COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) – Two hundred and sixteen; 87,032; 250,000; 2.3 million.

These were some of the biggest numbers to come out of the city of Colorado Springs’ 2023 “Popular Annual Financial Report”!

The PAFR highlights some of the city’s key achievements each year — here’s how 2023 looked in Colorado Springs, by the numbers!

2.3 MILLION TRAVELERS

The Colorado Springs Airport has continued its dramatic post-pandemic growth, seeing more travelers each year than the year prior, including improving on travel numbers immediately prior to the pandemic in 2019.

2023 was another record-breaking year, with more than 2.3 million travelers passing through its gates.

52,000 HOURS OF MITIGATION:

Citizens approved the Wildfire Mitigation Fund in 2021. Through that fund, at the end of 2023 the city had completed 52,000 hours of wildfire mitigation work.

250,000 CALLS FOR SERVICE

The Colorado Springs Fire Department responded to more than 250,000 calls for service in 2023, underscoring “the department’s dedication to serving and protecting the community, as well as its responsiveness to the diverse needs and concerns of its residents.”

87,032 POTHOLES REPAIRED

The city continued to send road crews wherever citizens said they were needed, filling 87,032 potholes — many reported directly to the city by residents through the COS GO app.

216 LANE MILES REPAVED

The city repaved more than 216 miles of asphalt and over 50 miles of curb and gutter replacements.

For a full breakdown of the above achievements, as well as other big numbers out of the city in 2023, look through the document below!

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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) – The Cimarron Hills Fire Department today said if they are included in the property tax reductions being negotiated this week- they may have to cut staff.

Gov. Jared Polis called for a special session on Monday to discuss a property tax cut that could save over a billion dollars for Coloradans. But he says he doesn’t want to be at the expense of the school system.

“I’m hopeful, I am always supportive of property tax relief. There is an opportunity here to provide some prop property tax relief for every homeowner in the state at the same time, we can reduce the risk going forward. I have several different kind of ballot initiatives. It seems like every year we have different ballad initiative. They can threaten school funding and planning,” said Gov. Polis.

The Cimarron Hills Fire Department says they also want to be exempt from those tax cuts and maintain their funding.

“Those impacts are already devastating enough, but we think that moving forward we’re able to sustain under those we’re just asking for no further cuts. So the cuts that were made in (Senate Bill) 233 we aren’t going to have to cut any stuff, but it doesn’t look like we’re gonna have the ability to add any additional staff either,” said Cimarron Hills Fire Chief, Andrew York.

The Fire Chief said that for 1 in every 3 calls they get, they have simultaneous emergent calls and want to ensure they have the proper staffing to respond to people at risk.

“There’s going to be a very real impact to the public and what we said to the legislators and I know it’s gonna sound abrasive, but the bottom line is that houses could burn down and lives could be lost,” said Fire Chief York.

The special session is between Advance Colorado, Colorado Concern and state legislative leaders to negotiate a tax cut without enacting Initiatives 50 and 108. Those measures, if passed, would cap property tax revenue per year and reduce the assessment rates when considering the property values.

Allegedly there has been an agreement between the groups that would

• Cut the effective residential property tax rate to 6.3 or 6.4 percent depending on assessment growth; 
• Cut the commercial property tax rate to 25 percent; 
• Implement a property tax cap of 5.25 percent for local governments and 6 percent or inflation growth (whichever is greater) for school districts.  
• Ensure clear and non-biased ballot language in the required vote of the people to opt out of the local cap.  

The session will be held this week until Wednesday.

For more information on the session, click here.

Copyright 2024 KKTV. All rights reserved.

WASHINGTON — A Colorado man has been arrested by the FBI and charged with making threats against elections officials, a judge, and federal law enforcement agents.

Teak Brockbank, a 45-year-old from Cortze, Colorado, was arrested on Friday and charged with transmitting interstate threats and will make his first court appearance on Monday.

A redacted affidavit from an FBI special agent indicated that they had been investigating threats made on two right-wing social media websites — Rumble and Gab — and determined that Brockbank went by the username “Teakty4u” and made threats against numerous officials. Brockbank, federal prosecutors wrote, “also has a lengthy history of illegally possessing firearms,” and the FBI affidavit references slogans associated with the fringe QAnon movement. The names of Brockbank’s targets were sealed at the request of the government.

“As alleged, Teak Brockbank threatened the lives of multiple public servants on social media. Among other threats, he allegedly claimed that it was ‘time’ to put two state election officials to death and that he was obligated to ‘put a bullet’ in the head of a Colorado state judge,” Nicole M. Argentieri, who heads the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in a statement. “Public servants must be able to do their jobs without fear. The Criminal Division will continue to aggressively investigate and prosecute those who target public officials with threats of violence.”

Brockbank wrote about his belief that people in Colorado and Arizona needed to be executed, authorities said. “The people have to take matters into their own hands,” he allegedly wrote in one Rumble post in July 2022.

“We are gonna have to take care of these people ourselves. Our law-enforcement are incompetent our judges are incompetent George Soros paid for funded puppets are running our state,” he allegedly wrote on Gab in July 2022. “It’s time for the American people to take matters into their own hands start eliminating those that we know are guilty!! There is no other way! Mark my words. We have to go to war with these people right now!!”

After identifying Brockbank through subpoenas, authorities determined he had access to weapons despite being banned from owning them because of a prior conviction for attempted theft by receipt of stolen property, according to the FBI affidavit. He was blocked from purchasing a gun in Aug. 2023 after failing a background check and was notified that his appeal had been denied in Sept. 2023, according to the FBI.

More recently, the FBI said, Brockbank had shown “continued interest in violence toward public officials as well as his ongoing and recent illegal possession of firearms.” They cited a message that he sent to his stepfather in Dec. 2023.

“Four judges in Colorado have removed President Trump from the ballot in Colorado. their names have been added to my list… their names have been moved to the front of my list,” Teak Brockbank allegedly wrote in the message cited by prosecutors. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that states could not remove Trump’s name from the ballot.

Court records did not show that Brockbank had an attorney.