2022 Budget

No funding for the racist 1619 Project and CRT. No funding tor "equity' in any form. No funding for anything labeled "sustainable".

Lower taxes across the board.

Resources for the homeless, and police officer accountability towards civilians.

Better support for homeless population

We need to find a way to stop criminalizing poverty and finding ways to help the homeless population live with dignity and independence. Perhaps a campground with bathroom facilities for those who don't want to live in public housing? They need more support to get jobs, get off the street (if they want to) and have the ability to make decisions for themselves.

Keep the racism and propaganda of CRT/1619 out of our schools.

Minnesota citizens are making the claim Critical Race Theory (CRT) is overwhelming their workplaces and schools as three new legal actions are filed – one lawsuit and two formal complaints that might become lawsuits – arguing the Marxist ideology promotes racism and divisiveness. During a press conference Monday (video below) at the Minnesota Capitol, Doug Seaton, president of the Upper Midwest Law Center, who is representing the plaintiffs in all three matters, said: We’re seeing that everywhere these days … favoritism and disadvantages based on race and skin color, as you will see in our clients’ presentation. The CRT push is subverting the missions of all of their organizations. They are in educational organizations, health care and treatment organizations, and counseling and care organizations, and these are all being subverted by the propaganda of CRT. https://youtu.be/dvze6_aBfZQ

Homeless community needs the ability to have a safe area during this covid pandemic. Places to stay 24/7 in safety.

Find creative solutions that provide increased density throughout town, not just downtown and around CSU.

We've been getting a lot of large scale apartments added to downtown and around CSU, but it would be great to find ways to encourage smaller projects that increase density, but that are owned locally. Many of these large apartment builders are from outside of Fort Collins. Encouraging smaller scale projects that could be owned by individuals or smaller locally owned companies might give us more incremental growth that helps retain a sense of place and our "small town charm" while still adding the housing that we desperately need. We also need to be better integrating small commercial centers throughout our neighborhoods so that neighbors can walk to, and meet up at, the neighborhood cafe/brewpub/etc. Corner stores would enable folks to walk or bike to grab a gallon of milk. Northeast and Southeast Fort Collins are food desserts, as well as "hang out with the neighbors" desserts. Small commercial developments could help tremendously in these areas. And Midtown is soooo centrally located, and yet so sprawling. It really needs to share more of the burden of housing our residents. Those funky backyards with spaces that residents never use could become flag lots for tiny homes. We've got to stop letting motor vehicles determine how we build our City and instead put the power in the hands of local residents to incrementally and creatively add spaces for housing, small businesses, and community interaction.

Unify our community by promoting the use of our common language, English, in all but emergency situations.

Save money and clarify communication by removing multilingual publications and meeting translation that only benefit a small minority while confusing and delaying everyone else. Instead, direct those in need to English learning resources or even fund English language instruction.

Remove 4 way stops

Remove the 4 way stops in residential areas and provide a center cone to enable drivers to use the junction in a similar way to roundabouts. This would reduce pollution and noise avoiding unnecessary stops. If this concept is not understood please refer to google "mini roundabouts"

Needs based assistance

Further resources for those in need of a home, short term financial assistance, a job or income

Create a city based system for assisting the homeless

Create city-based services to assit homeless populations with things like Shelters, temporary housing and mental health services to better assist underserved and vulnerable populations.

Prioritize the citizen requested bike park in n. old town so all can access great mountain biking without driving. Other cities are leading.

Plant More Trees

I encourage City Council to increase the budget for the Forestry Department so more trees can be planted city-wide. The urban tree canopy contributes to our quality of life during the warmer months. Please consider offering the citizens a "treebate" program that provides a financial incentive for folks to plant trees on private property. This is done in Des Moines, IA apparently with great success.

More pickle Ball courts! There are so many new players, and empty tennis courts that can be converted! 🙏🏻

Break down natural areas/parks/other dept silos to deliver outdoor recreation plan desired by citizens that includes more nearby trail miles

Connect North East Fort Collins to bike lane + sidewalk network

+ Collaborate with Larimer County to augment safety along Country Club Road - a primary path to Tavelli Elementary School.

