Here's what city of Fort Collins is celebrating, prioritizing: recap of State of the City
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Fort Collins community members and leaders gathered at the Lincoln Center on Tuesday night for the city’s annual State of the City address, which looks both at the year in review and ahead to the coming year.
This year, the city also used the occasion to start the celebration of its sesquicentennial — or 150th birthday — and took time to go through how city services have changed and grown over the city’s lifetime.
City Manager Kelly DiMartino and Mayor Jeni Arndt took the stage for a conversation about all things Fort Collins. If you weren’t able to make it to the event, here’s a recap of what was discussed.
2022 was a year of recovery
City leaders saw 2022 as a year of recovery and building back up from the impacts of the pandemic.
DiMartino and Arndt shared some highlights of the city’s accomplishments, citing the city’s persistence and staff dedication to recovery:
The first full year of the city’s equity office
Community canopy program that sold 1,000 trees at the reduced rate of $25 a tree
Fort Collins police gaining enough mental health co-responders to have daily coverage
While Arndt and DiMartino spent some time talking about the successes of 2022, they also spent time talking about how far city services have come in 150 years.
DiMartino said a big part of the city's successes with utilities like electric and water services are from the "foresight our predecessors had in doing underground facilities." She pointed to Connexion, the city's municipal broadband service, as an example of how we're still utilizing that kind of distribution.
Arndt acknowledged the challenges with Connexion's launch but said the city always knew it wasn't going to be easy. "We take big risks. We look to the future, and we know it's gonna pay off," she said.
DiMartino pointed out some fun-fact changes Fort Collins has seen over the years, including that in 1925 the city received its first stop light and now there are more than 2,000 miles of road throughout the city, and that transportation was a streetcar service in 1974 and now the city has two battery-powered buses.
2023 promises more community engagement, ‘red hot’ topics
In 2023, the city wants to move from a phase of recovery into one of resilience.
“We're not going to just go back to normal, but we're going to build back better, and we're going to bounce forward,” Arndt said.
And one way they’re planning to do that is through improved engagement work in the community with what Arndt called “red hot” topics, including the recently overturned land use code changes.
The proposed land use code updates were one of the highly anticipated city happenings of 2022, but after a successful grassroots campaign against the changes, council repealed their adoption of the changes rather than send the decision to a citywide vote.
“The council opted to repeal the code and engage in a much deeper community conversation,” Arndt said. "I really honored that process, that democratic process, and look forward to the future discussions about how the built environment reflects the values and the visions of our community.”
Arndt added that she hopes the community stays engaged in the process with the city “because it's really important work” and will give the city an opportunity to get its values into code.
Along with land use code revisions, Arndt and DiMartino named the future of the Hughes Stadium site as a major topic for the city this year. Arndt said they’re still working to acquire the property — staff previously said they expect the sale to close in March — and are continuing to engage the community to determine the best use for the land.
“We know there are a lot of differing opinions about that, and that's why our community engagement efforts are really so important,” DiMartino said.
In addition to improving engagement, the city hopes to continue its equity work in 2023 with leadership, saying it “is not something we do separately, it is a part of the work we do.”
One major step toward improving equity relations is creating a “draft equity plan” that will help guide the city’s work, said DiMartino, noting that there’s so much to be done and that will help keep it focused.
They’re also going to work on “building deep relationships” with historically underrepresented communities.
“One community that we're focusing on is our Native American community,” DiMartino said. “I am happy to say that we have hired an Indigenous community engagement specialist for the first time in the city organization, and we really want to work on rebuilding and building deep and authentic trusts with those community members.”
Molly Bohannon covers city government for the Coloradoan. Follow her on Twitter @molboha or contact her at mbohannon@coloradoan.com. Support her work and that of other Coloradoan journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Here's what you missed at Fort Collins' State of the City address
