Colorado Springs City Council passed a resolution Tuesday recommending that the mayor allocate funds from the marijuana sales tax toward PTSD recovery. It passed by a 5-4 vote.
It’s the first time the council utilized a controversial new ordinance that included a veto override.
The new ordinance codified a pathway to make formal recommendations to the mayor, by way of passing resolutions, on how to spend money from the recreational marijuana sales tax fund.
In a statement opposing the ordinance at the time, Mayor Yemi Mobolade accused the city council of misleading the public and usurping his office’s official powers.
In Tuesday’s meeting council formally requested that the mayor’s office put a chunk of the revenues from marijuana sales tax toward treatment for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, even though the original ballot question specifically said revenues could go, in part, to PTSD treatment for veterans.
City officials who introduced the resolution said Colorado Springs has a relatively high number of veterans, many of whom suffer from untreated PTSD.
“Let’s also not forget a lot of the homeless that are downtown are also those same veterans,” said City Councilor Roland Rainey, who supported the bill and is also a veteran. “It’s those veterans downtown also who need that support and treatment.”
Councilor Nancy Henjum voted against the resolution. She said she supports funding PTSD treatment, but thinks city council doesn’t need the codified recommendation process since they already make recommendations.
“What’s really unfortunate, I think, is that this money has, in fact, just become a political football,” Henjum said.
The resolution is only a recommendation to the mayor, who ultimately has the power to allocate funds in the budget.
“This begins the process. This begins the dialogue with the mayor’s office,” Rainey said. “And I would hope that the mayor is going to be thinking through not just the words of this resolution, but also other programming that we can have this funding go to.”
In June, Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade told KRCC that there have been rising tensions between his office and city council leadership. He also said communication about the budget typically takes place over a series of meetings, not resolutions and ordinances.
Henjum said Tuesday the tensions between the two branches are not in the city’s best interest.
“What I see is a city council and a mayor’s office who are publicly bickering, be it through resolutions, from the dias, op-eds, both sides,” Henjum said. “And, we’re not really necessarily putting the city first.”
She said the city council and the mayor’s office need to start collaborating.
“The mayor can actually ultimately do what the mayor chooses to do, so why wouldn’t we want to sit down and collaborate and find some compromises that way?” Henjum said.
City Councilwoman Brandy Williams pushed back, saying the resolution doesn’t preclude city council from working collaboratively with the mayor in the future.
“I think what this does is that it states the intention of city council, much like the mayor will be stating his intentions with the budget that he presents to us,” Williams said.
The city is in the early stages of creating a budget, which will have to take into account an $11 million shortfall in revenues.
