Provide an exceptional customer experience to the community and increase the City’s effectiveness by simplifying processes and delivering modern technologies.

• Council Priority: Make Government More Accessible, Approachable and Fun
• Council Priority: Modernize and Update the City Charter
• Inconsistent and overly complicated City processes negatively impact the customer experience.
• Updates to the City’s website and other digital platforms provide an opportunity to ensure that they are accessible to the entire community.
• As our flexible work practices continue to adapt and evolve, the City is committed to providing exceptional and reliable customer service.

Build trust with our increasingly diverse community through meaningful engagement and by providing timely access to accurate information.

• Council Priority: Develop a Hughes Site Master Plan
• The voices and perspectives of marginalized community members have been historically underrepresented in the City’s public engagement efforts.
• The evolving media and communications landscape requires pursuing innovative avenues of engaging with and informing our community.
• Effective and meaningful public engagement includes listening and responding to input and depends on establishing mutual understanding with those who choose to participate.
• Increasing voter turnout provides insight into the opinions of residents through the democratic process.

Deliver an exceptional employee experience by attracting, developing and retaining diverse talent and fostering a culture of employee safety, belonging and empowerment across the organization.

• The City continues to face challenges with attracting and retaining talent in certain sectors.
• The region’s high cost of living increases pressure on competitive pay.
• Developing a diverse talent pool and increasing representation in both the broader workforce and at the management level remains a major focus.
• The City’s efforts to simplify processes and deliver modern technologies will have beneficial impacts on the employee experience.

Incorporate a management strategy for all new and existing City assets that addresses deferred maintenance and accessibility.

• As the City’s assets age, renewal and replacement are critical to maintaining and elevating service standards.
• Developing and implementing an asset management strategy is fundamental to the long-term sustainability of City services.
• Successful and efficient asset management requires improved coordination among City departments on capital projects.
• New funding provides an opportunity to perform necessary maintenance and replace deteriorating assets.
• Renewing the ¼-cent street maintenance tax will help maintain the high quality of the City’s transportation network.
• Asset management includes preserving and maintaining a safe, healthy and resilient urban canopy.

Make City arts, cultural and recreational programming more inclusive to reflect the diversity of our community.

• In the 2023 Community Survey, 63% of respondents reported the quality of arts and cultural opportunities as good or very good, which is a recent increase, but below historical averages.
• Programming can be within City facilities, as well as throughout the community.
• Artistic and cultural opportunities are essential to a vibrant and creative community; engaged and equitable participation and inclusion in those opportunities are core community values.
• Effective communication strategies are necessary to help residents understand how to learn about and access currently available programming.
• Emerging trends and opportunities for all ages and abilities need to be considered as the community evolves.
• Consultation and collaboration with local and regional community organizations are a key success factor to identifying gaps and opportunities.
• The City maintains a strong commitment to enhancing access to nature.

Implement criteria and prioritization to manage assets and replace equipment that will revitalize parks and recreational facilities, as the planned buildout of the parks and trails system continues.

• Parks, trails, and cultural and recreation opportunities are highly valued and used by residents.
• Utilize new dedicated funding to make necessary improvements and updates to meet design standards and maintain these as highly valued neighborhood amenities.
• Aging parks should periodically undergo a redesign or comprehensive upgrade to respond to new park standards and changing community expectations.
• Equipment replacement and overall asset management should include understanding modern service expectations as the community evolves.

Foster diverse and attractive employment opportunities, remove barriers to local businesses and bolster economic mobility by facilitating workforce development that aligns businesses drivers with worker capability.

