Strong Towns has long argued that local government is the highest level of collaboration among people who actually live in a place together – the closest, most accountable layer of decision-making most of us will ever interact with. Council Work Sessions and Regular Meetings are where the work of that collaboration happens: where street designs, surveillance policy, housing rules, and budgets get shaped. Most residents don’t have time to watch three hours of Council a week, so we’ll try to give you the gist of what was discussed and where you can weigh in.

Meeting agenda, details, and video recordings available on Fort Collin’s Municode website. The next city council meeting is on June 2nd and will be a regular session, that does include opportunities for public comment.

What this meeting covered

This was a work session – a discussion-only gathering where Council hears presentations, asks questions, and gives staff informal direction. No votes were taken and nothing was adopted; the goal was to prepare for decisions coming later. Mayor Emily Francis chaired the seven-member Council. Two topics were on the agenda: the 2027–2028 city budget (focused on utility rates and revenue), and the proposed Front Range Passenger Rail project.

A useful term up front: the city splits its money into governmental funds (paid for by taxes, covering things like police and parks) and enterprise funds (paid for by the fees customers pay for a specific service – chiefly the utilities). By city charter, each utility’s fees can only fund that utility.

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Item 1 – The 2027–2028 Budget

Utility rates are going up. Chief Financial Officer Caleb Weitz and Utilities Finance Director Joe Wimmer explained that Fort Collins kept utility-rate increases unusually low for about a decade – which kept bills affordable but left the city behind on inflation and on replacing aging infrastructure. Several council members described this as a problem “kicked down the road” by past councils, partly because the city intentionally paused increases during COVID. Now the bill is coming due.

The proposed increases, for both 2027 and 2028:

Utility	Increase	Main reason
Water	15%	The ~$228M Halligan water-storage project
Wastewater	10%	Major rebuilds at the Drake treatment plant
Electric	7%	Higher wholesale power costs
Stormwater	5%	Flood projects and pipe replacement

For a household with all four city utilities, that means roughly $18.86 more per month in 2027 – a 9.3% increase. Even so, Fort Collins expects to stay among the more affordable Front Range cities, and staff believes neighboring utilities face similar double-digit increases. A recurring example: the city has ~600 miles of water mains that last about 100 years, so it should replace ~6 miles a year – but it’s replacing only about 1.5 miles, a roughly 425-year pace. Much of the rate debate comes down to how fast to catch up.

Staff stressed they aren’t only raising rates: utilities committed to zero growth in staff positions next year. Tonight’s specific request was simply whether Council wanted to see any rate options beyond those presented.

Council’s discussion centered on affordability and fairness. Council member Anne Nelsen pressed hardest, asking staff to model what combined bills would look like for the lowest-income households and raising gaps in the city’s assistance programs – for example, renters whose utilities are bundled into rent, and residents of mobile-home parks and master-metered apartments who can’t directly receive the Income-Qualified Assistance Program (IQAP). It’s a Fort Collins Utilities program that gives a roughly 25% discount on electric, water, and wastewater bills to customers whose income is at or below 60% of the state median income. Council members Josh Fudge and Mayor Francis asked staff to clearly show, at budget time, how the utilities’ healthy reserves will be spent – so residents understand why rates rise even though the savings look large. Melanie Potyondy asked why the city invests in costly water storage rather than conservation; staff explained that without storage, conserved water simply flows downriver, and storage protects the city against multi-year droughts.

The bigger budget picture. On the tax-funded side, Revenue Director Jennifer Poznanovic and Budget Director Victoria Shaw described a cautious outlook. Sales and use tax – about half of governmental revenue – is running above budget but unevenly, so staff is forecasting a conservative 2% growth. The headline: even with these forecasts, the city expects a roughly $15 million shortfall for 2027 if it maintains all current services. Officials stressed this is a coming gap, not a present crisis – the city is financially healthy – but closing it will require about $20 million in spending reductions, which staff has been quietly developing since last fall. The recommended budget will be published in September, with public engagement to follow; the next budget work session is July 14.

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Item 2 – Front Range Passenger Rail (“Colorado Connector”)

After a break, Council heard from the Front Range Passenger Rail District (FRPRD) – a special government district that can ask voters to approve a tax – represented by General Manager Sal Pace, alongside Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) and city planning staff.

