It's time for the weekly general session of your Denver City Council.

Tonight's coverage of Denver City Council starts now.

Oh, that's me.

Sorry.

Oh, look, it's it's is it time to start?

Denver City Council, that's President Sandoval.

Alright, good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join us for Denver City Council's meeting.

Today is Monday, November 3rd, 2025.

Happy November.

Um I'm gonna just take a moment of personal privilege and encourage everyone to turn in their ballots as tomorrow is election day.

Um, because we do not get tell council announcements until we go over the numerous budget amendments.

So taking a moment of personal privilege there.

Um, tonight's meeting is being interpreted into Spanish.

Sam or Jasmine, would you please introduce yourself and let our viewers know how to enable translation on their devices?

Yes, of course.

Thank you for having us.

Hello everyone, my name is Sam Guzman with the CLC, uh joining you virtually through Zoom.

And um, along with my colleague Jasmine, we'll be interpreting today's meeting into Spanish.

Please allow me a quick minute to give instructions in Spanish on how to access interpretation.

Um, muchas and thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Sam.

Welcome to the Denver City Council meeting of Monday, November third, 2025.

Council members, please join Council Member Heinz in the Pledge of Allegiance.

One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Council members, please join Council Member Heinz as they lead us in the Denver City Council land acknowledgement, the Denver City Council honors and acknowledges that the land on which we reside is the traditional territory of the Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho peoples.

We also recognize the 51 contemporary tribal nations that are historically tied to the lands that make up the state of Colorado.

We honor elders' past, present and future, and those who have stewarded this land throughout generations.

We also recognize that government, academic, and cultural institutions were founded upon and continue to enact exclusions and erasures of indigenous peoples.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Madam Secretary Roco.

Council members Gilmore.

Aye.

Albitris.

Hi Flynn.

Here.

Gonzalo Cutieres.

Here.

Heinz.

Here.

Cashman.

Lewis present.

Parity.

Here.

Romero Campbell.

Here.

Sawyer.

Here.

Torres?

Here.

Watson.

Here.

Madam President Sandoval.

Here.

Thirteen members present.

There are 13 members present.

Council has a quorum.

All right.

We have 26 amendments being offered to the mayor's proposed budget this afternoon.

This is a reminder that the amendments may not be considered in numerical order as they are posted online.

Please use the agenda to refer to the amendments.

So what we'll do is we're going to go by the the title.

So for instance, 251756.

So they're all out of order as they were posted on the agenda.

Council President, I move that the mayor's proposed 2026 budget be amended in the following particulars on page 350 under the agency title, Department of Finance.

I'm not gonna read that going blind in the zeros.

Um in the section title department, but do I have to read that, John?

I think so.

The number do you have to read the verbatim?

Dang.

Yeah.

250 000.

Yes, okay.

Um in the section titled Department Budget, in the section titled Other General Funds, in the lined title general contingency, reduce the 2026 proposed column by 379,038 on page 446 under the agency titled auditor 030100 in the section titled budget detail in the section titled expenditures by activity in the line titled personnel services, increase the 2026 proposed column by 379 and 38.

379,000 38 dollars.

Make other adjustments to comments, tables, schedules, and figures in the mayor's proposed 2026 budget as may be required to reflect the actions directed in this amendment.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded questions or comments by members.

And remember, colleagues, this is the questions and comments.

Um the comments by the hold on, number one.

The comments by the sponsors, and then there'll be questions and comments by other members of council.

Um just trying to get the the flow.

So questions or comments by members of council, Councilmember Torres, Louis Parady, and Gonzalez Gutierrez.

I'll start, madam president.

This amendment proposes transferring contingency funds to the auditor's office.

The auditor is returning over $500,000 in 2025, and we'll plan to underspend in 2026 by the same amount, $500,000, through keeping vacant positions vacant, but needs its whole base budget allocated to ensure flexibility.

Uh this will not result, this will result in a net zero effect on fund balance at the end of 2026, so long as the auditor does not spend this additional amount.

Um we referenced $500,000 because that was the original amount we were seeking in order to make the auditors uh base budget whole.

Again, the mayor did um offer up $120,000 to begin the uh worker fund, the worker justice fund.

Um, so we've um subtracted that, which is why the transfer is for $379,000.

Got it.

Thank you.

Councilmember Flynn.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um, Councilman Torres, uh, do you have uh any explanation for how we if we take this out of the two percent contingency, uh how does that affect and appropriate it?

Then we need to add to the contingency again.

How do we handle that?

So our thinking was that they would be reserving the same amount that we are moving, or actually even more than we are moving from contingency or allowing the spend of that amount.

Um they're going to hold seven positions vacant, which will result in more than 500,000 in savings next year.

So as long as they don't hire those positions, they will save that and return it back to the city's um general fund and contingency fund at the end of next year.

So the end of next year.

Yes.

What do we do at the beginning of 26?

Because we have to have a uh contingency of at least two percent.

And I understand that it is greater, there's greater than a two percent contingency that's being held for the sheriff's deputy's uh collective bargaining agreement.

Right, to fund out of that.

Um, do you want to ask someone from the department of finance, Council member?

Sure.

We have a whole plethora of people here to help us answer questions.

Who could answer that?

Justin or Stephanie, whoever wants to come up here, and then if anyone from the auditor's office needs to assist, feel free.

I guess it would be a very small amount, two percent of three, what's 379.

Yeah, I think it's about seventy-six hundred, seven hundred dollars.

Okay, yes.

Uh usually, as you know, councilman, contingency works the other way around, right?

We typically don't provide funding and then see if they spend it.

We usually would monitor someone's budget, and if they need it, we come to you then to pull it out of contingency in 2026.

So this is a little certainly unprecedented.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you.

Councilmember Alvidres.

Thank you, Council President.

Um, I have a question for the auditor's office.

Is someone here for the auditor's office?

Great.

Um, can you just confirm the underspend that you plan to have?

Yes, thank you, Councilmember Alvidres, Matthew Fritzmauer here from the Denver Auditor's Office.

We will, by our conservative estimates, return at least $500,000 to the contingency fund this year.

And then as Councilmember Torres explained, we will also underspend by at least that amount next year.

And so as we return money this year, my understanding from the Department of Finance is it goes into the contingency fund.

This amendment, as I understand it will draw down from the contingency fund by less than we will return this year, and then we will also return more next year.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Council President.

I think we have a clarifying comment by the Department of Finance.

I think you got it almost 100% correct.

It would not lapse to the contingency fund, it would lapse to the fund balance.

Yeah, so close, not quite a um can I follow up on that question?

So when the funds are going into the fund balance, are how are those reallocated into the next year then?

So they are evaluated as part of the annual budget process.

So some of the budget that you're projecting for 2026 is savings from 2025.

Is that what you're saying?

So for 2025, we believe that expenditures will be more than revenues, which means that we are dipping into the fund balance in 2025.

For 2026, we are hoping to add money to the fund balance reserves, and and that's partially because of spending less than we would be bringing in in revenue in the proposed budget.

Wow.

So it sounds like we're already spending that other underspend in this year, is what you're saying.

In your budget, not in the auditor's budget, correct?

Um, are we spending 2025 underspend in 2026?

2025.

Because you're saying you're going to overspend.

So every year we we bring in revenues and we appropriate expenditures, city council appropriates expenditures out of the general fund in 2025, the level of authorized expenditures, the level of projected expenditures are higher than the amount of revenue that we project that will bring in this year.

Uh so in the current year, in order to spend at that level, we we are spending out of some of the fund balance reserves.

Okay, thank you.

Um, did the auditor's office want to say anything to about that?

I forgive me if I'm misunderstanding your question.

I think partly what you're seeking to understand is whether the expected underfund from our budget this year has been factored into next year.

DOF can correct me, but I believe that's not the case.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that we shared with the administration what we expected that under spend to be.

Okay, great.

That does answer my question.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

You're welcome.

Councilwoman Sawyer.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um, just wanted to say thank you to the sponsors for this one.

I do hear the Department of Finance and that this it is unprecedented, sort of, for us to spend out of the um contingency right now, as the budget is being created.

I also just want to acknowledge that there's a lot of unprecedented things going on this year with the budget.

Um, and uh I think it is incredibly important that our um independent agencies receive the respect that they deserve um as independently elected officials in the city and county of Denver, and I find it disturbing that um the mayor's office does not, has not shown that respect to the independent and like uh independently elected officials of Denver in this budget.

And so while this may be unprecedented, I will 100% be supportive of it and really appreciate the council sponsors finding a way to get this done to ensure that the independence of our independently elected officials remains.

Because that is what independently elected officials were elected to do.

And the strong mayor form of government might be a strong mayor form of government, but it is not a kingdom.

And so I will be a yes.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Watson.

Uh thank you, Council President.

Uh, for the auditor's office, got a question for you.

Um, can you explain uh kind of break down the why for the meeting of the additional funds this year if you are expecting to return funds back to the general fund next year?

What would be the size and because it is um something that's that's not normally done?

The normal process is for the Department of Finance to identify um what the year end spend down is.

If there's additional funds needed for the next year, um during our May, April, whatever the timeline is, they identify gaps and they provide those funds at that time.

Walk me through the why this would be necessary now instead of through the regular process.

Thank you for the question and the opportunity, Councilmember Watson.

I want to follow up on and emphasize what council member Sawyer just spoke to, which is how important the independence of the auditor's office is, and that includes a significant degree of autonomy over our budget, which shouldn't be unilaterally cut.

That is a an unfortunate way to impede the independence of an agency dedicated to government transparency and enforcing the rights of Denver's workers.

Um I think I hear in your question um whether the auditor's office is overfunded if we're returning half a million next year and can return half a million or this year and can return half a million next year.

Um and that's not the case.

We have been unable to fill budgeted for positions this year.

We have a meaningful number open we have for some months that accounts for the underspend this year, and we're going to underspend next year because many hands make light work, right?

We're all in this.

The auditor wants to be part of the solution to Denver's current budget crisis, but as an independent elected official, he needs the autonomy and the discretion to decide how to do that.

And it sets a dangerous precedent.

If the agency that audits the rest of government and also enforces the basic rights of marginalized people, has its budget unilaterally cut three percent this year, maybe it's 10% some other year, 20% another year.

And that significantly impedes our work.

We think that this amendment is important to send a strong message around how crucial it is that independent agencies remain independent, have that discretion and autonomy.

Thank you.

Um for the Department of Finance, can you clarify the why um the budgeting process normally set up the way it is?

So, for example, you do identification of gaps, whether it's uh independent offices or whether it's uh any of the other departments within the city and county of Denver.

They identify gaps in their spending, um, you have a year in closure, and then you provide the opportunity for supplemental or additional dollars.

Can you walk through kind of why it's set up that way?

Certainly.

Thank you, Councilmember Stephanie Adams, Deputy Chief Financial Officer.

So there is a process by which we ask all agencies to participate and submit their information.

Um, and we ask them to work with us and provide a scenarios when those that information is not provided, it's challenging for us to make sure we can balance the budget.

And that is the case here.

So we um do try to work with agencies.

That is what the supplemental process is also for.

Um, when we uh I do certainly understand the auditor would like to have the level of flexibility.

2026 is a tough year for extra flexibility.

