So. Colorado Business Digest & CSBJ || DECEMBER || 2025

MEDIA

AGRICULTURE

ECONOMIC FORUM

Facing Cuts, Public Media Looks to Donors for Support

Federal Funding Cuts Impact Local Agriculture, Food Pantries

Understanding Colorado Springs’ Municipal Finance Woes

P. 12

P. 28

P. 31

December 2025 / Vol. 3 No. 12

Moving Mountains for Business Economic Competitiveness is Worth It

Access / Opportunity / Connectivity / Visibility / Insights

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socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 3 Publisher’s Letter

FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE PUBLISHER

Dirk R. Hobbs

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Pam Bales, Jeanne Davant & Wayne Heilman

The Friction is Real

C

olorado still enjoys a strong reputation nationally. When people outside the region talk about the state, they mention our educated workforce, innovative spirit, outdoor lifestyle and a sense that Colorado “should” be a national leader in growth. Outlets like Forbes, CNBC and Bloomberg routinely point to our talent base and industry diversity as competitive economic advantages.

However, increasingly, those same outlets highlight the weaknesses here — and businesses see them too. Colorado is gaining a reputation as a state where the fundamentals are excellent, but the friction is real.

The state’s high housing costs, complex regulations, lengthy permitting times, rising fees and unpredictable policy climate now show up in major national economic rankings.

Site selectors pay attention. Investors pay attention. And workers, especially young families, see it every time they look at the cost of living.

Migration is slowing. Talent pipelines are tightening. And Colorado’s long-standing advantage of drawing ambitious people from around the country is fading.

If Colorado wants to be a place where new industries plant roots and existing sectors expand, we must reset the fundamentals. Housing can’t be

an afterthought — it is economic infrastructure.

Companies won’t expand where workers can’t live.

Business needs regulatory clarity and consistency.

Companies can handle rules; what they can’t handle are constantly shifting targets, layered requirements and costly delays.

Colorado’s brand is strong. But a great brand will only take us so far. The nation still sees Colorado as a place of opportunity. Whether we remain competitive depends on whether we make it as easy to build and grow here as it is inspiring to live here.

See you in 2026,

Dirk R. Hobbs,

Founder & Executive Publisher Colorado Media Group, Inc. Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest

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4 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest

Contents / December 2025 ECONOMICS

ARTS ECONOMY

INDUSTRY PROFILE

COLORADO SPRINGS

8 Aging U.S. Population

15 SoCo Communities Helping Film Industry Grow

23 Want to Write a Book But You

32 Breakdown of COS 2026 Budget

Film professionals gathered to plan the next steps in a grassroots movement to increase Colorado’s footprint in the industry. A statewide town hall event generated ideas, strategies and enthusiasm for growth.

This guide to ghostwriters of business books explains what the heck they are, what they do and why they are in demand. Several professionals in this industry spoke with the Digest about the nature of their work and how they can help business leaders get a viable book idea to market.

Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade cut $31 million in planned spending in September because sales tax revenue was falling well short of what had been budgeted. Collections are lower than last year amid weak consumer confidence and economic uncertainty.

Pushing Economy to Inflection Point, According to Economist Tatiana Bailey Declines in the labor force are slowing a sluggish growth in employment. Much of the slowdown is due to the aging population, according to Tatiana Bailey, Colorado economist.

BY WAYNE HEILMAN

WORKFORCE 9 Students Find Fun in C Cubed

Training’s Cybersecurity Curriculum Walsenburg C Cubed Training, a nonprofit that provides computer science classes and cybersecurity training, works with junior high and high school students to help them obtain computer certifications that will help them gain entry-level positions.

BY THERESA WOODS

BY THERESA WOODS

TOURISM 16 How Is Colorado’s Tourism

Industry Changing?

The annual Colorado Governor’s Tourism Conference in late October uncovered some interesting trends, including that half of Colorado’s international travelers come from Canada and Mexico.

BY THERESA WOODS

BY JEANNE DAVANT

ENERGY

CONSTRUCTION

18 AI Powering the Latest Weapon in the War on Wildfires

10 Housing Solutions Breathe Life into Empty Office Buildings

Colorado Springs is following a new trend in larger cities like Denver — commercial-toresidential conversion projects to create more housing. Shea Properties purchased a former office building with plans to provide 32 onebedroom units in May 2026.

BY KERI KAHN

California company Pano AI partnered with Xcel Energy to supply more than 100 cameras that constantly monitor rough, remote terrain throughout Colorado and software that looks for signs of smoke.

BY LORELEI SMILLIE

ENTREPRENEURSHIP 21 Health Startup Wins $50,000

TECHNOLOGY 13 Pushpay Expands in COS Software company Pushpay is gearing up for expansion in Colorado Springs for its donor management and church management solutions. Pushpay also builds customdesigned mobile applications for churches to help members connect with each other and the church.

BY WAYNE HEILMAN

EDUCATION 14 Colorado College’s New President

Looks to Deepen Community Ties

Manya Whitaker is rooted in education, through her philosophy and her family legacy. CC’s new president spent years conducting research and teaching. But now that Whitaker is permanently installed in the role, she has big plans for CC programs.

BY LORELEI SMILLIE

Can’t Write?

MANUFACTURING 24 Trussworks Expanding to Pueblo with New Manufacturing Facility Trusswork’s new facility will produce highquality trusses for large-scale multifamily and commercial projects. Long term, the company aims to grow its customer base in Colorado and the surrounding states while deepening its investment in Pueblo’s manufacturing community.

BY TIFFANY UNDERWOOD

MARKETING 26 Businesses Can Benefit from State 2026 Celebrations The dual celebration of America’s 250th birthday and Colorado’s 150th year of statehood is expected to boost travel and drive interest in cultural and heritage tourism across the state. Resources are available to businesses to participate in the year-long celebration to attract new customers and increase visibility.

Torch Grant

BY THERESA WOODS

This year’s Torch Grant attracts another entrepreneur and small-scale manufacturing company to Colorado Springs. Lodgeit started in 2023 and plans to expand its operations using the grant.

AGRICULTURE

BY WAYNE HEILMAN

NONPROFIT 22 Homeowners can “Pay it

Forward” Through Energy-Efficient Upgrades In 27 Colorado counties, Energy Resource Center provides no-cost services to improve home energy efficiency, generating $300,000 in utility savings annually. The nonprofit’s new Pay It Forward social enterprise will underwrite services for low-income families by charging market rates for home services to those who don’t qualify for free upgrades.

BY KERI KAHN

28 Federal Funding Cuts Impact Local Agriculture, Food Pantries and Small Grocers Changes to several federal programs have impacted Colorado’s agricultural system.

Our state has 35,900 individual farms and ranches with 30 million acres, or 45% of the state’s land, in agricultural production.

One national agricultural advocacy group estimates the affected state funding at close to $179 million.

BY THERESA WOODS

GOOD BUSINESS 30 Businesses Step Up to Help People Affected by Shutdown An army of local restaurants and companies provided vital support to federal workers and low-income families during the government shutdown. Learn more about a few of the many.

BY JEANNE DAVANT

Challenges

BY WAYNE HEILMAN

33 CSU Flips Switch on New Electric Rates New rates that will affect businesses and residents won’t necessarily mean paying more, according to Springs Utilities.

Customers will receive a letter notifying them about the start on the new rates a minimum of 30 days before they go into effect.

BY JEANNE DAVANT

34 Breaking Barriers to Prepare a College-Educated Workforce

Experts say the average lifetime earnings difference between a bachelor’s degree and high school diploma is $1.2 million. This nonprofit’s initiative to increase college and career readiness and their program expansion has earned Peak Education a reputation as an innovative organization. First-generation college students are reaping the benefits.

BY KERI KAHN

SPORTS ECONOMY 36 Rocky Mountain Vibes Shut Down After 2025 Season Ends

Get to know some of those people in the region who have made leaps in their careers.

This is where The Digest celebrates the achievements of Southern Colorado’s workforce.

PEOPLE 44 Professionals on the Rise Get to know some of those people in the region who have made leaps in their careers.

This is where The Digest celebrates the achievements of Southern Colorado’s workforce.

45 The Man who Pioneered Broadcast News Trailblazer Lowell Thomas was a news commentator who transformed how journalists delivered the news. He launched the first televised nightly news broadcast, wrote more than 50 books and never forgot Victor, where he grew up.

BY JEANNE DAVANT

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6 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest UP DAT ES AR OUND THE REGION

Teller County

Native American Bank Funding Woodland Park Center Native American Bank has provided $3.8 million in financing for a new restaurant and event center in Woodland Park. That is being paired with an additional $3.1 million from Park State Bank & Trust to fund the completion of a top-tier facility that includes three dining concepts led by Chef Victor Matthews of Tava House Properties.

“This partnership highlights the vital role community banks play in advancing projects that strengthen our communities,” says Payton Batliner, senior vice president, chief lending officer of Native American Bank, headquartered in Denver.

Tava House’s first floor will include

the Tava Taphouse, a 50-draft beer hall that will seat more than 40 inside, with patio seating for another 50 diners. It will also include the River Room Banquet Hall.

The second floor will feature the Firebrand Chophouse for fine dining. Tava House is also launching a collaboration with Colorado Springs’ Paragon Culinary School, which Matthews also founded. Matthews’ partners in the venture include Mary Sekowski, Derek Waggoner and Mark Weaver, all of Woodland Park.

Tava House is expected to open

by April 2026 and is booking summer 2026 weddings and events now.

Information: tavahouse.com

Teller

El Paso

El Paso County

Statewide

Colorado River Discussions Continue to Avoid Federal Intervention Seven Colorado River Basin states will restart discussions on operating guidelines for Lakes Powell and Meade after failing to reach agreement by a Nov. 11 deadline.

The states, including Colorado, were unable to reach consensus, but enough progress was made to warrant an extension to mid-February, says Abby Ortega, general manager of infrastructure and resource planning for Colorado Springs Utilities.

These talks are critical for Colorado Springs, Ortega says, because half of the city’s water comes from the Colorado River Basin.

The seven states are subscribers to the Colorado River Compact, which defines the way water is allocated among the states. States in the Upper Basin, including Colorado, where the river originates, as well as Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico, are required to ensure that the Lower Basin states — Arizona, Nevada and California — receive their allocation.

COLORADO COUNTIES

However, in recent years, dry conditions have forced the Upper Basin states to make do with less water, while the Lower Basin states have continued to pull from the stored water in Lakes Mead and Powell, requiring the Upper Basin states to release water from reservoirs such as Colorado’s Blue Mesa.

Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s Commissioner to the Upper Basin Commission, has remained steadfast in defending Colorado’s rights under the compact, Ortega says. She seeks to prevent Lower Basin overuse and has resisted attempts to impose additional cuts on the Upper Basin states.

Ortega says Colorado Springs Utilities has planned for possible future scenarios through finding additional water sources, expanded storage, agricultural partnerships and conservation efforts, adding that “hope remains for an agreement to avoid federal intervention.”

Read more from Ortega on this issue on page 35.

CommonSpirit Installs Physician-Led Model of Care Every Intensive Care Unit patient at CommonSpirit’s Penrose, St. Francis and St. Francis-Interquest hospitals will have their inpatient care led and coordinated by a U.S. Acute Care Solutions (USACS) board-certified critical care physician, as a result of a new strategic partnership between CommonSpirit and USACS. The physician-led model of care, which will be implemented in February 2026, will streamline treatment, foster a more integrated approach to care and ensure the hospitals can expertly manage the growing number of patients who need the highest level of critical care, according to a Nov. 20 release.

CommonSpirit has collaborated with USACS for the past five years to provide care in Penrose Hospital’s emergency departments.

“This established relationship has consistently yielded highquality, patient-centered care and will now expand to enhance critical care services,” Penrose Hospital President Kristi Olson says.

The ICU partnership involves a transition away from the current ICU coverage, which has been provided by Colorado Springs Pulmonary Consultants. Colorado Springs Pulmonary Consultants will continue to own and operate its clinics and provide outpatient care, the release states.

“We are confident that this expanded partnership with USACS will bring innovative leadership, further strengthen our clinical teams and deliver a shared vision for excellence to our Intensive Care Units, ultimately benefiting every patient who comes through our doors,” says Gina Temple, St. Francis Hospital and St. Francis Hospital-Interquest president.

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 7 UP DAT ES AR OUND THE REGION

El Paso County

Colorado Springs City Council Approves New CHIPS Zones, Incentives Semiconductor companies in such

Mayor Yemi Mobolade thanked

The city is offering up to $177,500

in November approved designating

zones can receive tax credits for hiring,

council for “advancing this important

in rebates on sales and tax on business

12 areas in the city as CHIPS zones to

job training, research and development,

opportunity for Colorado Springs.” The

personal property such as machinery,

make existing and future semiconductor

new investments for facilities and

approval is “reinforcing our legacy as

equipment, furniture, fixtures and

companies eligible for a variety of state

equipment and commercial vehicle

a high-tech manufacturing hub and

construction materials. The project

income tax credits.

purchases. Up to 80% of the credits can

accelerating our momentum as ‘Silicon

would create up to 523 jobs from an

be paid as immediate tax refunds.

Mountain.’”

annual economic impact of $70.9

The Colorado Springs City Council

The designation is scheduled for

Council also approved city incentives

The zone “positions the city to

consideration by the Colorado Economic

million. The company already operates

Development Commission on Dec.

compete for new investment and

for a semiconductor a manufacturing

a semiconductor packaging facility in

18 and would take effect on Jan. 1,

high-paying jobs by unlocking access

and design company known by the

Colorado Springs, a description that

according to a presentation made to

to state and federal incentives under

code name “Project Rey,” which plans

only matches locally based Frontgrade

council in October. The areas include

the Colorado CHIPS Zone Act and

to spend $20.3 million over four years

Technologies.

the Garden of the Gods Road corridor,

the national CHIPS and Science Act.

for expansion, increased capacity and

The state economic development

near The Broadmoor World Arena,

Together, these programs support

enhanced facilities for new capabilities.

commission in October approved up to

near the Colorado Springs Airport, off

the growth of companies involved in

The company plans to hire 70 people

$1.8 million in incentives for a company

Marksheffel Road, off U.S. Highway 24

semiconductor design, production and

who would earn an average annual wage

also codenamed “Project Rey.”

West and six areas in northern Colorado

advanced manufacturing,” according to a

of $87,000, according to an October

Springs.

city news release on the approval.

presentation to council.

El Paso County

Terra Ferma Announces Plans to Hire 120 for Colorado Springs Manufacturing Plant A Colorado Springs company that has

suppliers and partners.

El Paso County

Visit COS Employs AI Pika Visit Colorado Springs has launched an AI-powered virtual travel assistant, aka Penny the Pika.

developed technology for short-range

Terra Ferma, which now employs 12

communications through infrared LED

people, has been approved for up to $1.23

devices announced plans in November to

million in tax credits and rebates from

Network’s GuideGeek, an AI company

open a manufacturing plant that will employ

the state, city and El Paso County that

that specializes in travel, the chat feature on visitCOS.com has

120 people.

are contingent on the company hiring 120

already responded to more than 10,000 user messages since it was

employees during the next eight years.

posted a couple of months ago.

The company plans to open the plant near

Created in partnership with Matador

When a user asks Penny a question, the feature scans the Visit

Peterson Space Force Base to produce what

The company was started in 2009 to

it calls Light Fidelity or “LiFi” devices for the

develop and produce systems that delivered

COS website and more than 1,000 sources of travel data through

military, other government agencies and

power and data through ethernet cables

GuideGeek to provide answers that may include itinerary prompts,

commercial customers, says Dennis Roark,

and later developed the Light Fidelity

trip-planning support, packing suggestions and information about

Terra Ferma’s founder and CEO. The company

communications system that will be produced

businesses and attractions in the region.

plans to spend $1.3 million renovating an

at the Colorado Springs plant. Terra Ferma

existing building into a manufacturing plant,

received a $249,809 state grant in 2020 to

and messaging. A major focus was sustainability: Penny can draw

purchasing equipment and related expenses.

continue developing the power-over-ethernet

upon plenty of information on the principles of Leave No Trace and

technology for remote communications,

how visitors can be good stewards of the outdoors.

The announcement culminated a two-year effort to persuade Terra Ferma to expand locally rather than in Florida, Virginia or Wyoming.

“Through strategic local and national

sensors and surveillance devices.

Roark says Terra Ferma worked with U.S. Central Command to help develop security

Penny underwent training to align with Visit COS’s brand, content

Penny is also programmed to recommend alternatives to crowded destinations, including less-traveled hikes and lesser-known outdoor activities.

partnerships and collaboration, we are

standards for LiFi devices that are key to

Penny is not only helping visitors but also providing useful data

bringing full-scale production and [research

the company winning approval for federal

for Visit COS’s marketing programs, Director of Marketing Melissa

and development] efforts for our portfolio

agencies to use the technology. He said the

Williams says.

of products to Colorado Springs as part of

company has spent the past 1½ years seeking

“Penny has already been so helpful for our visitor services staff,

our growth strategy,” Roark said in a news

and gaining that approval, which has resulted

helping field and respond to key visitor inquiries,” Williams says. “We

release from the Colorado Office of Economic

in three federal contracts, but he declined to

have access to the backend of the technology where we can dive into

Development and International Trade,

provide details about those agreements.

insights like what questions people are asking the most and where

highlighting Terra Ferma’s work with local

there may be content gaps on our website that we need to address.”

