One-on-one with Colorado Springs city councilmember Dave Donelson

News5 is taking the time to check in with Colorado Springs city councilmembers to share their voices outside of city council meetings and hear what their messages are to their constituents.

This week, we are highlighting Councilman Dave Donelson, who represents District 1, which covers the northwest side of the city.

NOW IN YOUR SECOND TERM, HAS YOUR VISION CHANGED, AND DO YOU FEEL YOU ARE STICKING TO YOUR CAMPAIGN PROMISES?

"So really, what I'm doing is trying to do the best job I can at representing citizens or the constituents of District One on city council, and I try to represent what I believe they want from me and from city council. So sometimes my vote will be different than all the others, like, for example, on the amphitheater. The vote was eight in favor, one against. I voted against it because I listened to the citizens that lived around the amphitheater and their concerns about the future, and now today, I'm glad I voted that way... just the noise, the noise issues that have come from the amphitheater kind of validate the concerns I had and on that issue in particular. You know, the ones on council who voted yes on that, I think, were misled. We were told there was a certain decibel level. If the amphitheater reached that level, the sound would be turned down. What we weren't told is that's over a five-minute average. And so there's a small detail, but there are four things I think citizens are really concerned about in Colorado Springs. Those are the things I think we, as a council, the mayor, everybody, need to focus on. I can go into those now or later, but that's my purpose on city council. I ran because I saw that city councils were doing damage to their cities, and this was after George Floyd. My brother is a police officer, and he's retired now in North Carolina, and you know, I knew that certain city councils were defunding police, and I asked someone that was on our city council at that time. Hey, Andy. It was Andy Pico, any chance that that could happen here? Actually, what I said was, I'm glad that can't happen here. And what he told me is like, Well, Dave, you know, there's probably a few on our city council that would, and so at that point, I thought, you know, you can't wait for others to do what you think needs to be done. You should do it yourself, if you can. And as a retired Army guy, and I worked after the Army also, but at that point, I could basically focus on city council. So I ran really to support law enforcement, because I know that's a critical thing that's importantto our constituents, and so those four things, I'll list them off real fast. But potholes, right roads, I think that's critically important to citizens. When they leave their homes, they start judging our city government. How are we doing on their commute to wherever they're going? So roads, potholes, number one. Number two is the homeless or urban camping. Citizens really want that addressed. It's really the same issue with urban camping. We need to stop it, and I'm working on an ordinance now, along with our city attorneys, to improve that, to improve the way our law enforcement can address it, garbage or just trash in the city. And a lot of that, I'd say, comes from the homeless. I mean, there's pictures of it today, because we're doing some work at MVP [Monument Valley Park] that needs to be addressed. Citizens are very disappointed in the cleanliness of the city. And finally, it's crime, and some of that does come also from homeless folks. It's really a friend of mine, their son was stabbed in the back down here downtown by a guy who was living in his car and stabbed their son. It was a very severe injury. So those are the four things I think I need to focus on. Council needs to focus on, the mayor needs to focus on, and I'll continue to do that."

DONELSON'S FOUR TOPICS HE BELIEVES CITIZENS ARE CONCERNED ABOUT, LISTED OUT VIA A TEXT MESSAGE:

1. Fix the potholes and Improve roads.

2. Stop urban camping/“homeless” living in our parks and downtown, and neighborhoods. This creates a sense of lawlessness and fear in our city.

3. Reduce crime- including stop the panhandling, and other public lawlessness engaged in by the “homeless”

4. Clean up the garbage - much of which is created by the “homeless”.

CAN YOU SHARE MORE ON THE PROPOSED ORDINANCE TO CRACKDOWN ON THE UNHOUSED AND URBAN CAMPING, WHY DO YOU FEEL THIS IS THE SOLUTION OR PART OF THE SOLUTION?

"I think Council will support it when it comes time to vote on it. I think citizens will certainly support it, because citizens want those four things I just talked about, they want the city to do something to address that sense of lawlessness which we have at certain... on certain streets... certain places. A lot of times it's like supermarkets. When you try to you just go in the supermarket. My wife is nervous, almost scared to go shopping at Supermarkets closest to our house, because there are people there who make her nervous, they scare her. And I've heard it from others. It's not right. It should not be the way our cities are, and that's one of the things we need to work on. This ordinance is a piece of that."

EDITOR'S NOTE: When the ordinance Donelson is referencing is introduced News5 plans on tracking it while providing updates.