Um, so I don't know if that answers your question, council member, but we do have a pretty thorough process that we kick off the beginning of the year and try to work with agencies, and where they provide us some compromise and some scenarios, we certainly try to accommodate those.

Is it your intent when you provide direction and advice to independent agencies to override their independence, specifically to the auditors?

Can you speak to that?

There's been a theme on the overriding of um the independence of the auditor um with the budget uh recommendations that the Department of Finance made certainly.

Do you mind maybe sharing a little bit on that?

Thank you, Councilmember.

I appreciate the opportunity.

We have worked with several independent agencies and asked them when we gave them the situation, our financial situation, several independent agencies, separately elected individuals actually worked with us, provided us with some optionality in terms of their budget, and so we were able to accommodate that.

It is certainly not in any way, shape or form a reflection of um trying to exert any uh change over independence.

We are just trying to meet the uh requirement that we have a balanced budget and we can actually balance our budget within revenues um that we have available to us, and that that is sort of where we landed.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you, Councilmember Flynn.

Uh thank Madam President.

A quick follow-up uh based on what um Councilman Watson was asking, uh maybe for the auditor's office.

I guess what I'm hearing then, because I was wondering over the weekend when I was looking at these.

If you're giving back, if you expect to return $500,000 next year, why are we giving you $300 some thousand now?

I mean, why don't you why don't we just reappropriate that half million that you have reserved for vacant positions?

And I think I heard your answer was that you might not hire them.

You might turn back the whole half million, but then you might not.

Is that am I hearing that correctly?

No, that wasn't my answer.

It was that um, and thank you.

I'm happy to clarify, thank you for the opportunity.

Um, there's no maybe as to whether we're going to be part of the solution.

We we will be part of the solution, um, as we have been in in years past when we've had to tighten our belts as a city.

Um, the the dangers around the independence of our office.

We are not an executive agency, and so there's a terrible precedent set when our budget is unilaterally reduced, as though we were an executive agency.

That's very concerning to us.

Um it would, as you know, auditor O'Brien is term limited, and so um 2026 will be his last full year.

But he's concerned about what could happen with a future auditor if their budget is subordinate in a way that runs contrary to what Denver's voters decided in 2006 when they voted to amend the charter.

All right.

I and I understand all that.

I'm just wondering about the the, you know, from one pocket to another.

Uh, you're gonna give us back 500,000 next year, and we're gonna give you 300.

Why don't we just reappropriate that half million and call it good?

Because I'm sorry, because then that's a cut to our base budget that will carry forward in future years, and that is going to impede the work of our office.

It will be harder to fill those positions that we had budgeted for this year and weren't able to fill.

Right, okay.

And it will, if I may, it will impede the work of wage enforcement as well.

We've identified some um items that are absolute necessities that we need to have flexibility around next year.

This amendment will allow us to do that.

Might you still might you hire and not turn in the $500,000 next year?

All of it might do you have intent to use that.

But you expect that you will.

I'm trying to understand as best I can.

Sure.

I'll say the auditor's word is ironclad, and so we will keep an eye on our budget, and we will return the amount that he has pledged to return.

Okay, thank you, Madam President.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you.

I just wanted to add as one of the sponsors, um, that this amendment is meant to honor the auditors' independence as an elected official in the city who oversees an independent agency.

Um that said, the auditor's core function of ensuring accountability and how city agencies are spending their money, among other things, is much needed in this current budget environment, and the agency should be funded at a level appropriate to ensure that that happens.

That's it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Parity.

Yeah, I want to um, Councilmember Flynn, I respect the question that you're answering, and I want to add a gloss to it from my understanding of what we're doing here, which is that um within the budget book, you know, the subparts of the auditor's budget um are separated out, right into personnel services, just like all other agencies.

And I think the auditor's point in this, which is very well taken, is that um if they make these cuts in advance and they and they decide, you know, or really department of finance decides for them to allocate those cuts as between say personnel services and supplies, um, then they're locked into that for the coming year.

Whereas what they're committing to do is to have a savings of a certain amount by the end of the year, but they are um retaining the flexibility to decide how to reach that savings as the year goes on.

And I think that's perfectly appropriate for an independent agency.

Um, and I um certainly think that you know council will hold them to that commitment, but the point is um not to be controlled in the decision making about where those funds ultimately are saved, and I defend that completely.

Um I also would say that our job here is to assess what the agency requires to do its work.

Um, and when you look at the numbers of wage theft cases that this agency is resolving, the numbers of workers that they're serving every year, over two million dollars recovered, um 7,000 workers served.

I believe a 60% increase year over year, with um far smaller increases to the agency's budget.

Um certainly my colleagues know this, but I just like to say it again and again.

My a big part of my career before I came here was representing people that had experienced wage theft.

Um, and I just can't even begin to explain the impact of missing a paycheck when you're a low-wage worker in a job.

I had a client who um cried on the stand because he had stopped taking his children out from McDonald's because they that was a luxury that they couldn't afford having experienced wage theft.

So when we're in this kind of economy, um being able to protect vulnerable workers is an extremely crucial function of city government, and I don't want to see that um infringed upon by these kinds of micromanaging budgetary decisions.

So um thank you to my co-sponsors for um for helping to put this forward and thank you to the auditor's office for your advocacy.

And thank you, Councilmember Heights.

Thank you, Madam President.

Uh, I'm gonna channel Voltaire here.

Um, I disagree with everything you say, but defend to the death your ability to say it.

Um I disagree with some of the um uh lawsuits that uh the auditor's office has filed in the past, particularly against me and city council.

Um you are an independent agency and you should have the ability to do that again.

So I'll support this.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you.

Um, I'll be supporting this this uh afternoon.

I think it's important that we keep our independence um independent, and I had a meeting with the auditor's office, so thank you for taking the time to meet with me and go over thoroughly all of your the work that you had done throughout the year.

And um, this was something that when I had was talking to the mayor's council president, I had made the recommendation to give them the $500,000, and when we got the letter unbeknownst to me, that was changed.

And so when you have an agreement with someone, I think you should keep your agreement and every year word matters.

And so if someone gives you your word, you should keep the and give them your word and follow through with that.

So I'm giving you my word by voting yes on this amendment this afternoon.

Um seeing no other questions and comments by members of council, madam secretary.

We'll call on council member Torres Lewis Parity Gonzalez Gutierrez, amendment number one to the mayor's proposed 2026 budget.

Council members Gilmore.

Aye.

Albitres?

Flynn, aye.

Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Aye.

Heinz, aye.

Cashman, Lewis, Parity, aye.

Romara Campbell?

Aye.

Sawyer, aye.

Torres?

Aye.

Watson?

Aye.

Madam President Sandoval.

Aye.

13 ayes.

13 ayes, amendment one to the proposed 2026 has passed.

Um Gonzalez, Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez, your amendment?

Thank you, Council President.

I move that the mayor's proposed 2026 budget be amended in the following particulars.

One on page 567 under the agency titled police department 351000.

And the section titled Police Investigations, 351-2000, and the section titled Expenditures by Activity in the Titled Police Recruits reduce the 2026 proposed column by 5 million dollars.

Two on page 562 under the agency titled police department 351000.

In the section titled Department Budget in the section titled general fund expenditures by type in the line titled Service Services and Supplies reduce the 2026 proposed column by 4 million dollars.

On page 409, under the agency titled Department of Housing Stability 01440 in the section titled Department Budget in the section titled General Fund Expenditures by Agency in the line titled Department of Housing Stability.

Increase the 2026 proposed column by 9 million dollars.

Make other appropriate adjustments to comments, tables, schedules, and figures in the mayor's proposed 2026 budget as may be required to reflect the actions directed in this amendment.

It has been moved and seconded.

Questions or comments by members of council.

Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Yeah, thank you, Madam President.

This amendment moves funds to host to be used to reduce unsheltered family homelessness.

According to host, there are approximately 240 families, and this was information gathered probably just a few weeks ago, so the number could be different.

So I'm saying approximately 240 families, households, not individuals that are unhoused.

Getting folks indoors is just one part of the equation.

And there is more work to be done to transition families to more stable living conditions and getting people housed as a way to begin that engagement.

We've seen that, we've seen we've done it here in the city, and this shouldn't be any different.

This is not a sudden increase, the 240 families.

At the beginning of this year, I think many council members can attest to uh having been approached, have their offices been called about the hundreds of families that were on the wait list with the connection center, or the families that would call the connection center and not receive a response would leave uh, you know, I don't even know if they could leave voicemails, but we we knew that this has been an issue.

We've known this has been an issue for a very long time.

I want to also state that knowing where these funds are coming from, this is not reducing the number of officers in Denver or reducing response times in 2024, um, just so that we're very clear about where these the funding sources for this.

Uh in 2024, the actual cost for Denver to train and hire 167 recruit officers was 2.8 million dollars.

That was in 2024.

Those are the actuals that were spent in 20 the 2026 proposed budget, there is an ask of 9.4 million dollars to recruit 168 officers.

That's a very significant increase in funding.

Um, they will still, with if this budget amendment passes, will have 4.8 million dollars in that in that allocation, and that is nearly double of what was spent in 2024.

Why I'm talking about 2024 is because we don't have the actuals for 2025, and we won't know that until um the first quarter of next year, and so looking at um, looking at that fact and looking at how much it actually takes to to be able to go through the recruitment um and how many uh how much money is actually needed for that.

Um I think it what begs the question there, and what even more begs the question is that we know that we have families that are living on the street right now.

And that is a public safety issue.

And so I want to make sure that we're we're addressing that fully.

Um the last thing I'll just say is the um other funding sources come from the services and supplies.

Um initially, I know when I hit uh this was initially maybe sent out, it had said from specific areas, but I um in understanding that I don't know all of the um the details of DPD's budget when it comes to their services and supplies.

We're not provided with all of those exact details.

I wanted to make sure that it would then be left up to them to determine how they would best utilize their dollars across those different services and supplies line items.

So I'm asking for my colleagues to support in this effort.

I want to make sure that it is clear that this is about giving hosts the flexibility in order to properly apply what is needed to serve families that are unhoused and unsheltered.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you.

And we'll go to questions by or comments by other members of council.

First step, Councilmember Parity.

Yeah, I want to speak up as a co-sponsor in spirit because I have an alternative amendment to accomplish the same thing that's I think three amendments down this evening.

Um so I would ask people to sort of uh consider those in the alternative, and I personally would be a yes vote on either of these um formulas for getting this funded.

Um to speak first just to the substance of the amendment, though, and what we're trying to accomplish, um, those rates of family unsheltered homelessness that my colleague mentioned amount to a doubling in the last 12 months.

893 people within those 200 plus families, 500 to 600 of whom are children.

Um, and so regardless of whether some of those families are finding a car to sleep in or occasionally finding a living room to sleep in, or in fact sleeping quite literally under bridges and in parks, which some of them are.

Um, that is homelessness.

No child should be in those conditions.

To me, this is a moral red line, and this is an amount of money that we absolutely must spend, regardless of frankly where it comes from.

Um, but we're here tonight proposing amendments with sources.

Um keep in mind too that um for cold weather shelter this year, we're expecting to spend a 20% increase, about $7.2 million for emergency cold weather shelter, um, which wouldn't be necessary for many of these families if we had them um sheltered to begin with.

