Mayor Mobolade announced his word of the year in January 2025. It was “data”. It was a sincere-sounding word — like he would consider all the facts when making important decisions that impact your day-to-day lives.
Data is defined “as facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis.” Garbage data, on the other hand, “is data that is faulty, inaccurate, incomplete, or irrelevant to a given task or system.”
As we approach the end of 2025, here we are…with garbage data. This will shape the city’s future.
Maybe the word of the year should have been “agenda”?
Apparently, ‘garbage in, garbage out’ is less a warning here and more of a city policy model.
Report Out Community Tour Meetings 2025
Earlier in the summer, we attended and recorded multiple Report Out Community Tour Meetings. We record city and county meetings because it’s essential to our readers. Also, it’s helpful to get public servants on the record.
According to the city, the purpose of the Report Out meetings was to:
- Learn about the progress the city has made in Mayor Mobolade’s first two years in office.
- Provide residents with the opportunity to share their ideas and input on important issues.
Also, according to the city website, “The Report Out Community Tour featured live audience polling from residents as well as facilitated collaborative discussions with City department leaders on the City’s five strategic priority areas: public safety, housing, infrastructure, economic vitality, and community activation.”
The city website states input received at the sessions “will directly inform the City’s 2026 Strategic Doing Action Plan, which addresses short-term goals and priorities.” According to the city charter, each administration is mandated to provide a strategic plan for the city’s future.
We attended and video-recorded four Report Out meetings in City Council Districts 2, 4, 5, and 6. Click on the district numbers to watch the full videos.
Mayor Mobolade attended the meetings in districts 4, 5, and 6. He was absent from the District 2 (D2) meeting, though, due to health reasons. The City of Colorado Springs Chief of Staff Jamie Fabos, filled in for him in D2. City Strategic Plan Manager Courtney Brown led the meetings.
The only district city councilman who didn’t attend his district’s Report Out Meeting was District 1 (D1) City Councilman Dave Donelson. Donelson was critical of Mobolade’s past Listening Tour meeting. We shared an op-ed written by Donelson back in 2023. At that time, Donelson “was disappointed there was no question and answer; no direct exchange between the mayor, or councilman present and the citizens.”
All other district city council members were at their respective meetings with bells on.
Our CORA Request
After all the Report Out Meetings had wrapped up, the city published feedback summary reports for each district. When those post-meeting reports arrived in our email inbox, we took time to review the information. We knew something was wrong immediately. City public servants had intentionally adjusted the live polling data responses in the feedback summary reports to better align with their agenda.
We obtained Brown’s city emails about the Report Out meetings through a Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) request. We got very little for our $240. Most of the emails consisted of Brown trying to wrangle city staff to man the meetings.
In the emails, Brown coached the city staff on how to handle residents’ concerns that didn’t align with the meeting topics. The purpose of the meetings was solely to receive comments on the topics they wanted—nothing more.
A portion of our CORA request was denied because some of Brown’s emails were part of a work product prepared for a public official. They wouldn’t pull back that curtain for us. Nothing in the city’s CORA response explained the inaccuracies in the feedback summary reports.
The Live Polling Insights Overview and the Feedback Summary Reports
Live-polling questions were crafted to make it nearly impossible for the city NOT to get the answers they wanted. Based on the feedback summary reports, if spin were an Olympic sport, they’d be bringing home a gold medal.
We found multiple inaccuracies and exaggerations about the live polling responses.
- District 4 (D4) live polling indicated the most significant percentage of respondents were “neutral” (49%) about broadband or electric vehicle infrastructure. The city’s feedback summary report inaccurately detailed the respondents’ answers, stating the infrastructure was “poor” to “very poor.”
- In District 6 (D6), the summary report exaggerated support for affordable housing. The feedback summary report said there was “strong support” for affordable housing. In fact, more live polling respondents were “strongly opposed” than “strongly supportive”.
- In D3, most residents felt “very safe” or “moderately safe” in their neighborhoods, but the feedback summary report said most residents felt only “slightly to moderately safe”.
The most glaring inaccuracy in the summary report was for D2.
- When D2 residents were asked how supportive they were of affordable developments in their neighborhoods, the overwhelming sentiments were “strongly opposed” (29%), “opposed” (14%), and “neutral” (22%). The less popular answers were “supportive” (22%) and “strongly supportive” (14%). The city’s D2 Report Out Summary Report went in a very different direction with this topic and inaccurately stated “many selected strongly supportive or supportive”. Here’s that live-polling video for that question.
Public servants blatantly misrepresented the support for affordable housing projects in D2. Currently, there is an outstanding lawsuit over a taxpayer-subsidized affordable housing apartment development adjacent to the Pine Creek neighborhood. It doesn’t matter if you love or hate the idea of affordable housing in neighborhoods. What matters is that the city accurately details what constituents want for their neighborhoods and represents them accordingly. That’s clearly not happening for D2 citizens.
Comments from Public Servants
We reached out to Mayor Mobolade, Chief of Staff Fabos, Acting Chief Communications Officer Joe Hollman, and all city council members.
D2 Councilman Bailey was the only one to respond to concerns about inaccuracies in the D2 Report Out feedback summaries. Think about that…a gross misrepresentation occurred during a city meeting, and only one person responded.
D2 Councilman Bailey’s response:
“Thanks Ms Marshall. I’ll follow up with the folks in the Mayor’s office to make sure the report is accurate”.
The inaccurate summary reports remain on the city’s website, and we have not yet received a comment from any other public servant.
We replied to Bailey and the other public servants, asking for a statement from the city regarding the inaccuracies. No one responded with a statement. That was more than 10 days ago.
Our Take
The mayor and his staff failed to serve the citizens. They misrepresented and continue to misrepresent the public feedback they solicited. Some data didn’t support their agenda, so they altered it. The inaccuracies should alarm all city council members, as it was their choice to participate in the Report Out Meetings. Collecting and reporting accurate data isn’t rocket science.
Reach out to the mayor and city council members to inquire about the circumstances surrounding the live-polling inaccuracies, their plans for rectifying the mistakes, and steps to prevent similar errors from occurring in the future. They are supposed to represent you and answer to you.
Mayor Yemi Mobolade yemi.mobolade@coloradosprings.gov
Tom Bailey Tom.Bailey@coloradosprings.gov
Lynette Crow-Iverson Lynette.Crow-Iverson@coloradosprings.gov
Dave Donelson Dave.Donelson@coloradosprings.gov
Kimberly Gold Kimberly.Gold@coloradosprings.gov
Nancy Henjum Nancy.Henjum@coloradosprings.gov
David Leinweber David.Leinweber@coloradosprings.gov
Roland Rainey Roland.RaineyJr@coloradosprings.gov
Brian Risley brian.risley@coloradosprings.gov
Brandy Williams Brandy.Williams@coloradosprings.gov