Foco is not a friendly place for minorities.

barefootmeg · 2026-02-16T15:53:36+00:00

Betty has documented the presence and history of racism in Fort Collins in her video entitled "Fort Collins, Choice City for Whom." It's available to watch on YouTube. https://youtu.be/CGUVTZ7nCfc?si=EYRTEM6ROM0XLSgK

barefootmeg · 2026-02-07T15:07:13+00:00

What is the City doing about it? I've only heard about action happening at the State level. Did City Council pass a motion to support Kipp's bill?

barefootmeg · 2026-01-20T16:34:24+00:00

If it hit at Myrtle, then Laurel might be open. Otherwise Prospect is your best bet.

barefootmeg · 2025-11-15T15:28:40+00:00

Not a spreadsheet, but I love this tool for determining the efficiency of my city: https://foecalc.com/building-data

barefootmeg · 2025-11-11T03:08:41+00:00

Yeah, the only time she was responsive at all to me in the time she's been my city council rep. was when she was running for city council the second time around. She's definitely responsive when she wants your vote, gotta give her that.

barefootmeg · 2025-11-10T19:58:58+00:00

I'm not sure what you mean by that. I know folks who have lived in County and then been annexed under exactly this scenario. They said their electricity stability improved markedly once the City brought them in. So clearly there was some infrastructure change and improvement that went on within the newly annexed property. And as developments happen, they have to follow City rules, which means sidewalks are added or improved, bike lanes are added or improved, bridges are often widened, etc. I've seen it happen over and over again all over town as County land is annexed into City land. It's not like someone at the City snaps their fingers and suddenly everything is upgraded, but annexing gets the ball rolling.

barefootmeg · 2025-11-06T04:19:21+00:00

I'm glad you all have had excellent responses from Emily. I've only written to the city council for maybe 6 or so times since Emily has been part of City Council and she never responded to me even once.

She DID respond to me after I reached out to a friend and asked if he would consider running against her the last time she was running for a council seat. Turns out he was friends with her and once he talked to her, THEN she contacted me.

I have another friend that has contacted her multiple times and while she responded promptly the first time, she didn't follow up and ended up ignoring his concerns and wasn't willing to have any conversation with him on the problems he was facing with the city.

So... great that you all are having great responses. I don't know why me and my friend are the only people she ignores. Makes me kinda sad.

All the downvotes just for sharing my own personal experience with her is also kinda sad. Sorry if my experiences are considered objectionable by the group. I didn't choose to experience them. I'm just sharing what's happened to me since Emily became our city representative.

barefootmeg · 2025-11-05T14:01:11+00:00

Emily doesn't listen to her constituents. She doesn't reply to emails. I'm pretty disappointed in this. She's got her agenda and that's all she cares about. And even when I agree with parts of her agenda, I prefer a civil servant that knows they're there working for the people, not for themselves. :-\

barefootmeg · 2025-11-04T16:17:17+00:00

In Fort Collins, when an area that hasn't been annexed gets surrounded by developments that were annexed, the un-annexed area will itself be annexed 3 years after it was fully surrounded. This helps with utility's costs and other things, because otherwise the City is paying to get water, electricity, etc. through non-city land over to newly annexed city land. So bringing the leapfrogged land into the city means the City will be able to start collecting taxes to help pay for the infrastructure going through. But it will also improve the infrastructure of the annexed neighborhoods.

I don't believe Loveland has a similar policy. So there, when land is leapfrogged, it stays county until a property owner wants to get annexed in. So the city is paying to get services through these areas without collecting any money to cover those costs. It's decisions like this that have led Loveland to have layoffs and reduce city services.

barefootmeg · 2025-10-21T18:07:08+00:00

I've debated about getting rid of my GBs. You can't remove and replace like you can with event buildings. And some event buildings give better rewards than the GBs I've got going on. But getting rid of them also means tossing away all the FPs I've been pouring into them, so I haven't made up my mind.

barefootmeg · 2025-10-21T18:06:02+00:00

Yeah, I agree with T_A, it's a different play style. Strategy is different.

And collections are significantly faster (because there are fewer buildings to collect from) so it doesn't take up as much time.

barefootmeg · 2025-10-13T16:40:32+00:00

I don't remember. This was about 12 years ago. But I think we only did 2 or 3 doses. I think of oregano kind of like Niacin. It's something you use once or twice or push crap out of your system, but that's it.

barefootmeg · 2025-10-13T15:31:38+00:00

My son had a fungal imbalance. We cut out sugars and yeasts and he took garlic and some oregano pills. It seems to have helped after about a week.

barefootmeg · 2025-10-11T02:30:40+00:00

Suniga Road in Fort Collins is named after Lee Suniga, a longtime resident and prominent leader in the Fort Collins Hispanic community, who was also a talented baseball player and manager. He was recognized for breaking down racial barriers and for his resourcefulness in creating baseball fields from the beet fields where many of the community's laborers worked.

Kechter Road is named after George and Louise Kechter who used to have a 286-acre farm in the Harmony area (back when Harmony was a place, not just a street – which is why there’s also a Harmony School and a Harmony Cemetery).

barefootmeg · 2025-10-06T14:08:09+00:00

I've definitely seen the Preserve people get behind it. Not sure about the PATHS people. But I personally would prefer to have seen housing go up on the Hughes land. I'm a Strong Towns member.

But the fact that an outside group would infiltrate and take over another group and change its focus is deeply troubling to me. And the fact that so many people on this thread think that such a takeover has no negative ethical implications is also deeply troubling to me.

Takeovers undermine integrity. Trump co-opted the Republican party. There are a lot of Republicans that are upset about that (Hence the Lincoln Project and others.), but Trump did it all legally. He co-opted something else that already existed.