So um having done a lot of work on figuring out what is needed.

Um I feel confident that um a $9 million investment could be spent in a variety of ways by hosts that would get families sheltered.

Um I'm not sort of attempt trying to dictate that hosts spend it on any particular building on any you know particular path to do that, but I'm just asking them to use their expertise and this money to get the family shelter wait list down to zero because we can't we cannot have a one-year-old baby sleeping in a park.

It's getting cold.

We just can't.

Um, including, by the way, on the nights when the cold weather shelters are not open because those open at 25 degrees.

Um, I can't have a baby sleeping outside at 27 degrees, period.

And there are people in this room who have taken some of those kids into their homes.

So in terms of the two amendments, um, I support Councilmember Gonzalez Guterres's sources, and I would point out that in terms of the um line item for services and supplies from DPD, that line item includes um $390,000 for a contract extension with Flock, which I don't think there's a need to be budgeting for at this point.

Um, a $1 million increase in our contract with Axon, $48,000 for mounted patrol.

So I think any of those things are um fair for us to look at and say that that line item could be reduced and still provide very effective safety services to the city.

Um I also echo echo Council Member Gonzalez Gutierrez about the fact that the recruiting budget right now is essentially an overspend.

And I my understanding is that it's planned that way so that that money can roll from year to year.

We don't let other agencies do that.

I don't see why we treat DPD differently, quite frankly.

Um my amendment is different in two ways.

Um, it has essentially the same reduction of um that recruiting budget that is not uh reflective of actual recruiting costs over 2025 to date or 2024.

Um but then beyond that um we took a look at DPD's own projections of how many officers they would have towards actual authorized strength if they meet their recruiting targets fully in 2026.

Um the recruiting budget should pay for DPD's own recruiting target based on their actuals from the last couple years.

Um, and in terms of staffing, DPD is also holding open positions for uniform officers up to full authorized strength, but not actually projecting breaching that, even under its own best case scenario, with a full contingent of 169 new recruits.

So even if they meet that recruiting target, um, they will still have um about 2.7 million dollars of officer salaries over and above what they predict to spend, and that's because we just budget year over year for full uniformed strength, even when we know we're not going to meet that.

Again, that's not good budgeting.

We could be spending that money instead of letting it sit as a line item in a budget where it's not actually needed, even based on DPD's own projections.

So my amendment adds that staffing level right size proposal to the recruiting right size proposal.

And then in addition, asks that we consider ending our helicopter lease, which costs us a total of $866,000 a year.

The lease has a provision in it that if there's a non-appropriation, the lease ends.

So that's a way to terminate the lease is through non-appropriation of the necessary funds.

And that includes the actual lease, no staffing costs, so no officers, you know, uh jobs being cut through this, but just the operations of the actual helicopter fuel maintenance, the lease, and the insurance for it, which is quite costly.

Um a police helicopter, you know, most agencies do not have those.

Um we have seen our police department shift to drones, which I also don't think is a great idea, but if I don't see the point of spending nearly a million dollars a year on a helicopter when there are kids in parks.

It's just we do have to draw these equivalencies.

These are real dollars, and I am not willing to prioritize one of those things over the other.

Um, so I feel so that's sort of the alternative proposal that's a couple of amendments down, and to the extent that members have a strong preference between the two, um, and you know, have an indication of that.

Um, Councilmember Gonzalez, you chairs and I, I think are both happy with either of these versions being the way that we fund this extremely um urgent need to fund to fund uh to get families into shelter.

Thank you.

Thank you.

First up we have Councilmember Cashman.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Um, I'm make comments now that are gonna apply to most of my votes tonight.

Um I think the the budget process that we're looking at is somewhat nonsensical.

Um the mayor and and his team, uh fully staffed Department of Finance, uh, takes a year to speak with all the city agencies and become intimately knowledgeable about every fund where every dime is in the city's coffers, and then uh on September 15th, um uh without any real um interaction with council over that year of creating the budget, we do send them a letter telling them our general priorities.

Um, but the council president doesn't sit in any meetings about how we should craft the budget.

But on September 15th, same day as it goes to the public city council sees the budget.

We then sit for about a week of mind-numbing hearings with uh I think this year 19 city agencies telling us um how much money they want and how they want to spend it.

And then in a couple of weeks, we're supposed to with without a department of finance at our disposal, with no professional uh finance people on the council staff um equipped to assess a budget.

Now we're supposed to pull it apart and tell you exactly where we want to pull the money to uh fill gaps that critical gaps that we think the mayor has missed.

And I think this budget misses a lot of gaps.

So um uh I'm I'm gonna tell you a story.

Uh my friends know that I'm a music lover, and a few weeks ago, a couple months ago, and I went to a show at Red Rocks, had a great time, uh, saw a gal named Brandy Carlisle, great show, got home about 11:30, and uh uh all I could think of was going to bed and um shutting the house down and I hear water dripping, and I look around, can't find any water drip and check the sinks and think I'm just gonna go to bed and then don't do that.

There's water dripping.

Long story short, I pull out my refrigerator and a little plastic hose that attaches the ice maker to the wall had sprung a leak.

Got down on my hands and knees, waited in the bit.

Fortunately, I'd only been gone an hour or so, and I turned off the leak.

And I got a few towels, I mopped up the water and I went to bed.

Now I could have left the water going and called my kids and some friends who said bring towels, we've got a leak.

I'll shorten this up.

That's how I view what we're doing with public safety in Denver.

We're mopping up the leak.

We're not shutting off the source.

I do not think we're doing our uh uh police department, our sheriff's department, our fire department any favors by only addressing half the problem.

I believe we need a well-staffed, well-trained police department.

I've said it before, I'll say it every time I address this.

I don't know whether we have enough cops, too many cops, not enough cops.

It's not for me to decide.

I'll leave that to Chief Thomas, the director of safety to decide what I believe to my core, is this city has failed and this budget continues to fail to address the root causes of crime.

So we keep spitting out this never-ending uh tsunami of people who are so unprepared to face life that they think the only way they can get their needs met is through unlawful behavior.

Okay.

For me, this budget needs to do a lot more to spend money on housing, to spend money on uh programs for kids and families, to spend money on mental health, to spend money on drug treatment.

Until we do that, we're putting our we're intentionally putting our police officers in more danger than they need to be.

We're we're leaving hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of our residents on the street where they don't need to be.

So I'll be supporting uh this uh this evening.

Um if the mayor doesn't like where this money is coming from, I would invite him to propose an alternative.

Like I said, this is a statement of my values.

Don't ask me to interpret an 800-page budget without a professional staff to do so.

Um and I will close.

I was reminded in a meeting today of uh something that I uh always uh end these discussions with, and that is um, don't tell me what your values are, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what your values are.

And I believe, unfortunately, this budget too clearly displays a lack of values.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you.

Council President Pro Tem.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Um, so I know that there are a few uh amendments that are coming that are addressing um family uh sheltering and what that support is, and I think you all know it's like I have worked a lot with a family shelter in our in um my district, and I think that there definitely is a need.

We are serving a lot of families right now.

Um, and I say we because we as the city are serving a lot of families right now, and there still is a need out there.

Um I do think that we have I do have questions, and so uh sorry, have to look in my readers.

Um can I ask a question of you, uh Dr.

Reif?

This afternoon and hi could introduce you.

Hi, yeah, you have to introduce yourself.

I do, right?

Okay, Jamie Reif, Executive Director of House.

Um, thank you.

Uh we talk often, um, almost weekly.

Have a lot of questions about family sheltering.

Uh can you talk to me a little bit more?

Um, the line item number, budget number on this is nine million.

Um can you talk to me a little bit more about uh, and I think the specific language being used, I just want to get it right, is what is our specific language here?

Um sorry, I think they blacked out one part of this.

Um amendment moves funds two hosts to be used to reduce unsheltered family homelessness.

Can you tell me a little bit more about what that use might be at host?

Yeah, may I actually ask for clarification from Councilmembers Parity and Gonzalez Gutierrez?

Would that be okay?

Is this to address only unsheltered homelessness?

Yes.

I mean, I think that there is there is we don't want, I think the the issue that we're talking about are folks that are sleeping outside.

But also we know that there are people who are sleeping in cars.

And so we've heard about the different situations that families are finding themselves in.

Um, we also know that sometimes people do maybe find a night or two at a friend's home or maybe in a hotel, but um, in large part are still unsheltered.

So I think that's a difficult, as you may know.

Like that can be a difficult thing to really find a point to because at any point in time, somebody can find themselves on the streets depending on the situation.

You know, if it gets if it's just a just that much too cold, they may try to find another another situation, but then the next night might be different, right?

It's in flux.

Yeah, exactly.

Um, and just for to kind of add to that, I I um I have some trust from having interacted and listened to host a lot that you all know what to do to cut the size of this wait list.

Um, and that's what I'm looking for you to do.

Okay, so I want to speak a little bit to the wait list right now, and I want to acknowledge there are families that are sleeping outdoors.

I want to say that that is absolutely true.

Um, there are not 230 families sleeping outdoors.

So our wait list is not comprised fully of unsheltered families.

So I do want to like just acknowledge that.

Um, and so I think the approach, I think it would be hard to tell.

Admittedly, I just got this amendment about an hour and a half ago.

So knowing exactly what I would do with this money, is uh is a little bit challenging.

Um I think I what I am deeply concerned about is as much as we want to address family homelessness, and it is an issue, I am concerned about how it affects the part the department from which it is being taken.

Um and so I think to your question, can you remind you your question, Councilwoman?

Um, where would these dollars go?

How would the how would it be appropriated in host?

Yeah, I think we need to think a little bit more about that.

I think one of the challenges is, you know, homelessness ends in a home.

I think we all agree, Councilmember Cashman, you just talked about that.

Um, one of the challenges we have around family homelessness is only two of our providers do rapid rehousing, and they're currently at capacity.

So I think we would have to try to figure out do we need to RFP out, um, another provider, because we don't currently in the provider community to have a ton of capacity to house people.

I think the other question would be um regarding shelter.

Um, finding a spot um to stand up shelter has been very, very difficult for cold weather.

I think many of you have been involved in conversations.

Um so trying to figure out where we would stand up more family shelter, I think would be an additional complication that we'd have to think through, and I'm not, it's not something that we've been able to identify currently.

Um so I was going back, I went back, I watched the video that we had of um of our last committee meeting where we were talking, and Jeff had presented, um, and the magic wand.

It was kind of that magic wand ideal.

Is the magic wand like is that feasible?

Is that something that we could address?

Because there were a lot of things that were mentioned in that um conversation of this is what we could do, this is where we, you know, where we could be, and I don't mean to, I know that's difficult because that's somebody who you work with closely, and I really respect him, and I think he's great.

I also think you're great, so we'll just leave it at there.

I know that puts you in a position.

But there was that conversation about if you had a magic wand, and I went back and watched some of the some of the ideas.

Um is that feasible now or can we do that?

And do you have a price tag to what that would be?

Yeah, so I'm just for context for people that weren't watching the magic wand conversation.

Um Jeff Kazitzki, my deputy director, presented in committee, and council president Sandoval and he had a an exchange about if you had a magic wand, what would you do?

And I think a lot of that was a philosophical conversation about if we had a magic wand, what could we do?