8 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest ECO NOM ICS

Aging U.S. Population Pushing Economy to Inflection Point, According to Economist Tatiana Bailey

BY WAYN E HEILMAN

T

he U.S. economy is nearing an inflection point with declines in the labor force likely to slow already sluggish employment growth even further in coming years, according to economist Tatiana Bailey.

The slowdown is a result of demographic trends — the U.S. population is aging, with the percentage of those 65 years or older more than doubling from 8.1% of the population in 1950 to 17.3% of the population in 2022. That has resulted in slower population growth both nationwide and in Colorado, which had been adding residents at twice the national rate but now is growing only slightly above the U.S. average.

Bailey made her comments during

her year-end update presentation Nov. 5 at the Garden of the Gods Resort and Club that also featured an update from Mark Ferrandino, director of the Colorado Office of State Planning and Budgeting.

Those trends mean fewer working adults supporting each retiree by making required payments into both Social Security and Medicare programs, which could make it difficult to keep benefits and coverage at current levels. To prevent the ratio of working adults to retirees from declining even more, Bailey said the number of available workers must grow each year by 4.6 million people.

That growth can’t happen without immigrants, a population that now makes up 19% of the U.S. labor force despite being just 15% of the overall

population, Bailey said. However, deportations of undocumented immigrants and other restrictions on immigration have resulted in the number of foreign-born workers declining by more than 1 million this year, leading to a reduction in the overall number of available U.S. workers, she said.

“Some degree of immigration is necessary [for the needed laborforce growth], so a safe and orderly process for immigrants who will work is needed to solve this structural headwind,” Bailey said. “Eleven thousand people a day are retiring, so we need to increase the labor force to pay for those future [Social Security and Medicare] outlays,” which now make up 40% of federal spending.

Bailey warned that businesses are reluctant to invest and expand due to economic uncertainty and higher tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, which she said are “antithetical” to the U.S. free-market system. While consumer spending is increasing, much of the gains are coming from high-income households, which she said could slow if the U.S. stock market begins declining.

U.S. economic growth has been slowing since early 2024 and Bailey expects that to continue into next year, with economic output expected to rise between 1% and 2%. She estimated the government shutdown in October and November cost the U.S. economy about $15 billion in economic activity per week, or more

than $100 billion total, reducing economic growth in the final quarter of 2025.

These challenges come as employment growth is slowing nationwide, in Colorado and in El Paso County, and Bailey forecasts that both the county and state unemployment rates will increase next year to 4.8% and 5%, respectively. Much of the slowdown in local and statewide job growth results from demographic shifts, with Colorado and El Paso County “catching up” to nationwide trends, she said.

Those shifts include fewer younger workers entering the labor market, which is making a shortage of qualified workers even worse, Bailey said. Fewer highschool seniors are continuing their education due to high tuition costs and reluctance to accumulate debt to pay for college classes. She said the state should invest in technical training to help build the labor force the local and state economies need.

Bailey said the high cost of healthcare ­­— which now makes up 18% of all economic activity — is squeezing out needed investments in worker training and other initiatives that could boost economic growth.

Wayne Heilman is a senior writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 9 WO RK FOR CE

Students Find Fun in C Cubed Training’s Cybersecurity Curriculum

BY JE AN N E DAVANT

Photos courtesy of C Cubed.

S

outhern Colorado junior high and high school kids may fidget in their seats in social studies classes. But the kids in John and Marcy Freeburg’s cyber classes are glued to their computers as they play Capture the Flag games or figure out how to build robots.

The Freeburgs operate C Cubed Training, a nonprofit that provides computer science classes and cybersecurity training.

“We try to be that unique place where the kids learn without knowing they’re learning,” Marcy Freeburg says.

From their base in Walsenburg, John Freeburg travels to various locations during the week, teaching the curriculum the couple developed to students in Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Cañon City and Florence.

A class in Walsenburg meets on Sundays at C Cubed’s office on Main Street.

“John and I get out of church at noon,” Marcy says. “We’re at the office by 12:05, and the kids are waiting to come in the door. They might spend the first hour playing video games, and we bring in pizza. At 1 o’clock, John’s like, ‘OK, it’s time to actually learn something,’ and the kids are happy to do it. By 4:30, when they’re supposed to be packing up, they’re saying, ‘Hey, can we stay longer?’”

The classes, which are supported through a per-student stipend from the Colorado BOCES (Board of Cooperative Education Services) Home School Enrichment program, aren’t structured like a traditional school curriculum.

Attendance is not required — “one week we may have 12 kids, one week four,” Marcy says. The atmosphere is more like an extracurricular activity.

Indeed, C Cubed sponsors teams in Pueblo and Huerfano counties that have placed high in CyberPatriot, a youth competition sponsored by the Air and Space Forces Association.

But there’s more to it than fun and games. The purpose of the C Cubed program is to prepare kids for an indemand profession.

“We tell them cybersecurity is

Above: C Cubed Training coowner and instructor John Freeburg accompanies students to the Cyber Symposium in Colorado Springs.

Photo courtesy of C Cubed Right: C Cubed Training co-owner and instructor John Freeburg and his students have fun while learning about cybersecurity.

a lucrative career that you can do from home,” Marcy says. “Our goal is, if you stick with us throughout your high school career, you’ll get your A+ certification, your Network+ certification and your Security+ certification — three of the baseline CompTIA certifications most companies are looking for — for an entry-level position,” Marcy says.

Besides technical training, the students learn about professional ethics and the behavior that will be expected of them in the workplace.

The Freeburgs take them to events like the Space Symposium, Cyber Symposium and National Cybersecurity Center’s First Fridays in Colorado Springs, where they’re encouraged to talk with industry professionals about their companies and ask questions about jobs and possible internships.

“We make them get over that teenage angst about talking to adults

and get them mingling with the right people,” Marcy says.

C Cubed also sponsors internships for students and hosts STEM camps in the summer. Noting that 60-70% of the participating students are female, Marcy says, “We’ll hold a Women in IT conference in Pueblo next summer.”

John and Marcy met when both were in the U.S. Army. They combined John’s background in psychological operations, leadership development, engineering and teaching and Marcy’s work in military intelligence, information security, compliance and risk management in 2005 to form J & M Solutions, a cybersecurity consulting firm.

John was teaching ROTC in Pueblo District 60 in 2019 when, driving home from a trip to Wyoming, they started taking about the growing need for cybersecurity professionals.

“The kids down in Southern Colorado didn’t even have computers

to work on,” Marcy says. “We saw this huge, untapped component and brainstormed all the way.”

That was the origin of C Cubed, first called Certified Cyber Coaching.

“We opened up a shop where kids could come do homework — sitting six feet apart — and gave them free internet and free access to computers,” she says. Once COVID restrictions were lifted, they launched the classes in locations that provided them free access.

The Freeburgs have invested a lot of their own money and developed partnerships to provide equipment.

They use a government program called Computers for Learning through which government agencies give retired computers to nonprofits.

They are trying to find funding to complete a lab network with servers, routers and firewalls in Walsenburg and the other locations where John teaches. The students are getting hands-on experience in setting up a network and, when it’s completed, they will gain real-world experience in defending it. They welcome cash and in-kind donations from supportive partners.

“We’re looking to expand by training other trainers — our reach is limited with just John and I doing this,” Marcy says. “We’re trying to provide the kids that can get those remote cybersecurity jobs, stay at home, keep the money there and hopefully change the trajectory of these small rural counties.”

Jeanne Davant is a senior writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

10 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest CO N S T R UCT ION

Housing Solutions Breathe Life into Empty Office Buildings Left: The Parkside Office Suites will soon be converted into 32 apartment units at 550 square feet apiece.

Below: The four-story office building on South Monaco Street is months away from becoming the new Lofts on Monaco.

Opposite page: The building at 125 N. Parkside Drive was built in 1959 and has been without tenants during the conversion process. The building, which has been gutted down to the rafters, features underground parking and each tenant will have a parking space with a storage locker.

BY KERI KAHN

S

outh Monaco Street in the Denver Tech Center is home to Denver’s first commercial-toresidential conversion project since the pandemic.

The 120,000-square-foot office building, which Shea Properties purchased in April for $12 million, will offer studios to four bedrooms with a one-bedroom renting for about $1,400 a month. They’ll be move-in ready by summer of 2026.

In a dated neighborhood east of Downtown Colorado Springs, 125 N. Parkside Drive sets the stage for this city to follow suit. The 25,000-squarefoot office building, which NORAD constructed in 1959, sold in 2019 for $1.3 million, according to the El Paso County Assessor’s Office.

“We want to be leasing it up in the prime move-in season over the spring and summer,” says Matt Bousky, president of current building owner MJB Parkside Investments LLC. Bousky says 32 one-bedroom units will be available by May of 2026 and, although rent price is not yet determined, the 550-square-foot homes will go for market rate.

The concept of converting commercial properties into residential ones has gained traction for years,

especially in the aftermath of the pandemic as workers traded the hustle and bustle of office life for remote or hybrid options.

Not for the Faint of Heart Some underutilized buildings — if paired with proper support and comprehensive planning — are good candidates to become competitively priced housing.

Developers across the country are proving the feasibility of this concept, but Shea’s Executive Vice President Peter Culshaw tells the Digest he won’t downplay the challenges.

“It’s not for the faint of heart.

This is a complex, difficult thing to undertake.”

Shea Properties has built office products similar to what they’re converting. The company has also developed 3,500 multi-family homes, of which 25% were deemed affordable. This convergence of expertise, coupled with the building’s characteristics, make the Lofts on Monaco a likely success.

Candidates for Conversion A building needs to be located in an area where there is demand for rental housing, and it needs to be acquired at

the right price.

“We got it cheap enough where we could afford to basically build everything out,” says Bousky, whose project has been gutted down to the rafters.

Culshaw stresses the importance of his company’s chosen building being only four stories, due to HVAC and plumbing requirements.

“The four-story aspect is important because you’re almost always putting the mechanical on the roof. You’ve got to get the mechanical from the home to the roof and if the building gets too tall, I think that gets much harder to

do,” he explains.

MJB Parkside’s property is only two stories.

“It’s just a big rectangle and it’s two floors. It was a layout that was pretty friendly to a conversion,” says Bousky.

“We cut a corridor down the center, and all the apartments have a whole wall of windows on both sides.”

Windows are another consideration. The wrong size or shape could prohibit windows in all units if converting to apartments.

CONTINUED ON P. 11

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 11

BUSINESS SURROUNDED

BY BEAUTY

Housing Helps Reduce Commute Times “There’s a crushing need for housing so that people don’t have to drive 50 minutes to get to their place of employment,” says Culshaw. “So, whether this person living there is making the frappuccino at Starbucks or doing a landscape job … these people have a right to be able to live close to where they work and we’re providing a solution for that.”

In Colorado Springs, Bousky estimates the Parkside property is probably within a mile of at least 1,000 jobs at nearby medical facilities, restaurants and more.

“There are really a lot of jobs around there, so a tenant could definitely live there and not even have a car but have a scooter or bike instead,” he says. “It should be great for the market.”

Creative Solutions Needed for Colorado Springs According to a 2024 Housing Data Report for El Paso County, at the current median household

income, 34% of residents were cost burdened. That means they spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs, which include insurance and utilities.

Although 5,000 apartment units were completed in 2024, there seems to be a mismatch between new offerings and what households can afford.

“Since Colorado Springs has much lower (office) vacancy rates than Denver, we have less vacant office space that is ripe for conversions,” says Jill Gaebler, executive director of the Pikes Peak Housing Network.

Creative solutions are needed to meet demand, and Bousky says he hopes the Parkside conversion won’t be the last.

“You’ve just got to buy it right and you’ve got to just have some guts and get after it,” he says.

Keri Kahn is a staff writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

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12 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest MEDIA

Facing Cuts, Public Media Looks to Donors for Support

BY JE AN N E DAVANT

Gov. Jared Polis sits for an interview with Colorado Matters host Ryan Warner at the Governor’s Mansion.

Credit: Hart Van Denburg/Colorado Public Radio

developing marketing strategies and branding and messaging, and we truly can be a full-service partner.”

In many ways, Mountain says, public media is the civic fabric that ties the state and the nation together.

“We pledge to do everything that we can to put your investment to good work, and building and repairing the civic fabric for all Coloradans to benefit,” she says.

Colorado Public Radio’s CPR News station, CPR Classical and Indie 102.3 in Denver and KRCC in Colorado Springs serve 80% of Coloradans through a network of transmitters and translators. In Southern Colorado, its reach extends from Colorado Springs to Salida and Cañon City, and south to Pueblo, Trinidad and Starkville.

CPR received its last federal allocation for the previous fiscal year in March and has lost about $3 million in funding over the next two years, says President and CEO Stewart Vanderwilt.

“CPR is lucky, as federal funding only accounted for approximately 6% of our overall budget,” Vanderwilt says.

“We had already finalized budgets and made plans based around this critical funding. While the loss of federal funding is a major blow to public media and a free press everywhere, CPR is thankfully in a strong and stable position.”

That’s because partners and donors have stepped up in record numbers, he says.

Many smaller stations across the state have relied more heavily on federal funding, and CPR is helping to lay the foundation “for a new, radically collaborative future for public media,” he says. “This summer, we started providing our flagship daily news program, Colorado Matters, to KRZA in Alamosa completely free of charge.”

Credit: Lauren Antonoff Hart/Colorado Public Radio

O

n Dec. 9, Colorado Gives Day, public media outlets in Southern Colorado are hoping donors will tune in to their needs.

The U.S. Congress rolled back $1.1 billion in previously allocated funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), leaving organizations like Rocky Mountain PBS and Colorado Public Radio scrambling. Smaller organizations, such as Cheyenne Mountain Public Broadcast House, which operates Jazz 93.5 FM and classical radio station KCME, also were affected.

Rocky Mountain Public Media is the parent organization to Rocky Mountain PBS and radio stations KUVO Jazz and THE DROP 104.7.

Rocky Mountain PBS includes KTSC, which broadcasts from its studio on the Colorado State University-Pueblo campus; KRMA in Denver; KRMU in Durango; and KRMJ in Grand Junction, says Amanda Mountain, CEO and president of Rocky Mountain Public Media. The stations reach more than a million Coloradans.

“We are losing about $3 million a year, or 10% of our budget,” she says.

“Our teams are working overtime trying to expand our services at a time when people need more information and connection to each other.”

The organization’s expenses are increasing as well, because discounts and shared services through CPB are no longer available.

Mountain notes that there are more than 18 public media organizations in Colorado, which often collaborate with each other.

Together, they lost more than $9 million annually in federal funding.

“The good news is that communities are really turning out in abundance right now to support public media,” Mountain says.

Individual support can take the form of becoming a member and making a monthly or annual contribution. Businesses can consider investing advertising and marketing dollars in public media outlets.

“We are always working with our business partners to design creative ways to help them achieve their financial goals,” Mountain says. “We work closely with our underwriters on

Reporter and host Haylee May in a CPR News recording studio.

Contributions to CPR “help sustain important news coverage, strengthen Colorado communities and demonstrate your commitment to the public good,” as well as showcase business brands and connect them with customers, he says.

Cheyenne Mountain Public Broadcast House lost about 10% of its federal funding to support its $1 million budget, General Manager Stephanie Horton says. Its stations serve listeners from Denver to Walsenburg through translators in Chaffee, Summit and Fremont counties.

“We run on a very lean budget,” Horton says. “We really have to raise more revenue and look at other avenues to do that. New donors are the key right now.”

The organization concluded a twice-yearly fund drive in October,

during which it partnered with Care and Share for two days. Sponsor Bryan Construction provided matching funds that paid for meals through Care and Share.

“We can’t fundraise for other organizations, but this was a way for people to give to both organizations,” Horton says.

Businesses that purchase underwriting get a 15- or 30-second spot on the air to promote their business or event, and contributions on Colorado Gives Day are taxdeductible.

“When you support KCME and Jazz 93.5, you’re also supporting the arts community, because we give them a platform to share about their organizations,” Horton says.

Jeanne Davant is a senior writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 13 TEC HNOLOGY

Pushpay Adds New CEO, CFO as Software Company Expands

BY WAYN E HEILMAN

A

Colorado Springs software company that provides online giving, donor management, streaming and other services to churches, nonprofits and educational institutions is gearing up for expansion with a new CEO and chief financial officer.

Pushpay was started in and is still based in New Zealand with its U.S. headquarters in Redmond, Wash., and major offices in Colorado Springs and the Dallas area. The company offers a church management platform that is used by more than 14,000 customers to process $7.6 billion annually in contributions. The Colorado Springs office has 110 of its 560 staff members, focused on software development.

Kenny Wyatt, who had spent nearly 20 years as an executive in the telecommunications industry working for giants T-Mobile, CenturyLink and Vonage and moved into software, was promoted by Pushpay in March to CEO after spending 10 months as president. Nolan Smith was hired in October as the company’s chief financial officer after spending 18 years in similar roles with several Denver area software startups.

“We continue to be the market leader through innovation in donor management and church management solutions, fostering engagement with not just donors but the entire congregation,” Smith says. “Our solutions allow staff to spend less time on routine tasks and more on congregation engagement,” offering pastors and staff insights on the health of their organizations through data analysis.