Penalize conglomerates who hold commercial real estate vacant for longer than 2 years (esp. along College Ave).

We need "streetcar commercial districts"... even if our streetcar is no longer a city-wide form off transportation.

Not only should every resident live within walking or biking distance of a park, but they should also live within walking or biking distance of a gallon of milk. We need small, neighborhood level commercial areas where residents can gather together over coffee/tea/beer and get to know each other. We need places that are affordable for small business owners to get their start and they need to be easily accessible by walking, riding, or scootering for everyone, including moms with young kids on bikes. We can't just put our commercial centers along dangerous motorways. We need to be putting them at the smaller crossroads within our neighborhoods. And we seriously need to deal with the food desserts on the eastern edges of town.

We need to be supporting our local businesses more than we support businesses from outside our borders.

We've done a great job of rallying around our local businesses during the pandemic. Let's learn from that and find ways to support our local businesses with vigor and encouragement going forward. Let's help our local business owners buy the buildings their businesses reside in. Let's recognize the extent to which they often pay more sales tax per acre than our big box stores. And let's take note of how embedded they are in our community in ways that the big box stores often only pay lip service to.

Create a Light Rail plan that can easily connect Fort Collins to other Urban Centers

Create a plan for lightrail that can connect into Denver's infrastructure (or even Cheyenne) to help alleviate traffic issues, but also better connect people who might not be able to make a trip to Fort Collins very easily. (Or vice versa)

Incentivize "Walkable/Bikeable" Communities / Economic areas

I'd like to see an effort to incentivize more local businesses to concentrate in areas similar to the Front Range Village shopping mall. Make them very easily accessed by bus/bike/etc. Create a place where businesses can help each other by encouraging foot traffic while reducing vehicle traffic by making goods and services more locally accessible

The City should use the money it gets from the State Severance Tax and the Federal Mineral Leasing fund for regional air quality monitoring

The City should not put the money into the General Fund.

Use Northern Colorado Wildlife Center to improve habitats in the city

Save money on the other contractors, and pay the nonprofit Northern Colorado Wildlife Center to do the clean-ups like they already provide. Paying them would allow them to clean-up MORE city natural areas and it would keep the money going to local nonprofits instead of contractor companies.

Leverage things like "Trash Tag" to help incentivize citizens to keep areas clean.

Create programs to get equipment (vests, grabbers etc) and community events to clean areas/neighborhoods of trash that accumulates in them. Prizes for garbage removal, events, food trucks etc. can help encourage people to participate in keeping their communities more clean.

Air quality/climate change. Need to go beyond monitoring air quality. Need short and long term plan to combat these threats to life quality.

Air quality/climate change

North East Fort Collins cannot access XIP grant - please partner with ELCO + FCLWD + Northern Water to expand this program to homeowners.

The times I feel the least safe in Fort Collins is when I'm walking or biking and an angry motorist threatens me.

One of the scariest moments for my son when biking downtown was when he and his dad were bicycling over the sharrows on Mountain Avenue and an angry older woman in a car careened around them shouting at them to get off the road. I've taken the lane in preparation to get into the left hand turn lane in order to turn left, only to have an angry motorist zip left around me, shouting venom at me. (If I'd started getting left, I would have been run over.) And I can't tell you how many times I've gone to cross at an intersection as a pedestrian only to have a motorist either speed past me, as if they hadn't seen me, or pull right in front of me, stopping right in the crosswalk. If we truly want Fort Collins to be safe for residents, we have got to find a way to alert motorists that they are not the only people traveling around the City, nor do they need to "teach" anyone that they're wrong... especially when it's the motorist who is in the wrong. Why don't the police do anything about this dangerous behavior?!!! I've seen six cops come to talk to my neighbors across the street, spending hours mostly talking to each other on the sidewalk in front of the house. But I've never had a cop pull someone over in their vehicle after they threatened my life.