I think what was not considered is the rest of the impacts to the city on where we're taking the money from.

And then could we I think one of the things that came out is could we stand up family congregate shelter?

I think that was one of the biggest questions.

And again, I think we're having a really hard time finding locations for that and where we would permanently put shelter.

So I think my answer is I don't know because I haven't like fully investigated what that might look like.

We have been running into consistent walls on where we would put additional shelter.

Thank you.

So does that mean that we have you had talked about rapid rehousing.

So rapid rehousing, the idea is you get into shelter, you stabilize, you move on with rapid rehousing dollars to a more stable housing location.

Can you tell me a little bit about like what does that you said we don't have, did I understand you don't have capacity right now with the providers that are doing it?

Didn't we have more though?

We did.

So originally there were three providers that provided rapid rehousing as volunteers of America, Salvation Army and Jewish Family Services.

Um council might remember that we brought a contract earlier this year from Salvation Army to do rapid rehousing for families.

Um it was voted down, so we had to reallocate that funding to Jewish family services and volunteers of America.

So they are no longer engaged in this work currently.

Um if that means okay, so rapid rehousing.

If we have dollars, I guess I'm just trying to figure out like is the 9 million the right number for what we need, and do we have a current strategy for families during cold weather sheltering?

Yeah, we do have a current, I think that's a thing.

Like, so over the next six months, we'll be bringing a lot of families indoors, and I think that gives us a really good opportunity to case manage and work with them.

Um I think at the end of that, trying to decide like where might we put a more permanent shelter?

I think that becomes a longer term question.

Um kind of the strategies we have right now for families really revolves around bringing them indoors or directly housing them, right?

So it's a lot of um uh diversion.

Um so that means like you know, like a mom might need her car repaired so she can go to work.

That is one of the things we use.

We have ramped that up this year.

The next is rapid rehousing.

We've traditionally had um funding from the federal government around that.

Admittedly, that is less this year, but our capacity in the system has also shrunk to be able to do that.

Um, and then the third thing I would say like we really need to be thinking about as a city is what is our strategy for our migrant families?

I think that needs to be something that we work across agencies on and maybe with different and new community partners around.

I think migrant families just have a different need, particularly in this federal landscape that we find ourselves in.

So we've started working with HRCP on what that might look like to have a uh a more targeted approach to bringing to to rehousing migrant families permanently.

Um so we currently don't have cross agency collaboration on strategy for migrant families.

I thought we do.

So we I think we we we talk about it like we have had it.

I think phase one was let's get families inside, right?

We had children outside in the dead of winter, and we needed to bring them in and get them housed and do everything we could.

I think phase two is we now know what families will probably be you know calling Denver home.

So how do we make sure that they have a permanent place to reside?

And that's kind of this next phase.

Okay, thank you.

Um, do you have capacity right now in host to?

I mean, yeah.

If you if you have the dollars, you know, I keep asking, like, what can you do with it?

Do you have to RFP it out?

Like how how do these dollars get spent?

What's the current capacity for your staff to be able to do this?

I I think we would have to probably wrap it do an RFP for rapid rehousing.

I don't know who else might respond to that.

So that would be um, you know, we'd have to have a quite a bit of runway to do that.

Um, the same with like a congregate shelter, we would have to RFP that out as well, or we're in the process of RPing it this spring anyway.

So I do think there would be delays.

I do also um my staff is um, you know, we've had a really hard time um across the city having capacity with within our departments to get money out the door.

Um and so I do think we need, I would need to be really thoughtful about how we shifted things around, and we might have to not do other things, right, to be able to effectively deploy this.

Okay.

Um thank you.

I don't have any other questions for you, Ryan.

Thank you.

I do have other questions.

Um, I don't know who, Chief Thomas.

Good afternoon, ma'am.

Uh Ron Thomas Chamber, police chief.

Thank you, sir, for being here.

Um, can you tell us a little bit?

I mean, it was explained um recruit classes, what does that mean for recruit classes and some of the carryover that's happening?

Can you speak a little bit to that?

It sounds like a lot of it sounds like a lot of dollars.

It does, and I think maybe a better question answered by finance for why there's that rollover that I think counts for the nine million dollars specific for 2026.

Um I can tell you that um that removing any class of of recruits would have a staggering impact on public safety.

Okay, um, is there somebody from finance that can answer that?

Thank you.

Good evening.

Justin Sykes, budget management office director.

So uh just to clarify, there is not a rollover of budget in the general fund for police recruit classes.

As part of each year's budget, what we will budget for are the rollover recruits.

And so what happens is when the police department has an academy, it takes I believe about six months for recruits to go through the academy, and so of that uh over 9 million dollars of budget for 2026 recruits, a little under four million dollars of that are is for uh what we consider to be the rollover recruits, so recruits who started the police academy in the current year who wouldn't complete it until 2026.

Okay, I think I get that.

Thank you.

Um Chief, can you also um it was also mentioned uh response times?

I hear a lot in my district about response times.

Can you speak to that?

Yes.

So, you know, we've done some calculation to determine the impact of response times as it relates to um the number of recruit classes that we would have, and so uh specifically if we were to only have one class of say 58 or 56 recruits in 2026, that would have the impact of um an additional two minutes on response time to priority calls.

Okay.

Um I may jump, thank you very much.

Um, I will probably jump back in the queue.

Um I still am trying to figure out how the nine million dollars would be spent.

Um I think that we do need to be able to help support, you know, families and augment what's currently happening.

Uh Salvation Army is leaving, you know, the Tamrak at the end of the year.

We have Bayad coming in, and that is a big transition.

Um, and I just want to make sure that that transition happens well.

I don't know if some of these dollars then could go to support that.

I know there's already contract that's out there.

So um I'll hop back in the queue, but thank you.

Thank you, madam president.

Thank you, Councilmember Watson.

Uh thank you so much, madam president.

I'll start with a quick comment and then uh Dr.

Reif, um, don't go too far because I'm gonna be calling you back up and Chief uh Thomas as well, be calling you as well.

I think each person on this dais um has been impacted or have had a family member or someone that has been on housed.

I think this council has communicated and demonstrated in a two and a half years that we have been here.

Um, our focus and attention to ensure that we reduce the number of folks living and dying on our streets has not been compared to by any other class.

Um I can tell you in district nine, as I became a city council member, I had 600 souls living on the streets in my district.

In encampments, being targeted by drug dealers, pimps, etc.

Families, kids, and adults.

We came in with intentionality to ensure that we wrap them with service and support, and we brought them indoors, and then we rapidly housed the majority of those folks.

That has been the commitment of this council.

That has been a commitment of the agencies that we have supported within the city and county of Denver.

And that's an essential point to put forward.

Our budget's all moral documents and by through our budgets and through our priorities, we have demonstrated, unlike any other class, that focus.

And I stand by that.

I have this book on my desk because I read it frequently by Dr.

Reif.

And I say that, Dr.

Reif, if you don't mind coming forward, I'm not selling a book.

If you don't have it, please buy it.

Um I think it's fantastic.

It has helped me with the work that I've done, and it and it helped me when I chaired the department of the housing board as a first chair of the housing stability strategic advisors board who helped came up with a five-year plan and a targeted plan for housing stability, housing opportunity, and a clear focus of ensuring that we reduce the instances of unhoused um folks and impacts on our families' lives directly.

I speak to Councilmember Cashman's uh point of the timing that we have for this process.

It's not a lot of time.

I was very good at that.

I retired at 50 because of that.

Then I run for counsel, you can call me crazy.

But I rely within the six week process on experts.

Exactly what Councilmember Cashman said.

And one of those experts has a book that walks us through the process.

One of the experts is the executive director of the Department of Housing Stability.

And when I look at this budget and I ask the tough questions of how we are supporting those who are needing the most support from us, I don't come up with a big idea.

I asked Dr.

Reif.

So let me ask you a few questions, um, Dr.

Reif.

On your focus and that of the Department of Housing Stability, as it pertains to ensuring that we are taking care of families that are living on the streets or living in couches or living in cars.

What is your strategic process and what are you looking at to make sure we reduce those numbers?

Tell us the steps that Department of Housing Stability is doing today through your expert experience as a doctor who spent their lives doing this work.

First of all, thank you for pitching the book.

Um, yeah, I think you know, we've been working on this budget for six months.

Council, this was not an easy process.

We had to make really, really hard decisions.

And I think one of the decisions we really made was we have brought a lot of people indoors.

It's now time to really focus on the housing piece of things.

And so continuing to stand up emergencies, uh shelter and emergency responses after emergency.

We're just gonna continue to fill those out.

And so the process really needs to be things like again how do we specifically need meet the needs of migrant families?

How do we meet the needs of families, single adults, people that are suffering from substance use disorders, mental health?

So those are all things we're bringing to the table to try to make that more robust.

With families, we do have specifically an outreach team that goes to families, tries to bring them indoors.

We hotel voucher, and again, we're really working for cold weather shelter to make sure that we have enough to bring people indoors and then try to get them on the path to housing.

But I do feel like the thing that we need to most focus on is how do we assure that we are having throughput in this federal environment for families that do not have documentation or they do not have the ability to work right now, and so that's really what we're focused on in this moment, um, as well as again trying to get the housing throughput.

Um, council is aware we're doing the performance-based contracts.

That is not something we've done before.

And a lot of the performance-based contract is around how do we get people housed?

So it's um are you having rapid resolution conversations right when a family enters shelter?

Are you making sure that they are getting four housing focused case management meetings a month?

Are you ensuring that they are on the community queue for housing?

Those are all things we're trying to make our system more efficient and really point the entire system towards housing.

And that is what we need to be focused on is how do we make sure everybody everywhere is rowing the boat towards getting people into housing?

And so what I gather, Dr.

Reif, you have the skill set, you have the expertise, you have the care, because this has been your life's work.

To make sure reduced instances of families living and dying on our streets and needing shelter.

Do you need me to drop nine million dollars on your lap on planned and just tell you go for it?

Or do you, as the expert, I'm not the expert.

Do you working with the Department of Housing Stability?

What do you need from council for us to do to get you to the point where we're reducing family living on our streets?

Yeah, I think that's a really hard question because again, I got this amendment a couple hours ago, and we can't take this out of the context of the repercussions it has.

It's not free money, and we have to understand that this comes from somewhere.

If you said to me, Jamie Reif, I'm gonna give you nine million dollars that has no repercussions across the city.

That's amazing.

Of course, I would, you know, I'd do my best, but like this does have repercussions across the city that we need to be thoughtful about.

And it's it's hard for me to put that aside and just say, like, this is what I would do or this is what I need, because I do have to weigh that with how this affects the Denver Police Department.

Correct.

We do live in a real world, and I don't expect you to put that aside.

So I'll ask uh Chief Thomas to come up.

Um, what do you think?

Chief Thomas, can you share the impacts the first of all?

Sure the the rationale for your budgeting for the recruiting class and the dollars that you set aside.

Why are those dollars set aside in that way and talk through what that impact is of the the value of that those dollars spend the way you have it set aside, and the lack of those dollars, what would be that impact?

Thank you for the question again.

Uh, Chief Thomas, Denver Police Department.

Um, so you know, it is true that if we were to have our um our current ask for recruits fully funded uh through this year's budget, that we would not get to authorized strength.

