City Council Cleans the Budget

By Demi Sullivan

FORT COLLINS, Colo. – On the evening of Tuesday the third of four city council meetings were healed in Old Town Fort Collins. The meeting focused on three topics; economic health, high performing governments and environmental health. Mike Freeman started off each segment with short power point presentation explaining areas of budget cuts, funding sources, and places the city will continue to fund and focus on. All of these slides can be referenced on fcgov.com/budget.

In the first section the council worked through issues of tourism, transportation, airport funding, event planning, neighborhood services, and the mid-town coder. One of the most heated subjects was neighborhood watch. Fort Collins has a reputation for being a very safe area. With neighborhood watch and house alarms being a main priority.

Captain Jim Szakmeister explained that both neighborhood watch and false alarms make up 30 percent of the job. This is an area of the budget that will be cut; there will no longer be an attendant to cross check alarms and make sure that police don’t dispatch to false alarms. This is a major cost to alarm companies and will be cut in the 2011 budget.

Lisa Poppaw a city council member added her input asking why the cut is important, and asking if a retiree couldn’t do it. The chief said that it uses to be a sworn in position but former budget costs made it a civilian position.

“We don’t want to cut another sworn position,” said Szakmeister.

After coming to an understanding and exhausting economic health the council moved along to high performing government. Health care was the main concern under this topic, with a budget of 7.3 million dollars. Amy Sharkey compensation and benefits manager broke down the components of health care for the council. The breakdown is as follows; 13 million dollars to medical services, 1 million dollars to dental, and 5 million dollars to retirement.

“Claims costs make up most of our budget,” said Sharkey.

After much debate on health care the council took a ten minute break to reconvene on the topic of environmental health. The tired council touched briefly on West-Nile and the impotence of recycling. The main focus is to not lose sight on the simple things we are known for. Mayor Doug Hutchinson closed the meeting with the simplest most meaningful words; Most of these cuts are very frustrating to watch take over Fort Collins.