Wyatt says Pushpay has plenty of room to grow since it serves about 4% of the nation’s 350,000 churches.

The company expanded into serving Catholic parishes three years ago with software designed for the world’s largest denomination that has since attracted “several hundred” parishes.

“We want to return market-based or better growth in the businessto-business software-as-a-service market by looking at opportunities such as acquisitions – we have grown

Kenny Wyatt

Nolan Smith with acquisitions and will continue that where it makes sense – and organically,” Wyatt says. “We plan to integrate new technology to serve churches in different ways and a big part of that future is the talent we have in Colorado Springs.”

A big part of Pushpay’s expansion will come from integrating artificial intelligence into its software solutions, including new features allowing AI-powered searches for people and queries and insights into donor data. The company rolled out an AIdatabase assistant in early November in a partnership with Colorado Springs-based 9 Embers, which supports the Rock RMS open-source church management software.

The company was started in Aukland, New Zealand, in 2011 by Chris Heaslip and Eliot Crowther, who didn’t have cash to make a church donation and wanted to bridge the gap between in-person and online giving. Pushpay quickly opened its U.S. headquarters in the Seattle area, grew from $1

million to $100 million in revenue in four years and went public on the New Zealand Stock Exchange in 2014.

Pushpay expanded to Colorado Springs in late 2019, when it acquired locally based church management software provider Church Community Builder for $87.5 million. Chris Fowler started Church Community Builder in 1999 to replace outdated back-office software used by many churches with an online-based platform.

The company’s biggest acquisition came two years later, when it paid $150 million for Texas-based church streaming-video provider Resi Media during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The deal allowed Pushpay to offer “a unified solution for digital giving, ministry management, media and more,” according to a news release about the transaction.

Wyatt says, “Churches had to go to streaming and digital giving [quickly], forcing them to adapt their technology at a different speed than they planned.”

Earlier that year, San Franciscobased private equity investment firm Sixth Street Partners acquired a 16% stake in Pushpay for $320 million. Two years later, Australian private equity firm BGH Capital joined Sixth Street in buying the rest of the company for

$1 billion, about $100 million more than their initial offer that failed to attract the required 75% support from shareholders not linked to either private equity firm.

Pushpay also builds customdesigned mobile applications for churches, including Springs Church in northern Colorado Springs, to help members connect with each other and the church. Springs Church was facing a problem many churches experience – disconnection from their congregation – so they turned to Pushpay for apps to simplify communication, signups for groups and events, access to sermons and giving options.

Wayne Heilman is a senior writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

14 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest EDUCAT ION

Colorado College’s New President Looks to Deepen Community Ties

BY LORELEI SMILLIE

T

he newest president of Colorado College has a long history in education. So long, in fact, that she never left it.

“I went from undergrad to graduate school to Colorado College and I’m a third-generation teacher,” says Manya Whitaker, CC’s 15th president. “My grandmother was a high school science teacher. My dad was a teacher and then did most of his work in public service through social work, working in low-income housing development.”

Whitaker’s roots in education led her to pursue research in K-12 schools as well as in higher education.

After earning her doctorate in developmental psychology from

Vanderbilt University, she came to Colorado College as a postdoctoral fellow through the Riley Scholarsin-Residence Program. She spent the next 12 years as an education professor before being appointed interim president in 2024 and later taking on the role permanently.

That wasn’t always her plan.

Whitaker spent years conducting research and publishing on inequality in public schools, childhood development and academic outcomes.

Although she didn’t originally envision a career in college administration, she says she’s excited about the work ahead.

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Manya Whitaker, Colorado College's 15th president

the president of Colorado College,” Whitaker says.

Her plans for the school include strengthening community engagement and expanding partnerships with local businesses.

Whitaker serves on the board of the Matrix Center, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs’ center for the advancement of social equity and inclusion, and says she hopes more executive leaders will take on similar roles. She pointed to the Fine Arts Center and Robson Arena as two CC institutions with room to deepen their collaboration with the city.

The Fine Arts Center hosts rotating art exhibitions, theater productions, concerts and hands-on workshops for all ages, often partnering with local schools and community groups to expand arts access. It regularly collaborates with city organizations on festivals, outreach initiatives and events aimed at strengthening community engagement through creativity.

Robson Arena was part of the City for Champions (C4C) initiative aimed at boosting local tourism, economic activity and regional visibility.

Under the C4C plan, up to 50 days each year are reserved for non-CC events, including youth sports camps, tournaments, training camps, club competitions and Paralympic events.

Planning documents say the events are expected to draw new out-ofstate visitors and support the local economy.

“Colorado College is not just part of the Colorado Springs community.

We are responsible to it and what that means is that we do need to be engaged in city and state and regional issues,” Whitaker says.

She adds that CC is also working to expand free transit options in Colorado Springs through partnerships with the Colorado Department of Transportation to offer free bus and transit services for students.

Whitaker acknowledges that higher education faces national skepticism as college costs rise and AI reshapes entry-level jobs. She says one of the college’s strategic priorities is helping students articulate their career competencies to employers to show the value of a liberal arts education. Employers, she says, increasingly seek graduates who bring a breadth of knowledge rather than narrow skills that can be replaced by technology.

Many CC alumni stay in Colorado after graduation, most working in healthcare, government and education.

“The college has given so much to me. I have come to love CC so much and this is really an opportunity to give back to this institution. I think that I have the skill set to lead CC into the future for the next 150 years.

I’m just honored that I was given this opportunity,” Whitaker says.

Lorelei Smillie is a staff writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 15 ARTS ECONOM Y

Photo by Jemal Countess courtesy of Sundance Institute.

Photo by Breanna Downs courtesy of Sundance Institute.

SoCo Communities Helping Film Industry Grow

A view from Main Street at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

BY THERESA WOODS

R

epresentatives from across Colorado’s film and media community gathered for a statewide town hall event on Nov. 15 as part of a grassroots movement to grow Colorado’s film industry.

This was the second Colorado Film and Media Town Hall and continued work from the 2024 event and the inaugural Film & Media Colorado Leadership Summit in October.

The event was organized by the Film and Media Community Coalition of Colorado (FAMCO), a grassroots organization to unify film and media as an industry; and the Colorado Film and Video Association (CFVA), the professional organization representing film, television and media professionals statewide.

The event took place live and online, and 340 people attended across Colorado and other states.

The Colorado Springs event hosted 70 people and was the secondlargest session in the state. Other participating communities: Boulder, Cañon City, Denver, Fort Collins, Grand Junction and Pueblo.

“Colorado Springs is starting to become a recognized name in the industry,” says Evan Alderson of

Alderson Film Co., a local film director and FAMCO member.

The town hall was conceived as an opportunity for a statewide interactive conversation about what’s next, to foster statewide and local collaboration, and to identify challenges, assets, needs and priorities to grow a strong, thriving film and media industry in Colorado.

“I know that we can build a strong industry here, but only if we do it together,” says CFVA Vice President Shawna Schultz.

An insight from Colorado Springs attendees is that education and training are priorities locally. Current productions need an increased number of reliable, dedicated crew in all areas.

“The reality is, if we got our dream and someday there was some, let’s say, Marvel movie that was shot in Colorado Springs, the people that are here … they wouldn’t be doing anything major in terms of actual crew positions. So, our goal is to help change that,” says Carlo Maldonado, Independent Film Society of Colorado program director.

“Getting that secondary business support is another one … they don’t exist if you want them. You have to go to Denver,” says Alderson. Services such as rental houses, casting

Audience members at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. agencies, security companies, lighting technicians and many others are needed here to make Colorado Springs a film and media production hub.

The Colorado Springs Film Commission is becoming more active. Currently, it is expanding a local directory of film and media professionals and production resources available locally. CFMA is doing the same with its directory.

Another priority is financial incentives. Colorado has significantly fewer favorable incentives for film productions than New Mexico, for instance.

“Incentives are what drive the industry,” says Alderson. “There already is an exploration of a city-based tax incentive,” to make producing a film here more financially attractive, he says.

This town hall took place amid a storm of excitement unleashed with the March 2025 announcement that the Sundance Film Festival would relocate to Boulder in 2027.

“We have the opportunity to have Colorado elevated nationally and internationally,” says Arielle Brachfeld, interim film commissioner at the Colorado Office of Film, Television and Media. “This is a particular moment for our industry,” says CFVA President Noah Smith. “There is so much energy

and enthusiasm.”

Hosting the prestigious festival increases the profile of Colorado’s film industry and is expected to contribute to a stronger film industry throughout the state and in Colorado Springs. Maldonado, a longtime theater manager with the Sundance Film Festival, sees an opportunity for Colorado Springs when Sundance creates satellite cities for film screenings. That happened in Utah when the festival outgrew Park City.

“The festival’s presence is expected to create potential partnerships with academic and educational institutions,” he says. “We should all be excited about Sundance.”

“The reality is, Sundance is a $2 billion economic machine that’s coming here,” says Alderson. “Granted, we are farther away than we would like to be from where this is all happening, but we’re still well within range to make an effective presence.

We have opportunities here. … We just have to figure it out.”

Theresa Woods is a staff writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

16 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest TOUR ISM

How Is Colorado’s Tourism Industry Changing?

Insights from the 2025 Governor’s Tourism Conference

BY THERESA WOODS

T

Highlights of the Conference Mayor Yemi Mobolade voiced his support for “destination development” of Colorado Springs. The Visitor Services Summit focused on ideas and strategies for visitor services and welcome centers as key to the visitor experience.

Middle-income families are changing to micro vacations that are more affordable, but luxury tourism and authentic experiences are driving trends in the industry right now.

What consumers mean by “luxury” is really an elevated experience or a transformative one, not just a trip.

Adventure tourism is a rapidly growing segment of the industry attracting a much broader range of experience levels than expected.

Environmental concerns and sustainability are top concerns of these types of travelers.

Music and sporting events and festivals are significant growth opportunities for local businesses and their communities.

How visitors search online is changing and demands marketing adaptation. Nearly half of all travelrelated search queries show AI-

Pictured, from left to right, are the members of the panel telling this story: Tim Wolfe, Director, Colorado Tourism Office; Ebs Burnough, CEO, Hatch House Media, and Chair of the Sundance Institute’s Board of Trustees; Charlene Hoffman, CEO, Visit Boulder; and Eve Lieberman, Executive Director, Colorado Office of Economic Development & International Trade.

Photo by Theresa Woods.

he Colorado Governor’s Tourism Conference is an annual event for tourism professionals and industry leaders. The conference, held at Hotel Polaris on Oct. 22-24, included sessions and speakers to address: destination stewardship, accessible and inclusive travel, AI in tourism, the changing rules of internet search, international travel trends and concerns, growing market for accessible and inclusive travel, the America250 — Colorado 150 Commemoration, as well as other industry trends and challenges.

Travel and Tour World, a leading media outlet for the industry, called it a “renowned event” bringing together tourism professionals and business leaders to explore new approaches and improve Colorado’s tourism industry.

generated overview responses and consumers increasingly turn to AI to generate itineraries. Visibility to AI should be a website priority and 77.35% of all AI external referrals go to a blog post.

Visit Colorado Springs and Wheel the World are creating accessible travel opportunities.

Multicultural consumers in the U.S. represent more than $4 trillion in buying power and are an opportunity for destinations ready to connect with diverse audiences.

Half of Colorado’s international travelers come from Canada and Mexico. According to international travel data, federal policies, global travel trends and international skier behavior are reshaping tourism.

Places across Colorado can benefit from the opportunities and effects of the Sundance Film Festival’s move to Boulder in 2027.

Past data shows significant numbers of Sundance attendees take local trips; offering packages is the best way to market to them.

The America250 — Colorado 150 celebrations throughout 2026, honoring the 250th anniversary of American independence and the 150th anniversary of Colorado’s statehood, could provide opportunities and strategies to boost tourism.

The Governor’s Awards for Outstanding Colorado Tourism

Efforts, recognizing individual and organizational excellence in the tourism industry, were presented.

Local winners: Jack Damioli, president and CEO at The Broadmoor; and Monica Rozelle, visitor information specialist and volunteer coordinator at Visit Manitou Springs.

Slide decks from several of the presentations are available at coloradotourismconference.com.

Recordings of selected sessions will be posted to the website in the future.

The conference is a program of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade’s Colorado Tourism Office. The 2026 conference will take place at Breckenridge’s Beaver Run Resort & Conference Center on Sept. 23-25.

2025 data suggest that increasing competition and uncertainty related to federal policy are putting pressure on Colorado’s tourism industry.

Although travel-related spending increased 0.3% in Colorado in 2024, the same metric increased 4.2% nationally. Colorado’s market share has also decreased in recent years, dropping from a high of 2.1% in 2019 to 1.8% in 2024.

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Colorado Tourism Numbers The travel and tourism industry affects accommodations, food and beverage businesses, retail, recreation and transportation sectors.

Tourism contributed $28.5 billion to the Colorado economy and supported 188,510 jobs across the state in 2024, according to annual research compiled

by Dean Runyan Associates and Longwoods International Travel USA. Tourism continues to be an important economic driver across Colorado. However, 2024 and early

•

Traveler spending in Colorado increased from $28.4 billion in 2023 to $28.5 billion in 2024.

Direct travel-generated employment grew from 176,800 jobs to 188,510.

Direct travel-generated earnings grew from $8.7 billion to $9.9 billion.

Visitation to Colorado increased by 2.3%, from 93.3 million in 2023 to 95.4 million visitors in 2024.

State and local tax revenue increased from $1.8 billion in 2023 to $1.9 billion in 2024.

The top activities and experiences for overnight visitors were outdoor and entertainment activities, followed by cultural and sporting activities.

23% of travel parties had a member that required accessibility services, notably above the U.S. norm of 18%.

Theresa Woods is a staff writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

18 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest EN ERGY

AI Powering the Latest Weapon in the War on Wildfires

BY LORELEI SMILLIE

A

Focus on Power Lines More than 100 cameras installed across the state are constantly monitoring and detecting early signs of wildfires. The cameras, which Pano AI manufactures, track the landscape near electricity assets such as power lines. Their 360-degree lenses are installed on high vantage points like cell towers and continuously scan a 10-mile radius. AI software monitors for signs of smoke and sends a signal to a human analyst for verification before alerting local authorities within five minutes.

Each station is equipped with two ultra-high-definition cameras that rotate a full 360 degrees, capturing a panoramic time-lapse of the surroundings every minute. The cameras feature 30x optical zoom and include sensors that can detect heat from fires, even at night.

Funded by various venture capital

A Pano AI station in Snowmass, CO.

Aging Infrastructure Part of Problem

Photo courtesy of Pano AI.

I-powered cameras are the newest tool in Colorado’s fight to prevent wildfires.

Xcel Energy and Pano AI are teaming up to install them in the state’s highest-risk areas.

“We started Pano AI after watching the devastating wildfires in California and Australia. Fires were spiraling out of control before anyone even realized they’d started — what was out there just wasn’t working,” says Arvind Satyam, co-founder and chief commercial officer at Pano AI, which is based in San Francisco.

In July 2025, the Cottonwood Flat Fire swept through Garfield County, burning 310 acres before it was contained. The quickest notification of the fire came not from a human observer, but from an AI-powered camera Xcel Energy installed.

The cameras “provided early notification of the fire to Xcel Energy and our public safety partners 10 minutes before the fire was reported through other publicly available channels,” says Michelle Aguayo, senior media relations representative for Xcel Energy.

and corporate investment firms, Pano AI launched in 2020. Although it has competition, Pano AI has been successful in integrating AI tracking and a live alert system on a large scale, working with both public and private sector clients. State foresters, county fire prevention districts, private landowners and utilities — anyone with a stake in stopping fires — has been using them.

How effective are the cameras?

“They work,” says Satyam. “The whole point is catching fires when they’re still tiny. We’ve spent years getting the system to handle tough conditions — high-risk areas with rough terrain and unpredictable weather.”

Wildfire on Increase The U.S. has seen an increase in the frequency and severity of wildfires in the past few decades.

According to NOAA, over the past 30 years, Colorado’s climate has warmed by two degrees Fahrenheit.

A growing population is pushing farther into wildfire-prone areas, and dry conditions and poor forest maintenance are contributing to higher risk factors. The 10 largest fires in Colorado’s history have all occurred since 2002. Utility companies across the country have increased wildfire risk-reduction efforts, acknowledging

their role in causing some wildfires.

The cameras have been installed in high-risk areas including the Front Range and Jefferson County. After installation, Pano AI reaches out to fire protection districts, offices of emergency management and sheriff’s offices to provide information on how to use the cameras.

Each camera station costs $50,000 per year to install and maintain, a cost that will be passed to customers.

Xcel’s goal is to install 135 cameras to fully cover the state’s moderate- and high-risk areas.

“All technology comes with a cost,” says Tracy LeClair, communications and outreach specialist for the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control. “It’s important to recognize that the costs associated with fighting large fires and the costs of potential damages and losses can be substantial. So, if we can detect a fire early and deploy resources quickly, the investment is justified.”

Power lines and other electrical equipment are known to cause wildfires, especially when left unmaintained. Downed lines or grid failures can cause sparks and ignite dry brush. In April 2024, Xcel preemptively shut off power to 55,000 customers in Boulder and Jefferson counties due to high winds in a move aimed at preventing wildfires.