THE FIRST THING YOU BROUGHT UP WAS THE FORD AMPHITHEATER, WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THE OWNER'S EFFORTS TO TACKLE NOISE MITIGATION?

"We're not really interested in how much money the amphitheater spends. Efforts are good, but really what citizens that live around the amphitheater want is simply peace and quiet in their homes, which they've paid... it's the largest investment in their life, right their homes? And they don't have that this season. I don't know that it's any better than last year, and I have emails that say that this is no better than last year. I can put you in touch with the people that live up there. You know, there's one gentleman who's who HAS really helped me a lot to understand what's going on up there. There's a website Ford Hurts Families. I don't know if you've been to that website, which documents a lot of this. I don't know that the complaints have gone down there. The amphitheater itself has a website where they ask people to send complaints to so they're going to different places now... the complaints... and sadly, some people are just giving up. There are homes for sale up there. The street that this one gentleman lives on, there are multiple homes for sale. Why? Because of the noise. They loved their neighborhood. They want to stay there, but they won't. They can't do it with the impact on their families."

ANYTHING OUTSIDE OF THOSE FOUR TOPICS YOU ADDRESSED EARLIER THAT YOU ARE HEARING FROM CONSTITUENTS?

"I'd say it fluctuates, you know, just fluctuates by not really by season, but maybe what Council is dealing with, or the kind of an issue that pops up, you know, and then is addressed and goes back away. I do a lot of individual help for constituents. You know, not too long ago, a month ago or so, a lady contacted me. It was actually a friend of hers, and she's legally blind. She's, I believe, in her 70s, the sidewalk in front of her house had deteriorated pretty badly, and it might have even been lumped up, I can't remember now. And her street wasn't scheduled, you know, to be done with to see until next year, but, and she wasn't even in my district, but, you know, I worked with Corey Farkas [Operations and Maintenance Division Manager for the City of Colorado Springs] over at roads, and she's legally blind. And so we got to her house, like, really, within a week, and got that sidewalk redone. And I've had other individual things, like little things like that. They take they take up, you know, a little piece of each day, but I think they're very important to show citizens that the city council really cares. We're responsive to them. Growth, you know, growth of the city is always something that I think we're dealing with on council, because we do land use. That's our big thing that we do on city council. The mayor doesn't get to vote on land use. He doesn't get to vote whether we annex in Karman Line, whatever it is, it's the nine of us, and so that's an issue which I think citizens are concerned about. It's not that they are against growth. They don't want to lose their quality of life that we have here in Colorado Springs. And I totally agree with that. I empathize with that. We don't want to be jammed up in big traffic jams like Denver. We don't want our downtown to become too... it's such a large scale... that it no longer feels friendly and inviting the way I would say it does now. Except for some people would say it doesn't, because of the homeless problem. They're afraid to come downtown. So that's one which I think is always with us, and always will be. Why? Because Colorado Springs is a beautiful place. This Pikes Peak region is a beautiful place. A lot of people are going to want to move here, and so we have to balance that balance. How much growth do we want, weighing it against the impact on our quality of life."

News5 is making an effort to do a follow-up story on the woman whose sidewalk was repaired.

IS THERE A ROAD MAP FOR GROWTH?

"Karmen Line went the way I planned. You know, I was against Karmen Line. I thought it was a threat to Schriever and it was something citizens didn't want. That's another one on council. Council approved that, seven to two. I was one of the two that voted no. It goes to the people, 82 percent against it. So that's an indication that council needs to be sure we are representing the will of the people, right? There are some on council who say, 'Oh, this isn't a democracy. It's not democracy. This is a representative Republic. So once you elect us on council, basically take a seat and we've got it from here.' I disagree with that, because if what we're doing is voting in a way that 82 percent of the people don't want. We're not really representing them anymore, right? And if we keep doing that on various issues, we are out of touch with the citizens. There's one going on right now with our city auditor, right which, and I don't want to, use up too much time on that.

WHAT ISSUE WITH THE CITY AUDITOR WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADDRESS?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Since this interview was filmed, Council set a different requirement for the city auditor. The City Council voted 6-3 Tuesday to replace the stipulation that City Auditor receive a Certificate in Public Accounting in the next two years with a rule that she become a certified internal auditor. Lovell has to get the certificate by March 2027, which is two years after she was hired. Previously it was required the auditor hold a CPA.

Bailey, Crow-Iverson, Gold, Henjum, Leinweber, and Risley voted to approve the new requirement, Donelson, Rainey and Williams voted no. Read a statement about the decision from council leadership by clicking here.