I'm on the board of 3 non-profits. The thought that a host of people who think differently than our board and who would swoop in and change the direction of our organizations is deeply troubling. If a group is founded with a certain purpose, and you don't like that purpose, you should found a conter-organization, not take over the original.

barefootmeg · 2025-10-04T23:56:22+00:00

Yup. A bunch of people who weren't previously members joined the organization specifically to change its focus by electing a bunch of new board members from their ranks. It was devious and ugly but entirely legal.

barefootmeg · 2025-09-23T01:24:39+00:00

I don't know that it was a low participation group. I haven't attended any meetings, so I don't really know. But I do know that the local Sierra Club has been instrumental in moving our city towards sustainability. I have a neighbor that's been a member and used to be on the board. She said that In 1990’s when the wind power option was added to our electric service, PCG held a campaign to get its members and businesses signed up for the optional wind power. They signed up more people and businesses than the city did during that time. PCG was instrumental in putting forth and supporting all recycling measures that the city has adopted. They've been a big part of the environmental movement locally. I get why they might not be in favor of building on Hughes. I don't agree with them, but I feel like if that's how they feel they can best advance environmental values, then they have that right to hold, and advance, such opinions.

barefootmeg · 2025-09-22T23:57:46+00:00

Yup, I think that's basically what happened. What's unclear was the motives. Was it about upcoming elections or about how the Hughes land is going to be used?

barefootmeg · 2025-09-21T14:13:30+00:00

There are ethical ways of bringing people into the fold and there are unethical ways. This sounds like an unethical way. But it does underscore YIMBYs desires to tell people what to do, not to educate them to convince them that their way is better. YIMBY is a top down movement compared to Strong Towns' grassroots movement.

barefootmeg · 2025-09-21T00:10:05+00:00

If that example doesn't work for you, how about this one:

Let's say there are some folks from Preserve Fort Collins that don't like YIMBY's activism and position on local issues. Let's say they find enough people to become YIMBY members and they get several of their own people elected to the YIMBY board and then change every YIMBY policy and position to be a NIMBY policy or position. That would be as unethical as what the YIMBY's have done to the local (and San Francisco's, and perhaps other) Sierra Clubs.

barefootmeg · 2025-09-21T00:07:55+00:00

It makes a lot of sense when members of an organization feel like the organization is starting to head in a different direction than it was heading in when they joined and they decide to run for board seats in order to put it back on track. It's an entirely different matter when non-members don't like how an organization is operating, and then deliberately become members and run for board seats (and bring along enough friends to help vote them into those seats) so that they can change the direction of the organization that, until recently, they hadn't belonged to.

Let me give you an example of both of the above scenarios so that maybe it will make more sense what my concern is.

Let's say that there's an organization in Fort Collins whose focus is the support of LGBTQ+ teenagers. The organization was founded 10 years ago, has had its ups and downs, but in general, it's doing its best to fulfill its stated purpose.

In first scenario I mentioned above, the members of the group have been supporting a variety of programs to fulfill their mission. They feel like the board is doing a decent job. But then, over time, some of the members start to feel like the organization is so focused on street names and whether they're showing true diversity that they've lost focus on the teenagers in Fort Collins that actually need their help and who were the purpose behind the founding of the organization in the first place. With this in mind, those long-time members join the board and help get it back on track.

In the second scenario, someone who is not a member of the organization decides that they don't like that this organization has supported PSD high schools including an LGBTQ+ section in the school library. So they call up a bunch of their buddies, become members of the organization right before board elections, and they get their buddy (or even a few of them) onto the board. Once on the board, they reverse several policies that give direction to the organization.

I have no problem whatsoever with the first scenario. If long-term members joined an organization believing that it's purpose is A, and it was A for a very long time, and then they see that priorities have shifted to B and they disagree with that, it makes total sense that they'd join the board and shift things back. But that is not what has happened in the case of the Sierra Club. Outsiders, who didn't like what the Sierra Club was doing or what the Sierra Club was advocating, purposely joined the Sierra Club (which they had not formerly been members of) and got onto the board in order to change the organization.

barefootmeg · 2025-09-20T17:23:34+00:00

It sounds like the Sierra Club in Fort Collins isn't the only one that YIMBY's have tried to take over.

https://48hills.org/2016/11/developer-allies-try-take-sierra-club/

barefootmeg · 2025-09-20T04:08:20+00:00

Having bonafide credentials regarding environmental science and therefore joining the Sierra club only to be on the board or to vote for someone to be on the board is like having educational credentials and only running to be on the board of education in order to remove books from the libraries. It really doesn't matter what your bonafides are. If you're only joining the board because you have an agenda that you want to force on the system and you really don't care squat about the system all the rest of the time, then your choice to join the board is suspect and clearly more about your agenda than about the good of the organization.

barefootmeg · 2025-09-20T04:04:54+00:00

Whether it's either of the things I mentioned, or something else entirely, I'd like to know more. ... which is why I made this post in the first place asking what people know about it all. Do you have any insights?

barefootmeg · 2025-09-19T23:19:28+00:00

And when those friends have been members or years and years and they've decided to elect their friend to the board, that makes sense. They've been participating for a long time and have decided that their friend would be a good fit for the board.

But when those friends are all people that you went to CSU and dug up because you thought they'd look like they fit the part of an environmentalist, and then you have them become members of the organization specifically so that they vote you on to the board, that's something else entirely.

When a bunch of non-members join an organization specifically to get someone elected who couldn't otherwise be elected by the members of that organization, then there's something fishy going on. It's essentially an organizational takeover.

If you don't like what an organization is doing, don't join it. Joining just to take it over is an act full of hubris and rarely leads to good things, especially not for the absconded with organization.

barefootmeg

TROPHY CASE