• Council Priority: Pursue an Integrated, Intentional Approach to Economic Health
• To support a better customer experience during business creation and mitigate the rising regulatory cost of doing business in Fort Collins, the City can evaluate removing barriers for business by streamlining processes and becoming less siloed in its communication.
• Life sciences, clean energy, biotech and other industries in close alignment with City values and goals can be important drivers of innovation and contributors to the local economy.
• Collaboration with educational and institutional partners is needed to create and execute a unified regional workforce and economic mobility opportunities.
• The Economic Health Strategic Plan establishes goals to increase business owner demographic representation, increase five-year business survivability, add 1,800 jobs in targeted sectors and increase representation within those sectors.
• Continuing to expand the City’s Connexion services while finding innovative ways to leverage the network across Fort Collins and in the region can be a business attraction tool.

Deliver City utility services in response to climate action objectives and opportunities and targeted reliability and resiliency levels, and make significant investments in utility infrastructure while communicating and mitigating cost impacts to the community where possible.

• Maintaining reliability is critical as PRPA implements its Integrated Resource Plan and distributed energy resources are integrated into the electric grid.
• Water storage capacity is needed to ensure water rights can be fully utilized to meet future demand and drought resiliency needs.
• The benefits of reliable infrastructure such as water distribution, wastewater collection/treatment, and flood protection extend well beyond economic impact and have ties to community safety and environmental health.

Implement the Our Climate Future Plan to advance the City’s greenhouse gas, energy and waste goals; reduce air pollution; and improve community resilience.

• Council Priority: Accelerate Zero Waste Infrastructure and Policies
• Council Priority: Reduce Climate Pollution and Air Pollution Through Best Practices, Emphasizing Electrification
• Actively working together and building on existing partnerships with local, regional, state and national affiliates is necessary to achieve desired Our Climate Future goals and outcomes such as: decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 80% below 2005 baseline levels by 2030; ensure 100% renewable electricity provision by 2030, utilizing both grid and local sources; and attain zero waste, or achieve 100% landfill diversion, by 2030.
• Engaging all parts of the community in solutions to increase accessibility and community consciousness of recycling, xeriscaping and other environmental programs can raise participation.
• Implementing mode shifts advances the City’s climate and Vision Zero goals by reducing the number of vehicle miles traveled.
• Accelerating building electrification aligns with the City’s pursuit of clean energy sources and lowering building energy consumption, which is responsible for more than two-thirds of the community’s emissions.

Sustain the health of the Cache la Poudre River and regional watersheds while delivering a resilient, economically responsible and high-quality water supply for all Fort Collins residents.

• Council Priority: Protect Community Water Systems in an Integrated Way to Ensure Resilient Water Resources and Healthy Watersheds
• Collaborating with partners and attaining regional commitments to assess and support river and watershed health is crucial for success.
• Proactively managing the high costs of acquiring water rights and storing raw water ensures the provision of an adequate and affordable water supply for everyone.
• The Water Efficiency Plan and Water Shortage Action Plan guide strategies for water demand management and water conservation.
• The health of the river requires collecting wastewater and ensuring it is treated safely.

Expand, restore and maintain the Natural Areas land portfolio to improve habitat conditions across the community and ensure equitable access to nature.

• Amidst escalating costs, the City must actively seek partnerships with local, regional and national organizations to bolster land conservation and restoration efforts.
• The City is challenged to maintain investments in restoration and built infrastructure to fulfill stewardship responsibilities for the existing land portfolio amidst budget constraints and changing environmental conditions.
• Programs like Nature in the City can continue efforts to protect and expand naturalized landscapes on City-owned properties and throughout the community.

Increase housing supply, type, choice and affordability to address inequities in housing so that everyone has healthy, stable housing they can afford.

• Council Priority: Operationalize City Resources to Build and Preserve Affordable Housing
• Fort Collins’ population is expected to grow to 250,000 by 2040, which will drive significant need for housing units throughout the community. The Housing Strategic Plan provides guidance on next steps.
• Fort Collins is focused on enhancing the quality of life and sense of belonging in all neighborhoods by connecting neighbors to each other and to City services, building social equity, inclusion, and fostering harmonious relationships.
• The challenge of keeping up with affordable housing options necessitates that the City support efforts to preserve and enhance mobile home parks as a source of affordable housing and to create a safe and equitable environment for residents.
• The City continues to address the need for regulations and procedures to be clear and predictable to ensure new development efficiently advances adopted City plans and policies.
• The City will need to advance development efforts in the Growth Management Area in order to see a measurable increase in housing supply and type, and to meet the goal of building 282 units per year to have 10% of all housing inventory as restricted affordable housing by 2040.