The cameras are one piece of Xcel’s $1.9 billion 2025-27 Wildfire Mitigation Plan. Other approaches include repairing and replacing aging infrastructure. Central to the strategy is replacing vulnerable equipment. The company plans to replace 165 miles of small-diameter conductor and 33 miles of bare, open-wire secondary conductor with stronger, more durable materials by 2027. Bare wires pose ignition risks from vegetation contact or wear.

In the highest-risk areas, Xcel plans to move 50 miles of overhead distribution lines underground, which significantly reduces wildfire risk since buried lines are far less likely to spark fires.

“Cameras are especially valuable in areas with coverage gaps, high ignition risks and where early detection can significantly shorten response times.

However, they should not replace efforts in fuel management, vegetation management or infrastructure hardening,” LeClair says.

Pano AI has cameras installed in Colorado, Minnesota and Texas, with plans to expand into New Mexico.

Although not a replacement for traditional firefighting, the technology offers a growing sense of optimism and safety for the future of fire prevention.

Pano AI’s expansion reflects a broader push to use artificial intelligence for public safety. As utilities and agencies embrace new technology, Colorado is becoming a testing ground for how technological innovation can coexist with the natural landscape.

Lorelei Smillie is a staff writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 19 EN TR EPR ENEUR SHI P

Health Startup Wins $50,000 EPIIC’s Venture Attractor Torch Grant

BY WAYN E HEILMAN

A

startup that helps women treat yeast infections without antibiotics has become the latest to win a $50,000 grant from the Venture Attractor at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs during a ceremony Oct. 30 at the Pinery at the Hill.

Lodgeit, founded and headed by Lauren Little of Denver, is required to move to Colorado Springs to get the grant, which is expected to happen in the next few months after Little finds a local place to live, secures manufacturing space and hires a third-party logistics provider to handle order fulfillment. The company has about 200 test users and Little says she hopes to begin customer sales early next year.

“I’m incredibly excited to get the award. We plan to use the [funds] for packaging, product manufacturing, marketing and legal costs,” says

Little, who started the company in 2023 while working in the hospitality industry. She says she expects the company to generate nearly $350,000 in revenue next year through sales at events on college campuses and through the company’s website, lodgeit.co.

She developed a boric acid suppository that she plans to market as a health supplement designed to restore natural pH balance in a woman’s vagina, reducing itching, odors and other symptoms of pH imbalance. Lodgeit also will sell pH strips that help measure the pH levels in a women’s vagina that can be a sign of a yeast infection or other condition that needs treatment with the suppositories.

Lodgeit competed against three other startups for the grant. They are: •

Lauren Little, founder of Lodgeit.

Air O Sport, a Colorado Springs company that has developed a game that combines basketball •

One Stop Print Shop Printing • Promo Products • Signs Graphic Design • Vehicle Graphics Direct Mail • And Much More!

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719-638-2920

northcs.minutemanpress.com 6870 N Academy Blvd.

Colorado Springs, CO 80918 northcs@minutemanpress.com

Where Your Business Is Our Business

•

and Ultimate Frisbee; eight-person teams play it on a 40-foot-by40-foot field. The company is promoting the game as a corporate retreat and team-building activity.

MapleGRC, a Toronto company started in 2022 that has developed a web-based cybersecurity and privacy governance, risk management and compliance application that currently serves about 30 nonprofits in Canada. The software-as-a-service platform is sold on a monthly subscription basis.

StructureBot, a Colorado Springs company started in 2022 that is developing a 3D-printing system and software to quickly build low-cost concrete housing in the southwestern U.S. at a lower cost and with less waste than currently used. The company won a $100,000 state grant last year to build 36 housing units using the technology.

The Venture Attractor awarded grants last year to Nightingale Caring Solutions, which developed software to match nurses with patients; in 2023 to Altitude Movement, which operates Altitude Ninja Gym and SendMyGear, which ships bikes, golf clubs, skis and other sports equipment for customers; and in 2022 to LeadFoot Racing, which helps racing enthusiasts build or rent cars; Salt Athletic, which produces

odor-combating bags to hold cleated athletic shoes; and Defender Imports, a company that helped buyers with sport utility vehicle importing, but shut down in August.

The grants are designed to attract entrepreneurs in the sports/outdoors, health innovation and human performance industries to Colorado Springs. The Venture Attractor also sponsors a 16-week startup education and mentorship program called Scale to $1M ($1 million) Boot-Up Camp that Torch Grant recipients must complete. Funding for the grants comes from All-Pro Capital, Classic Homes and Colorado entrepreneur Jim Waldrop.

Wayne Heilman is a senior writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

FOR MORE INFORMATION VENTUREATTRACTOR.ORG/ TORCH-GRANTS-2

EPIIC’s mission is to drive entrepreneurship at UCCS and in the Pikes Peak Community: •

Venture AttractorTM — Torch Grants, and Spark the Springs

•

The Garage

•

EBV (Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans)

•

Community Partnerships, including VetCon 2025

•

EPIIC Nights

•

COS Rising with our partners Exponential Impact and Catalyst Campus

•

And So Much More!

2025 Achievements The Garage Ventures have generated over $140K in revenue this year Awarded the 6th ($50,000) Torch Grant to Colin Plover (Nightingale) Announced Lauren Little (LodgeIt.) as the 7th Torch Grant Recipient Hosted the inaugural EBV program with 16 veteran entrepreneurs from around the country Hosted over 25 events and workshops for COS entrepreneurs with 1,000+ total attendees Venture Attractor Companies have raised $1mm+

NONE OF THIS WOULD BE POSSIBLE WITHOUT OUR 2025 SPONSORS:

LEGACY SPONSOR:

JIM WALDROP

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 21 EN TR EPR ENEUR SHI P

Creative Funding: Building SoCo Startup Success Together

BY MAX CUPP

Why Exponential Impact is a Hub for Capital Conversations, not just Venture Rounds.

Do you really need venture capital?

It’s the question every founder eventually faces. Lately, inside our accelerator at Exponential Impact, more founders are deciding the answer is “not right now.” This week, two of them chose to step off the VC treadmill. The relief was obvious.

They were reclaiming control, no longer running on a 5- to 7-year clock designed for specific return targets.

Instead, they’re focusing on what matters most: building their product and winning customers.

Seed-stage venture investors often ask whether a company can plausibly

return 100x within a decade. That’s a sensible question for their model, but not every great company fits that mold. Many strong businesses are durable, profitable and steadily compounding without chasing exponential outcomes on a tight timeline. The key is founder honesty: about ambition, their business model and which funding journey truly fits.

Understanding the Venture Capital Mindset Venture portfolios are shaped by the “power law”: a few outliers generate most of the returns while many others fail or produce modest outcomes. That’s why VCs prioritize companies with potential for outsized, rapid growth; one “fundreturner” can offset dozens of misses.

For founders, this explains why a promising company can still hear “no.”

just “raise a round.” We host coaching and conversations around: •

•

Not because it isn’t good, but because it doesn’t match the fund’s return profile. If your path is profitable and resilient but not 100x there are betteraligned capital options.

Community, Creativity and the Power of Connection Funding is never one-size-fitsall. In Southern Colorado, we see founders assemble capital from multiple sources: bootstrapping, friends and family, angels, revenuebased financing, grants, venture debt, equipment lenders, community banks and, yes, venture capital.

Most founders blend two or three across stages, using collateral when appropriate (sometimes a current asset; sometimes prior income) and sequencing instruments as the business de-risks.

But here’s the real unlock: connection. As Boodle AI CEO France Hoang advised at UCCS’s Spark the Springs, find a “battle buddy,” a peer outside your startup to pressure-test decisions and commiserate through the tough weeks. Larry Plummer, chair of the bachelor of innovation program at UCCS, has written in this publication on how isolation feeds imposter syndrome; community counters it. When founders compare notes on valuation, dilution, lender covenants and customer-funded growth, they move faster and make fewer costly mistakes.

What Community Looks like at Exponential Impact At XI, founders, experienced operators and capital providers routinely sit down to map options, not

•

•

Matching instrument to model: equity vs. revenue-share vs. debt (working capital, equipment, venture debt).

Sequencing capital: non-dilutive first (grants, customers), then angels/seed if the growth curve requires it.

Deal hygiene: data rooms, cash conversion cycles and covenant awareness to avoid surprises.

Peer perspective: what terms look like on the ground, not just on blogs.

Given that less than one percent of startups ever raise traditional VC, the majority path is, and always has been, creative financing. That’s not second best; it’s the default for resilient companies that pick the right tempo, the right partners and the right structure for their growth.

Join the Conversation If you’re a founder exploring alternatives to pure equity, or a seasoned entrepreneur or capital provider willing to share what you’ve learned, join us. Exponential Impact is more than an accelerator; it’s Southern Colorado’s front porch for capital conversations. Come to one of our workshops, participate in a Pitch Night or join in for Tech Connect Coffee and Community, every Thursday morning. Bring your questions and your scar tissue.

Together, we’ll chart the revenue path that fits your business.

Max Cupp is the executive director for Exponential Impact.

22 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest N ONPR OFIT

Homeowners Can “Pay it Forward” Through Energy-Efficient Upgrades

BY KERI KAHN

A

ccording to the Pikes Peak Housing Network’s 2024 Housing Data Report for El Paso County, at the current median household income, 34% of residents are cost-burdened because they spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs, including insurance and utilities.

Mike Mazzola is director of programs for the Energy Resource Center (ERC), which provides free energy-efficient upgrades to incomequalified homes. He says it’s often people with lower incomes who live in older, less efficient homes and therefore have higher utility bills than people with higher incomes and more efficient homes.

“People are in need. We’ve got inflation, the economy, grocery prices ... and low-income families are getting squeezed,” he says.

ERC has 142 employees and serves 27 counties in Colorado with regional offices in Alamosa, Berthoud, Colorado Springs, Denver and Sterling.

Through a grant that Colorado’s Energy Office administers, the 501(c)(3) empowers low-income families by providing no-cost services like wall, attic and crawlspace insulation; air sealing and weather stripping; water-saving measures; furnace replacement or repair; water heater replacement; and carbon monoxide and smoke detector installation.

In the 2024-2025 fiscal year, ERC served about 2,000 households.

Mazzola says the average spent per home is $10,000 and that his organization generates $300,000 in utility savings annually.

“We lower their utility bills

permanently when we insulate the house,” he says, “and 15 years from now, that insulation is still saving energy.”

Diversifying Funding with Social Enterprise Each ERC regional office has separate contracts. The Colorado Springs office, for instance, receives funding from Colorado Springs Utilities. Like other nonprofits, ERC sees diversified funding as a necessity in this day and age and, for that reason, is launching a social enterprise called Pay It Forward.

“This program is an important piece to our overall funding. We can use our expertise to create additional revenue and help even more people,” says Mazzola.

Pay It Forward will charge market rates for HVAC, plumbing, insulation and furnace services for homeowners who do not qualify for ERC’s free upgrades.

“You might get a bid from us and two other people. We’re in competition in the for-profit market, and then if you hire us, all the profits stay with Energy Resource Center to help more families,” says Mazzola. “It will mean capital improvements to expand our warehouse, or applying it directly to help people with their homes.”

ERC plans to start slowly and grow the program over time, and the nonprofit anticipates hiring additional staff within the next 12 months.

Keri Kahn is a staff writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

The Energy Resource Center provides nocost services like wall, attic and crawlspace insulation for low-income families through a grant administered by the State of Colorado’s Energy Office.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

about ERC and the Pay It Forward program:

ERC-CO.ORG

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 23 IN DUST R Y PR OFILE

Want to Write a Book But You Can’t Write?

The Guide to Ghostwriters for Business

BY THERESA WOODS

A

n increasing number of business experts and leaders are writing books.

“A published book has the potential to increase your visibility, position you as a thought leader, attract more attention to your work or your company and even generate a little income,” says Marcia Layton Turner, executive director and founder of the Association of Ghostwriters and a ghostwriter herself. “However, all of those benefits are predicated on you releasing a well-written book,”

What is a Ghostwriter?

A ghostwriter is a professional who “can take information and then present it so that it sounds like their client,” explains Turner. “They’re working with you to help you better communicate your message or methodology, your ideas, your stories.”

A ghostwriter does not work on their own and then hand over a completed manuscript, she says. “A ghostwriter is really a writing partner … They’re not going to do all your thinking for you.”

“It’s a collaboration,” says Susan Joy Paul, a local author who has ghostwritten more than 80 books.

After hours of intense interviews, she takes the transcripts and organizes the author’s ideas and words into a book structure. Then she writes and submits drafts for the author’s review and revision. “I have to rewrite it in their voice, into the tone that they want,” says Paul. “You want to develop your own voice and tone, and you don’t want mine. You want to sound like you.”

Do You Have a Book?

A viable book idea must address a hole in the market.

“For it to be worth doing, I think it needs to showcase the author’s particular expertise or knowledge in a way that other people haven’t,” says Turner. The topic must also have enough substantive content to fill 250 pages, or 60,000 words. “I also need to know what’s the reader going to

US Book Production 2004: 0.29 million 2009: 1.05 million 2019: 4 million

Self-Published Books Over Time 2014: 0.6 million 2015: 0.72 million 2016: 0.81 million

2017: 1.19 million 2018: 1.67 million 2019: 1.7 million Source: Zappia

get out of it,” says Paul. “Why are you qualified to write this book? Who’s your audience?”

“Right now, people are more interested in buying books that are going to help them get better at something,” says Turner. “How-to books or even leadership books ... as long as they have takeaways.”

How to Hire a Ghostwriter The most important consideration when selecting a ghost writer is chemistry and fit, according to both Turner and Paul.

“I encourage them to talk to other people,” Paul says. “It’s a job interview. … Interview a few other people, see who you click with.”

“Better books come out of ghostwriting relationships where the two parties get along,” says Turner.

She also advises considering energy level. “Can you match their energy level, and do you want to?”

Other recommendations are to hire someone who has written other books in the subject area, “just because the learning curve is shorter,” says Turner.

She also recommends looking at writing samples. “Look to see evidence that the ghostwriter can write in different voices and that it’s not all just sounding, probably, like them.”

“Hire someone you trust, that you feel comfortable with, because they’re going to ask you hard questions. You’re going to have to be willing to be open and vulnerable with them. A lot of my authors cry on our calls,” states Paul.

There are independent freelance ghostwriters available through LinkedIn and sites such as the Association of Ghostwriters.

Agencies can connect authors with ghostwriters also (such as Kevin Anderson and Associates and Gotham Ghostwriters).

Above all, remember this is a business arrangement and it requires a detailed contract. Some important items to include: strict nondisclosure and non-compete standards, payment schedule and amounts, ownership and rights, manuscript format and publication readiness stage at delivery.

for $4,000,” says Turner.” Paul concurs.

“About a quarter of ghostwriters charge six figures or more. … Expect at least $1 per word. … You can get a very cheap ghostwriter on sites like Upwork and Fiverr. However, you get what you paid for,” says Paul.

Other red flags are a ghostwriter or agency not willing to meet over video calls or asking for more than half the total fee up front.

“Be really careful who you hire … research their ghostwriter thoroughly,” advises Paul. “Try to write your book yourself first, just hire a good book coach. See how it goes. A lot of my ghostwriting projects started off as book coaching.”

Theresa Woods is a staff writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

What to Watch Out For “There’s so many scammers out there,” says Turner. “There are many authors who are getting taken, and they’re losing thousands of dollars because they hire firms that look legit and they just aren’t.” She recommends asking to speak to former clients and to see samples of their work.

Unusually low rates are a warning sign. “You’re not going to get a book

MORE INFORMATION

about ghostwriting is found at:

associationofghostwriters.org gothamghostwriters.com ka-writing.com marcialaytonturner.com susanjoypaul.com

24 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest MANUFACT UR ING

Trussworks Expanding to Pueblo with New Manufacturing Facility

BY TIFFANY UNDERWO O D

T

russworks Operations, a nationally recognized manufacturer of structural building components, has announced plans to open a new production facility in Pueblo. The expansion marks the company’s first location in Colorado and represents a significant investment in the region’s growing manufacturing sector.

The new facility, located in the Airport Industrial Park east of the city, will produce high-quality trusses for large-scale multifamily and commercial projects. At full capacity, the plant is expected to employ 65 full-time workers and generate an estimated $3.53 million in annual prebenefit payroll.

Partners Mike Bellows, Don Groom and Tony Urban established Trussworks in 2017 in Texas.

“Their expertise was the rocket fuel that propelled Trussworks to what it is today,” says Travis Anderson, operations manager for Trussworks.

“Our leadership team brings decades of experience, which sets us apart in how we partner with our customers from estimating jobs to designing them and getting the product delivered on time.”

Since its founding, the company has expanded across several states, with truss plants in Oklahoma, Arizona, Missouri and Arkansas. With additional developments underway in Colorado and Florida, the Pueblo facility represents the next step in a broader national growth plan.

Why Pueblo Anderson says that Pueblo stood out as a natural fit for Trussworks’ expansion due to its industrial base, transportation access and skilled workforce.

“Pueblo is a great fit for us because of the industrial base and labor pool that already exists in the city,” he says.

“The location made sense as well, as we plan on servicing the state of Colorado and our current customers in the surrounding region.”