That is because we have a multi-year plan, uh having fully funded academy classes for a number of years to finally reach that uh that allocation of authorized strength.

Um but what we what we are uh urgently trying to do is outpace attrition.

So we know that we are going to lose um 115 officers or so a year to retirements and and other separations.

And so we need um at least two full academies just to barely outpace that uh attrition, and so that's why that's critically important.

Obviously, the number of officers that we have on the street directly ties to response times.

Uh, the number of officers that we have on our department, I think directly responds uh relates to some of the public safety impacts that we've had are significant reductions in auto thefts, homicides, non fatal shootings, all of that work takes people, and so to not have those people focused on that work, um, I think would detract from public safety.

I think the other thing that we need to be concerned about is we have a responsibility too to uh staff uh uh den.

And so uh in order to keep those officers fully staffed, we need to pull officers from our patrol ranks uh to make sure that then is fully staffed, and so um for for all of those reasons, it is critically important that we continue to have full academy classes in each budget cycle.

Thank you, um Chief Thomas.

And in closing, um I have asked the executive directors and the chiefs of each of the departments um through this process.

How can I as a city councilperson, be helpful to make sure not only that we can execute on the outcomes that departments are saying, but that we can be smart in ways that we're spending these dollars?

Um, I trust in the work that you all have done, the council that you have provided, we have challenged you to spend money differently.

I cannot support this amendment because of the impacts.

Dr.

Reif and Department of Housing Stability are working on the process of reducing family uh families living on the streets.

We need to work with her and her team to find ways to make sure that happens.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you.

Councilmember Finn.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Uh, thank you, Dr.

Reif, for uh mentioning that you had just seen this amendment.

When I came into the building uh around 12 30, there were 12 amendments.

And when I sat down here, there were 26.

So I'm getting my first look at many of these.

And I don't think that's very fair.

And I think a lot of it has to do with our budget process, and maybe that needs to change uh that we should have information a lot earlier.

I had a discussion with another member uh uh this afternoon about that very about that very issue.

So I think it's really unfair to try to balance and weigh the impacts.

Um thank you, uh Chief.

Uh could I call you up again?

Thank you.

Uh on the aspect of the uh the recruit class that's gonna start next month is mostly funded out of this 26 budget.

There are salaries and services and supplies, et cetera, uh correct.

Do you know what that amount is?

Uh Chief Thomas again, uh, police department.

I don't, uh, but I think some folks in finance can answer that question specifically.

But actually, I think that any class that would start towards the latter end of the year, the majority of those funds would actually fall in the following year's budget.

Right, so that's why I'm concerned with taking away nearly half of next year's police recruit budget because a significant portion of it is uh allocated to the class that's gonna start in at the end of 25.

That is correct.

And okay.

Um I appreciate you mentioning the uh response time issue.

Um, just a very quick anecdote from my district, which is the farthest southwest, and the area south of Hamden, uh difficult to get to sometimes because of the freeway, uh, very few ways to get under.

Uh, but I have there's a couple in my district that owns a restaurant in Aurora, and they closed up and came home late one night after a day of work at their restaurant, and they clicked their garage door open, and lo and behold, inside there were two burglars filling bags with the belongings from inside their home.

And so one of them persons gets on 911, the other one tries to keep the people there, tries to keep their space there.

Uh the burglars eventually left.

I don't know if they left with any of the belongings, but police didn't get there for 45 minutes.

So I'm very, very concerned about reducing the flow of new officers to replace the ones who are retiring or leaving uh because response times when we took office in 2015, average response time in my district was 16 minutes.

We got it down within a couple of years to 12 minutes or just under 12 minutes, and now it's climbed up again, and that's unacceptable.

I believe, as uh Councilman Cashman said, that we can do a lot more to address the root causes of crime, and I think that we are on that path.

We might it might be useful to have more money, more programs, more innovation, uh, but we do have a broad suite of programs that are working to address the root causes of crime.

And I know that DPD and Department of Safety also has programs uh for crime prevention, but at the same time, we can't take away resources from the responses to crime that's occurring today and tomorrow and next week and next year while we look at funding those others.

We have to have both and yes and uh so uh thank you for those answers, uh Chief.

Uh either Justin or Stephanie, can you address the uh this amendment, which I only saw for the first time when it was introduced, uh proposes to take away 26 percent of the services and supplies budget for the Denver Police Department.

$4 million dollars, but it doesn't give any direction as to where to take that from.

What services and what supplies.

There have been some suggestions, but I believe it's incumbent on this body.

If we're gonna balance the budget, we can't just say take that top line number and cut it by by four million dollars and you figure out where it comes from.

So how does that process normally work?

Councilman, it's a great question.

You know, I do want to flag some of the mandatory items that the police department needs to fund out of that services and supplies budget, body cameras are one of those mandatory items.

It's required by state law.

A state law.

And so I believe the contract amount is somewhere uh in the order of around $4 million.

Uh that is something that legally we don't have any choice around.

Um and so I think there would be an effort to sit down with the police department and analyze where are there items that are not legal mandates that even could be cut?

Um we don't know.

Uh we also are are seeing this amendment just very recently, and uh don't have those answers at this point in time.

Okay, thank you.

I actually believe it's incumbent on the sponsors of the amendments to specify where it comes from.

Can I address that as a sponsor?

Uh not yet.

Okay, I'm just answering the question that you're asking.

Thank you.

I know I know there's been some suggestions made as to where it could come from, but there are a number of like police administration, police investigations, and it should be incumbent on the sponsors to lay that out.

If you I uh councilwoman power, do you have a separate amendment on that?

I think uh well, this one I'm the sponsor of, and I think councilwoman parity is the sponsor of the other one.

Um, and I will just say the reasoning for that is because as I mentioned in my opening remarks, is that I don't know the intricacies of what is spent in the services and supplies budget.

Um, and getting that information doesn't always it's not always transparent as counsel.

And there's been many times when I have uh asked for information, and I don't always get it.

And so I did not have time.

And to your point earlier of the timing of all of this makes it very difficult to be able to manage that.

And so I will say that I didn't have a chance to ask uh the chief or department of finance, you know, what what is exactly in each of those line items, which is why I reverted back to the general services and supplies of DPD for them to make the determination of what are the mandates, what are the things that we cannot cut, um, and where are there places that could potentially um be cut in order to fulfill that need.

So I didn't think that it was right or my place to be able to make that determination for the department because they know what it is that they are mandated to have.

Thank you.

Not knowing that at this point, there's no way I could support this.

Uh Stephanie or Justin, what is the how many police recruits could be run through the academy next year if we took five million dollars out of the nine million?

So I think we would be obligated to fund those rollovers or recruits.

Certainly.

Um how much is that?

Yeah, so I believe that's about four million of the little under four million of the nine million approximately total for recruits.

Um really, we've got two recruit classes budgeted, and then just a very small amount for a third recruit class that would start in December of 2026.

Uh, each of those recruit classes is uh slated to be I believe 56 officers, and so uh we would have to re reduce that significantly.

I don't know off the top.

That sounds like we could only have one other recruit class then.

Um I'm sorry?

It sounds like we could have only one other recruit class next year.

Um I think you know, there might it might be possible, I think, to still do the one in December, but then the other two would be I think in jeopardy uh that would occur earlier on in the year.

Thanks.

Real quick on that to maybe answer, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Justin.

On page um 564 in the budget book, um, under uh it says that it is add budget under personnel services under general fund investigations, add budget for recruits in 2026 due to an academy rolling over from 2025, and right there it says 1 million 126,200.

And if that's just a portion of it, and there's other pieces that are rolling over to fulfill that requirement, but that is one place where it says and it says it's around 1.1 million dollars.

So, and what you're looking at there, council member, in the budget book is the incremental amount.

So the amount in addition to what's there in the 2025 budget.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um thank you, Madam President.

I think that uh without knowing the impact on this of this amendment on delivery of services, particularly in in the outlying parts of town and the response time, I think it's it it's not wise while we invest in addressing the root causes of crime, which I believe we should do to also to pay for that by cutting back on the responses and the ability to respond and prevent crimes that are occurring today, tomorrow, and next year.

And I think that this kneecaps us from doing that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Heinz.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um, I too are I want to extend council members cashman and Flynn and I think uh Watson's comments about the tight time frame, the legislative branch has to review, propose amendments and educate our colleagues on uh the impact of what those amendments are.

Um I agree I think there should be a reform of city council's section of the budget process.

Um I do want to share a lens that I use um because this I'm halfway through my second term.

Um a few years ago we funded STAR.

Um the uh council uh put forth a budget amendment that was adopted that funded STAR with money that it ultimately could not use.

Uh they couldn't hire social workers fast enough.

There were some um uh delays in the delivery of star vans.

Um so we ended up overfunding STAR, and um and we didn't realize until late in the year we could have given that money to uh temporary rental and utility assistance or some other destination, um, but it just sat in star, and unfortunately um we had good intentions, but uh but those good intentions kind of um kind of created some uh challenges with uh funding other things that we could have funded.

Um this amendment's tough for me as uh councilmember Flynn mentioned.

Um I I went back to discover when I got this amendment, it was um 1015 on Sunday night, but I wasn't checking my email at 1015 Sunday night.

Um so I think that isn't a um a knock against that email, it's more really to talk about this this process doesn't allow us the time to truly breathe and and vet um the now 26 budget amendments.

Um if we focus as Dr.

Reif has suggested, I'm totally gonna go buy that book.

You should too by the book no, just um uh if we uh focus on getting people into permanent housing, um, then the shelter space that um that this proposed amendment would get us, uh we might have too much shelter space if if really the the plan is to get people from the street into shelter into permanent housing.

Um that's the Houston model.

Um had Hurricane Harvey uh that gave it um 10 times as many federal vouchers as we get here in the city.

Um so uh so they were able and the average rent um price for uh housing in in Houston is way lower than than here in Denver.

And so um uh interestingly now the city of Houston is coming to us to learn how um uh how to get people into uh off the street and into housing.

Um but I'm I'm concerned that if we um buy um another way to get people into shelter, and yet we're focusing on getting people into housing, then we might have an overabundance of shelter, and um uh so I don't know.

I I guess it part of me wants to plan the work and work the plan, and I know that host has a a five-year plan.

And um, so I guess um I uh two things I'm concerned about.

One, I want to make sure host can use the money.

Um and Dr.

Reif um you know was saying that she can always use more money, but um uh but is not exactly sure how to allocate it at this at this moment um and then the second thing is um uh i want to understand more about uh the comment that uh police department can't use the funds um so uh you know the the tripling of the recruitment budget um or the you know the cost to uh per recruit has tripled I guess um I don't know is that a finance question not a uh police question uh throw it out uh I would start with Chief Thomas but if he's just gonna throw it at finance then I might as well just go straight to finance.

And I think the point of clarification there, Councilmember is back in 2024, I don't believe we were filling the recruit classes to the degree that we have but in the current year.

I'd defer to Department of Safety if they want to provide more details but I think that's one of the reasons why that cost per recruit for 2024 is relatively lower than I think the approximately sixty thousand dollars that we're projecting for 2026.

So I I guess I just don't under I don't understand.

So perhaps you could maybe give the same answer in a different way but let me try to rephrase the question.