Support community partner efforts to address priority human service issues like poverty and mental health, and to make homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring.

• Council Priority: Improve Human and Social Health for Vulnerable Populations
• The social issues that partner agencies address are wide-ranging, complex and systemic. A strategic, collaborative approach will ensure programmatic effectiveness and efficiencies, add agency capacity, eliminate redundancy, and identify and better serve disadvantaged areas and groups.
• The City’s core role has been and continues to be strengthening partnerships, funding programs and developing policy in coordination with community agencies that provide a wide range of human services and homelessness services.
• According to the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) that is administered by the Continuum of Care, as of January 2024, approximately 530 community members are experiencing chronic homelessness in Fort Collins. This indicates that chronic homelessness declined about 16% in 2023. Despite this progress, efforts need to be coordinated to address the myriad challenges that lead to homelessness.
• Continued innovative, collective efforts across agencies are needed to reduce incidents of, and impacts from, disruptive and unwanted behaviors, working closely with the community’s partner agencies to offer creative approaches that balance compassion and consequences.

Identify and remove systemic barriers and advance equity so that persons of all identities, including race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, mental and physical abilities, and socioeconomic levels can access programs and services with ease and experience equitable outcomes.

• Council Priority: Improve Human and Social Health for Vulnerable Populations
• Identifying and actively working to remove systemic barriers will help address the historical root causes that have created generational inequities for vulnerable and disadvantaged groups.
• As the cost of living in Fort Collins increases, low- and moderate-income households are struggling to afford necessities and participate in City programs and services.
• Related to the high cost of living, increased and targeted outreach efforts and supportive customer experiences are needed to assist community members in participating in income-qualified services, improving accessibility to City and community programs for low- and moderate-income households.
• There is an increase in requests from community members eager to build a sense of belonging for the City to commit resources to creating experiences that promote inclusion and celebrate cultural diversity in the community.
• As there are sections of the community that do not have access to digital equity services, the City is developing methods to prioritize connectivity services to under-resourced neighborhoods.
• To advance equity for all and apply a data-informed approach to making policy, program and service updates, City teams are growing their practice to systematically gather, analyze and interpret qualitative and quantitative data, disaggregated by racial and social identities and additional equity indicators, to identify barriers, decrease inequities and increase access for all.

Remove obstacles to build interconnected Neighborhood Centers to accelerate progress toward our goal for everyone to have daily goods and services available within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from their home.

• Council Priority: Advancing a 15-Minute City by Igniting our Neighborhood Centers
• Innovative neighborhood outreach and engagement efforts that help gather data from a diverse range of communities on needs, interests and expectations will be necessary for teams to develop strategies and actions for implementing adopted plans.
• Preparing to build 15-minute neighborhood centers, City teams will need to analyze neighborhood-level geographic data to assess hyper-local needs. It is important to understand population density and demographics; locations of essential amenities; public spaces; and the quality, safety and accessibility of walking, biking and public transit networks.
• In developing 15-minute neighborhood centers, City planning initiatives will have the opportunity to assess environmental health impacts such as how to increase walking and biking mobility options, lower emissions and increase healthy opportunities for residents through reduced air pollutants.
• Building physical neighborhood connectivity will require the City to consider complex infill and redevelopment projects that offer significant opportunity to contribute to vibrant walkable and bikeable neighborhoods and centers.
• According to the National League of Cities, “the goal of the 15-minute city is to provide convenient and equitable access to necessities like healthcare, schools, grocery stores, jobs, and greenspace.”

Enhance overall community safety and foster increased trust in public safety services and the municipal justice system through innovative service delivery models.

