Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade met with White House staff earlier this month to make the case for Colorado Springs’ strategic value to the administration.

Mobolade was in Washington March 8-12 for the National League of Cities’ annual Congressional City Conference, an event where thousands of city officials meet with federal staff and members of Congress.

During the trip, Mobolade met with the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, the liaisons between President Donald Trump’s White House staff and local governments nationwide. Mobolade had talked to the office in February and, while there last week, said he offered to have Colorado Springs serve as a sounding board and testing ground for national policies.

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“My big ask of them this time around was to consider Colorado Springs one of the top partners when they need feedback on the administration in connecting to cities like ours or they’re testing thing out,” Mobolade said.

The issues Mobolade offered to provide feedback on would include the local impacts of executive orders and possible funding freezes. According to city staff, Colorado Springs has around $425 million in projects that rely on federal grant funding, as well as roughly 80 staff positions who are least partially federally funded. Those grant commitments would be around 40% of the city’s entire 2025 budget.

The only freeze that has directly affected the city’s budget so far was funding through the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the State Homeland Security Grant Program, which staff said affected $850,000 and two emergency response employees. 

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Other city staff members who traveled to Washington made cases on the military side and to the Transportation Department, which Mobolade said were the biggest areas of financial concern to the city. Government and military jobs comprise the largest portion of the city’s workforce, and federal funding is a key source of road improvements.

“A lot of the time, we have to match local dollars to the federal dollars. That is the only way we can move the needle on these infrastructure projects,” Mobolade said.

Mobolade said he was able to connect with the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs quickly because he is on the international affairs committee for the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Earlier this year, Mobolade, along with Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt and Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser issued a joint letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about the importance of international trade to large cities like theirs.

The conversations about the military impacts focused on recent issues with the Air Force Academy and the effort to retain U.S. Space Command. Mobolade said “no news is good news” about the earlier concerns that the base would be moved from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Ala.