By: Chelsea Metheny
FORT COLLINS, Colo. — The Fort Collins City Council met on Tuesday, Oct. 12 for the third installment of four work sessions to discuss the 2011-2012 budgets. Three specific areas were covered at the meeting: economic health, high performing government and environmental health.
Mike Freeman, the chief financial officer for Fort Collins, opened the meeting by discussing economic health and how it would affect the recommended budget.
Freeman explained that money to pay for services comes from a general fund, which has continued to decrease since 2007. As a result, many programs have been left unfunded, such as a large reduction in the duties of the Crime Prevention Specialist.
Many city council members believe that in order to increase revenue for the general fund, Fort Collins must focus on marketing. Freeman offered his suggestion of changing how people get their information about Fort Collins by focusing on electronic marketing.
Revamping the Fort Collins website to target both tourists and the community might attract more business.
Although the city has seen a strong trend in attracting visitors by hosting softball and baseball tournaments, hotel revenue has plummeted. Hotel revenue was about 14 percent in 2009 and is currently 7 percent in 2010.
“It is going to be a slow growth. It won’t be until 2013 when we see how the economy was in 2007,” said Freeman.
Other suggestions to increase revenues included raising the lodging taxes and adding additional fees to the Fort Collins/ Loveland airport. These additional fees would include tickets and parking.
Among the Front Range, Fort Collins has one of the lowest lodging taxes. An increase in lodging taxes would bring a significant increase in revenue to the city.
Kelly Ohlson, Mayor Pro Tem, changed gears from economic health to environmental health by bringing up sidewalk cleaning. Ohlson expressed concern that the power-washing of the sidewalks and street corners would be eliminated with the new budget.
“The street corners get power-washed six to seven times per year. This would be eliminated with the new budget,” Marty Hefferman said, a city council member.
The $200,000 reduction to the budget is responsible for the elimination of cleaning.
“This would be a significant and noticeable impact on downtown, I have no doubt about that,” Darin Atteberry, city manager.
Not only sidewalk cleaning has been eliminated with the reduction of funding, but also programs that are designed to protect the community.
The budget has cut the duties of the Crime Prevention Specialist by one half.
This position is responsible for neighborhood night watch programs, presentations on crime and community safety and manages alarms for the businesses of Fort Collins. This includes managing false alarms and allocating crimes, which takes up about 30 percent of the position.
“This is the most proactive position we have on in Police Services right now,” Jim Szakmeister said, head of Fort Collins Police Services.
The reduction of programs like this, along with other factors that affect environmental health, will continue to challenge decision makers until the budget it finalized.
I don't think you need to include the date as long as you say it was Tuesday since this article was published the same week. You did a really good job at explaining what happened at the meeting and there are some really good quotes throughout. The only thing I would have done would be to focus in a little bit more on something more specific to give your story an angle. A question I have is: how will citizens be affected by the crime prevention specialist being cut?
ReplyDeleteI think you started off very strong, and had a great lead. You didn’t add any fluff; you just got straight to the point. The only thing I would have changed about the article is your organization. You say the three topics they discussed in the meeting, but only explain one. If you’re only going to explain one topic, then you would need to put where to find arguments about the other topics. Whatever you do, you want it to be what’s best for the reader. Overall you did a really good job, you used very strong quotes.
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