So if we were not trying to recruit in 2024 like we are in 2026 are you saying it's just three times as hard to recruit someone that will get through the academy or three times as expensive?

So I think what uh trying to say is that currently so for a police recruit class uh we target 56 recruits right now my understanding is that we are coming very close to filling those recruit classes that has not always been the case.

So in 2024 my understanding is that we were significantly below the 56 recruits per class which is why then that cost per um you know the total recruit budget is is lower because we just have fewer recruits in the recruit class.

So it takes we did the analysis what we as in someone in the executive branch did the analysis and it um actually to fill a recruitment class it cost more money to recruit we were trying to do it on a third uh the budget and we just weren't recruiting people and now we are because we're spending more money in the recruitment process is am I getting that right?

I'm not sure if Shine is here maybe and could help me out on this one.

She she is our subject matter expert on Department of Safety Finance.

So let me just uh better to have her say it than me get it wrong.

And will you let us know who you are when you come to my good evening Shine Cummings chief financial officer for Department of Public Safety.

So I think one of the things and I would like to get with council member parody um at a different time there might be a miscalculation or misunderstanding of what the per recruit class cost is.

So in 23 and 24 the actual cost of a recruit um with salary and benefits total package is about $9000 just averaging that out when you take that a recruit it takes them six months to go through that class that's starting at a baseline of 45 thousand we also have about a $13,000 um cost that is acquired for equipment costs.

So when you look at the budget package the one thing that is misleading as council member um cashman spoke to is that we when we process requests is based on your payroll at that time so if a class starts in December 2025 but does not graduate until May of 2026 only one month of that expenditures in theory falls in current budget year and the other five months will fall into a different budget year.

Now as Justin spoke to back in 23 and 24 the reason we had lower numbers that we're starting in our recruit classes, it was just the timing of how our civil service commission has to be assisted in this process too of hiring.

And when there's competing interest, as has been mentioned before, between fire department, police department within civil service and the um limited staffing that does impact how many officers and or firefighters were able to put in the class as well.

Understood.

Um council president, I see that we're uh bumping up to time, so I'm going to just leave it there and uh if I have to, I'll get back in the queue.

Thank you, madam president.

Thank you.

So, colleagues, we have public comment in four minutes.

I'm gonna break us, and so just for the record, we have council member parity, council member Lewis, Council Pro Tem Mario Campbell, and Councilmember Flynn in the queue.

Um, Madam Secretary, will you note that?

Awesome.

And then if there are no objections, let me go to my chisha.

Oh, please.

I view us me.

Yeah, what page?

Okay.

Um, um, if there are no objections to from, okay.

Um, if there are no objections from members of council, we will reset until 5 30 p.m.

before reconvening the regular meeting.

City council will provide a half hour general public comment session to hear from the public on city motion.

If we did not get to you today, please join us next week or submit your comments in writing.

The next session will be held Monday, November 10th.

Sign up begins at 5 p.m.

on Thursday, November 6th.

We look forward to hearing from you again, and thank you for attending.

Okay.

Council will now reconvene from earlier session, and we will continue with consideration of amendments.

Questions or comments by other members of council on council member Gonzalez Gutierrez's amendment two is in amendment two, right?

Yeah, amendment two to the mayor's proposed budget.

In our queue, our council member parity, followed by councilmember Lewis, Council President Pro Tem Romero Campbell, and Council Member Flynn.

Councilmember Parity.

Yeah, thank you so much, Council President.

Um, I want to really slow down and talk about this $5.7 million within the recruiting budget.

And I want to make it exceptionally clear to people who are listening, and especially to those who got the text messages from the mayor's office tonight, claiming that we're um cutting police officers from the streets or cutting recruits, that that is in no way, shape, or form what we're doing here.

What we have done is simple math and determined that this 5.7 million dollars is an overage that it is not needed to recruit the exact number of officers the DPD intends to recruit in 2026.

Um I'm gonna walk us through that.

In 2024, we were able to recruit 129 new recruits for 2,822,537.

That is 21,880 per recruit.

In 2025, through the end of June, as we were told in budget hearings, we have been able to recruit 103 officers for 2 million dollars to 2,250,000.

That comes out to 21,844 per recruit.

Four dollars difference from the 2024 number.

So these are seeming like real and valid recruiting expenses.

That is the number for the last year and a half.

Every single year before that, the number that we have budgeted for police recruiting every year has never gone higher than about three million dollars, and it's usually been it's been in the two million and change to three million dollar range for four years going back to 2020.

So this year we have 9.4 million for the same number of officers that we always try to recruit, which is 167, 168, 169.

It's always somewhere in there.

Um, if we were to recruit 168 officers successfully in 2026, and it cost us 21,884, again, that very real figure, the cost for that would be 3.7 million, not 9.4 million.

And that is if we succeeded in meeting that recruiting target, which is council president typically points out, we usually don't, but I'm assuming we will for the first time this year, and that would cost us 3.7 million.

I have heard no explanation from any of the five or six people from Department of Finance and DPD and Department of Safety who have stood up tonight about why the amount per recruit for 2026 is $55,871 instead of 21,844.

I don't understand it.

So I would appreciate if someone cook it up and tell me why.

It is going to cost us 250% more, 2.5 times as much in 2026 as it did in 2025 to date, as it did in 2024 to recruit an officer.

And I want to add one thing.

Chine said that the officers' salaries are $90,000.

Those are on a different line of the budget book.

We can see that in the budget book, and we asked you all about that in our budget questions, and you all responded to us being very clear that the costs on the recruiting line that we are proposing to cut by 5.7 million dollars do not include the officers' salaries.

So I am sorry, can someone explain this to me?

I have been asking this for months.

Department of Finance or Department of Safety.

Or all of you.

Council member, thank you for the opportunity.

So I think one of the things that is uh probably not apples to apples is the number of months that the recruits are in academy each year.

So when we budget for recruit classes, we are not each year budgeting three classes for all six months of the year.

Uh it's oftentimes one full class, so one class for six months.

There are rollover recruits within that amount.

Um, not sure, you know, would love to sit down with you like Shanish Harid, understand what numbers you're looking at, what you're comparing them to.

I'm looking at page 567 of the budget book, your chart.

Um, in terms of the cost number, so I so I think for some of those prior years to um look at where the budget was, what was were those recruits that were um starting in that year were those recruits that were.

I mean, Justin, you can speculate about that to me, but you cannot tell the public that we should budget based on speculation.

I mean, that that is so outrageous to me.

No other department could conceivably get up here and tell us to allocate 5.7 million dollars to them when they cannot explain why.

Yeah, councilmember, if if you want to sit down, we we would be glad to walk you through kind of how we arrived at it.

It's too late.

We're in the hearing, we're amending right now.

And Councilmember Flynn, to your point about the timing of the amendments, I just want to make something else really clear.

I sent to our legislative staff, who then immediately sent two BMO and presumably BMO shared with relevant agencies last Tuesday, my full list of possible drawdowns, including this 5.7 million and how I calculated it.

This is not an ambush.

I had not circulated that to council members that were not supportive of this amendment.

I circulated variations of this to council members who had indicated in our straw poll in our process that there was a chance of support, and you were not on that list.

So that is why you personally did not see these numbers sooner.

Um, and I do apologize for that because in an ideal world, I certainly would have circulated that to everyone, but I was trying to engage the council members who had indicated a willingness to potentially vote for family shelter based on our straw poll.

So that's where my focus was.

Um, all of those council members received the same list of potential drawdowns on Wednesday.

We are all inundated, and I am not faulting anyone in the slightest for that, but for those who are listening, I want to make it very clear that this is not an ambush.

This money was, I proposed it a week ago.

I asked about it in budget hearings, I asked about it in my questions to DPD, DOS, and DOF, and I don't understand why it is costing 250% more.

Did the academies get longer?

I mean, give me something here.

Uh the academies did not get longer.

I think uh it would go back to how many months of actual recruits in the academy we are looking at in any particular year.

Explain that again.

Sure.

Um, if you want to jump in, so so I think the the key point is that a full recruit class is six months for 56 recruits.

In any given year, we are not budgeting three six months recruit classes.

In most years, there's some portion of recruit budget that's for those rollover recruits, so recruit classes that started in the prior year, and then one or two full recruit classes.

Okay.

And then portion.

Yeah, and I understand that that the classes can break out differently across years, but here are the numbers.

2020, the spending on recruits was I believe $2,600.

$2,600.

We successfully got 105 recruits that year.

In 2021, the spending was $2,620.264.

In 2022, it was $3,000, $118.

In 2023, it was $2,822,537.

And in 2024 through June, it was $2,000 and change.

So I cannot in any universe, all of those years we had recruiting numbers in the in the 100 plus.

I cannot get us from those numbers year over year over year over year.

It's not showing these weird spikes like the classes are just breaking out differently until now when we're asked to vote to budget 9.4 million.

What I have been told by DPD when I've asked about this in the past is that the overages in the recruit classes are used for sort of flex spending for other things, maybe overtime.

Is that what's happening here?

So recruit classes are not typically used for other costs in Shenaia.

I don't know.

Good evening, Shinee coming to Chief Financial Officer for Department of Public Safety.

And that's why I am stating I'm more than welcome to meet with you in future months to really go through this process, but I will let Chanel but we need an answer tonight.

Correct.

Why 5.7 million dollars beyond?

So the 5.7 million dollars actually represents what it would take to hire one class of 56 from a time period of April through August, or sorry, October for that six month period.

There is also only three months funding while we say we're hiring a class of 56 again because that class starts in October and it will not graduate until March.

There is only three months of funding.

So if you take what we would actually be able to put in an equivalency of FTE, we're only hiring the equivalency and FTE of about 88 individuals or 88 officers in this case.

Now when you speak to 2023 and 2024, I will acknowledge along with our safety HR partners that there is this misconception, and we are working on that with our payroll side of things, because everything does not post what we provided to you as referenced in the workday account, is what shows up in there under that recruit line item budget.

Now we will say when we talk about equipment costs and things of that nature, because we have inventory that we have to manage, it might be a replenishment of that inventory that does not show up under that same cost center.

So I is recruited on the recruit line in the budget book, or is it on another line?

So we do salaries are not on the recruit line.

So salaries are under the recruit line that are in the budget cost allocation for that cost center.

Um as you spoke to when I say $90,000.

If we go back to the collective bargaining agreement, when you hire a PO4 under the collective bargaining agreement, which is what a recruit would be, it is still that same salary.

So there is, and I'm not quite sure the $21,000 being like a per recruit cost.

If that is factored into say, because we hired $168 recruits, because that's not in fact the way, even though we represent, so a good example would be like now.

We're saying in December, because they actually started in December, that brings us to that number 168.

But from a payroll side, we may only have 120 officers that we paid in that year.

So that's where it is kind of that misalignment there.

So what's the change?

This is a chart of the numbers for it from the budget book from 2020 through 2025.

Now keep in mind in 2024, we did not spend that.

That was what was budgeted, and then we actually spent again 2.8 million.

So this line is essentially flat through 2024.

In 2024, we budgeted far more than this and didn't spend it.

We didn't spend it.

And now in 2025, we're asking to budget even more.

And I don't understand why it's, I just nothing you're saying to me is translating to me to this kind of a spike.