Access to Interstate 25 and rail

line service was also critical in the company’s site selection. Anderson notes that Trussworks was impressed by the city’s business-friendly approach and its willingness to partner with new employers.

“Meeting with the City of Pueblo and seeing their commitment to partnering with new business entering the state made it clear that they are serious about bringing in more jobs to the community,” he says.

Jobs and Economic Impact The Pueblo Economic Development Corp. (PEDCO) worked closely with Trussworks to bring the project to fruition. The company will receive $1.43 million from the City of Pueblo’s half-cent fund for land, building and equipment, as well as up to $32,000 for employee training. The total investment in the facility is expected to reach $6 million.

In a press release, Jeff Shaw, president and CEO of PEDCO, said, “PEDCO is happy to work with Trussworks Operations on this wonderful project for Pueblo. Their team has been wonderful to work with and will fit in perfectly in Pueblo’s manufacturing culture.”

The new plant will employ workers in several key roles, including truss builders, material handlers, truck drivers, maintenance technicians and administrative staff. On-the-job training will be provided for new hires.

“We’re looking for motivated individuals who want to make an impact right in their backyard,” Anderson says. “As we continue to grow our business, employees will have the opportunity to move into leadership, design and project management roles.”

Trussworks also plans to collaborate with local educational institutions and workforce programs to help prepare new hires. “Pueblo offers many programs that train people in different trades, and this training will help new hires have more success entering into our business,” Anderson says.

Dominic Gallina, Chairman of the PEDCO Board of Directors

“Their investment is not only a vote of confidence in the Pueblo workforce, but also a testament to the strength of our primary job initiatives.

It’s truly a great day for Pueblo.”

Looking Ahead In the short term, Trussworks plans to begin operations in its existing building on the property, with future plans to construct an additional facility on-site. Long term, the company aims to grow its customer base in Colorado and the surrounding states while deepening its investment in Pueblo’s manufacturing community.

“Pueblo has always been a bluecollar industrial community, and many of us at Trussworks come from the same types of communities,” Anderson says. “Coming to Pueblo feels natural.”

In a press release, Dominic Gallina, chairman of the PEDCO Board of

Directors, said Trussworks’ investment highlights Pueblo’s ongoing economic momentum. “Their investment is not only a vote of confidence in the Pueblo workforce, but also a testament to the strength of our primary job initiatives,” Gallina said. “It’s truly a great day for Pueblo.”

Tiffany Underwood is a staff writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

OPERATIONS, LLC

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 25 MUST R EAD

Thought Partner

The Fusion of Soul and System: The AI Collaboration

by Jonathan A. Liebert

Available on aithoughtpartner.co early December 2025.

A

ccording to this book, AI is not here to replace human intelligence: It’s here to expand it.

Thought Partner is a guide to the next evolution of thinking, where human creativity, emotion and ethics fuse with the logic, speed and scale of artificial intelligence.

In this groundbreaking book, Jonathan A. Liebert reveals how to transform AI from a mere productivity tool into a true collaborator in thought, one that sharpens your mind, deepens your discernment and accelerates your creativity.

Drawing from psychology, philosophy and lived experience, Liebert explores seven stages of AI-enhanced cognition — from critical thinking and cognitive stillness to discernment, curiosity and the rise of Synthios, the fusion of human and machine intelligence. Along the way, he introduces The Prometheans — a movement of leaders and creators redefining what it means to be intelligent in an age of partnership.

More than a book about technology, Thought Partner is a declaration of human potential.

It marks the beginning of an evolution in consciousness and an invitation to think differently, to evolve deliberately and to approach AI not with fear, but with purpose, curiosity and courage.

Because the future of intelligence is not artificial. It is the fusion of soul and system.

Jonathan Liebert is currently the CEO of the Better Business Bureau of Southern Colorado, author and adjunct faculty at University of Colorado Colorado Springs. Liebert is a native of Colorado Springs and speaks on topics ranging from Artificial Intelligence to Social Impact and Entrepreneurship.

26 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest MAR KET ING

Businesses Can Benefit from State 2026 Celebrations

BY THERESA WOODS

•

esources and toolkits as part of the statewide and national marketing campaigns surrounding the 2026 Sesquisemiquincentennial are available to businesses. This dual celebration of America’s 250th birthday and Colorado’s 150th year of statehood is expected to boost travel and drive interest in cultural and heritage tourism across the state.

Business participation in the commemorations can increase visibility, attract new customers and build long-term tourism growth.

Ways to capture America250 — Colorado 150 Celebration Opportunities:

•

R

• •

Create heritage-themed products, packages, menus or experiences Apply to be included in the Colorado Digital Passport

•

• • • • • •

•

Use America250 – Colorado 150 branding resources Tell authentic Colorado stories about you, your family and your business Use social media graphics and sample messaging from the Community Toolkit Host gatherings, trivia nights or other historically themed activities Add your events to the statewide event calendar Sponsor or participate in local community events Host the print-on-demand exhibition “Moments that Made Us” Participate in a Colorado Day mountain climb The free Community Toolkit has ideas and resources to attract travelers searching for “things to do in Colorado in 2026.”

Statewide Drone Shows will be held to drive visitation, local

•

•

spending and media attention.

History Colorado offers new exhibits, free educator guides, exhibit templates and storytelling workshops to help highlight local history.

The Colorado Digital Passport program encourages residents and visitors to explore Colorado's attractions and businesses.

Events surrounding historic preservation, storytelling and oral history projects, special publications and historical markers are planned. Grant funding for community projects is available.

Theresa Woods is a staff writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

RESOURCES AVAILABLE AT:

• colorado.com/am250-co150 • historycolorado.org/ colorado-150 • colorado.com/passport • america250.org • aaslh.org/programs/250th

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 27 EN TR EPR ENEUR SHIP

Your Holiday Shopping has Power

BY L A RRY PLUMMER

E

very entrepreneur knows the feeling — that pit in your stomach when you check the bank account during a slow month. While deep-pocket corporate giants can weather economic storms, younger smaller ventures face a different reality. For them, seasonality and business cycles aren’t abstract economic concepts; they’re the difference between making payroll and closing shop.

Seasonality hits certain businesses with particular force. The ski resort that thrives in winter sits nearly empty in summer. The landscaping company that can’t keep up with demand in spring watches revenue evaporate when snow falls. Retail shops that depend on holiday sales may generate 40% of their annual revenue in just two months.

This feast-or-famine cycle creates a constant juggling act of managing

inventory, staffing and cash flow.

Business cycles add another layer of complexity. During economic expansions, consumers spend freely and businesses invest confidently. But when recession clouds gather, discretionary spending drops first — and some businesses feel it immediately. Unlike large corporations with multiple revenue streams and credit lines, entrepreneurs often operate on thin margins with limited reserves.

Smart entrepreneurs develop strategies to smooth these fluctuations. Some diversify their offerings — the wedding photographer who shoots corporate events in the off-season, or the ice cream shop that adds coffee and pastries for winter customers. Others build robust online presences to reach customers beyond their immediate geography. Many maintain careful cash reserves during peak seasons to sustain operations during valleys.

Supporting seniors to

AGE WITH DIGNITY & INDEPENDENCE Boost your company’s social impact while making a difference for seniors—get involved by volunteering today!

Come take a tour to learn what we do for your community.

To learn more, scan the QR code or visit silverkey.org

JOIN US! Contact development@silverkey.org today!

But here’s the truth: even the most strategic entrepreneur can’t completely eliminate the impact of these cycles. They need us — their customers — to show up, especially during critical periods.

Local Businesses Return Roughly Three Times More Money to the Local Economy than Chain Stores.

The holiday season represents a make-or-break moment for many community businesses. That local bookstore, the artisan jewelry maker at the farmers market, the familyowned restaurant on Main Street that you love — they’re counting on holiday sales to carry them through slower months ahead. When we choose to shop at these businesses instead of clicking “add to cart” on a massive e-commerce site, we’re doing more than making a purchase.

We’re investing in our community’s economic resilience.

Consider what happens when you shop local. Your dollars circulate through the community multiple times — the shop owner pays local suppliers, employees spend their wages at nearby businesses and tax revenue supports community services.

A 2004 study shows that local businesses return roughly three times

more money to the local economy than chain stores.

Beyond economics, there’s something deeply human about supporting entrepreneurs. These are people who took risks to pursue their dreams, who pour their hearts into creating products and experiences they believe in. They know their customers by name. They sponsor Little League teams and donate to school fundraisers. They’re woven into the fabric of community life.

This holiday season, challenge yourself to shift even a portion of your shopping to local entrepreneurs.

The least we can do is throw them a lifeline when it matters most.

Your holiday shopping choices have power — use them to build the kind of community you want to live in.

Larry Plummer holds the El Pomar Chair in Business and Entrepreneurship and is the interim director of the El Pomar Institute for Innovation and Commercialization (EPIIC) at UCCS. He is internationally recognized for his research on regional entrepreneurial ecosystems and development.

*Civic Economics. (2004). The Andersonville Study of Retail Economics. Commissioned by Andersonville Development Corporation, Chicago, IL.

28 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest AG RICULT UR E

Federal Funding Cuts Impact Local Agriculture, Food Pantries and Small Grocers

BY THERESA WOODS

C

hanges to several federal programs have impacted Colorado’s agricultural system. Across all federal agencies, an estimated $6 billion in previously awarded funding to support agriculture and rural communities has been frozen or canceled.

Multiple agricultural industry groups are reporting delayed payments to farmers, lost jobs in rural communities and the imposition of additional federal bureaucratic processes as a result of these changes.

Colorado has 35,900 individual farms and ranches with 30 million acres, or 45% of the state’s land, in agricultural production. Colorado produces $10.5 billion in agricultural products and $47 billion in agricultural economic output annually.

Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program LFPA funds were awarded to states to purchase food directly from local small farmers and ranchers for distribution to food banks and food pantries. The program was announced on Dec. 6, 2021, and Colorado was the first state to enter into an agreement for the program, signed April 13, 2022. On March 11, 2025, a reported $420 million in budgeted 2025 funding to states was rescinded and all existing agreements under the program canceled.

As of October, Colorado received $12,018,145 in total under the program and purchased from 273 agricultural producers. The March announcement rescinded $4.5 million in program funding to Colorado. LFPA is funded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service Commodity Procurement Program budget.

Building Crisis in Agricultural Communities Long standing food pantry initiatives tripled in size with LFPA funding, according to Max Gibson,

executive director of the San Luis Valley Local Food Coalition. The coalition expands access to local food and supports small family farmers, ranchers and grocers in the San Luis Valley. One of the program’s important benefits for farmers and ranchers was guaranteed sales for a percentage of their products, as well as allowing them to plan and structure crop planting more efficiently.

Additionally, it allowed local agricultural producers to deliver their products to remote communities due to the increased customer base in those areas. These deliveries benefited the small-town local grocers who previously did not have the sales volume to support deliveries from producers. Residents benefited by having more food available closer than the 100-mile drive to the nearest chain grocery store.

“The local ranchers, they were really glad to not have to hustle on the front line just trying to find buyers for their product,” Gibson says. “What we’re really focused on is … how can we just keep business systems functioning in these small communities.” The coalition is seeking

other funding to support these programs, but it will be less than what LFPA provided.

The San Luis Valley is one of the state’s poorest areas and has a large percentage of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients.

“Our locally owned grocery stores take SNAP and rely so much on the SNAP dollars, that if people aren’t spending their SNAP dollars at the grocery stores, they may not be able to keep their doors open,” says Jae Sanders, the coalition’s Community Food & Agricultural Assessment & Action Plan program director, calling it a crisis for local grocers.

“Our vision for the future is that we don’t need the [food] pantries because we have a strong circular economy and these local grocery stores,” says Gibson.

The coalition recently shuttered its local Cooking Matters program, active since 2009, due to federal funding cuts to other programs. Cooking Matters taught a variety of cooking and nutrition skills through classes, workshops and social media.

CONTINUED ON P. 29

Top Five Counties

Where LFPA Purchased from Local Farmers/Ranchers:

1. Mesa $2,032,871 (19.3%) 2. Pitkin $955,157 (9.0%) 3. Denver $854,263 (8.1%) 4. Alamosa $841,472 (8.0%) 5. Pueblo $554,475 (5.2%)

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 29

Top Five Foods Purchased with LFPA Funds:

1. Produce $5,083,900 (48.1%) 2. Meat & Poultry $3,443,200 (32.6%) 3. Eggs $1,028,322 (9.7%) 4. Nuts, Seeds, Legumes $385,578 (3.6%) 5. Dairy $363,253 (3.4%) Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program LFS awarded funds to states to purchase food directly from local small farmers and ranchers to distribute to schools and childcare institutions. The program was announced Dec. 17, 2021. On March 11, 2025, $660 million in budgeted 2025 funding to states was rescinded and all existing agreements under the program canceled.

As of October, Colorado received a total of $2,649,917 since 2022.

The Regional Conservation Partnership Program In October 2024, the USDA awarded $1.5 billion for 92 RCPP projects through its grant application process.

Awarded projects included conservation easement, farmland preservation, irrigation improvements and flood control. Only 28 of the October 2024 grant recipients were informed they would receive awarded funding on June 11.

Approximately $1 billion in awarded RCPP grant funding to 69 selected projects was rescinded. The USDA did not release the list of canceled grant recipients.

RCPP has funded 16 projects in Colorado, several of which are in process, since its establishment in 2014.

Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Program Almost $3 billion in grants were awarded through PCSC in 2022. Awarded grants were for cover crop planting, conservation work, composting, improving soil health or manure management, drought resilience, data collection about grazing practices and other projects.

The federal administration froze funds for this program in February 2025, then canceled the program on April 14, 2025.

Grant recipients were notified in April that awarded grants would receive no further funding and incurred expenses would be honored only if they met newly established criteria.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, a national agricultural advocacy group, estimates the amount of PCSC funding affected in Colorado is close to $179 million.

Theresa Woods is a staff writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

30 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest GO OD BUSINESS

Businesses Step Up to Help People Affected by Governmental Shutdown

BY JE AN N E DAVANT

Coming Home Group and Others Carla Braddy, a real estate professional with Coming Home Group and owner of The Hive, a coworking space in Cañon City, woke up on a Thursday morning knowing she needed to do something.

“I grew up here, and as I engaged with people every day, I was told there were over 7,400 people who were with no SNAP benefits,” Braddy says.

She posed the idea of a food drive on social media, and two days later, on the first Saturday in November, Braddy purchased 75 pizzas from Papa Murphy’s and handed them out on the sidewalk in front of The Hive.

City Councilor Amy Schmisseur and Victoria Dugger, both of whom were furloughed from their jobs, started putting food collection boxes in local businesses in the Downtown area. They and other volunteers collected the items on subsequent Thursdays and Fridays, and each Saturday morning in November, they set up tables behind The Hive at 729 Main St., where people could take what they needed. Braddy supplemented nonperishables collected by the merchants with fresh food she purchased with cash donations. Anything left over was donated to local food pantries.

On the second Saturday, 40 people were in line at 9 a.m. when distribution began at The Hive.

Courtesy photo.

Photo credit: Zachary Allen

C

ommunities across Southern Colorado coalesced to help people affected by the government shutdown, and businesses played a huge and important role in assisting people who saw their resources shrink.

Restaurants offered discounts and provided free meals, and other businesses found ways to relieve the burdens of people who were furloughed or had SNAP benefits withheld.

Here are the stories of three businesses that went above and beyond to support their communities.

Carla Braddy (left), owner of The Hive.

They came from all segments of the community. Braddy says one man told her, “I’ve never done this before; I’m really nervous.”

There was plenty of food to help these recipients, thanks to the efforts of local merchants who offered discounts to those who contributed and helped spread the word about the food drive.

Participants as of mid-November included My Brother’s Place, Dream Wolf Arts, Sally’s Bakery, Autumn’s Attic, Yarned and Dangerous, Royal Gorge Creamery, Chrysalis Consignments, M & M Decorating Center, The Lucky Stop, Salon de Cheveux and the Fremont Center for the Arts.

The Sacred Bean At The Sacred Bean, a coffee shop and café in Pueblo, customers can “pay it forward” by adding a food item to their order that will help feed someone in the community.

It’s something that the shop was doing before the shutdown, but “we’ve been pushing it out a little more,” says Vicy Stone, owner of The Sacred Bean with her husband Daniel.

Customers can contribute a dollar amount, but most people purchase items like a breakfast sandwich to add to the pay-it-forward stock. Stone also offers a few daily items, such as soup, overnight oats and coffee.

Customers can ask the barista what is available on the pay-it-forward menu

Vicy and Daniel Stone, owners of the Sacred Bean. and pick what they like.

The Sacred Bean also provides free meals for kids in need.

“I have kids myself,” says Stone, a Pueblo native. “I grew up very poor, and we didn’t have assistance. So, any kid that comes in and needs a meal, we offer that.”

The shop has a collection box for nonperishable food items and toiletries with a sign that says, “Take what you need, leave what you can.”

Stone says she’s looking to expand that to a cabinet big enough to hold larger items like blankets.

“We’ve been talking about putting together a community potluck,” she says. “I try to give back however I can.”

Ent Credit Union Ent Credit Union, the largest in Colorado based on assets and memberships, has a heart as big as its reach and a history of giving back to the community. This year, the credit union is giving more than $3 million across the state to organizations that support youth, community enrichment and food security, says Annie Snead, executive director of philanthropy and community relations.

