Eggleston: smaller city budget, incentivize affordable construction

Adam Eggleston’s top three values

By SCOTT REIF
The Ramspondents

On Nov. 4, 2025, Fort Collins citizens will have the opportunity to choose between seven potentially prospective mayors, including the independently-associated Adam Eggleston. To provide voters with more information, The Ramspondents sat down with Eggleston and asked him about what to expect from him as a mayoral candidate and prospective mayor of Fort Collins.

Adam Eggleston’s background

Eggleston first moved to Fort Collins in 1993 with his family, growing up in the town and graduating from Fort Collins High School in 2002. Starting his career in sales, he would eventually move to work in real estate, where he sparked an interest in local housing policy and being a positive force in his community. “I’ve always been interested in government and would go to city council meetings occasionally,” Eggleston said. “I have two, three-hundred city council meetings under my belt. I ran for city council. I lost. But through that, through running in 2018, I realized I could do more good.” 

While working as a realtor, Eggleston would serve on the Board of Directors for the Fort Collins Board of Realtors and even win Realtor of the Year in Fort Collins in 2023. Doing so, he would also find himself improving the Fort Collins community in politics.

“I started organizing a task force for getting rid of U Plus 2,” Eggleston said. “I got a couple policies that I helped influence at the state (level), including a policy that provides some financial protections for survivors of sexual assault.”

Eggleston says he is no longer a realtor but now a local business owner and self-proclaimed community and victim advocate.

“I help out with a lot of nonprofits, I help victims throughout the community. Seeing how strong our community is together has kind of led me to run for mayor.”

Eggleston is an Independent candidate, choosing not to align with any political party during his run for mayor. He expressed that he decided to run for mayor instead of for a district representative role because of his desire to keep his work local. 

“I get giddy thinking that I can hold town halls and coffee meetings with people,” Eggleston said. “Being close to the people, you can get more done. You can see the changes you make.”

Adam Eggleston’s focus on housing

Being a realtor for most of his professional career, Eggleston has a clear focus on the housing market in Fort Collins – one that is under much scrutiny for a lack of affordability and mobility. He makes it clear in his campaign efforts that making housing affordable and mobile for Fort Collins citizens is a top priority. “Housing is kind of my bread and butter,” Eggleston said.

To help achieve this goal, Eggleston’s plan mainly involves incentivizing the building of small homes and condominiums over large, million-dollar family homes through the redesigning of the city’s impact fee structure. “We can control impact fees,” Eggleston said. “And right now, those fees incentivize building million-dollar homes over 1,000-square-foot condos or small homes. If you build a 3500-square-foot-or-bigger home, (the fees are around) 2%, 3%, 4% of cost. It’s about 18% (of cost) for a small home.”

Changing the housing impact fee structure the town currently abides by would, in theory, make way for the building of more condominiums and small homes – homes that are far more affordable for the average resident than that of larger homes. This would decrease the average cost to rent or buy a home in Fort Collins. 

Eggleston also expressed that to make Fort Collins housing more mobile and affordable, the city could underwrite litigation liability insurance. “In 2008, (insurance cost) was $500 a unit on average. Now, it’s over $35,000 a unit on average,” Eggleston said. He also said that developments in the city’s land use code could help his efforts as well.

Plan for Fort Collins’ budget

Eggleston expressed that he believes Fort Collins’ budget is too high and does not match the city’s revenue. According to him, the city’s budget today sits around $930 million, and that just 10 years ago, this figure was nearly half of what it is today, at around 500 million dollars.

“Our budget’s nearly doubled,” Eggleston said. “And if you ask most people, we’re not double as good as we were. We probably need to get our budget closer to 850 million or 800 million in the next ten years.”

To do this, Eggleston says the city first needs to evaluate how it spends sunsetting funds. 

“Any programs that we funded with short-term money – if those programs aren’t somewhat self-sustaining without taking from our general fund, we need to eliminate them or modify them because we can’t keep funding long-term projects with short-term money,” Eggleston said. 

Additionally, Eggleston criticized Fort Collins’ budgeting process and called for its reworking. 

“I’ve heard from staff that our budgeting process is too onerous and takes too long,” Eggleston said. “I think we can save thousands of man hours if we restructure the two-year budget cycle. I would like us to look at what other cities are doing to streamline their budgeting processes.”

Speaking on the city’s revenue, Eggleston noted that it falls short compared to Fort Collins’ budget. When asked about why, he turned to the rising amount of commuting workers in the city to explain. 

“It’s too hard to be a small business here, and we’re having a lot more people commute to do business here,” Eggleston said. “The problem with having people commute is most people spend 80% or more of their incomes within a mile of where they live, and that includes housing. We need to figure out how to get more people to stay here.”

Paid parking: Is Eggleston on board?

One of the key issues the city has been discussing is parking revenue. Having free parking in Old Town Fort Collins drives people away from using paid garages, which city officials say need more use. However, as a prior member of the City’s Parking Advisory Board, Eggleston said paid meter parking is a more expensive solution compared to one that was discussed during his time as a parking advisor – changing allotted parking time from 8am-4pm to 10am-6pm, and encouraging employers to purchase garage parking passes for employees. 

“It would cost, like, 80 grand to resign Old Town, and it’s going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to put a paid-parking system in,” Eggleston said. “Let’s do the cheap thing first and see if we can modify behavior. Tourists won’t notice if we start charging for paid parking tomorrow, but all the citizens, all  the residents, everyone that’s lived here will probably stop and be less likely to go to Old Town.”

Learn more about Eggleston

For those who are interested in following Adam Eggleston’s campaign for mayor, visit www.adamegglestonformayor.com, or follow his many social media accounts.

Scott Reif is a senior student of CSU’s Journalism and Media Communications program minoring in Music Business. He also works as a videographer and production assistant for Barnfly Productions, led by Emmy-award-winner John Barnhardt.