How we can put community first!

  Our tourism driver as an outdoor mecca  is established. It is time to look at refining and diversifying the tourist we bring to our city by promoting our small town atmosphere of boutique businesses, restaurants, and the entire main street experience, not just our backcountry offering. 

We should find ways to encourage more pedestrian activity in the city as opposed to driving from location to location.  Promoting ourselves as a pedestrian oriented city that is easily experienced on foot.

We need to become better stewards of our outdoor amenities by partnering with conservation groups to assist visitors in understanding the rules , promoting respect, and maintaining the quality of the back country experience for decades to come.

Our future development needs to be quality development in order to maintain the character that makes us unique. We should work to maintain our historic past while striving to create projects that will retain that same quality and character well into the future. 

We must broaden our approach to address attainable housing and workforce shortages. Partnering with Ouray County to accommodate housing outside of City limits and establishing a transportation connection that will link the city with the rest of the regional transit is a start.

Infrastructure improvements are imperative and are making progress; however, we need to continue these improvements beyond the immediate water and sewage treatment plants. We should be planning and funding for future improvements before they are emergency repairs and fixes.

Josh commits to following the guidance of the Ouray Community Plan.  Download it here.

 We need to do a better job of noticing the public of upcoming hearings and provide better descriptions on agendas of what is coming up for review and who it may impact.   We should be recording all work sessions and public meetings with links immediately available on the city website for those that were unable to attend.  Minutes should be posted as soon as they are approved and citizens should never feel degraded or unheard when voicing their concerns.

We must work on ways to increase our city budget in order to hire staff to assist with programs that will improve our city and allow us to move forward, and thrive. We can not afford to continue to over burden staff with more responsibilities than one position can accomplish.  Increasing our efforts to establish a creative district and moving forward on the Main Street Program will allow for more funding opportunities through grants and financial assistance on programs.

Josh commits to following the Code of Conduct for Ouray City Council Members.  See our Blog.