Ent gave $25,000 each to Care and Share, which serves Pueblo and Cañon City as well as the Pikes Peak region, and Food Bank of the Rockies and authorized an $8,000 gift to Adams State University for emergency food funding in Alamosa, where Ent just opened a new service center. Ent

also has service centers in Southern Colorado locations including Castle Rock, Woodland Park, Fountain, Pueblo and Cañon City.

“We heard from so many members who were missing paychecks,” Snead says, “and sometimes it was single moms who were on furlough and trying to make ends meet.”

To help them, Ent did a one-time sweepstakes and gave out $250 gift cards to 200 members.

In addition, Ent’s senior vice president of governmental relations and credit union advocacy reached out to other members of the credit union network in Colorado and encouraged them to give more. His efforts spurred $220,000 in donations to food banks, Snead says.

Ent’s collections and loan department offers an ongoing skip-apay program to members with auto, RV, motorcycle and personal loans who are facing financial stress.

“We know that the ripple effects of missing paychecks or SNAP benefits are going to be felt for weeks, if not months,” Snead says. “So, we have a financial coaching program: whether you’re a member or not, you can meet with one of our certified financial coaches at one of our service centers or virtually, and they can walk you through budgeting. That could be something to lean on for folks across Colorado for the next few months.”

Jeanne Davant is a senior writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 31

Economic Forum

Understanding Colorado Springs’ Municipal Finance Woes

BY WILLIAM CRAIGHE AD, PH.D.

T

he City of Colorado Springs has been under financial strain – in September, the city announced that it was cutting 38 staff positions and closing the Meadows Park Community Center.

Colorado Springs is far from alone among U.S. cities in facing financial stringency – cities from Austin to Aurora are trimming budgets.

The main driver of the city’s difficulties has been weakness in sales tax revenue. This fluctuates with the seasons, so the accompanying graph smooths it by using a 12-month average. Average collections in the 12 months through September 2025 were

down 0.6% from the year before.

Sales tax revenue is an imperfect reflection of the overall economy – most services and many goods, including groceries, are not subject to sales tax, so weak sales tax collections do not mean that the economy is in a recession, though it is clear that activity is no longer expanding at the rapid pace we’d become accustomed to.

The narrowness of the sales tax base increases the importance of changes in the things that are included. Among these, one category stands out – building materials. The region saw a surge in building permits in 2021 and 2022 which has since subsided with higher interest rates. With a bit of a time lag, building activity

has followed the decline in permitting, which means that the city is collecting much less revenue from sales of building materials.

As of September, the 12-month average of sales tax collections in this category was down 12.0% from the same period the previous year. Building materials accounted for one-in-eight dollars of sales and use tax revenue over the past year. The decline in this category was, therefore, large enough to pull down total revenue so much as to make it negative. The other categories were positive, albeit modestly so, with an increase of 1.3% in the same period.

While the regional economy has slowed, the impact on the city’s finances has been magnified by

relying on a revenue source that is heavily influenced by the volatility of construction activity. Sales and use tax accounts for 60% of the city’s general fund revenue. While every revenue source brings its own risks and downsides, diversifying the sources of funding would give more stability to the city’s budget; for example, many cities get a larger share of their revenue from property tax, which is less volatile.

William Craighead, Ph.D. is the program director of the UCCS Economic Forum College of Business.

32 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest A Legacy Carried Forward by the

EC ONOM ICS

Breakdown of COS 2026 Budget Challenges

BY WAYN E HEILMAN

T

he general fund of the City of Colorado Springs 2026 budget will decline $11 million from this year’s spending levels, largely due to waning consumer confidence and sluggish economic growth, Finance Director Charae McDaniel says.

Much of the reduction, $7.7 million, will come in matching funds for federal grants that will instead be funded by revenue from the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority, to avoid canceling or postponing any capital projects, McDaniel says. Much of the remaining reduction will come in postponing vehicle replacement for the Police, Public Works and Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services departments, she says.

That doesn’t mean the cuts won’t have some impact — the city is leaving 60 positions unfilled across all funds and laid off 34 employees in September, which combined represents about 3% of the city’s overall workforce. Most of those cuts will be in the Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services as well as civilians in the Fire and Police departments,

which combined represents nearly two-thirds of city staff.

“We continue to have public safety and infrastructure as [budget] priorities. We tried to keep reductions in police and fire as little as possible.

It is very important not to impact services to the community, so we made them [the cuts] as minimal as possible in public safety,” McDaniel says. “We are leaving positions unfunded that will not be hired next year but will remain” in the budget, if funding becomes available, she explains.

The spending cuts are needed because of weak sales tax collections, which through September are down 0.3% from the same period a year earlier amid weak consumer confidence and economic uncertainty.

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Much of the weakness in sales tax revenue has come from sales of building materials, resulting from mortgage rates peaking at more than 7% in January and falling to 6.17% in late October.

Some items cut in the city’s initial 2026 budget — including a canceled Fire Department training academy and a delayed Police Department academy — could be restored from taxes paid on recreational marijuana sales, McDaniel said.

Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade cut $31 million in planned spending in September because sales tax revenue was falling well short of what had been budgeted. Those reductions included the 34 layoffs, five furlough days next year for most city employees, immediately closing the Meadows Park Community Center

and reallocating nearly $15 million in capital spending.

The 2026 budget calls for sales tax collections to increase 1.4%, which McDaniel says is based on forecasts of two interest rate cuts and slightly stronger U.S. economic growth. The city expects collections to recover to 2% growth in 2027.

Mobolade submitted the city’s 2026 budget to the Colorado Springs City Council on Oct. 6. Council made few changes in the budget during an Oct. 30 markup session. The council is scheduled for initial budget approval on Nov. 10, and final approval for Nov. 24.

The Digest will continue to follow this developing story; look for updates on socodigest.com Wayne Heilman is a senior writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 33 A Legacy Carried Forward by the

EN ER GY

CSU Flips Switch on New Electric Rates

BY JE AN N E DAVANT

C

olorado Springs Utilities is switching on new rates that affect both businesses and residents.

But the new rates under the Energy Wise program don’t necessarily mean commercial customers will be paying more. In fact, 50% of CSU’s customers will see their electric bills decrease, says Tristan Gearhart, CSU chief planning and finance officer.

Those customers who will see their bills increase can take steps to lower their usage, and CSU is standing by to help businesses decide how to save energy and pick the best billing options, Gearhart says.

In essence, the new scenarios are designed to reward customers for shifting energy use to off-peak times, when overall demand is lower.

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Energy Wise rates are based on usage during on- and off-peak time periods. Rates increase during on-peak times from 5-9 p.m. Monday through Friday. Rates decrease during off-peak times, before 5 p.m. and after 9 p.m. and all weekend days and holidays.

Rates will be higher between June and September, when demand for power is higher, and lower between October and May. Overall, the offpeak rates, which are slightly lower than current rates, apply about 85% of the year, he says.

Energy Wise Plus rates have similar parameters but offer even lower rates during off-peak “saver” periods from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. every day.

Small businesses with peak demand less than 10kW can choose a Fixed Seasonal Rate option. With this scenario, the rate is higher than off-peak Energy Wise rates but lower than on-peak rates; rates will shift season to season.

The Energy Wise rates include a demand charge for business customers with maximum demand of 10kW or above, Gearhart says.

Demand is calculated using the highest usage generated over 15

Smart Energy-Saving Tips for Businesses Businesses can lower energy use and save money on bills by implementing small changes.

• Install programmable thermostats and adjust them to lower heating and cooling use during peak hours.

• Schedule to minimize use of equipment and major appliances during peak hours.

• Schedule cleaning tasks, such as vacuuming or using a dryer, or maintenance and deep cleaning during off-peak periods.

• Use natural light or dimmers when possible and replace older light bulbs with ENERGY STAR®-qualified LED bulbs.

• Install lights on timers with motion sensors in areas such as bathrooms, break rooms and storerooms. In other areas, turn off lights when not in use.

• Plug multiple small devices into smart power strips to turn them off with one switch.

• Turn off or put registers, computers and monitors/TVs in low-power mode when not in use.

• Stagger the turn-on of high-usage equipment to avoid spikes during peak times.

• Check for air leaks around windows and doors and seal them.

• Regularly monitor energy usage to identify peak contributors and pinpoint what is driving demand.

Source: csu.org

minutes in any billing period.

“The reason that’s important is because Utilities has to build all of our systems to be able to handle the instantaneous load that’s happening, to make sure we can flow all the electricity people are wanting at one particular time,” he says. “The demand charge covers the costs related to building a system large enough to handle the maximum draw.”

The demand charge is a small component of the rate for small commercial customers, he says.

Demand charges have been part of rates for CSU’s large industrial customers for years, he says.

The new rates also factor in the rate schedules and tariffs approved in 2024, he says. Those base rate increases will begin with February bills, Gearhart says.

The new rates for both residential and business customers are being phased in based on customers’ billing cycles. Customers will receive a letter notifying them about the start on the new rates a minimum of 30 days

before they go into effect. As of Nov. 4, more than 4,500 residential and 1,838 business customers were on Energy Wise rates.

Obviously, the on-peak rate hikes will hit some businesses, such as restaurants, harder than others, Gearhart says.

“We’ve had a lot of outreach with these customers, and we’ll continue to have conversations with them as we work to transition customers over to these rates,” he says.

Gearhart points out that weekends and holidays are entirely off-peak.

Many commercial and industrial customers already have CSU account managers who are working with them, Gerhart says. He urges businesses to watch for notification letters and contact CSU for a consultation about the new rates. Consultants also can work with businesses on how they can reduce energy usage. Small changes may mean that customers can save on their electric bills, he says.

CSU recommends that commercial customers schedule a free energy audit to help them make smart choices and energy-saving improvements.

Gearhart encourages customers to visit CSU’s Energy Wise landing page or view a video by scanning the QR code below. It leads to more information about rates and demand charges, and information on lowering energy usage and bills.

“There is a lot for businesses to consider, and each business is a little bit different,” he says. “We have the staff, the account management team, the customer service reps that can help our business customers make that evaluation.”

Jeanne Davant is a senior writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

34 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest A Legacy Carried Forward by the

W OR K FOR CE

Breaking Barriers to Prepare a College-Educated Workforce

BY KERI KAHN

F

orty high school seniors passed up the opportunity to sleep in one Saturday morning in November. Instead, they attended Peak Education’s First Gen Celebration, which honored them for being the first in their families on their way to attending college.

The event showcased Peak Education’s new building at 117 S. Wahsatch Ave. and spotlighted students like Jerick Arcega, a Harrison High School senior and the oldest of five siblings born to young parents.

“They only finished high school and started working,” Arcega says of his parents. “And they’ve helped set me up for college education and all this college aid.”

The event illustrated the ongoing need for resources to help trailblazing students like Arcega and the strength of Peak Education in a time when nonprofits face great uncertainty.

Removing Obstacles for Post-Secondary Education According to the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, the average lifetime earnings between a bachelor’s degree and high school diploma is a $1.2 million differential.

Georgetown also projects that, by 2031, Colorado will be one of four states with the lowest share of jobs for workers with only a high school diploma. Seventy-three percent of Colorado jobs will require a postsecondary credential, and 30% of those jobs will require a bachelor’s degree.

College seems out of reach for many students, but Peak Education identifies potential in middle school students and helps them overcome systemic barriers to reach that potential.

“Why would we let somebody who’s perfectly capable, who’s going to do incredibly great things after they get their education? … Why would we let a barrier stand in their way?” asks Carlos Jimenez, the nonprofit’s executive director.

A Strong Foundation for Bigger Dreams The growth Peak Education has experienced under Jimenez’ leadership is nothing short of remarkable.

The organization generated $2.5 million in revenue in 2024, compared to $280,000 in 2019 — a year before Jimenez took the helm. The group purchased and moved into a new building last April. By the end of 2025, Jimenez estimates, the capital campaign will have generated $1 million of the $2 million purchase price.

With a solid foundation in place, Jimenez says diversified funding, stakeholder expansion and revenuegenerating programs have been key.

“The margins are thin, and it is really hard and really challenging, and even as we do great work at Peak Ed, without continual donations and investment from the community, it would be very challenging to maintain this and grow.”

Generating Revenue During Economic Instability The nonprofit takes in revenue from partners including local school districts that collaborate on initiatives to increase college and career readiness. At Palmer High School, for instance, a Lane Foundation grant enables Peak Education to embed staff within the school.

Another revenue stream is the social enterprise program called Base Camp.

“Some middle and upper-income families can pay and get additional support with the college admission process,” explains Jimenez. “Eighty percent of the proceeds go back into funding general operations of Peak Ed and then the other 20% covers the cost of doing the service.”

Program expansion has earned Peak Education a reputation as an innovative organization. For this reason, EAB (formerly Education Advisory Board) selected the nonprofit to conduct a regional pilot of its direct admission process.

Jerick Arcega is the oldest of five children, and as the first in his family to apply for college, he is blazing a trail of higher education for his siblings.

Simplifying the Admissions Process Through this pilot, which rolled out in September, students can visit peakedu.org/directadmissions to apply to multiple schools with a simple, single application.

Participating schools are Adams State University, Colorado Mesa University, CSU Pueblo, Fort Lewis College, Pikes Peak State College, University of Northern Colorado, University of Colorado Colorado Springs and Western Colorado University.

Jimenez says the process has facilitated 2,500 admission decisions and generated $17 million in scholarship offers this fall.

Critics may argue the process is too easy, but for many kids the complicated nature of traditional admissions is often just one more barrier.

Once a student has a path forward, the streamlined process may inspire bigger dreams.

“Now that you’ve already got college in your back pocket no matter what, maybe you could dream even bigger and think bigger about where

you might want to go,” says Jimenez.

“Why not throw in an application to another college or try CU Boulder?”

At the First Gen celebration, Arcega planned to complete an application, as he hopes to study computer science at UCCS. He says being a First Gen student sometimes makes him feel stressed and uncertain but that the process is manageable with Peak Education’s support.

“It’s definitely needed, especially since I’m the oldest. So, it’s setting up not only myself, but also a standard aligned for the other four.”

Setting a standard of higher education for his family is what makes Arcega a trailblazer, and trailblazing students are what Colorado needs to fill its college-educated workforce of the future.

Peak Education will host a holiday party on Colorado Gives Day (Dec. 9) and invites the community to see the new building and learn about its mission. Visit peakedu.org for more information.

Keri Kahn is a staff writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 35 A Legacy Carried Forward by the

EN ER GY

State Holding Firm on Colorado River Negotiations

BY A BBY ORT EGA BRO UGHT TO YOU BY CO LO R A D O SP RIN GS UTILITIES

Colorado Springs Utilities stores some of its Colorado River Basin supplies in reservoirs on Hoosier Pass.

A Quick Review of How Colorado River Water is Shared: •

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The Colorado River begins as snowmelt along the Continental Divide in Colorado and winds its way through the Southwest toward Mexico.

Seven states rely on water from the Colorado River Basin. They are divided into Upper Basin (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico) and Lower Basin (Arizona, Nevada and California).

The 1922 Colorado River Compact promised certainty and security of water supplies for both the Upper and Lower Basins. Each was granted use of 7.5 million acre-feet of water a year, or 75 million acrefeet on a 10-year rolling average.

The Upper Basin states, which receive the bulk of snowpack, are required to ensure the Lower Basin states receive their compact allocation. That water is stored in Lake Mead and Lake Powell.

Changing climate conditions over many years have resulted in lower flows in the river, yet the Lower Basin continued to pull mightily from storage, even as the Upper Basin managed with less

water in dry years. The imbalance resulted in near-critical levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell in 2021, requiring water to be released from upstream federal reservoirs — including Blue Mesa in Colorado — as a stop-gap measure.

Unfortunately, this water was released to the Lower Basin for use rather than remaining in Lake Powell to boost storage.

Two facts underscore the Upper Basin’s position in negotiations: Water going into Lake Powell is consistently less than what is going out (the Lower Basin is using more than their share), and the Lower Basin is not accounting for significant evaporation losses in Lake Powell in their calculations.

Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s commissioner to the Upper Basin Commission, has remained steadfast in defending Colorado’s rights under the compact. She seeks to prevent Lower Basin overuse and has resisted attempts to impose additional cuts on the Upper Basin states beyond those Mother Nature already imposes.

Legal and administrative uncertainties remain, but there is strong support for Mitchell’s stance to protect all Colorado River water users in this state.

Meanwhile, Colorado Springs

Submitted photo.

A

major November deadline for Colorado River negotiations passed without resolution, though hope remains for an agreement to avoid federal intervention.

The seven Colorado River Basin states were expected to submit broad parameters for managing Lake Powell and Lake Mead by Nov. 11, but failed to find consensus. However, enough progress was made to warrant an extension, according to a joint statement from federal officials and the states’ representatives. Continued discussions — and the deadline for them — were set to an urgent timeline of mid-February 2026. Current guidelines are expiring, and a new finalized agreement must be in place

by October 2026, the start of the 2027 water year.

What’s being negotiated are the future operating guidelines for the two large storage reservoirs. The guidelines must be realistic and resilient and not allow one reservoir to be drained to shore up the other, as has happened in recent years. Both reservoirs have hovered near critical levels for a few years.

