Extreme budget cuts are under consideration by the City. Under the current proposal, our streets will not be plowed or sanded as often. Severe cuts to parks include closing the Starsmore and Helen Hunt Falls visitor centers in North Cheyenne Canon.

Police officer and firefighter positions will be eliminated, and 34,000 hours of transit cuts are proposed (on top of a 24,000 hour cut previously planned). It looks like elimination of FREX service to/from Denver will be spared, though it had its neck on the line along with the downtown Dash shuttle (the most popular route in our transit system).

While the current Council guts our vital services, millions of dollars in growth subsidies remain in the city budget. Over $100 million is budgeted by our utility in a gamble on growth, and this Council wants to extend an expiring tax and drop that $3 million in the slot machine next year to gamble that growth will bring prosperity (even though it hasn’t over the past 15 years).

We should be investing our precious resources in our community, not cutting that investment and running to Vegas to gamble those funds on growth. Developers have convinced this city to waste hundreds of millions of dollars on growth subsidies in a misguided quest for community prosperity. That strategy has failed us for the past 15 years - miserably.
 
Importing prosperity just doesn’t work. We can unlock the prosperity in our community if we believe in ourselves and take care of what we have.

Our beloved city is under siege. This is a critical time. I’ll try to keep you informed, but there is more information than I can pack into these posts. So I encourage you to read the city’s current proposed cuts, call or e-mail me about this subject, and plan to attend the town hall meeting City Council has scheduled February 17 at 7 p.m. to hear from citizens on this subject.