COLORADO SPRINGS — Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade revealed his top priorities for the city Monday as he presented the proposed city budget for 2025.
The top priorities for the City of Colorado Springs are the following:
- public safety
- city cleanup
- addressing homelessness
As for public safety, some of the items included in the proposal are adding 20 police officers and giving all police and fire employees a 2% raise.
The mayor also wants to keep funding in place for the police and fire homeless outreach teams, which help contact people in need of the following:
- healthcare
- housing
- mental health resources
When it comes to homelessness, the city wants to continue to use $500,000 to fund shelter bed operations. The Housing and Homelessness Response Department would focus on the following:
- affordable housing
- homeless service coordination
- public facilities improvements
"This budget reflects the commitment to the values of our community for good governance evidence based decision making and rearranging operations and resources to efficiencies and responsible stewardship of our taxpayer dollars," said Mayor Mobolade.
The third priority for the city is getting things cleaned up.
News5's Dianne Derby looked through the budget and noticed how much it takes to do that.
Just last year, the city filled 89 dump trucks with debris, such as tires and shopping carts. They also removed more than 3,000 abandoned vehicles and got rid of 10,000 graffiti tags.
To keep up with all of the that, the city is adding positions, including a maintenance technician to address neighborhood parks. City council still needs to approve the budget, which is expected to happen in November.
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