These talks are critical for Colorado Springs. Half of the city’s water comes from the Colorado River Basin through trans-basin diversions that cross the Continental Divide.

Because trans-basin water can be reused, the value of those supplies is multiplied.

Ongoing drought in the West already threatens Colorado River supplies for Coloradans who rely on them. In 2012, for example, Colorado Springs received only 35% of the expected yield. The Upper Colorado River Basin states have had to manage through natural shortages many times and are not willing to compound that risk by acceding to additional cuts (curtailment), a key negotiation point.

Utilities has prepared for possible future scenarios through extensive risk modeling and the goals set forth in its 2017 Integrated Water Resource Plan. The plan addresses risks to Colorado River supplies through diversification of Utilities’ water portfolio, expanded storage, enhanced reuse mechanisms and the development of Arkansas River Basin supplies through agricultural partnerships.

Conservation also plays a vital role in the plan: Customers have reduced their per capita water use by 44% since 2001 and embraced water-wise landscaping. These efforts to use water wisely are paying off in terms of stretching the city’s water supplies.

Together, conservation efforts and strategic planning will help Colorado Springs manage its valuable Colorado River resources amid ongoing challenges and negotiations.

Abby Ortega is the general manager of Infrastructure & Resource Planning with the Colorado Springs Utilities.

36 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest A Legacy Carried Forward by the

SP O RT S ECONOM Y

Rocky Mountain Vibes Shut Down After 2025 Season Ends

BY WAYN E HEILMAN

T

he Rocky Mountain Vibes are no more, ending 37 continuous years of minorleague baseball in Colorado

Springs.

Vibes owner D.G. Elmore Jr. confirmed in a late October email statement the team is “no longer going to operate in Colorado Springs. Changes in the Pioneer League recently — closing of the team in Windsor and the moving of the team in Grand Junction — and, over the past few years, have made it unsustainable.” He added that the team is “very appreciative of the community and fan support.”

The Vibes were part of the Pioneer League, which has replaced the Windsor and Grand Junction

teams with franchises in Long Beach and Modesto, Calif. Pioneer League officials could not be reached for comment on the Vibes shutdown.

Rumors spread for weeks about the Vibes shutdown and intensified in late October, during a “garage sale” of desks, mini-refrigerators, televisions and team gear, with team personnel saying the Vibes were preparing for a “renovation.” The team’s final event was its annual “Baseballoween” fireworks display on Oct. 24, featuring a costume contest and on-field trickor-treating.

Elmore says the team has no plans for the future of blocktickets Park, formerly UCHealth Park, the 8,500seat stadium owned and operated by the Vibes and its predecessor, the Colorado Springs Sky Sox. The

stadium in northeast Colorado Springs opened in 1988, shortly after the Hawaii Islanders moved to Colorado Springs from Honolulu and became the Sky Sox. In March, the Vibes signed a 10-year naming rights agreement for the stadium with blocktickets, a New York-based online ticketing platform, after a 2019 agreement with hospital giant UCHealth expired.

The Colorado Springs Sports Corp., Visit Colorado Springs and the City of Colorado Springs said in a joint statement they were saddened by the shutdown but “remain dedicated to preserving the legacy of baseball in Colorado Springs. We will continue exploring opportunities to bring exciting sporting events and activities to our city and to keep our facilities vibrant and accessible for residents and visitors for years to come.”

The shutdown leaves the Elmore family with three minor-league baseball teams in Amarillo, Texas; Eugene, Oregon; and Idaho Falls, Idaho.

The family previously sold baseball teams in San Antonio, Texas, in 2022; in San Bernardino, California, in 2024, and Lynchburg, Virginia, as well as a hockey team, both earlier this year. Elmore says each sale “has a unique story” and no further sales are planned.

Chris Moyer, a longtime historian of minor-league baseball in Colorado Springs who had previously worked for the Colorado Springs Sky Sox, says he was “sad to hear about it, but with all of the changes in the Pioneer League, I can understand D.G.’s [Elmore’s] concerns.” He says minorleague baseball’s fate may have been sealed more than a decade ago.

He believes a 2013 survey that former Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach led as part of the City for Champions initiative — which resulted in construction of a downtown soccer stadium — found 57% of city residents opposed the Sky Sox moving

downtown. As a result, Weidner Field became one of five projects funded through state tax breaks and the Sky Sox stayed on the city’s northeast side.

The Colorado Rockies ended a 20-year affiliation with the Sky Sox a year later and in 2019 the team, which played at the highest level of minorleague baseball, was replaced by a rookie-league team that moved from Helena, Montana, and became the Vibes. Although the Vibes attracted the Pioneer League’s third-highest attendance this year, crowds were still down more than 40% from the peak attendance of the Sky Sox. The Pioneer League’s Northern Colorado Owlz shut down during the 2024 season and played the final two months of its schedule as the Colorado Springs Sky Sox at blocktickets Park, though spectators were not allowed.

Moyer says the only way minorleague baseball might likely return to Colorado Springs would be through possible expansion of Major League baseball in 2030 or later, once a new labor agreement is negotiated with players after next season.

Before the Hawaii Islanders moved to Colorado Springs, a team called the Sky Sox played in Memorial Park’s Spurgeon Stadium from 1950-58 as part of the low-Class A, Western League affiliate of the Chicago White Sox. The Colorado Springs Millionaires also played at Colorado College’s Washburn Field from 1901-04 before moving to Pueblo and then returning for about a month in 1916.

Wayne Heilman is a senior writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 37 A Legacy Carried Forward by the

O P I NION

The Sky is the Limit

BY A L E X KOVACS

I

f you really want to know how a city is doing, just look at its airport. The airport is one of the purest reflections of a city’s economic health, including Colorado Springs. Flights follow growth — not the other way around. When the business community is adding jobs, people move here, visitors choose us and that momentum shows up in our passenger counts, in airline interest and in the buzz surrounding Peak Innovation Park.

Colorado Springs Airport sits in a unique spot. Located on more than 7,400 acres, COS has three runways that can accommodate any commercial passenger aircraft. We serve a region of approximately 1.2 million people, while living in the shadow of one of the busiest airports in the nation, less than 100 miles away.

That proximity is both a challenge and an opportunity. As the city and our market grow, we need to continue investing in the airport and use our local resources wisely. It’s not just for the benefit of the airport; it’s for all of us. Through the ElevateCOS terminal modernization program, we are investing in COS’ future, transforming the traveler experience with upgraded gates, paired with expanded concessions, enhanced ADA options and more. Additionally, the airport built a new Federal Inspection Station, allowing for international service.

When it comes to economies of the sky, air service is one of the most visible indicators of a community’s economic strength. Airlines typically only take calculated risks; they invest where there’s sustained demand and they see a high likelihood of success.

Every seat filled and every ticket purchased matters. The more local passengers choose to fly COS, the more our market justifies expanded routes and airline investment at COS. In aviation, there’s one simple truth — “use it or lose it.” Five airlines (Allegiant, American, Delta, Southwest and United) currently serve our community providing non-stop flights to 19 airports. We continue working on expanding service to the West Coast and Latin America. Increasing

COS Airport supports nearly 35,000 jobs, generates $2.7 billion in annual payroll and contributes more than $5.2 billion in business revenue to the region.

cargo operations at COS is also an area of focus for the airport’s air service development team. Our goal is to connect Colorado Springs to the world.

When Southwest Airlines launched service here, and recently added international flights to Cancún, Mexico, that wasn’t luck — it was the result of the Colorado Springs community showing up in numbers and Southwest’s belief in this market.

Maintaining and growing air service depends on the same continued commitment from residents and businesses who see the value in supporting their local airport. We at COS are determined to bring you value through accessible, modern facilities, high-quality food and beverage options, fun retail and, soon, covered parking.

Airports don’t just move people; they move economies. The 2025 Economic Impact Study conducted by the Colorado Department of Transportation shows that COS supports nearly 35,000 jobs, generates $2.7 billion in annual payroll and contributes more than $5.2 billion in business revenue to the region. We succeed when our local economy is strong and growing. When there’s increasing demand from business travelers, military traffic and families

who prefer the ease and convenience of flying from their local airport, the airlines pay attention.

A great story of growth is unfolding at Peak Innovation Park, the airport’s 1,600-acre master-planned, mixeduse business park just south of the terminal. What began as a vision for on-airport commerce has become a regional engine of innovation and job creation. Today, Peak is 20% built out, featuring 4.7 million square feet of vertical development and nearly 230 acres of shovel-ready land available for immediate construction.

With more than 5,000 employees already working on-site and more than $80 million invested in public infrastructure, the foundation for long-term success is firmly in place.

At full buildout (est. 2040), Peak Innovation Park is expected to deliver 15.3 million square feet of industrial, office and supportive commercial space, supporting more than 44,000 jobs. With major employers now calling Peak home, the momentum is credited to the city’s continued investment in infrastructure that meets future needs. Colorado Springs Utilities, in partnership with Colorado Springs Airport, has embarked on a major investment program to expand utilities to the business park, to include an additional capacity of 600

megawatts of power necessary for continued development.

We are also taking a thoughtful look at compatible land use around the airport, ensuring future development promotes growth while protecting the safety and efficiency that define our operations. That balance is crucial as we continue to attract airlines, aerospace, manufacturing, logistics companies and others that depend on reliable, well-planned infrastructure, and keeping safety at the forefront of every decision.

By continuing to embrace growth, COS will serve as a symbol of our city’s progress, because in the end, our airport is the gateway to our community and our community’s future. We are here to serve you!

Alex Kovacs is the Director of Aviation for Colorado Springs Airport.

38 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest F I N ANCE

Smart Gifting and Charitable Strategies for the Holiday Season

BY MEGHAN MCGUI R E , C F P ® , CHFC®, MS , RICP ® BRO UGHT TO YOU BY VI RTUEN T W E A LT H MANAGEM EN T GRO UP O F W ELLS FARGO A DVI SO R S

A

s the holiday season approaches, many individuals consider how to make meaningful financial gifts to loved ones and charitable organizations. Whether you’re looking to support family members or give back to causes close to your heart, there are several strategic ways to help maximize the impact of your generosity while staying tax efficient.

Annual Gifting Limits and IRS Guidelines In 2025, the IRS allows individuals to gift up to $19,000 per recipient per year without triggering any tax reporting requirements. Gifts exceeding this amount are still permitted but must be reported using Form 709, which applies against your lifetime gift and estate tax exemption — currently set at $13.99 million per person.

Importantly, direct payments to educational institutions, or medical providers on behalf of someone, are not considered taxable gifts and do not count toward your annual or lifetime limits. Any donations to political organizations also are not deemed gifts.

Charitable Giving: Appreciated Assets and Tax Efficiency When donating to charities, consider gifting highly appreciated assets, such as stocks or mutual funds.

This strategy allows you to avoid capital gains taxes while still receiving a charitable deduction, if the amount is above the standard deduction, for the full market value of the asset.

For individuals aged 70½ or older with tax-deferred retirement accounts (like IRAs or 401(k)s), a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) offers a powerful giving tool.

A QCD allows you to donate directly from your IRA to a qualified charity, bypassing ordinary income taxes on the distribution. While QCDs cannot be itemized as deductions, they can satisfy part or all of your Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) if you’re age 73 or older, up to $100,000 annually.

Example: Jane, age 74, has a $20,000 RMD. She typically donates $5,000 to charity.

• Option 1: She takes the full RMD and pays income tax on $20,000.

Her $5,000 donation doesn’t exceed the standard deduction, so she cannot itemize it.

• Option 2: She donates $5,000 directly via a QCD, reducing her taxable RMD to $15,000.

Donor-Advised Funds: Flexibility and Growth A Donor-Advised Fund (DAF) is another versatile charitable tool. A DAF is a 501(c)(3) account that allows donors to contribute assets, receive an immediate tax deduction and then recommend grants to charities over time. The account can be invested, and any growth is tax-free.

Example: John sells his business and expects a $500,000 capital gain, resulting in a $75,000 tax liability. He typically donates $10,000 annually.

To optimize his tax strategy, John

contributes $50,000 to a DAF, allowing him to itemize this year. The account grows to $60,000, and he continues his $10,000 annual donations for six years. Additionally, John can donate shares of his business to the DAF before the sale, avoiding capital gains on those shares.

Roth Conversions and Charitable Offsets Roth conversions have gained popularity as a long-term tax planning strategy. This involves transferring assets from a tax-deferred account (like a traditional IRA) to a Roth IRA, triggering ordinary income tax in the year of conversion. Roth conversions are most effective in low-income years, typically before RMDs begin.

To offset the tax impact of a Roth conversion, charitable bunching through a DAF can be a helpful strategy. By making a larger donation in the same year as the conversion, you may be able to itemize and reduce your overall tax liability.

Final Thoughts These strategies can help you make the most of your year-end giving while aligning with your financial goals.

Before implementing any of these approaches, it’s essential to consult with your financial adviser, CPA or tax professional to help ensure they fit your unique situation.

Meghan McGuire CFP®, ChFC®, MS, RICP® Senior Vice President – Investment Officer Meghan.mcguire@wfa.com

Investment and Insurance Products are: *Not Insured by the FDIC or Any Federal Government Agency *Not a Deposit or Other Obligation of, or Guaranteed by, the Bank or Any Bank Affiliate *Subject to Investment Risks, Including Possible Loss of the Principal Amount Invested Wells Fargo Advisors does not provide tax or legal advice.

The solutions discussed may not be appropriate for your personal situation, even if it is similar to the example presented. Investors should make their own decisions based on their specific investment objectives and financial circumstances. It should not be assumed that the recommendations made in this situation achieved any of the goals mentioned. This example is hypothetical and does not represent any specific, investments or strategies.

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 39 W OR K FOR CE

Return-to-Work Orders Impacting Employee Loyalty?

BY D ONN A CARLSON

T

he COVID lockdown taught us that working remotely has its bright side. Some people are actually more productive at home. One of my Chamber of Commerce members in Estes Park who relinquished their office space said, “We’re actually more productive working at home and we’ve invested the cost of that office lease into our company.”

At my last management position, four of the five people on my team were parents, with kids ranging from newborns to high schoolers. The mandate to be in the office by 8 a.m. was met with incredulity. “How can I get my kids to school on time and be in my seat by 8 a.m.? It’s impossible.”

The answer that was mine to enforce was, “This was a requirement of the job you accepted.” Parents have learned to make it work over the years. What has changed?

Part of what has changed is that the emerging workforce has the audacity to ask, “Why?” If I can be just as productive, or more productive, at home than I am in my cubicle, why am I required to be in the office? In the interest of curiosity, I asked a few CEOs what they were doing to meet

workers in the middle.

“We have a hybrid on-site policy,” one CEO told me. “Our team knows not to schedule mandatory meetings outside of the hours of 10-2. That means everyone works eight hours a day, but whether you start at 7 and work until 3, or start at 10 and work until 6, that’s up to you – as long as you are in the office from 10-2.”

Another woman named Cate told me that the company used its returnto-office policy as a voluntary staff reduction measure. The mandate to return to office three out of five days a week or take a parachute package led

to a deluge of talent. “While I see the benefits of a hybrid work policy, it’s impacting our workforce drastically.”

I asked about her personal team. “The policy has been a dealbreaker. Four of my 15 team members have left since this policy took effect, including some incredible talent. Many of those who have stayed are searching for other jobs right now.”

I posted an informal poll to LinkedIn asking, “If your company required you to work on-site 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., five days a week, would that impact your interest in staying?”

Here were the results: three people

said it would not affect them at all.

While 25% said they’d appeal for a partial week or modified hours, 42% said they’d start updating the resume.

Those result echo how Cate summed up the situation: “We are living in a world where people demand more flexibility.”

Donna Carlson is a client benefits executive with NFP, an Aon company.

MAR KET ING

Get Out of Your Office for the Best Marketing Insights

BY PA UL YANKEY

W

hen was the last time you created real distance from your business? Not a weekend off where you checked email. Not a vacation where you “stayed connected.” Real distance.

Most of us would answer: “I can’t remember” or “I don’t have time for that.”

I recently had that same thought when I was invited to a leadership fellowship in Israel this December.

Almost two weeks completely removed from my classroom, my consulting work, my routine. My first reaction? “I don’t have time for this.”

But here’s what I’ve noticed in

my 30 years in sales and marketing working with big tech and a broad spectrum of leaders: the best breakthroughs never come from doing more of what you’re already doing.

They come from distance.

Distance lets you see patterns you couldn’t see when you were too close.

It forces questions you didn’t know to ask. It breaks assumptions that were quietly sabotaging your strategy.

I’m not suggesting everyone needs to fly to Israel. But I am suggesting this: the marketing plan you’re stuck on, the customer segment you can’t quite reach, the strategy that feels like it should work but doesn’t — maybe the answer isn’t working harder.

Maybe it’s stepping back far enough to see what you’ve been missing.

I’ll share what I learn when I return in January. But the lesson started the moment I said yes to leaving.

Sometimes the most productive thing you can do for your business is the one thing that feels most impossible: step away from it.

What would you see differently if you did?

Paul Yankey, MBA, is an Ethical Marketing & Growth Professor at University of Colorado Colorado Springs.

