2022 Budget

We really need regional air quality monitoring! The northern Front Range has received a "F" rating for air quality and we are among the worst in the country. Much of this is due to Oil & Gas development in Weld County, directly to the east of us, but without regional air quality monitoring for methane and Volatile Organic Compounds, we cannot prove the harm that is being done to our citizens. Weld county is getting the financial benefit while Fort Collins is paying the costs of their pollution.

Everyone deserves a fair return on their contribution to the city budget. A large part of the city’s budget comes from sales taxes, which are inherently regressive. People with lower incomes contribute a larger share of their incomes to the city than people with higher incomes. Yet many city services, particularly open spaces and trails, are used disproportionately by people with higher incomes. Further, open spaces often bolster real estate values for those who live in already pricey neighborhoods. The result is unfair; folks with lower incomes pay proportionately more but benefit less. The remedy is to ensure progressive allocation by prioritizing services and policies that meet the needs and preferences of people with constrained means.

Build a downtown specific bike park. This would allow kids& adults to ride to this area to recreate. For example look at Valmont in Boulder. This park is utilized year round& people come from out of state& other areas to use. Bikes have become more popular in the past years and it would be great to have the cities support to build a park.

Citywide composting and ability to receive completed compost if using the service. This could also be useful in the implementation of community gardens.

Make it easier for the residents of Fort Collins to learn about opportunities like these to offer feedback on things the city is doing.

Provide additional resources to the homeless community. This includes making sure that during the colder months they have a safe place to sleep like they did during Covid. Allow them to set up tents in designated spots. Additionally the city needs to insure that not a single kid ever goes hungry. This means creating a summer and after school program that targets the most vulnerable individuals. This should not fall onto the shoulders of non-profit organizations. Also, continue rapidly installing Connexion and making sure the lower income neighborhoods are at the top of the list. Do not spend a single dollar on the Hughes property. Also, continue to stick to the Parks & Trails master plan and don't speed up the development of those trails just because all the people buying the brand new homes are crying the loudest.

Abolish U+2 and institute rent control. It is impossible to find housing that is affordable.

Abolish U+2. There’s no reason a house with 4 bedrooms can’t house 4 u related people. This policy seems to have only been put in place to force college students into more expensive housing.

It would be nice if the parks department would re-allow ice fishing city lakes and ponds, even if just at specific bodies of water. Recently insurance was renewed and a decision was made to effectively institute a ban on ice fishing city-wide. This has made it so there's no way to enjoy fishing in the city during the winter.

Build bike paths to the newer developments on the Northeast side of town. We cannot bike safely on Mulberry, Vine, or Timberline.

Connecting SE FoCo to the bike trail system! Currently, the only options are to be on Timberline, Trilby, or Harmony OR to carry your bike over the railroad tracks. With the speed and high traffic all of these options are unsafe. There is a growing number of families in SE FoCo who would
like to safely use the bike trail system, so this should be a priority.

Remove certain factors that are restricting housing supply, such as repealing U+2, allowing by-right construction of the next level of density (single family to du/tri/quadplex, quadplex to small apartments), and removing lot size restrictions on carriage house construction for all residential areas.

Connecting the southeast to the amazing trail system.
Trilby is dangerous for families or any cyclist/runner. Harmony is unsafe for families. Ziegler is unsafe for families too.

If you live south of harmony and east of lemay, you have zero connection.

City-wide compost program! Make composting mandatory (for single- and multi-family residences as well as businesses) and provide everyone with the materials and education (like with the city-wide recycling program).

Allocate adequate funding for construction of a grade-separated crossing at Harmony and completion of the missing section of the Power Trail. This is a glaring hole in the city’s trail infrastructure that should have been completed a decade ago.

We need more bike trails. There should be connections between every major neighborhood that don't require riding on major streets. Example: we should connect the Dry Creek and Mosaic to downtown neighborhoods with a bike trail across the airway.

More affordable housing. The average Coloradoan cannot afford a home in their own state. Between cost of living, inflation, and supply/ demand, there needs to be a bigger effort to support affordable housing.

I would like to see multi-modal transportation, especially bicycling and transit, funded adequately to match the city's goals vs. the level of ongoing funding that occurs toward single occupant vehicles as, arguably, the ongoing priority for the city. The status quo feels as though big talk (20% mode share goal that is nowhere near being met) but funding that simply doesn't align with this goal nor related goals around climate action. Primarily what is being supported and therefore what we are getting and experience out there are more cars, higher speeds, and with growing interactions between users, more risk to the most vulnerable. Let's stop going backwards and step-function-step-up to make progress in the right direction.

Provide gainful employment and 24/7 housing to homeless. Prohibit panhandling downtown and on street corners. Employ homeless to contribute labor to their housing and meals. Be more assertive in providing services such as food stamps, medicaid, rental assistance, and disability if applicable.

Publish all city communications only in the common language, English. Not only will this save translation and printing expenses, it will make voluminous city communications easier for citizens to scan through to find the information that is most important to them while unifying the population by enabling them to communication bettter among each other. With the frequent switching of languages in this website, I have difficulty finding what I need and why should the preference (not need) of less than 2% of the population force this on me.