Cortez, Montezuma county, our future is bleak. We can make it bright.

Our economic Outlook is catastrophe. The Cortez and County that we love will not remain unless we tackle this head on urgently. What we need most from City Council is visionary courageous leadership. Did I say money? I didn't say money. I said Visionary courageous leadership. Honestly, factually, courageously, 

• What is our financial outlook? You tell me?
• Fossil fuels, agriculture, tourism are declining, if not free-fall.
• The honest unemployment Outlook is 20% unemployment in just four years, AI being the primary driver, a global economy approaching freefall and accelerator.
• Childhood poverty approximately 60%, 40% being the Tipping Point where communities become unsustainable, people with money flee with Rising crime etc.
• The only opportunity is to raise taxes driving all the people with money away, when 35% of the population is elderly and or in poverty, and we in Cortez are there, same with Montezuma county.

• What are the implications of that. 
• Obvious. Econic Disaster. The revenues that sustains all the things material in this city that we love, rapidly going away.
• It's not going to go get better by keeping our head in the sand.
• It's going to take a whole Community rolling up its sleeves, but that's not going to happen without Visionary courageous leadership by City council.

• What are the downside risks?
• What if National and global economic Outlook is worse than we think?
• What if our key Industries declined even faster?
• It is beyond my comprehension that the leaders on the Titanic lacked the imagination to ask, what if? The rest is history.

• What are best practices for improving our financial Outlook?
  

  

  
  

What is our quality of life situation and outlook? As disastrous as our best case scenario Financial Outlook is, that's how bright we can make our infinitely more important quality of life outlook. Guaranteed. It's entirely in our control. A fellow 2000 years ago was in exactly the same spot. There wasn't anything that was going to make the material outlook for the community bright. But he rightly said, but we can make ourselves a community like the world has never seen, and the joy will be extraordinary. And it was. These best practices being used by dozens and hundreds of communities throughout the country and around the world, the joy of these communities, you can cut i with a knife. And whatever their status quo Financial Outlook is, they're improving it. Poverty is an indisputable blight on a community. And we have two options to deal with it. We can follow much of the rest of the country and build camps, concentration camps, Warehouse space, and force people into it. That's pretty joyful, right? It isn't. That's what the Romans did. Or we can stand on the shoulders of the hundreds of communities that have well documented how they are bridging their fellow citizens and their community toward prosperity, away from poverty.

We just have to roll up our sleeves, Embrace them, and use them. I'm doing that. I'll just show with my last breath. If you put me on City council, I'll do it from there. If you don't, I'll do it anyway, just not from there.