Council member Shirley Peel: Will city use ARPA (one-time) money to fund any ongoing items that would need other funding sources down the line?
CFO Travis Storin: We funded some ongoing items in 2022 budget with ARPA money (city plans to find other funding sources for the future), but most items in 2023-24 budget will be one-time things
Peel asks when tourism is projected to return to normal, suggests study on that topic. She would support marketing programs to encourage people to visit Fort Collins
Peel says she generally supports the plan but has some "philosophical differences" with its contents and thinks the federal rules are too broad: "I'm worried the city is expanding to be responsible for programs that aren't necessarily our purview"
Kendall adds that plan is really looking at building long-term resilience in the community, rather than the "band-aid" approach of CARES Act funding
Council member Kelly Ohlson says he has a lot of feedback, including some "dealbreakers"
Ohlson says community feedback heavily emphasized need for economic recovery, but he's not sure he sees that reflected in the actual state of the economy aside from existing systemic inequities.
Ohlson: The economy's doing very well, though it's not perfect. It certainly has been unfair to the people who are most vulnerable, so I'd like to see our emphasis there.
He wants staff to verify that city won't be cutting any checks directly to businesses.
His "one gigantic, big no": Implement a "one water" approach for water utilities and enhance regional collaboration for water supply and delivery.
Ohlson says he doesn't see how this relates to the pandemic, and he sees it as a thinly veiled effort to charge Fort Collins ratepayers for decades for projects that serve people outside our service area
Fort Collins economic health manager Josh Birks addresses Ohlson's question about payments to businesses: City ran two grant programs for businesses using state and federal funds earlier in the pandemic.