40 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest W OR KFOR CE

“Soft Skills” that Drive Hard Results

How Essential Human Abilities are the New Hiring Advantage

BY BECCA TONN

W

hat would you think if one morning you hear a supervisor chastising another manager’s direct report in public? (True story.)

Unfortunately, this type of breakdown in professionalism is far too common.

If you’re struggling to hire and retain talent with a modicum of common sense — and a smattering of problem-solving, conflict management and personable communication — something is clearly lacking. In other words, essential skills — often called “soft skills” (are anything but soft) — they’re absolutely necessary.

When focusing too much on technical skills, you may have found the individuals you’ve hired lack the basic skills of interpersonal communication, professionalism and graciousness. And you’re not alone.

Across industries, employers report the same challenges. While hiring for essential skills holds significant workforce implications, perhaps smaller businesses aren’t yet aware of the benefits.

What Businesses Can do According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Spring Update survey, nearly two-thirds of surveyed employers use skills-based hiring practices for entrylevel hires. More than half use this practice always or most of the time in hiring for any position.

Almost half of employers surveyed

by NACE ranked technical skills as the least important competency, when compared to professionalism, teamwork and communication.

Fortunately, analytical thinking, creative thinking, resilience, flexibility and agility are not only considered critical but are projected to become

even more important, according to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025.

Hiring managers who can be diplomatic while firm, friendly while knowing boundaries, can keep your clients and staff happy and save you any number of human resources violations and headaches.

The Society for Human Resource Management reports that many employers feel the education system has done little to close the skills gap; the most common missing abilities for work readiness are problemsolving, critical thinking, creativity, the ability to handle ambiguity and communication — all essential skills.

By 2030, the World Economic Forum predicts that demand will surge for creative thinking, technological literacy, resilience, leadership and lifelong learning — the winning combination is tech fluency plus human relational abilities.

(If you’re one of those predicting AI and robots will soon take over the world, this ought to put your mind at ease.)

Summarizing data from Indeed’s Hiring Lab, Business Insider reports that 43% of job postings now include at least one essential/soft skill in the job requirements. In short, employers are increasingly naming, measuring and prioritizing essential skills because the market demands it.

Before you Hire Although you could compose a list of interview questions designed to suss out essential skills, that runs the risk of being subjective — both on your part and the candidate’s. Using an assessment is far more common these days. They are easy to use and can objectively measure the essential traits you’re seeking in the talent you promote or hire. Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Essential Skills Assessments Toggl notes that depending on the assessment, it may test personality traits and non-technical skills — complementing hard skills to deliver a rounded portrait of each candidate.

Cognitive ability tests are effective at measuring core skills, predicting adaptability/learning and measuring potential. Some experts say these tests are the single best predictor of job performance across most jobs and industries. (High praise — but I wouldn’t skip the prerequisite interviews just yet.)

The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology would make a small but significant change to that statement: “Cognitive ability is the best predictor of work performance.”

Each tool measures different traits, but most share a focus on predicting workplace behavior. At the Pikes Peak Workforce Center, we use

Predictive Index during the hiring/ promotion process and afterward for team building and employee engagement. This index measures four primary behavioral drives: dominance, extroversion, patience and formality — as well as cognitive ability— which has helped us match roles to strengths, increasing alignment within departments.

End Results Whichever tool you use, supplement it with behavioral-based questions in your interviews. In the end, essential skills may be the most underrated superpower your staff can possess — one that strengthens culture, performance and your bottom line.

Becca Tonn is the communications manager for the Pikes Peak Workforce Center.

Invest in Excellence. Stay Informed.

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socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 41 I N N OVAT ION

10 Plug-and-Play AI Prompts Small Businesses Should Use

BY DAWN DAWSON

I

n my previous article, we talked about the two main rules of AI models. Now that you know how to choose the right model and structure a prompt, here are high-impact prompt templates you can drop directly into your workflow.

Just fill in the {brackets} and run.

1. Social Media Post Generator

7. Spreadsheet & Formula Assistant

Create {n} posts about {topic} for {platforms}, targeted to {audience} with {CTA}, following {tone/length/hashtags}, avoiding {banned claims}.

Solve Excel/Sheets problem by providing formulas, (if needed) short script, and test plan with sample inputs expected outputs.

A Legend for some Abbreviations:

2. 8-Week Nurture Email Series

8. Job Description + Interview Pack

• CTA: call-to-action

Draft eight emails for {offer} and {segment}; each email includes subject (≤45 words), preview (≤70 words), body (≤180 words), CTA, compliance note, weekly on {weekday}, output as JSON + testing plan.

Create JD (short + long), eight interview questions with scoring indicators, and 30/60/90-day plan based on role, team, skills and pay band.

• SBI method: Situation, Behavior, Impact (For example: “Yesterday you ate my sandwich and it made me enraged.”)

3. Review to Testimonial Converter Turn raw reviews into long-form and short snippets, identify risks, request permission, follow compliance, no fabrication.

4. Lead Qualifier & Routing Script Build five qualifying questions, scoring rubric (0–100), and routing rules by {criteria}, with auto-replies (after-hours, disqualified).

5. Complaint De-escalation + Proofreading Respond to complaints with acknowledgment, next step, remedy options A/B, and timeline. Also return Grade-6 version and 280-character summary.

6. SOP Writer from Messy Notes Convert bullet notes into SOP with purpose, scope, roles, steps, screenshot placeholders, SLAs, QA checklist, risks, version history, plus 10-item audit checklist.

9. Performance Feedback Helper Turn manager notes into a balanced review using SBI method, plus employee-safe version and three SMART goals.

• SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound

10. Creative Brief from Screenshot

• JSON: JavaScript Object Notation is a way to structure data that makes it easy to be picked up by code-friendly models, like LLMs.

Extract layout/copy/colors from screenshot, diagnose three issues, propose two new concepts with headline/ visual/CTA, return Before After table + quick A/B test.

Quick Rules of Thumb for Building Your Own Prompts • Start general. If results vary too much, add light constraints.

• If repeatable, template it. Use JSON or tables for consistency.

• Ask AI to check itself. It will improve quality.

• Give feedback. Tell the model what was good or bad — you’ll get better output next time.

Start with one prompt today. Tweak it. Save it. Use it again. That’s how small businesses can get big results with AI. Happy prompting!

42 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest EC ONOM ICS

The Tax Base Explained: Why Every Great Community Requires a Strong Tax Base

BY D IRK HOBBS

A

strong tax base is the quiet engine behind every thriving community. Yet for many residents and even some business leaders, the term itself can feel abstract, something buried in budgets and not connected to daily life. A community’s tax base determines nearly everything citizens value: public safety, infrastructure, schools, parks, business districts and the overall affordability of the place they call home.

At its core, the tax base is simply the total value of taxable economic activity within a community — from residential and commercial property to retail sales, lodging stays and

business investment. The broader and more diverse that base is, the more stable a city becomes. A narrow tax base, by contrast, forces municipalities into a corner — fewer revenues to maintain services, higher taxes on existing residents … or both.

A healthy tax base grows when private investment grows. New businesses bring jobs, increase

Key Terms for Understanding the Tax Base •

Tax Base: The total value of all taxable economic activity within a community, including residential and commercial property, retail sales, lodging and business investment. A strong tax base provides the revenue necessary to fund public services such as police, fire, infrastructure and schools.

•

Assessed Valuation: The dollar value assigned to property by a local assessor for tax purposes. Assessed valuation, distinct from market value, determines how much property tax a resident or business pays — it is a key driver of municipal revenue.

•

Revenue Diversification: A strategy in which a city or county builds a mix of revenue sources: property tax, sales tax, lodging tax, business fees and industry sector growth to reduce dependence on any single source. A diversified revenue base helps stabilize budgets during economic fluctuations.

•

Fiscal Impact: The net effect a development or business has on a local government’s budget. This accounts for both the public costs (infrastructure, utilities, public safety) and the revenues generated (tax payments, fees, sales activity). Positive fiscal impact strengthens the tax base; negative impact strains it.

•

Mill Levy: The rate used to calculate property taxes. One “mill” equals $1 of tax for every $1,000 of assessed property value.

Adjusting the mill levy helps local governments generate revenue but can increase tax burdens if the tax base is too narrow or stagnant.

property values and generate sales taxes that support essential services.

Expanding industry clusters, such as manufacturing, aerospace, healthcare, tourism and others, widen the base and balance it, helping communities weather downturns in any single sector. Smart growth policies matter, too: Well-planned development yields long-term fiscal returns far greater than the public costs of infrastructure, permitting and services.

But the true strength of a tax base lies in its impact on people. A robust revenue foundation allows cities to build housing that matches demand, maintain roads and utilities, support police and fire departments and invest in schools that attract and retain families. When the tax base is strong,

opportunity expands. When it erodes, a community loses its competitive edge and businesses look elsewhere — then talent follows and essential services stagnate.

A strong tax base isn’t a technical concept reserved for economists; it’s the backbone of community quality, prosperity and resilience.

Understanding it is the first step toward shaping a stronger Southern Colorado.

Dirk Hobbs is the founder and executive publisher for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 43 F IN ANCE

The Year-End Questions for Every Finance Leader

BY BECKY LIMOGE , CTP

A

s the year winds down, most finance leaders are buried in the same cycle: closing the books, finalizing budgets, tightening forecasts, preparing for audits and managing year-end deadlines.

All necessary work. But not necessarily strategic work.

That’s the quiet danger of this season; you can spend all your energy keeping the business running and never step back to ask whether you actually moved it forward.

The real question is not “Did we stay on top of everything?”

It’s “Did we build anything this year that will make next year easier, faster or more profitable?”

Before jumping into 2026 goals and KPIs, every finance leader should pause and reflect on five key questions: 1. What strategic initiatives did we actually complete — not just start? (Automation, process redesign, treasury cleanup, ERP improvements, pricing strategy, etc.)

2. Which projects quietly died because daily operations consumed all available capacity?

3. Where are we still doing work manually that we promised ourselves would be automated “next quarter”?

4. How much of our time was spent producing information vs. improving how the business runs?

5. What did the business need from finance that it never truly received? (Cleaner insights? Better forecasting?

Faster decisions? Fewer surprises?)

These aren’t accounting questions — they’re leadership

questions. And they quickly reveal whether finance spent the year supporting the business or strengthening it.

Most teams assume they’ll tackle strategic work “once things slow down.” But in finance, things don’t slow down — the work simply changes shape.

Month-end becomes quarterend. Budget season becomes audit season. The inbox refills.

The requests keep coming.

The belief that extra capacity will appear on its own is the reason the same strategic priorities roll forward year after year. The truth is that capacity isn’t found. It’s made.

It’s made through automation, process redesign, clearer decision rights, better banking structure, or a willingness to stop doing work that doesn’t actually move the business forward.

As we finish out the year, take time to reflect on the wins — especially the ones earned in uncertain or unpredictable conditions. Progress made during difficult seasons is still progress, and it deserves to be recognized.

Then step into the new year with action and intention. Not with a longer task list, but with clarity around the work that will strengthen the business, free up capacity and position finance to operate at a higher level — not just a faster pace.

Next year won’t change because you do more. It will change because the strategic work no longer gets lost in the daily work.

Becky Limoge, CTP. Limoge Consulting.

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44 / Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest P EO PLE

Professionals on the Rise Southern Colorado’s Workforce Achievements!

Champ Bailey

Gina Sacripanto

Shaula Denton

Pro Football Hall of Famer Champ Bailey is partnering with Ent Credit Union to lend his personal story and time to help young people build financial confidence. Bailey joined the NFL in 1999, then started playing for the Denver Broncos in 2004. Before his 2014 retirement, Bailey played in 12 Pro Bowls, the most ever for a cornerback. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2019, his first year of eligibility. Bailey’s contributions will include a video series that will roll out in spring 2026.

It will deliver age-appropriate financial education for youth, with Bailey drawing on his own experiences from growing up in rural Georgia to managing his finances as a professional athlete.

AdPro, a Colorado Springs-based full-service advertising agency, has welcomed Gina Sacripanti as the company’s new president, effective Dec. 1. Sacripanti, who most recently served as the chief communications officer for Phil Long Dealerships, received a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Villanova University. She began her career in advertising and public relations in the Washington, D.C., metro area, later earning an MBA from The George Washington University. Sacripanti also serves on the Executive Committee for the Colorado Springs Leadership Institute.

In 2024, Gov. Jared Polis appointed her to serve as the Pikes Peak region representative on the Colorado Transportation Investment Office Board of Directors. Sacripanti will replace Camille Blakely, who recently announced her retirement after five years.

Shaula Denton has joined Connectionmark as vice president of operations and client strategy. Previously, Denton worked at the Pikes Peak Small Business Development Center, using her extensive experience in small-business leadership, workshop enrollments, operational development and strategic client support. Denton has launched, operated and grown several businesses across diverse industries, including event rental, concrete and landscaping, a power-washing service and a craft brewery. That experience will help her support business owners as they move from overwhelmed to optimized. Connectionmark specializes in working with small and medium-sized businesses, helping them navigate common obstacles such as duplicated efforts and inefficient use of resources. Entrepreneur Mark Bittle founded the Colorado Springs-based consulting company in 2017.

Highlight

STANDOUT PROFESSIONALS IN SOUTHERN COLORADO! Share promotions, new hires, or achievements — email up to 40 words & a photo to: newsdesk@coloradomediagroup.com.

socodigest.com / Vol. 3 No. 12 - December 2025 / 45 P EO PLE

Lowell Thomas: The Man who Pioneered Broadcast News

BY JE ANN E DAVA N T

W

hen Lowell Thomas was sitting in a classroom at the Garfield School in Victor, he might have dreamed of faraway places, but he probably didn’t imagine the adventures that awaited him. He would travel the world and return to tell the stories of people and places that would reach millions in new ways.

Thomas’s career as a news commentator transformed how journalists delivered the news. Though he is mostly unknown today, he was the most famous journalist of his time and inspired modern-day journalists like Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw.

Thomas was born in Ohio in 1892.

His father, Dr. Harry Thomas, moved the family to Victor in 1900, where he was one of 17 physicians, during the peak of gold production in Cripple Creek and Victor.

With a population of 18,000, Victor was home primarily to miners and working-class families; the wealthy mine owners lived in nearby Cripple Creek or Colorado Springs.

There were many amenities for Victor’s residents, but only one newspaper, The Victor Record. As he grew up, young Lowell wandered the rowdy streets and explored the nearby mountains. He later spoke about witnessing an occasional gunfight and bar brawls that spilled onto the street.

According to his biographer, Mitchell Stephens, “he had an authentic free-range, wild-West childhood.” Thomas worked summers in the mines and on a ranch — perhaps that’s where he developed a lifelong attachment to Stetson hats.

Thomas graduated from Victor High School and attended Valparaiso University, the University of Denver and Princeton University, earning two bachelor’s and two master’s degrees. His first journalism job was editor of the Victor Record; subsequently he was hired as a reporter for

the Chicago Journal.

The U.S. War Department enlisted the 25-year-old Thomas to report on World War I in Europe and the Middle East, with the aim of bolstering American support for the war. In Jerusalem, he encountered a young British captain, T.E. Lawrence, who was fighting alongside Arab guerrilla forces seeking independence from the Ottoman Empire. Accompanied by a cameraman, Thomas followed the charismatic Lawrence into the Arabian desert and spent two weeks compiling pages of field notes, hundreds of photographs and multiple reels of 35mm film.

After the war, Thomas combined photos, film and his stories to create innovative multimedia presentations about his experiences, and launched a worldwide lecture tour. A production titled “With Lawrence in Arabia” mesmerized more than four million people and made Lawrence of Arabia a household name. In 1924, he

published a book with the same title — the first of more than 50 he would write.

Thomas made his debut as a radio commentator the same year, hired for his warm, resonant and commanding voice and storytelling ability. He broadcast the first nightly national news program, which aired on NBC and CBS — the first time Americans heard the same news at the same time. He delivered the news in a calm, factual style that distinguished him from sensationalist contemporaries like Walter Winchell.

Thomas also narrated, wrote and produced newsreels for Fox Movietone News and, in 1939, launched the first televised nightly news broadcast. Thomas often broadcast from the studio in his Pawling, New York, estate, but he preferred remote locations and continued to travel the world in search of stories that captured his imagination. He became a media tycoon in 1946 when he invested in a group of broadcast stations that eventually purchased the ABC network.

Thomas traveled to places where no other American journalist had set foot.

In 1949, he met the teenaged Dalai Lama in Tibet, where few outsiders had been admitted. His broadcasts brought the world into American homes with an intimacy that transcended written words.

Throughout his life, Thomas never forgot his roots and returned frequently to Victor — usually wearing his Stetson hat.

According to the Victor Heritage Society, he last visited in 1981: speaking on Aug. 17 in Colorado Springs.

Thomas returned from his visit to his New York estate, where he was working on a new documentary. He died in his sleep on Aug. 29, 1981. His legacy is preserved at the Victor Lowell Thomas Museum.

Jeanne Davant is a senior writer for the SoCo Business Forum & Digest.

Sources: Victor Heritage Society, Smithsonian Magazine, Colorado Public Radio, Clio Visualizing History, Lowell Thomas: American Storyteller, Mitchell Stevens, The Voice of America: Lowell Thomas and the Invention of 20th-Century Journalism (2017). Photo courtesy of the Victor Lowell Thomas Museum.

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