FoCo in 15 Minutes | Reshaping Fort Collins Future

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We are live in Fort Collins. Fort Collins in 15 minutes. We are gonna jump straight into the action looking at things that have happened in Fort Collins, things that are happening, city council review, and things to do this weekend. Now it is fall. Now we've probably lost the majority of our leaves off the trees but I will say the one of the most beautiful trees in Fort Collins is our ash tree and unfortunately we've got the ash borer in Fort Collins, Northern Colorado and it's moving south. Unfortunately there was an article that came out that said it's been detected in Berthoudt, Aurora, Denver, and Golden and in about five years it will make its way to Colorado Springs and Castle Rock. So that's definitely a bummer because they are the trees that turn to kind of this purple red. They look like they're on fire. It's gorgeous but just this year we had to take down 20 trees in Fort Collins, so something that we are trying to maintain and protect and control but it's just not it's not a matter of if but when these ash trees are going to be cut down and killed by the ash borer. Poudre School District continues to rank very well both nationally and within Colorado.

Zack Elementary was ranked as the fifth best elementary school statewide. You found Fossil Ridge on there, Fort Collins, and Rocky Mountain High School were all in the top 100 high schools in Colorado. Campus Community College, Liberty Commons were some very highly ranked middle schools. So we just it's a great school system here in Fort Collins and actually one thing to know is it is school of choice. The window opened as of November 3rd and I think it's till November or December 15th for the first round of applications. So if that is something that's important to you, you're looking at doing, leveraging, get on it. A buddy of mine is on the board of the toy game and puzzle library here in Fort Collins and I had no idea what it was until he kind of told me he's like you need to go check this out. This is kind of like what makes Fort Collins so cool is I've never seen this anywhere else and essentially what it is is it's a library of games, toys, puzzles that you can come in check out the game. It costs nothing to be a member. You can support. I think I'm getting five dollars a month is what it costs to become a member or a giving member but it's zero. It's free for you to go in there, check out a game, bring it back and play and I will say definitely something that's pretty cool because you know my wife just cleared out our closet and a couple of weeks ago and there were some just old you know used toys that just kind of get discarded and done away with which is just kind of a bummer. So this toy library they just opened up a new space. It is they've nearly tripled their space from 1,500 excuse me it was about 1,500 square feet. I think there are nearly 4,000 square feet now. It is a great resource for Fort Collins and it's up to us. They just opened up their new space just this last Saturday and it's up to us as a community to support them and show what a great resource this is. Let's see here. Connections is opening up a new app for users to be able to maintain bandwidth between education, entertainment, parental controls. It is called the Smart Home through Connections and that's available to the 2.0 gig users to the 10 gig users. Man I will say I am pretty ignorant to where to the capabilities of technology. We're setting up our warehouse for internet and we've got different wireless access points, logins, security all done through an app and I'm just like I was kind of like wow I had no idea that you could do this but Fort Collins Connections are for our local utility provider of internet now has the Smart Home app that you can get, log in and have some of these controls over. Let's see our annual delinquent property tax lien is coming up this November 20th at the Larimer County excuse me it will be at the ranch in Loveland. There are 1,800 accounts 1,804 accounts totally nearly 4.74 million dollars and this too you know I've been in real estate feels like my entire life in some form or fashion but you know I just always saw this as an investment opportunity but the reality is this is where Larimer County can go auction off their delinquent property taxes and get the revenue that they budgeted to be able to provide for schools, fire departments, libraries, all that property taxes go to pay but you know having 4.74 million dollars in delinquencies means their budget is short for 4.74 million dollars so they allow investors essentially to go buy these delinquent taxes they've got to be paid I think that day they've got to go fill out a w-9 if you're interested in that and you can collect on that interest for the delinquent property tax and or I do know you know you can foreclose on that get a you know half a million dollar property for $20,000 through a delinquent property tax I hope that doesn't isn't the case you hope these people can figure it out everything can be solved but regardless that is happening November 20th at the ranch in Loveland. Let's see our city council actually had a pretty decent or pretty you know strong work session geared towards climate environments you know some of these really big heavy items that the City of Fort Collins wants to push forward specifically they looked at the our climate future goals our climate future strategic funding plan our transfer optimization plan as well as our building performance standards I was running Old Town for you know many years and they originally came in and they just wanted to have a building performance review of how our buildings performing so we provided we had to provide them access to our utility information water gas electric different sized buildings were required to provide that information and we did it and you know lo and behold fast forward this would have been gosh that's probably two thousand seventeen eighteen ish that we were starting to give information to the City of Fort Collins and they present and they've been talking about building performance standards for years so I'll get into what that is but and also kind of how the city council is looking at doing it but our climate future goals we want to have a hundred percent renewable electricity by 2030 but a eighty percent reduction in our carbon emissions and carbon neutrality by 2050 and we are actually on our way for this we are doing pretty well especially if you look at you know neighboring cities especially kind of the star cities like Los Angeles Seattle Salt Lake City Denver for energy efficiencies we we do very well with how many megawatts we produce per capita in comparison but that is a our goal for Fort Collins and how we are going to do it black hollow Sun project just came online phase one phase two will beginning will be beginning I believe that's like a 1400 to 1700 acre solar facility out by severance Colorado so they talked about that talked about what our goals were and then kind of led into our strategic funding plan for the next 15 years and there are 13 big moves that we want to make as a city but essentially have to figure out where