Make Longmont the best place to live
and a great place to visit!
Hi! I'm Riegan Sage, a nominee for At-Large Councilmember in Longmont. As a city, we need to choose both what is important to us to preserve and how we want to grow. We should build on our strengths, connecting the pieces that are already successful. It is our responsibility to envision and articulate what we want Longmont to be and to collaborate creatively with developers to bring that to fruition.
I’ve lived in Longmont for four years but it only took a few days staying here to see how special it is. The history, the neighborhoods, the people who call this place home.
I want to support Longmont entrepreneurs bringing their businesses to life here. That happens when we make Longmont the best place to live- with affordable homes (affordable meaning you can still afford to use the amenities in our city, not just scraping together rent or a mortgage)- and a great place to visit.
I have been serving on the boards of various organizations for over twenty years-- from non-profit theatre companies, to academic institutions, to Homeowners associations. Previously I've run marketing and operations for a global clothing brand, consulted privately with entrepreneurs building businesses and worked in education for over fifteen years.
I have an MBA from the University of Miami and a BFA from the University of Southern California.
Let’s build more housing. The only way to make housing more affordable and to ensure against rising houseless population is to make more housing available. I am against sprawl. I am for: increasing the mix and variety of housing, revamping unused industrial space, building smaller homes for sale and rent, getting creative and offering direct incentives and reducing fees to homeowners who want to build ADUs for long term rentals.
Let’s bring more people to our businesses. Our local businesses are wonderful and in order to thrive they need more patronage. We should focus on attracting visitors to Longmont, both from neighboring cities as well as from afar. We have an incredible opportunity with the Sundance Film Festival moving to Boulder in 2027, and we need to be ready to seize it. Let’s make Longmont the BEST place to live, and a great place to visit.
Let’s reimagine how we measure success. I believe we need to create new metrics with which to measure our success as a city. What we measure should be decided by Longmont citizens and should point toward the future we envision. Some examples might be: how many new public transit adopters we have, families we’ve kept in their homes, small business success rates, acreage of green space acquired, etc. What we measure dictates where our attention goes.
Let’s lead in agricultural innovation and incorporate it into our city planning. Longmont's history is steeped in agriculture. We rent out 1000 acres of agricultural land and we’ve voted to allocate more money towards acquiring green space and farm land. Let’s partner with and attract innovative farmers who take stewardship seriously. Let’s build an agritourism destination. Let’s consider agrihub neighborhoods. Let’s feed our community. Let’s be self reliant.
Let’s grow together. As Longmont’s population increases, traffic will continue to grow. By investing in the right mix of intercity and intracity transport for the routes that people need we can make a multi-modal Longmont for all. Bike lanes, bikeshares, free high-density bus routes and our innovative RIDE Longmont program are good additions to the cars on the road, As autonomous vehicles become more prevalent, I would also be in favor of adopting autonomous shuttles to supplement travel to neighboring cities and between hubs within Longmont as long as it serves our residents to do so.
Let’s be smart. Energy costs will continue to rise for the foreseeable future. As energy became cheaper in the last century, we became wasteful and complacent. As costs have gone up, we have not reexamined our own usage. We need to both offer support to our neighbors who are struggling, as well as incentivize energy and water conservation. We can do this by creating graduated energy usage programs and investing in renewables at the city level.
NextLight launched in 2014 thanks to the brilliant foresight of Longmont's City Council, and today it is recognized as one of the top ISPs in North America.
What is the next big idea we're going to build and invest in? Agriculture? Solar batteries? Quantum computing? We want your input and ideas!
