More than halfway through his first four-year term in office, Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade landed on a driving idea for his goals with the city: partnership.

In an interview Wednesday afternoon following up on his recent State of the City speech, Mobolade repeatedly drove home the value of collaboration. He said the city’s libertarian character meant it was important for the government to work with other groups to solve problems, whether it was attracting new business or coming up with 200 shelter beds for homeless residents heading into the winter.

“That’s what we are seeing and celebrating today is Colorado Springs’ identity as one of the most collaborative cities in the country,” Mobolade said.

Many of his goals would take decades to achieve or at least linger into a potential second term, which Mobolade confirmed Wednesday he was interested in running for.

“The first year is getting the lay of the land and you have three years to accomplish so much,” Mobolade said. “I’m looking for another four years to execute some of these big things.”

Some of the future challenges will be outlined Monday when the mayor provides his proposed 2026 budget to the Colorado Springs City Council and the public.

In preparation for a tight budget and limited sales tax revenue, the city already enacted $31 million in project cuts, staff layoffs and furloughs. Mobolade said he was proud of how his team approached the challenge, even though he sympathized with the 38 city employees who lost their jobs.

At the end of his State of the City speech Sept. 25, Mobolade outlined six priority projects that he wanted to continue focusing on for the next two years. The future goals included building a new regional law enforcement training center, landing businesses at Peak Innovation Park and expanding the programs keeping downtown Colorado Springs clean and safe.

The Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce & EDC, which helped put on the State of the City event, will be closely working with the city administration on about half of Mobolade’s goals. Chief Operating Officer Dani Bolling highlighted the $1.8 billion in investment that had come to the region through economic development agreements – the majority of which came during Mobolade’s time in office.

“We often say that we play quarterback on economic development projects… to ensure companies choose Colorado Springs and El Paso County. That level of success only happens when business and government are moving in the same direction,” Bolling said.

Here are Mobolade’s responses during Wednesday’s interview about some of the biggest challenges Colorado Springs is facing and some of the impending improvement plans.

Quotes from Mobolade on pressing Colorado Springs issues

The three options being considered to address the city’s sales tax issues

1. One of the first steps within my purview is to do a fee audit to make sure that we can recoup the costs of doing business, taking a hard look if our fees are up to where they need to be.
2. We talk about the possibility of a future public safety sales tax increase. That means we go back to residents and not only tell them the why, but say here’s what we have done with the current money you’re giving us, here is how we have been good stewards. Council and I are going to be taking that on.
3. This is why those future investments, laying the groundwork for future economic opportunities, are really important… As those projects come online and many of those businesses follow through on their commitments, we expect to see new revenue to the city.

On the future of Meadows Park Community Center

The new Senior Center opening, we had 400, 500 people come to that… There’s not that huge demand for Meadows.

Now, I believe there will be a huge demand for that space. We’re not decommissioning that building. We are closing the city’s ability to fund programming for 60 people there. But that space has future opportunities. We are already in conversation with several community members who are asking if that’s open for other partners. We have a model for that now with the City Auditorium.

The Center for Public Safety Excellence (rebranding police academy)

It’s bigger than just a police training academy. Now we’re talking to all the regional partners – fire, police, sheriff, emergency management. The military partners are interested in using the space as needed. We can train the team partners for the various scenarios in town so that when they come up, we are ready. We’re a lot faster, we’re a lot more coordinated.

We are down to looking at two locations… None of these are city-owned locations. We are looking at philanthropic partners, the private sector to help out to where we can match their donations with some of the city investment.

The continued challenges around homelessness in Colorado Springs

On the one hand, we are doing a better job gathering information around the real problem. On the other hand, we know times are harder. We know there are federal government cuts. We are hearing from our nonprofit providers that they are seeing increased demand.

Because we understand what we’re limited with in terms of cash, it forces us to be strategic with our partnerships. We recognize that it’s the faith community, the nonprofit community, the private sector, the philanthropic community. That is how we solved it in the past and that’s how we are solving it today.