"Our current city auditor, when she was hired, or it was appointed by an ordinance, agreed to get her CPA. That was a minimum qualification on the application; she didn't have a CPA, she agreed to get it within two years. All right, she didn't tell us at that point that she had failed the CPA exam previously, which we now know. And she told us that here in a session or last session, so she didn't tell us that once she's in the position a few months later, she's bringing forward information that other cities don't require a CPA, and that's true. Some don't, however, what I found in my research is that even though they don't require it, many of them hire them anyway. They hire people with CPAs, even if they don't require it, because it shows a certain level of professionalism. It's respected. You may be supervising CPAs. You need to understand the financial report, even if you don't create it yourself. So... she recommended, or said, Hey, we should consider getting rid of this. HR, agreed, and so Council is now voting [voted on Tuesday in favor of] to remove the CPA requirement, and we'll vote again on this just next Tuesday for probably the final time. Now what Council is saying is you just need to get a CIA which is a certified internal auditor. Okay, that was not what she was hired, agreeing to do. And if, if we're going to change the standard, what I think we should do is hand it off to an impartial group, and we have an audit committee, which I think would be a good one, or we could, we could find another group that doesn't have a dog in the fight, right? They will be impartial. They're not going to benefit from it. Our current auditor will benefit from it, if you consider she won't have to get the CPA, which she doesn't want to, and we now know that she has failed it in the past. So I think this was a long way to get to this point that I think if this went to the voters, and we've gotten, like, 100 and I don't know, 100 and some emails on this, which is a lot, it's a lot of emails for any issue on council. Nine, nine out of 10. It's actually more, I would say it's we've gotten less than 10 in favor of this, maybe less than five emails that say, well, that's a good idea. You should remove that CPA requirement, you know, so 99 out of 100 I'd say 97 out of 100 have been what are you doing? Council? Why are you doing this? You're supposed to enforce, you know, the standard if you hire somebody that agrees to do this. You should, you should require them to do it. A lot of people can just relate to that personally. You know, when you take a job and you say, 'Yes, I'll get that training,' you don't come back and say, 'You know what, I don't really think I should get that training.' There's different ways people approach it. Our two, you know, we've had two previous city auditors come in here, and they've sent us emails. They tried to speak to us, but they weren't allowed to, which is very unusual, and it'll happen again. You watch this Tuesday, the council president will not allow citizen comment during this item, during this ordinance, very rare. I've talked to people who have watched our. Council for years and years. They really have never seen it done except one other time, which tells you... why won't we even listen to the citizens on that topic? Right? And these are, these are former city auditors that want to step up to this microphone right here and tell us they think this is a bad idea. It's not in the interest of the city. We shouldn't do it... We should maintain that requirement. So again, that was a long way around, but it just shows sometimes Council can get out of touch. I think this would be another 82% or worse, or more, if it went to the people."

THERE HAVE BEEN SEVERAL BIG TOPICS YOU VOTE IN THE MINORITY OF, WHY?