• Ongoing partnerships support key enforcement and education programs, such as mental health, substance abuse prevention, detoxification, victim assistance, youth programs, bike safety, county jail management, efforts to reduce repeat crimes, fire safety and animal control.
• A diverse community requires new communication strategies and non-traditional partnerships to build trust and help residents understand available resources for safety.
• Utilizing local, regional and federal resources is crucial to comprehensively address safety issues.
• As Fort Collins continues to grow, the City will need to innovate and adapt to meet evolving community expectations for public safety services, including law enforcement, fire and rescue, and comprehensive emergency communication and preparedness.
• Innovative service delivery means coming up with new and clever ways to provide services. Fresh ideas, smart strategies and new technology can help improve services and customer satisfaction.

Enhance safety and security on public and private property and protect City infrastructure and sensitive data from emerging security threats.

• The physical safety of residents in public spaces and on private property is paramount.
• The City’s reliance on evolving technology for core operations and service delivery underscores the need for robust cybersecurity measures to safeguard City assets, information and customer privacy. Cybersecurity involves cyber audits, awareness training and digital access control.
• The Community Survey indicates that fewer residents feel safe at parks and recreation facilities than before the pandemic. The City is committed to enhancing the community’s safety across public amenities to help ensure a secure and enjoyable environment for residents.
• Providing and maintaining reliable utility services and infrastructure directly preserves and improves public health and community safety.

Make significant progress toward the City’s Vision Zero goal to have no serious injury or fatal crashes for people walking, biking, rolling or driving in Fort Collins.

• Council Priority: Advance a 15-Minute City by Accelerating Our Shift to Active Modes
• The City adopted a goal in 2016 to have no fatal or serious injury crashes within the transportation network. This requires appropriate programs, policies, educational resources and infrastructure improvements that work to reduce the overall number and severity of crashes.
• In 2023, City Council adopted the Active Modes Plans, which lays out the needed investments to ensure that alternatives to driving—which include biking, walking and rolling—are safe and accessible to all residents.
• In 2023, City Council also approved 10-year transportation capital project priorities that identify the key corridor, intersection and crossing improvements, and other projects that will directly work to increase the safety, efficiency and equitable operation of the transportation network for all modes of travel.
• Quality infrastructure that is in a good state of repair is necessary for the safe operation of the transportation network. The City has relied on dedicated funding from the street maintenance tax, due to expire in 2025, as a primary way to ensure a consistent street quality standard.
• Working closely with local schools is necessary to implement strategies that will ensure safe routes to school and protect our student population.
• Ensuring our transportation network is safe for everyone requires enforcing traffic and other laws with targeted and innovative strategies in priority areas.

Increase Transfort access and ridership by ensuring the City’s transit services provide safe, reliable and convenient alternatives to driving.

• The Transit Master Plan was updated in 2019, but the realities of operating a transit agency have changed substantially since the COVID-19 pandemic; ridership still has not returned to pre-pandemic numbers. The plan should be optimized to reflect post-pandemic realities, including new strategies to achieve the transit vision while still considering frequency and prioritizing key routes.
• Fort Collins voters approved a new sales tax to support transit initiatives through 2050. These resources will provide significant funding support toward some of the capital projects needed to increase transit frequency and stabilize operations.
• The Community Survey indicates that fewer residents always or usually feel safe on Transfort than did before the pandemic. Increasing ridership will require ensuring that transit is a safe transportation alternative.
• Colorado State University students account for a critical portion of Transfort’s ridership. Continued partnership with the university and students will be critical to achieving increases in ridership.
• Achieving many of the City goals outlined in City Plan, Our Climate Future and the Housing Strategic Plan will require increasing transit ridership.

Transform the parking system to better align supply and demand and incentivize sustainable outcomes in a place-based manner across the city.