What I can say, unfortunately, the number that is represented in the budget book under that cost center for recruit may not align with where the payroll expenditures end up.

I'm sorry, say that again.

So the cost center that is assigned to police recruits, and I'll just use myself for example.

If I'm a police recruit, I may in workday have a cost center allocation from a payroll expenditure standpoint in a cost center that is not police recruit.

And that is something when I say we um working with Department of Finance, our payroll team, as well as our Department of Safety, HR partners, so that we can ensure we're aligning the correct personnel costs with where it belongs in the cost center.

What I want to point my colleagues to, and thank you, Shine.

I don't I don't have any follow-up on that.

Um I can't say that I understand, but I I don't have any other questions.

Um, the if you look at our past budgets in 2024, um, we were asked to budget, or sorry.

Yeah, in 2024, we were asked to budget seven million some odd dollars for recruits, and then the actual spending was 2.8.

So I don't know what's, I I still don't understand what's happening here.

Um, but that's since I've been on council and going all the way back to 2020, we have never seen more than three million dollars of spending in a year on recruits with similar targets, 168 or so every single year, and often fairly successful recruiting towards those numbers.

So I'm gonna leave that there.

On the substance of the issue, I wanna be really clear about this.

The mayor has said many times in public that there are no children sleeping on the streets of Denver, and that is not true.

Um, that is to defend his budgetary decision to cut back drastically on shelter.

I understand as well as anybody in this room how tight this budget is.

It is agonizing for every single one of us, um, and I think I mean literally every single one of us, I know that.

Um, and I know that's true of the mayor's team as well.

But the fact that the mayor is essentially brushing this issue under the rug means that we are the only path remaining.

Um, and that is the difference between our prior efforts to shelter people, which had the backing of the mayor.

This time, we are the only, the only path remaining to get this done.

Um, I have to, and I have to say, I'm not judging myself on some kind of comparative scale to past council classes.

I am judging myself by whether there are toddlers sleeping in parks, and there are.

If there is one thing that I am certain of, it is that shelter can be obtained for money.

Two years ago, we rented and operated multiple hotels, I think as many as eight or ten at a time for around nine million dollars a piece.

Um we were able to find those places, we were able to put people inside them, we were able to staff them.

We're not asking to do anything on that scale now.

We are asking to do enough so that children are not sleeping on the streets.

Um I spoke to partner organizations to make sure that there are folks out there who would bid on this kind of RFP.

There are organizations that are in a different position than they were during our last two families sheltering RFPs, who, because of all of the budgetary changes that are happening in the world and their desire to meet the need that is out there, which they are seeing, would bid on this RFP.

Um, anticipating the host at the mayor's direction would find ways to protest that it's going to be too difficult to spend this money for both of these amendments.

The sponsors essentially took out the restrictions, put it under homelessness resolution, and said, here's a simple directive, spend it as the agency sees fit in the mayor's executive discretion to get children sheltered.

I don't understand how we are in such a different place than we were two years ago.

We had the entire neighbor of Highlands sheltering children in their living rooms and extra bedrooms.

I drove out to the Zuni in on Thanksgiving night when it was freezing and drove carloads of toddlers out to Tower Road to get them into shelter.

People were providing tents and putting them up.

And now we're just going to accept this.

The 13 of us, we are making that choice tonight.

Our jobs get hard when we disagree with the leadership of the executive in a strong mare system.

We get put through our paces, we get denied information, we get gaslit, like we're seeing here tonight, and yet our moral imperative remains.

This is where we matter.

This is one of the only times that we matter.

Voting through the mayor's budget, we may as well not be here.

The only difference between now and two years ago is that the mayor has decided to move on from the moral imperative to keep children sheltered.

I have not.

Thank you, Council Pro Timber Mirror Campbell.

Thank you.

Can I ask you, Dr.

Wright?

I'm gonna bring you back up.

So nine million dollars.

You've told me that our two um current providers for rapid rehousing do not have capacity.

Currently that's more.

So we have to RFPE out another provider.

We would, or we'd have to figure out how to add to contracts.

And again, I'd have to look at the contracts and see what we can add to.

At this particular moment in time, they don't have capacity.

It's not to say in the future they wouldn't.

They're just two organizations and there's only two of them.

So to again, I know that we could rent a hotel for 9 million dollars.

That doesn't leave us rapid rehousing money.

Do you know what I'm saying?

It would just kind of depend on the amount of money.

Okay.

Um my question is is nine million the right amount of money.

I don't have any like I don't have an answer to that, right?

Like, I think if we are going to stand up shelter, it might end up being that we need more money than that because it's only gonna cover a non-congregate shelter, as councilman parody correctly said.

We could go look to rent a hotel, but that would take all nine million of the dollars, and then we don't have housing exits.

So there's there, I think there would be some give and take on whether or not this is enough, depending on how we spend it.

Okay.

Um, what I know with the family shelter, we funded it for multiple multi-year um intent.

We're on second year.

Um, it's been more than nine million dollars.

Correct.

Um, I am and thank you.

I I don't think I have any other questions.

Okay, I think I'll go back, sorry.

Um, I'll just make this short.

I think this is a really difficult conversation.

I think that um we've gone deep on, you know, the dollars within the police budget, but my question is still the original um uh amendment that came up was for family sheltering, and this is for um to use for uh for a shelter, and this one specifically is to use for however hossees fit to be able to house families.

I'm not sure we have the right number, and I know that tonight we need to make that decision, and that is a really hard decision to make.

Um I have asked already that do we have dollars in our um for our cold weather sheltering for families and prioritized.

Um I don't know.

Maybe it is better for you to come up on mic as far as like what that priority is and how we would address that.

I've also heard that we need to have a better strategy across agencies for um thinking of our migrant family response, because that is very real.

Um, and I think a growing number of our families that are unsheltered right now.

Can you just talk to us a little bit?

Um, what was my question?

I just have my question for you.

About the cold weather sheltering plan.

Yes.

Yeah, so the cold weather sheltering plan, and I'm happy to send this out to council, is we will have um 400 uh vouchers for families to stay in motels during the cold weather season.

Um we will, you know all know the activation threshold, and then beyond 400 families, um, we will be activating a congregate shelter um in one of the ballrooms to um address any overflow for them the 400.

For what is the it's been mentioned today the the collaboration with other agencies to figure out what our strategy is.

What would be the timeline to come up with what that strategy is?

Yeah, I think um I know HRCP has been working on that and has been outlined kind of the um first portions of a plan.

I will say I'm not the subject matter expert on that.

That's like my director's, really.

Um I I do think that this particular thing uh needs urgency, just because we are seeing a growing number of newcomer families um that are unsheltered and a growing number that are on our wait list and in our shelters.

So I we need a specialized approach to make sure that these families can be stable long term.

Okay.

Um I know at the Tamrak we're serving nearly 200 families currently.

Um, their ability to move on without um with the rapid rehousing dollars, and also things have kind of stagnated because of the ability to work and to move.

Um I am concerned that we will continue to not have a strategy, put money at put money towards a um an issue and not have a strategy.

I'm concerned about the amount.

Um, I don't know, and it sounds as though, and you are the expert in this area, um, and the people on the host team, but I'm not sure that nine million is the right amount, and maybe it's 20 million that we need, but I'm not sure that nine million is gonna get us to the goal that we want to achieve.

Um, this is a really hard conversation.

It is.

Thank you, for acknowledging that this is really hard.

Do you have any other questions?

No, thank you.

I don't have any other questions for you.

Um to my colleagues, this is a really hard conversation.

I don't, my concern is I don't think nine million is the right number that we are putting forward.

I'm not sure that without a plan that we are gonna spend that money well.

No offense, Dr.

Reif, but I'm not sure without a plan that we are gonna spend that money well.

I think spending it in one time funds is not um it's not a good use of our times, and this is really difficult in a budget conversation that we need to be making decisions.

This is only the second amendment that we're talking about, and we've got how many to go through.

Um, it's these are hard choices that we are making.

My choices on this particular one, and I will just tell my colleagues because I know we've you know we've been texting back and forth and different pieces.

I just don't think that this is the right amount.

I think we need to have a better strategy.

I think that we need to be able to tell the executive director of host what we would like to see happen and a strategy coming forward in the new budget that is specific in this next year's budget.

And we are still serving almost 200 families at the family shelter that's going through transition right now that we need to make sure goes well with a provider that has never served children before.

I mean, those are the realities of what I am thinking about in this decision, and I really want the Tamarack to be successful, and I think that you know, competing things can be can happen, but I just don't think that this is the right amount, and without solid numbers behind what it is, we are now putting forth what we say the police department shouldn't be doing or any other department should not be doing is here's some dollars and go figure it out.

I would like to have something that is more concrete, that is a strategic plan that is addressing um our migrant families that does address workforce.

I know there are some other amendments that are gonna come and um address workforce later this evening or tomorrow morning, um, but I know it feels that way.

Um I just really struggle with this, and I appreciate the amendment sponsor um uh uh Gonzalez Pigetis.

Thank you for um making this one more general, uh, for that flexibility.

I just don't think we have the number right.

And since we are talking about dollars and in this budget, and I know that there is frustration with the mayor, but I just don't think we have the dollars right on this one.

So thank you, thank you, madam president.

Thank you.

Councilmember Flynn.

Um, thank you, Madam President.

Um I can't take away one quarter of the services and supplies budget for the police department next year, and nearly half of the recruit budget, uh, but there's been a lot of numbers thrown around tonight, and I want to um I want to rearrange them and take a look at what was actually in the budget books, we have budgeted over the last seven years, including the 26th proposed budget, since at least 2020, we have budgeted an average per recruit of about 49,000.

That's simply what we budgeted, whether we spent that or not was wholly dependent on whether we filled the classes and whether they graduated or whether they dropped out, so the actuals might not reflect the original budget in 2020 for 134 recruits, we budgeted 6.65 million in 2023, we budgeted nine million dollars for 188 recruits.

Last year, 8.2 million for 167 recruits, and this averages out to about 48, 49,000 per recruit.

The fact that we don't hit that mark is a function of the fact that in 2020, we hired only 41 of the ones we budgeted for and graduated only 17.

And while those 17 graduated, we lost 78 officers.

So we lost ground.

2021, we graduated 56.

You know, we budgeted in 2021.

We budgeted for uh uh 100 and some flipping through too many screens here, uh 105.

We graduated 56, but we lost 145 officers through the course of the year.

So we lost ground again.

The only year where we actually gained ground was uh 2024, where we had 107 completed and lost 106.

So we gained one.

So I think this budget number is a good number if we want to maintain 168 officers being hired in 2026, and I think we do need to do that because when my couple came home from their restaurant in Aurora and opened their garage in Southwest Amor and saw two burglars emptying their house and had to wait 45 minutes for a car to be able to get down there because we are critically understaffed in so many areas from the crime lab to the to street patrols, to stop hiring full compliments next year, is penny wise and pound foolish, and so I can't support this.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you, Councilmember Flynn.

Councilmember Sawyer.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um I will be quick because we are still on amendment two, and we have 24 more amendments to go.

Um I just want to say thank you to my colleagues.

I think this is a really important conversation.

I think this is uh a value that we all share, right?

Um, I also think when it comes to budget amendments, it is very difficult because it is as important where the money is coming from as where it is going, right?