"That's exactly what I try to do here on council. So I didn't bring an agenda into here. I'm gonna work on mental health, or there was nothing like that. It was, I'm gonna serve the people, really. It was what I came here for. Again, my brother's background is law enforcement, so I had a special concern that we do a good job of basically law enforcement in the city. But other than that, I would say I have been the voice on City Council of neighborhoods of what citizens want, and when I can tell what they want, that's what we should do, unless there's some exceptional reason we find, and then we need to explain why. You know we're going to do something that we don't think you would really want. You brought up the censure thing, but one of the reasons that came about was the day before, right in that time, I was proposing to put a building height limit on the ballot and let citizens vote. Let's find out if citizens want no height limit on skyscrapers downtown, or would they like to have a limit. And my proposal was just the tallest built, the tallest building we currently have, let's cap it there. That's the kind of thing I do. Like if, and I honestly believe that would pass by a large margin, right? Citizens would approve that. And it goes back to what I mentioned before, like trying to keep this current feel we have for Colorado Springs. Citizens aren't against growth, but they want to maintain a certain feel. You know, vibe might be the current phrase people use for Colorado Springs. And, you know, people here love Colorado Springs, but we can ruin it, right? If it gets too big, if it gets too crowded. Another thing I'm proud of what I did was... there was a proposal to study extending Constitution Avenue right through some neighborhoods and get it all the way over to I-25 through the Bon neighborhood near Corpus Christi Church. It would come in along the railroad tracks there, and it would have split these old neighborhoods in half with a big road with those concrete barriers on each side. And we got that taken out, a study of that taken out of a Connect COS plan, which we passed here on council. And that was, that was a big deal, because I thought about, what am I most proudest of? That is one of the things I'm most proudest of, because it really those citizens in those neighborhoods saw that, you know, what city council actually can, can change their vote, because it looked like it was going to that was going to happen, and it was through citizen involvement, and I helped kind of coordinate that, that we convinced the rest of council to change, change what they were going to do. And again, it saves the character of those neighborhoods, so that there's still kind of quieter, safer places for kids and families. You know, I work with everybody on council. I think you just have to have a professional relationship, you know, a friendly professional but I was elected by citizens to represent them, and I wasn't elected to just come to council and do whatever it takes to get along. Right when I got censured, it was because I asked several of my colleagues not to vote on a proposed apartment complex at a choke point in my district, District One, really right next to where 2420 at the end of Garden of the Gods. And why did I not want them to vote or ask them to recuse themselves? Because they had taken thousands of dollars from the. Developer in their campaigns. Now, does it mean that they're bad people or anything like that? No, that's legal. They could take those donations, that's fine. But there will be an appearance, there will be a concern by citizens that they're a little bit influenced by that, at least a little bit influenced by that, right? So they kind of feel maybe an obligation to support the developer who helped them get elected, if it creates the appearance of a conflict of interest, right? Those donations, I think it's a very fair question. You know, if you've ever seen the footage, I asked it very politely, just I and and wound up getting censured for that right, which, which I think was a mistake to do that to me, and the support I have received from citizens like rec immediately after that, and just after all these other votes, It makes it worth doing, right? So even when it's uncomfortable at certain times, it's worth doing for me, because I want citizens to believe that council isn't just a rubber stamp, or there's no way we can change Council's mind. We did it on Constitution, you know, the Constitution Avenue extension. That was a victory for citizens. I would say, another thing I'm proud of, which was interesting, was some citizens, like, they emailed, I think, all of Council, but I wound up getting involved with them. And there used to be this bar on Platte Avenue called Babylonia. And there were shootings at this bar. There were like cars racing on the street behind it, but I got involved with that, those citizens that lived right there, and I went there and we found some shell casings on the ground. I found I talked to an attorney to do pro bono work for them, and he represented them at municipal court when the liquor license renewal came up for that place, and I testified as to what I had seen when I was there and working with these, with these folks. And it didn't happen immediately, but eventually, Babylonia, you know that that got shut down, and there's something else there now, but again, it's just the idea that citizens deserve counsel that works for them. You know, that's something else. I'm proud that I did. It kind of restores their faith that there are people on council that really care and will go out of their way to help them."

WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON THE RELATIONSHIP THE CITY HAS WITH MILITARY INSTALLATIONS IN OUR AREA? (Donelson served in the Army for 21 years, including time as a Green Beret)

"Well, that's a great question. I don't know. I don't know what it was like two decades ago. I would just say it's good now. I would just imagine it was even stronger then. Why? Because we had more veterans. I mean, this congressional district has, I think it might be the highest percentage of veterans of any and so our city has a great tradition of supporting the military and having a lot of military retirees in Colorado Springs. That's what I am. I think the relationship is good. We have three on council now that are veterans. And then almost everyone on council was perhaps, if they didn't serve themselves, their parent, their father served. I go to all the stuff out at Carson, you know, the change of commands and other events. And we have two other the other guys are Air Force guys. And I go to some of the Air Force stuff, but they probably focus on that more. I think we need to be very careful. To go back to the Schriever example of Karmen Line, that what we don't do is we don't want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. And I see the military installations around here as being a great asset for the city of Colorado Springs, but if we encroach on the ones that can't handle that, and I'd say Schriever is Exhibit A in that they don't have to stay here forever. And the reason Schriever is here because it used to be out in California, near a city or and the city grew too close to it, and they just couldn't they couldn't function there. So they pulled stakes out there and came to Colorado Springs, and they were placed pretty far outside the city on purpose, because they need basically security, and really beyond security, security could mean just okay, we're safe, but they need open space for a good distance around Schriever. And that was a big issue with Karmen Line. Unfortunately, recently, just last week, I believe it was the county commissioners who approved development on the north side of Shriever, and there's some concern it wasn't a unanimous vote over there. Space, Space Force had asked for like, a couple of years to study exactly how close things should be to their perimeter for different reasons. I won't get into it. It's kind of dry, but they have reasons. They need open space around them."

