A NOTE - Context, Choices and Priorities

On April 28, the City Council asked me to come back on June 1 with a plan to fund the operational piece of the pool — about $500,000 a year — out of the city budget, without new taxes or new fees. This document is my best attempt at that plan. It is a draft!

Citizen Participation

I am releasing it publicly before submitting it to Council on May 28 for a deliberate reason. The Council asked for a proposal. The strongest response is a proposal that has already been read by citizens, scrutinized in public view, and refined through community input before it reaches them. A document this consequential should be pressure-tested by the public it serves.

The plan is built around clear criteria: no new taxes, no new fees on residents or visitors, a structure that bond underwriters will find credible, long-term cuts that hold up past year three, and a pool sized to the money that actually exists.

But criteria on paper are not the same as a plan that works. That is where you come in.

Read it. Tell me what is wrong. Tell me what is missing. Tell me what is worth strengthening. You may catch a number that is off. You may know a fact I missed. You may see a risk I did not weigh. You may have a better idea than the one I proposed. I would rather hear it during the comment period than read it after the document is final. Every comment received between May 14 and May 25 will be read and considered as the document is finalized.

What this document does, and what it does not do.

This document addresses one question: how the city can fund the operational piece of the pool out of its existing budget, without new taxes or new fees. That is the question the Council asked, and that is the question this draft tries to answer. It does not resolve the sizing of the pool itself. It does not address the relationships between the various entities involved in getting the pool built and operated. Those are real and important questions. They are not this question. Keeping the scope tight is how we make progress on the piece in front of us without tangling it up in everything else.

A word about priorities.

The plan in this document does not produce $500,000 a year out of thin air. It produces it by reordering how the city spends money it already has. I have also worked to make this more than a pool-funding plan. Where I could, I built in changes that make Cañon City work better — more modern, more disciplined, more competitive. The operational money for the pool is one outcome of that work. A stronger city is the other. Both are on the table.

The honest tradeoff.

Funding the pool this way means choosing the pool, and choosing a better-run city, over things the city does today. That is the question every reader has to weigh. If we are willing to take an honest look at priorities, the pool moves forward without new taxes or new fees, and the city gets stronger in the process. If we are not willing to take that look, then we have to be honest about what that means too: we have to look for someone else to pay for it, or find additional dollars somewhere. Both yes and no are legitimate answers. What is not legitimate is pretending the money can be found without choosing.

The three choices in front of us.

There are three honest answers to the question on the table. Every one of them deserves to be considered on its merits, named plainly, so we know what we are choosing among.

Choice One — The city commits to funding a significant portion of the operational cost by reordering its priorities. 

The city decides the pool is important enough to fund out of dollars it already has. It does that by making real priority decisions — choosing the pool, and a better-run city, over things the budget pays for today. This is the path the document in front of you lays out. It requires the willingness to look honestly at how the city spends money and to make changes.

Choice Two — The city keeps its current budget and seeks additional dollars from others. 

The city decides its current budget should remain as it is and looks for the operational money somewhere else — new taxes, new fees, or contributions from outside parties. The burden in this path is carried by residents, visitors, or third parties rather than by the city's own spending choices.

Choice Three — The city concludes this is not a city problem.

The Recreation District was established to operate the pool. The city decides the operational responsibility properly belongs there and steps back from funding it. The question of whether and how the pool moves forward then sits with the Rec District.

These are the three I can see. If you see a fourth, I want to hear it. Tell me what it is, how it works, and why it belongs alongside these three. A real fourth option would be a meaningful contribution to this work, and the comment period is exactly the place for it.  What the city decides is, at the core, a decision about which of these is worth defending. That is what we are weighing together.

One ask about how we have this conversation.

I ask that the public comment, the discussion, and the deliberation stay focused on the city's finances and our priorities. Not personalities. Not the past. Not who said what when. An honest review of the numbers and what we as a community choose to fund. That is the conversation that produces a good decision. Anything else produces a worse one.

This is your city. This is your document too.

— Phil Lund