collins, Colorado

With the large increase in population and outdoor activity, I'd like to see more park and trail rangers. I don't think the investment has kept up with the usage and it's frustrating seeing dumped trash, vandalism, etc in our natural areas.

Removed by moderator.

Affordable housing that's ACTUALLY AFFORDABLE! It's awesome that the city is working to support attainable developments through Housing Catalyst, but many of these properties are still hard for folks to afford considering the super high cost of living around here. Maybe we could approach this problem by repealing U+2 to start, and then work on alternative housing solutions? Shared spaces, tiny homes, co-op housing, etc. would all be excellent options. Thanks for your hard work!

I would encourage the Council to budget for continuous air quality monitoring with a sufficient number of stations to better represent the air quality of our city in real time. Our air quality has been deteriorating for years due to ozone, oil and gas emissions, and wild fires. Our city is a data driven organization and this is one area we need more, better, and timely data. With the data, the city can better regulate what they can including oil and gas permitting and monitoring and better advocate for what should be regulated better at the county, state and federal levels.

The city's of Boulder, Longmont and Broomfield are use the Boulder Air technology and it would be very appropriate for Fort Collins, and Larimer County, to use this same technology to get regional data since air pollution doesn't respect jurisdictional boundaries.

More compassion and caring for the homeless. Hire a person with social psychology background to work on getting the homeless off the streets. Many could receive benefits such as veterans, social security or disability to help them secure low income housing. This problem is not going to go away and shouldn’t be swept away. Be a city that cares.

Reopen and renovate the Community Creative Center. It was full of exhibits all the time and served the Community with a variety of exhibits. When Andrew Carnegie gifted this building, the City agreed to keep it open and functioning as a Community space.

Compost! Everywhere! For the past year, each week I would have to take all the compost I collected to CSU’s campus in order to be able to compost it. It should be more acceptable!

Rec center needs to build a big, indoor kids pool/play area.

Homeless population - provide shelter