The City of Colorado Springs is providing an additional $700,000 to expand the security side of the Clean & Safe pilot program in downtown Colorado Springs

Mayor Yemi Mobolade signed off on the supplemental funding on Tuesday morning to give the pilot program additional support for the rest of 2026, supported by the Downtown Partnership and the Colorado Springs Police Department.

The Downtown Partnership launched the Clean & Safe program in July to dedicate additional manpower to issues that downtown businesses and visitors have frequently complained about. The pilot program is a three-pronged effort to reduce the impacts of the area’s homeless residents and encourage visitors to the local stores

“This investment is more than just a program. It truly is about advancing human flourishing, it’s about supporting small businesses, it’s about restoring confidence in our public spaces,” Mobolade said.

The Clean & Safe program has hired additional private security guards to work with downtown businesses, created teams of volunteer ambassadors who cleaned sidewalks and worked with visitors, and supported homeless outreach teams from Homeward Pikes Peak.

Downtown Partnership CEO Chelsea Gondeck said the supplemental funds will be dedicated to the program’s private security. Before the launch of the pilot program, the Partnership covered the cost for a single security team to monitor a sub-section of downtown. The additional funding will bring the program up to three teams from Mercurial Security Solutions to cover the entirety of downtown.

“The majority of calls that come from our downtown businesses are things that don’t require a police response. We can provide these guards who are trained in de-escalation,” Gondeck said.

Data provided by Downtown Partnership Director Pat Rigdon showed that the security teams responded to 2,227 incidents, including 431 requests from downtown merchants, in the six months that the pilot program has been running. Many of those calls were for graffiti or disturbances.

Other data on the Clean & Safe program showed that the downtown ambassadors have spoken with 1,893 tourists and had more than 1,000 contacts with unhoused residents.

The Homeward Pikes Peak teams have connected with 142 homeless residents. According to Rigdon, the outreach workers helped one person obtain housing in Colorado Springs and provided bus tickets to six people who had stronger support systems in another city.

In his comments Tuesday, Mobolade cited Joe Campana as one of the downtown business owners who had been pressing the city government to do more for the area. Campana is the restaurateur behind Bonny & Read and The Rabbit Hole, among others.

Campana said the Clean & Safe program was helpful but wouldn’t solve all the issues businesses like his faced. Campana felt that he’d seen many new homeless people come downtown since the holidays and worried that an economic downturn would make things worse for both his staff and the homeless population.

“I like to see their presence downtown, but I’m also seeing more homeless, so they’re just going to need even more people,” Campana said.

The supplemental funding comes from the city’s 5% recreational marijuana sales tax, an approach that Mobolade and the Colorado Springs City Council agreed on late last year. The dedicated tax has brought in $1.87 million since Colorado Springs began allowing retail marijuana sales in April. Voters specified that the marijuana sales tax had to be used on public safety programs, mental health services or post-traumatic stress disorder treatment for veterans.

u003ca href=u0022https://gazettedev.gazette.com/2025/10/29/colorado-springs-expands-plan-to-fund-police-and-fire-departments-with-marijuana-sales-tax-in-2026-budget/u0022u003eColorado Springs expands plan to fund police and fire departments with marijuana sales tax in 2026 budget – Colorado Springs Gazetteu003c/au003e: Mayor Mobolade signs deal providing extra $700,000 to Clean & Safe program

The initial successes of the Clean & Safe program have inspired Mobolade to launch the Keep it Clean & Safe initiative, supporting businesses in other areas of Colorado Springs with large unhoused populations. One of the areas identified for the city initiative was the Nevada Avenue corridor south of downtown.