• A strategic approach to the City’s parking system and requirements can help achieve many other goals related to housing, climate and transportation. Incentivizing behaviors to make progress in these spaces requires a context-specific approach based on a number of factors including density, economic activity and availability of structured parking.
• In Downtown specifically, the existing parking model incentivizes additional vehicle trips as the spaces that are ideal for longer-term parking (garages) cost more than the spaces better suited for short stays (on-street). This results in a revenue model that is not sustainable for the long-term maintenance of the parking structures or the Parking Services team and increases congestion Downtown.
• Successfully implementing transportation demand and targeted land use strategies can reduce automotive congestion and the increasing need for associated parking across the community.
• In 2023, City Council supported advancing a workstream to look at new models for pricing Downtown parking.

• Accuracy of Cumulative Budgeted Expenses ($ millions)
• Actual Cumulative Revenue Compared to Budget ($ millions)
• Average Response Time of Cases Submitted to Access Fort Collins
• City Employee Cumulative Turnover Rate
• City Employee Safety – Days Away Restricted or Transferred (DART) Rate YTD
• City Employee Safety – Total Recordable Injury Rate (TRIR) TYD

• Gardens on Spring Creek – Total Cumulative Participation
• Golf Courses – Total Cumulative Participation
• Lincoln Center – Total Cumulative Participation
• Museum of Discovery – Total Cumulative Participation
• Natural Areas Programs – Cumulative Participation per Capita
• Paved Trails - Cumulative Number of Visits
• Recreation Programs – Total Cumulative Participation

• Commercial Vacancy Rates
• Electric System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) in Minutes
• Local Unemployment Rate
• # Business Establishments per Capita (Larimer County)

• Community Electricity Use per Capita (kWh/quarter)
• Community Water Use per Capita
• Outdoor Air Quality Index (AQI)
• Wastewater Treatment Effectiveness Rate (%)

• Affordable Housing Inventory
• Homelessness Data, Chronic Homelessness and # Chronic Homeless Housed
• Fort Collins’ Housing Opportunity Index (HOI) Compared to Western States Region HOI
• Response Time to Graffiti Removal
• Voluntary Code Compliance
• Voluntary Speed Compliance

• Average Response Time to Police Priority I Calls
• Drinking Water Compliance Rate (% Days)
• Number of Injury/Fatal Crashes
• Part 1 Crimes in Fort Collins (per 1,000 population)
• Percent of Time Fire PFA Intercedes Before Flashover (contained to room of origin)
• Percent of Time PFA Fire Personnel are On-Scene Within 7 Minutes 20 Seconds in the Urban Area

• Average Travel Speeds/Times on Arterial Streets
• Cumulative Lane Miles of Roadway Pavement Improved
• Transfort Ridership (in thousands) and Passengers per Hour

Although the City has stabilized the organization’s near-term financial position, it still faces continued pressure to balance the longer-term needs with the limited sources of funding options. During the previous LTFP update, the City had identified significant challenges associated with future funding for park life-cycle and maintenance costs, transit/transportation infrastructure, affordable housing options, ambitious climate and energy goals, and other Council priorities. The City has continued to add personnel capacity to keep up with the demand for services from our community of residents, businesses and visitors. The adopted two-year budget for 2023 and 2024 included approximately 42 additional full-time equivalent (FTE) employees to help serve these ever-increasing community needs.

Similar to the 2022 LTFP update, the 2024 LTFP contemplates the impacts of taking on these additional expenditures and explores options to fund these programs and services. The 2024 LTFP analysis continues to provide a Baseline Scenario and also builds up a Gap Closure Scenario that factors in four additional sets of assumptions:

1. Adjustments for historic budget underspend
2. Addition of new expenditures for currently underfunded programs and services
3. Longer-term growth-related programs and services
4. Addition of identified and potential

The Baseline Scenario forecast includes the following primary revenue and expenditure assumptions:

Primary Revenue Assumptions

• Sales Tax: Gowth of 2.5% based on taxable sales historical average, increased taxable sales base and reduced near-term inflationary impacts
• Use Tax: Growth of 3.6%, similar to prior forecasts
• Property Tax: Incorporates steep valuation increases from 2020 to 2024 that have significantly increased the base; growth of 2.0% moderates with Consumer Price Index (CPI)
• Capital Grants: 2.0% increase, very project specific; tied to long-term CPI growth
• Shared Revenues: County and State distributions, 1.3% growth, similar to historical rate for past 15 years
• Cultural, Park, Recreation and Natural Areas Fees: In line with average historical rate of 3.4%

Primary Expenditure Assumptions

• Salaries and Wages: Combined growth rate of 3.7%; includes CPI-driven wage increases plus projected FTE increases
• Benefits :Combined growth rate of 4.7%; includes 1% over CPI-driven rate increases plus projected FTE increases
• Professional and Technical: Growth of 3.3%, correlated to CPI and sales tax
• Supplies and Other Purchased Services: 1% growth
• Infrastructure: 5% growth rate, correlated to sales and use tax

The 2024 LTFP Baseline Scenario (see Exhibit 1) shows our projected revenues, expenditures and future estimated year-end fund balances. Overall, long-term revenues are expected to increase at an approximately 2.5% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Expenditures are expected to grow by 3.3% CAGR over this same period. The projected gap between revenues and expenditures could exceed $40 to 50 million per year by 2032, with the cumulative effect of this deficit spending eroding fund balances to less than $20 million.

The City is required to balance the budget during the biennial BFO process and cannot deficit spend beyond the utilization of anticipated revenues and existing available fund balances. Historically, there is an approximately 5% average underspend in actual expenditures compared to budgeted expenditures each year. Given the requirements of the City’s budgeting process, this result is expected and provides a requisite cushion level against potential revenue shortfalls in the short-term. As in the prior LTFP update, this 5% amount was removed from the Gap Closure Scenario forecast, providing a more normalized view of expected expenditure levels for existing services and programs.

During 2022 and 2023, City staff and the Council worked to refine the longer-term ongoing needs of the City as well as reflect updated Council priorities. The Gap Closure Scenario adds projected costs to account for identified needs for parks and recreation, transit additions, affordable housing programs and climate initiatives. The annual requirement for these items has been estimated at more than $40 million per year, with cumulative expenses totaling over $350 million by the year 2032.

The staff and Council update included a rigorous analysis of potential funding alternatives and trade-offs. The culmination of these efforts was placing two funding options on the November 2023 ballot:

1. A 0.50% sales tax increase to fund parks and recreation programs, climate initiatives and transit projects
2. A property tax increase to fund affordable housing needs

The sales tax initiative was approved by the voters with an effective date of January 1, 2024. While not projected to cover all the estimated needs of the covered programs, these funds are the basis for specific project planning and funding consideration for the BFO process later this year. The property tax initiative was not approved by the voters and the affordable housing shortfalls currently remain unfunded. This new sales tax revenue stream is included in the Gap Closure Scenario.

In addition to the current maintenance and program expenditure shortfalls, Fort Collins’ continued growth will bring on additional needs for funding. Specifically, identified areas of potential need are the Civic Center Master Plan, developing future community and neighborhood parks, and potential annexation costs related to the East Mulberry area. These expenditures may approach $15 to 20 million per year by 2032.

The City organization will continue to look for ongoing cost containment strategies to combat the growth and inflationary impacts. However, staff will need to continue looking for other funding sources – some potential combination of taxes, fees and/or grant revenues. For illustrative purposes in the Gap Closure Scenario, a combination of unidentified new sources was estimated at $25 million per year beginning in 2028.

The Gap Closure Scenario is highlighted in Exhibit 2, which provides greater stabilization of fund balances over the longer-term time horizon.

The City made significant strides during 2023 and 2024 in addressing some of the funding gaps identified in prior Strategic Plan and LTFP updates, but many challenges remain. Prioritizing programs and services will be key to delivering the highest value-added services to the community. Active cost containment will remain a vital component of maintaining our ability to deliver desired levels of service.