“Colorado Connector” is a future passenger train meant to link Front Range communities, eventually Fort Collins to Pueblo. Phase 1 is already funded and has a signed agreement with the freight railroad BNSF: three round trips per day between Fort Collins and Denver, launching by January 2029, with fares around $14 each way and bikes allowed on board. A bigger build-out – up to 10 round trips per day – would require voter approval of a tax, possibly on the November 2026 ballot. Notably, the project negotiated directly with BNSF rather than legally forcing its way onto the tracks, an approach staff said cut costs by about 60%.

The District wasn’t seeking any binding commitment – just feedback on a future resolution of support endorsing a public description of where the Fort Collins station would go. In exchange, the city could receive about $75 million over 25 years (up to ~$82.5 million if it endorses early) through a “Local Return” program to help pay for the station and surrounding improvements.

Staff announced the agreed location is the “Drake” site, on the BNSF line just north of Drake Road, next to the existing MAX bus rapid-transit stop. The catch: the agreement with BNSF runs 25 years, so Drake would be effectively permanent for 25 years unless the city both renegotiates and pays a relocation cost estimated in the tens of millions (or more for a downtown site).

Council split roughly three ways:

• Concerned (prefer further north or Old Town): Anne Nelsen and Chris Conway argued Drake is poorly suited to spur the walkable, transit-oriented development that makes rail succeed – Conway noted almost no one lives within walking distance – and that a Vine/Linden or Old Town site offers better long-term connectivity. Both asked for an economic comparison before any vote.
• Supportive (Midtown): Melanie Potyondy and Josh Fudge argued against “letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Moving north would make the project far more expensive and a harder sell to taxpayers, and they see Drake as a chance to revitalize Midtown and the Foothills Mall area. Fudge volunteered as an informal Council liaison.
• Undecided: Amy Hoeven (whose district contains the site) and Julie Pignataro were enthusiastic about the project but uneasy about the rushed timeline, how much control the city really has, and – for Pignataro – poor public communication about the whole process.

Mayor Francis named the core tension: there’s no shared answer to “Who is this train for?” – commuter service, a destination draw, an economic engine, or all three – and she noted a ~$28 round trip puts it out of reach for many families.

Because it was a work session, nothing was decided, but the City Manager heard enough support (at least three members) to bring a resolution of support forward on June 16, along with whatever follow-up answers staff can gather in the short window.

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In short

• Nothing was voted on – this set up future decisions.
• Utility bills are set to rise (15% water, 10% wastewater, 7% electric, 5% stormwater – about $18.86/month more for a typical household) to fund major water projects and overdue pipe replacement. Final rates are adopted with the budget in November.
• The city faces a ~$15M budget gap for 2027, to be closed mainly through spending cuts. It’s a coming problem, not an emergency. Recommended budget arrives in September; next deep dive is July 14.
• Passenger rail is moving fast. A Fort Collins–Denver line could start by 2029, with a possible November 2026 tax vote to expand it. Council backs the idea but is split on the Drake station location, with up to ~$82.5M in local funding at stake. A resolution comes back June 16.

Our reflection on this session’s discussion

The utility-rate topic is easy to read as a story about dollars and pipes, but underneath it is a story about the pattern of growth itself. The way most American cities expanded after World War II – Fort Collins among them – was a particular kind of bet: build outward, all at once, in a finished, single-use, car-dependent form that arrives complete and is never meant to change. It looks like prosperity, because the new infrastructure is paid for by the developer, given to the city, and won’t need replacing for decades. But that spread-out pattern produces relatively little public value for each mile of pipe, road, and pump the city must maintain forever, and when the bill finally arrives – as it is now – there isn’t enough productive activity along those miles to cover it. A 425-year pipe-replacement cycle is the arithmetic of exactly that: a city carrying more infrastructure than the land beside it generates the revenue to sustain.

What makes this worth sitting with is that the pattern is a choice – made over decades through zoning, street standards, and approvals – whose true costs are unintentionally obscured. The benefits show up immediately; the liabilities are quiet, deferred, and land on a future council and a future generation of tax & rate payers. It raises a fair question: would we have built the same way if the lifetime cost of maintaining each new mile had sat on the table next to the excitement of new growth – if we’d spent more time doing the math? The more resilient path is the one cities followed for most of their history, allowing places to start modestly and thicken up over time so the value produced on a piece of land keeps pace with the cost of serving it. Seen this way, the night’s two topics are one conversation: the rail debate asks whether the city’s next big investment will anchor places that grow more productive over time, while the utility debate shows the cost of the old pattern coming due – and the resilience of a city is measured not by how much it builds, but by whether the way it grows can ever pay for its own upkeep.