Remarks by Dave Donelson
131 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 4 of 6
“Yeah, Madam President, I just want to let you know I did have a couple of corrections which I gave to the city clerk and she'll take care of those.”
“Yeah, thank you, Madam President. Good morning, Renee. Good morning. Hope you had a nice weekend. I just want to add my voice to the support for your program, for this program, such as your program. I think there was a period not very long ago when we sent the wrong messages to young men, high school kids and women that, hey, if you don't go to college, you didn't do as good as you could have. There was something where you did better if you went to college. And we kind of shot ourselves in the foot with that kind of messaging. I think it was counterproductive for the nation and just for the…”
“In my, you know, I'll add something to what you said. I think in America we used to value, and we would express it, the worthiness of just work, good work, high-level craftsmanship and tradesmanship. And again, we got away from that for a while. but I think it is returning, and you see it even on financial programs like on CNBC where they talk about AI and how secure these jobs and the trades are, and these are places where you don't have to worry about being replaced by AI.”
“That's for sure. So I love hearing about this. Thanks again.”
“Yeah, thanks, Madam President. Good morning, Davis. Morning. Hope you had a nice weekend. Same to you. Yeah, it was good. What I'd like to point out is that I think this is like a perfect match of sports with Colorado Springs. Our city was really our early years, it was tuberculosis and health. This was a health capital, a center in America and really almost through Europe also. why my family came here originally that's right i recognize your your surname um so the more we can do in this area i think it's just it is it's a perfect match like we went down to huntsville last week and kind of…”
“Do you think the LART assistance, the assistance through LART makes a difference?”
“Okay, thanks a lot. Keep up the good work.”
“Yeah, thanks, Madam President. And just to come back to one thing that came up earlier, tops, properties, and just trails. What are your thoughts on that? Would it be useful if we could have events like, I can envision things kind of like Pikes Peak Marathon, a distance trail run locally, which could attract a lot of people who love the outdoors, they love um kind of undeveloped it's not wilderness per by definition but it's close and they're going to be low impact on it they're going to be good uh visitors to our our tops properties what are your thoughts on that and once again i always give…”
“And I can wait till the end of the slide, Madam President, I'm fine to do that.”
“Okay, can you, the 2,500,000,000 total construction valuation increase of 20% and you said you've never seen something like that, I think it was this, what do you attribute that to? Why the big, such a large jump from 25 till now?”
“Okay. is the 2.5 billion is for what calendar period?”
“Okay, all right, thanks. Council Member Risley.”
“Okay, thanks, and a follow-up, but first on the sticker issue, you know, you run a tight budget over there, you know, so maybe that's why you don't have stickers, so we appreciate that.”
“This might be reassuring to some taxpayers. Was 25 a down year? So are we comparing this first period of 26 to what was really a lower than average year, or is this truly,”
“And if I could, Madam President, Roger, just on the previous slide, you mentioned employees and pay raise to remain competitive and not lose employees, which I think is smart. And has that happened in the last couple of years where you feel like you've had some people, good people slip away due to salary competitiveness?”
“Are you competitive with the other public sector entities in the state?”
“Okay, but in order to maintain that, we need to, your recommendation is about a 5%.”
“Yeah, Drew, when this comes back for a vote, that previous slide, can you, can you just add a column where it shows the difference, right? If it's going from 45 to 50 plus five, would that be okay? Can you do that? Sure. Okay, I appreciate it. For each of those, for each of the two categories of mill levy.”
“Yeah, thanks, Madam President. Drew, can we go back to that one slide? Yeah. Can you remind us, what is the maximum PIF?”
“Is there one? No. Okay. And I know there's some unique things about this, because I've gotten emails about it, and like, do they have to have a sign up when they collect the PIF? Who does this fall under? Can you just give us a little refresher on PIFs?”
“It shows up on the receipt, right, as an additional tax or fee, although there's a difference. and it stays inside the district, this amount of money?”
“It can be increased, like next year they could come back and request an increase on the PIF or?”
“Do we know if any of these have changed from last year or?”
“Sometimes council members do get questions about these PIFs, like a tax that someone will see on their bill at a store. So it would be useful for us to have a little bit of a of a refresher on it. Maybe in conjunction with the next time this comes back to us.”
“And again, you said it was, they're established with the, what was the magic words? The service plan? Yeah, the service plan. Established during the service plan, and they can or cannot be raised or lowered? Yes, they can be. They can be. We don't know that there's any max. It's just sort of what the market would be.”