Tommy Butler: Vote Yes on 1A for our city’s future (guest opinion)
By Tommy Butler, Guest Opinion. Greeley Tribune
PUBLISHED: February 14, 2026
I urge you to vote Yes on 1A. The process that has gotten us to this point has lacked legitimate community input at nearly every step. If we had solicited real community input — perhaps if we had asked citizens what they wanted to see in the West Greeley project at any point — this project would look dramatically different. This project’s financing was built as an end-run around TABOR. Incredible effort was expended to create a plan to finance this project without asking voters to authorize this debt. As a City Council, we had the opportunity for real input, we ignored that option, so this is where we stand.
I want to touch on the referendum itself. Is it imperfect? Yes. Changing the zoning won’t outright stop the West Greeley project. But what else would you have citizens stripped of their voice do? They are using rights clearly laid out in our Home Rule Charter and this is their only option to weigh in. You don’t see folks getting thousands and thousands of signatures to overturn a simple zoning change.
We have had controversial zoning decisions dozens of times in my six years on council. None of those led to anything close to this. The heart of the matter is not zoning but the project that will go up in that zoning, and the fact that we are spending over a billion dollars without asking voters in the process. A yes vote will pause this project and force us to reevaluate.
Greeley taxpayers are right to be mad that we are moving forward with a project that our own consultants have said is not feasible. Throughout this project, Councilwoman DeBoutez and I have questioned the underlying numbers for the financing. This is a project that clearly cannot pay for itself the way proponent have stated. And that was before we were told at a recent council meeting that we don’t have a funding mechanism for the $102.2 million needed for the interchanges on U.S. 34 that this project desperately needs.
If this project moves forward, later this year the city will sign a “moral obligation” to pay for any shortfalls in this project. When this project underperforms, that will directly lead to the city having to make cuts to city services or having to ask voters to increase taxes to cover the difference. This project is fiscally irresponsible, and it’s time for us to change our course.
I will close by saying, I do think one good thing has come out of all of this: I trust our citizens now more than ever. Voters from across the political spectrum have repeatedly asked for a voice in this project. Their City Council ignored them, but they kept fighting.
I hope — for our city’s future — that we are successful in overturning this zoning. Because it is plain to see that the West Greeley Project is a huge gamble with taxpayer dollars, and odds are that it doesn’t work out in the long run. I hope voters save us from the decision this council made without asking them. We absolutely should have asked them in the first place. Please join me in voting Yes on 1A!
Tommy Butler is a Greeley City Councilman for Ward 1.