those funds come from and you know that being said there there could be some options for updating buildings updating houses our energy plan we have a compost facility that if voted on which that today is obviously you know our election day and there is a big community capital improvement project tax 25 cent sales tax that if approved could go to fund this composting facility it's a seven million dollar facility or excuse me it's a seven million dollar contribution to the city of Fort Collins because what we're trying to do is get a region compost facility so it could be anywhere between like 15 to 20 million dollars but we want to have Loveland you know Longmont Timnith you know wherever have access to it so have a regional facility of which the city of Fort Collins contribution would be seven million dollars if they build it on their own I think they could build a facility for seven million dollars is what their hope is but it'd be obviously scaled down see here it was interesting listening to Kelly Olson because he was like how do we have a 2050 tax that's giving roughly five million dollars a year towards climate and it's been in play now for 2024 and all of 2025 but yet we're just now getting to these kind of funding goals for the next 15 years and some of these goals aren't gonna be funded for five six seven years and there was just some frustration about how slow things went specifically you know how fast you know the rawhide facility was built comparatively to the composting and Jenny aren't goes well composting is something that the citizens themselves can do which by the way if you're interested in composting the compost Queen and the city of Fort Collins are currently doing a pilot program there's about a hundred spots available for this pilot program you've got to go on and apply you get a reduced rate for this pilot program that shows what compost we're producing creating for the city of Fort Collins but she said you know you as an individual citizen can compost nothing is restricted restricting you from that but we as a community need this power generation rawhide plant so that's why how fast that could move into development construction and into you know basically day-to-day operations comparatively to something that we as a community can do ourselves transfer optimization plan I do want to show this let me show my screen really quick alrighty so this is the compost facility by the way seven million dollars after about five years and but I want to get down to the transport optimization study this is the proposed optimization plan so we are gonna focus on these main corridors north and south if you're what if you're listening to sign the podcast the YouTube video will have visuals for you if you're listening to this on Instagram the YouTube video will have visuals but north and south on shields College you know Mason I should say LeMay and Timberline and then east-west on prospect and Drake as well as harmony vine and they what they really want to do they really got rid of microtransit because they didn't believe the cost of around $30 per person per ride was gonna be worth it so they're gonna add vouchers in for dial-a-taxi they're gonna have legacy users for dial-a-ride 34 users that are outside of their three-quarter mile requirement to get access to dial-a-ride and then if you were outside of they're gonna provide a $15 daily voucher for you to do a dial-a-taxi and I and I said this in my newsletter which if you aren't signed up for my newsletter definitely reach out feel free I will get you signed up for that gets a this all kind of aggregated into one quick easy-to-read newsletter but essentially what it talks about is like hey we need to get back to a economically feasible public transportation system before we expire you know expand into other ideas and options so this looks like it will be adopted and moved on with first reading second reading here shortly okay we are continuing on and where to go there we go and finally the building performance standards again I talked to this a little bit earlier we provided a lot of information the city for our buildings of specific sizes both multifamily and commercial and then they came out and said all right now we want to provide this is one of the best things that we can do for our city for carbon neutrality about a 5% to 7% lever that we can pull to help become more carbon neutral carbon you know reduce our carbon emissions is our building performances do better heating and air conditioning new windows new lights new toilets you know all of this planning to reduce our carbon emissions as a building and it could cost anywhere from 15 cents per square foot to like $14 per square foot so from a few thousand to a couple hundred thousand dollars and I really liked where the city of Fort Collins is going it looks like they are going to be leaning more towards a incentive based with a little bit of regulation behind it but mostly incentive based saying hey we want to do this so we'll give you some money or rather than you are required to do this and we are forcing you to do this which really honestly scared the bejesus out of me especially having property and for Collins one thing they are definitely going to be removing it seems is the requirements for anything on multifamily they don't want to push more expenses towards renters as they may already be burdened and that way we are focusing on commercial buildings which are also burdened I will say all right try to keep this to 15 minutes we got 30 seconds of left of things to do this weekend today is election day CSU basketball had a big win yesterday not a big win but it's his first win Ali for open a mesh era has begun but this November 9th against Omaha CSU football snow days so dress in white it appears but the snow days at CSU this weekend but CSU versus UNLV November 8th 7 30 p.m. at Canvas Stadium snow days at CSU November 7th through the 9th first Friday art walk this Friday downtown downtown holiday lighting ceremony get out there enjoy the flip of the switch November 7th 5 30 to 7 p.m. downtown dr. kaboom at the Lincoln Center Sunday November 16th at 2 p.m. get your tickets winter's farmers market every Saturday at 10 to 2 p.m. it is fun it's indoors go shop go support the toy and game puzzle library but that is going school of choice registration is first round began November 3rd open till December 20 December 15th for are the first round Colorado Eagles versus Abbotsford November 7th at 705 p.m. but there are some major things on the ballot this year I will go over just a couple more seconds taxes community capital improvement tax nature natural areas how Hughes will be used moving towards the future I myself I'm a multi-use kind of guy mayor race up today City Council districts three full up one three and I don't know there's another one and then we've got some school school board seats that are up statewide taxes Larimer County taxes for both streets 15 cent sales tax 25 cent sales tax to support the kids preschool teachers and funding and things of that nature so get out there vote thank you for listening and until next time everybody have a great day join me at 2 30 p.m. today for the real estate market update live have a great day