ANYTHING ELSE YOU WOULD LIKE TO HIGHLIGHT?

"There's a couple things, because some of what I do is like, we stop bad things, but you can't be just stop bad things. You want to do good things. And so when I first got elected, one of the first things I did was work with our vice squad here in CSPD, our city attorneys and we wrote an ordinance regulating massage parlors right to stop human trafficking in these massage parlors here in Colorado Springs, because, believe it or not, prior to that, to have a massage parlor, there was reallY... I don't think you had to do anything special. You might have to get a little business license or something, but we did not have a record of who owned the massage parlors. We didn't have any information on who worked in the massage parlors. So when Vice would go to one of these where they had deep suspicions, or they had had reports of human trafficking, they would say, 'Go into it.' The women that were in there would say, like 'we don't speak English,' they didn't know who owned it. So it became very hard for for CSPD to investigate these things, because we don't even know who the owner is. So working with the city clerk again, and VIce and the attorneys, we wrote an ordinance regulating the massage parlors, then the owners had to be registered. The ladies or women who worked there had to be registered. And so that was a big success. And so that was a very good thing for Colorado Springs, that is one.. another was at Prospect Lake here in Memorial Park, there's been a tradition of motor boating and water skiing on that part in that park since, like, the 20s and 30s. So it was a tradition that had really grown up. And we used to have the championship for water skiing here in Colorado Springs on that little lake on Prospect Lake... Might have been in the first year Parks came up with a plan, which had, part of the plan was to stop motorized boating, because they were going to put these aerators on the surface of the lake. And if you have those aerators on the surface, you can't have boats. And so again, working with the citizens. There are a lot of really blue-collar families that this had been a family tradition passed on to them this motor boating on the lake and the water skiing. And they worked with handicapped people out there. And it got some reporting at that time when this was going on, there's a name for that program where we help, like handicapped folks through the parks department. And so working with those people that were part of this group that used the lake and others on the council, we got parks to kind of reconsider this, and in the end, it came to a vote, right? The mayor had to, like, choose one of these plans. And the plan that was finally chosen, move these aerators under the water, right, so that now you could have the boat still on there, so you still have motorized boating. And that was another matter of just being fair to these, these people. Because when we have an ordinance, and it said that we won't restrict motorized boating on that lake until there's another place they can go to. So if we ever get this Gary Bostrom Reservoir out a little east, that would be perfect. But making them drive all the way to Pueblo or up to Denver is just not fair. So that's another thing that I think is important. Because it restored those citizens' belief that, hey, city council cares what citizens think. They listen to us, right? They found a compromise on this, and the lake is aerated now with those underwater bubblers, so we don't have the problems."

You can watch the full interview at the top of this article.

ABOUT DONELSON FROM THE CITY WEBSITE:

Dave brings the leadership of an Army Officer, the problem-solving approach of a Green Beret, and the business experience of a Clinic Director to Colorado Springs City Council.

Dave and his wife Holly moved to Colorado Springs 30 years ago. They have lived in District 1 for the last 22 years. They raised their two children in Colorado Springs. The children are grown and out of the house, but they now have a rescue Miniature Schnauzer (Heinz) who gets spoiled more than the children ever did.

Dave served his country for 21 years in the US Army - first in Military Intelligence as a Russian Linguist, then in the Green Berets as a Special Forces Medical Sergeant, and finally as a Commissioned Officer and Physician Assistant. He is an Iraq War veteran with three one-year deployments to Iraq. He also served one year in the Republic of Korea (where he was on 9/11), and six months at the US Embassy in Kazakhstan (among other deployments). He retired from the Army in 2010 after reaching the rank of Major.

After retiring from the Army, Dave continued to serve the citizens of Colorado Springs as a Physician Assistant at Peterson AFB Flight Medicine, then a small Urgent Care, and finally as the Center Director for a Men’s Health Clinic. In this final position his focus on customer service and understanding of small business success led to dramatic increase in patients (customers) enrolled.

Dave has a BA in Political Science from the University of New Mexico, and a BS in Physician Assistant Studies from the University of Nebraska School of Medicine. He has also been a Paramedic and a Wilderness Guard. He is a member of the Special Forces Association, Pikes Peak Road Runners, and Knights of Columbus (among other organizations). He and his wife Holly are members of Corpus Christi Catholic Church.

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