If elected, what will your top priority be for the city of Colorado Springs?
Continued strong support for Colorado Spring’s current City and Utilities’ leadership, which have been doing a phenomenal job of managing the growth of the City and the challenges of COVID-19. Enhance the leadership team by putting my engineering, military, and National Security training and experience to work for the future of Colorado Springs.
What should city council implement to address the impacts of COVID-19?
The City and Colorado Springs Utilities have already been reaching out to the families in need by assisting with utility payments and providing tax rebates for our local businesses directly impacted by the pandemic. This is in addition to the relief already provided at the federal level directly to taxpayers as well as the funds received to assist local governments and our citizens in need because of the challenging times. We should continue the good work to help all our citizens directly or indirectly impacted. Equally important, is the collaboration the City has with the El Paso County Public Health Department to, not only educate and inform us on the pandemic as it unfolded, but to ultimately deliver the COVID-19 vaccines to our residents in order of need. Moving forward, we will also need to address the potentially irreparable damage to specific sectors of our local economy (e.g., restaurants, hotels, and tourism industry). The silver lining to some local businesses is their natural instinct to innovate, which will bring them out of this historic national challenge stronger than ever before.
What needs to be done to address the growth the city has been experiencing?
The City and Colorado Springs Utilities is truly on top of this challenge. Prior to any ground being broken for any commercial or residential endeavor, the project is checked to see if it supports the goals and objectives of PlanCOS. The City needs to continue working closely with private enterprise in order for them to provide quality homes for our current and future residents. For example, in District 6 the City annexed over 800 acres in order to build 2900 much-needed homes in Banning Lewis Ranch. As our City grows, so must the infrastructure (i.e., Marksheffel widening) to support it. Our Colorado Springs Utilities needs to be in lock step to ensure that the new businesses and residents receive the electricity, gas, water, and sewer/wastewater to seamlessly support expansion. One area of concern that the City needs to be keenly focused on is working toward a solution to provide affordable housing across the spectrum of our diverse growing workforce.