And so as I look at this budget amendment, and and I'm gonna say this for more than half of the budget amendments that are coming up, which all defund the police.

This is not what my residents want.

I have heard from the residents of District 5, and they do not want the police department defunded.

And so I'm gonna be a no on all of these that are pulling money from the police department, not because the places where these would go are invaluable because they are incredibly valuable, but because we sit up here having run for this job so that we could have the honor of getting yelled at when you disagree with the decisions that we make.

My residents do not want to see the police department defunded, and so even though these are incredibly important values, and even though these are incredibly important dollars that could be going to really good programs, it's not what my residents want to see, and so I'll be a no.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Heinz.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um Ms.

Cummings, may I ask you a couple questions?

I I think you were trying to help explain that there's some police recruits in other cost centers.

Um is did I understand that correctly?

Shanai comes chief financial officer for public safety.

Yes, that is correct.

So why would we place actuals?

Because we're right now in the budget process, but then you do the actuals, and that's what that graph.

Actually, I think the graph had budget.

Because I think council member parody was saying that the last year's was budgeted for 7.9 and it was actually two point something.

Um, but why would we place actuals for police recruits and buckets that aren't for police recruits?

So that is unfortunately just a function of our workday functionality.

So when we hire a class and a class of 56 is hired without going through all the specifics that happen in work day behind the scenes, there are certain cost centers or what we call budgeted allocation areas where you have to select that into that individual cost center when we start a job requisition.

So it's a lot different.

The workday process is not formulated to fit for uniform personnel positions like we do for career service, because there's not a position by position allocation.

So we're starting over with the creation of positions, so it's just a function of what we do on a resource in and having the ability with our resources to be able to correct that.

What other buckets um is a finance or accounting uh placing police recruits?

So would we could um in some instances or cases, because it could be like where we start with a um operation support cost center, I'll just use that for example, or we could say, oh, this goes into the training cost center, which is a totally different cost center.

So again, it is the function of us within safety and working with our leadership teams on both the civil service side as well as um our safety HR partners, just ensuring that when we assign these individuals when they come into um our from a personnel perspective, that they come into our system that we make sure they're assigned the right cross center.

So I I know that when I submit an expense for water for the office, if I put it at a as office applies, it'll get kicked back to me.

Um if I put it it has to be water, which has its own uh accounting, you know, its own GL code.

So I guess where as someone who set and managed the budget for a global software company for seven years, this is incredibly frustrating for me that I'm learning tonight that uh something as as important as uh, you know, our police recruits are being put in various buckets.

Um I know that city council quality controls it's so much frustrating for me that uh I get things kicked back four or five times because I misclassified $50 in water.

Um, and we're talking about hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars um that apparently is just bebopping around.

So um I just would share with our um our city CFO, um, it's very unfortunate to hear about this now that we've got some just random bucketing.

So um anyway, thank you.

I have one other question for um for housing stability, uh, Dr.

Reif.

Um what's the number of people or if you can quantify families that you intend to place into permanent housing with um the housing stability allocation that you have now?

I don't have that number with me right now.

I'd have to go look.

Okay, all right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you, Councilmember Heinz, Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Thank you, madam president.

Um I have a question for um Department of Finance and then for Dr.

Royfe.

Um quick question for for Department of Finance is um I know that you know throughout the year, especially I think in our first year when all during all the House 1000, um, we did budget rescinds during the year where we would transfer funds from one agency to another.

Um if, you know, because we don't know how much, you know, the the appropriate number, is is that a possibility to do budget rescissions to move money to other agencies, perhaps it's partnering agencies that are you know would be partnering in the work if it were to be allocated to host with an amendment?

Uh Stephanie Carrionis Adams, deputy chief financial officer.

So during um the newcomer crisis in particular, uh, because we had not budgeted those dollars, and because quite frankly, agencies were focused on that work, and um we did in fact come to you that is a uh function of city council to rescind dollars and reappropriate those dollars.

It's not something we typically do, it is not best practice to make a change in the middle of the year, um, but that is uh under your purview.

Okay, thank you so much.

Dr.

Reif.

I have a question for you, and um, and this is hard.

Like I, you know, I've done budgets at the state, um, and I understand that you are you're under the mayor's purview, right?

Um, so my question is is our agencies given the latitude to make budget requests from city council, are in this process.

I don't are we able to are you able to ask us for additional dollars?

Are you able to say I need the X amount of dollars to be able to produce this type of an outcome outside like outside of um the resolutions and all of those things, but in this but in the budget process, are you allowed as agency director to come to us and say I need this and advocate for that amount of money?

I don't know the answer to that.

Like when you say can you, I mean, if I had Are you allowed to?

I don't know the answer to that.

I like I haven't asked if I'm allowed to do you know what I mean.

Like we have conversations about that's fair.

You know, I have conversations all the time with certain council members about like what the needs of the agency are and what we're saying seeing.

So I wouldn't say I'm not allowed to, but coming to you like a ask here, I think that's different than having conversations in preparation for today.

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome.

Um Stephanie, did you have something you wanted to say to that?

Uh yes, thank you very much.

Um, so I just wanted to say that we what's really important is that we actually do an appropriation for agencies, and they work very hard throughout the year to make sure they work within that appropriation.

You all know that we do an annual, oftentimes a supplemental appropriation, but we work with agencies through those dollars.

It's really important that we maximize those dollars, and we do come to you when we jointly work with all agencies, we do come to you to ask for supplemental appropriations when that is necessary.

Okay, thank you so much.

Um, the last thing I'll just say really quick is um I just have a hard time knowing that this isn't a new issue.

Um I have a hard time believing that we don't know how much it would cost to address this need, um, whether it's through um shelters, additional rapid rehousing providers, hotel vouchers, et cetera.

Um, I struggle to understand how we we don't know what it would take with all the means that are available to us, or things that we can go out and put RFPs out for.

I appreciate my colleagues for engaging in this conversation, and I know this is not you know something that we want to be up here talking about.

Well, when we are up here night after night, Monday after Monday, hearing the police for these things, having people call our offices, having people email our offices, driving down the street and seeing children, families.

I'm a mom, I'm a mom of three kids, and I cannot imagine how this how I mean, and I think some of my colleagues here can imagine that because they've experienced these things, and I can't imagine myself, and I feel lucky that I have a home to go to, and it's not to diminish somebody being burglarized.

I've been burglarized too, and I know that's not a it's not a great feeling.

You feel violated, but I have to say that those folks have a home to go to, and so I I really appreciate everyone engaging in this conversation, being thoughtful in this conversation.

I know these are not easy decisions to make for anyone, but I do still ask for your support for this and um ask to continue the conversation if if whatever the outcome is.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you.

I have a few questions.

Um I have um a few for Dr.

Reif, and then I have for one for Chief Fulton, actually.

You weren't expecting that, were you.

Gave regarding the number of families that were on the on the streets or on the waiting list that it wasn't 200 and whatever number they said shared.

Can you tell us what the number is?

Um so right now there are 230 families on the wait list.

Uh-huh.

Um, when we did the point in time count, we had 22 people in families unsheltered.

That was in January.

I think it's really hard, and I will acknowledge us.

One of the things that's really hard right now is that families are parking in cars on private property.

So it's hard for us to see that and know that.

I do know it's not 230, and I know it's more than the 22.

But like not everyone on the wait list is literally unhoused.

They're staying in hotels sometimes.

They're absolutely in temporary shelter until we get them into like the tamarak or more permanent shelter, but not all of them are sleeping out the streets.

But by definition, they qualify under the HUD.

Yeah, they're initially homeless.

They're not unsheltered homeless.

Understood.

Yep.

Um, the second question I have for you is if you were to receive additional dollars, you couldn't think of any way to put you couldn't think of any way to use those dollars in order to be able to get babies out of the streets, especially considering that the winter time is coming and folks are gonna be freezing.

Like, yeah, I can I I want to acknowledge um councilwoman, thank you.

Um I'm not saying that we can't we wouldn't be able to figure out how to get family off the streets.

What I am saying is I don't know if nine million dollars is gonna solve unsheltered homelessness for every family.

It depends on the approach.

So if we take that nine million dollars and go rent a hotel, that money is probably going to be gone.

That is all I will be able to do.

I won't necessarily be able to have more housing exits.

So, for example, the comfort is a nine million dollar program.

Does that make sense?

If we were to run something like a congregate shelter, if we could find a building and not have to purchase one that would buy, you know, maybe $3 million, and then I could rapidly rehouse other families.

So I think that's what I'm saying.

Is depending on the approach, like do we want to get everyone off the streets, then we need to absolutely stand up shelter tomorrow.

If the answer is we want to add throughput because we have cold weather shelter standing up, which might help us get families indoors, then that is a different approach.

But I what I can't say is nine million dollars will solve the entire issue.

Um, and it just depends that like rapid rehousing is about $30,000 a family.

So it's it's again, there's a gazillion different ways we could approach this.

Okay, that's um super helpful.

And in the presentation that we received um during the community planning committee.

That one.

I'm on that committee, I should know the name.

And um, Jeff mentioned that one of the things that he wanted to bring from his work previously was to bring the emergency housing or the emergency congregate shelter.

Um, and that's one way that I think we could use those dollars if if council if the body approves it.

Do you disagree with that approach?

I don't disagree with that at all.

I think again that was part of the magic one conversation.

I want to keep saying that.

And I think he said that outside of budget constraints, right?

So um, so I want to acknowledge that.

Um congregate shelter, we absolutely could look at a model like that and what it would take.

I do worry about the space.

Again, we're having trouble finding space, so it's gonna take a while to find that, especially a congregate space.

We need a council district that's willing to have it in their council district.

Um, and then we would need to RFP that out.

You're talking to the councilwoman who didn't have a choice but to put three.

That's totally fair.

In yes, choice, yeah, is subjective, with this administration.

We'll let you finish.

Okay.

So I I think it is a model we could look at again, acknowledging it was part of like a philosophical conversation with council president's hand of all.

But that's not to say it's not a model we could use.

And it again, when I say I'm not certain how we would spend the money, it's because we can slice us so many different ways.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Chief Fulton, just one question for you.

Councilman Lewis, good evening.

Good evening, council members, Jasmine Fulton, Chief Denver Fire.

Thank you.

Good to see you.

You as well, ma'am.

One question for you.

Um, one of the observations I've had as a council member is every time we were since I've been on council, um, we've received the budget.

One of the things that the mayor's office is asked um you all to consider is to cut your recruitment class.

And that has happened from 23, 24, and now again, 20, oh 23, 24, 25, and then in the proposed um budget for 2026.

And so I'm curious as to what you all do um with the mandate to cut your um recruitment class.

Like, how do you all maintain um your service?

That's a great question.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Uh, we've been very fortunate.

We've had very robust numbers of applicants that apply every year, so it's not difficult to attract uh firefighters.

So I try to keep us close to 100% staffing for many reasons.

Uh the predominant reason is we have a lot of injuries, uh, fire fighting as some of the highest injury rates across the country and our profession, and because of uh those injury rates and other challenges that we experience, it's very important we keep close to 100%.

We're currently uh just area above 97%, and I track our attrition uh very very closely because it takes six to eight months to recruit uh applicants and another six months to get them through an academy class successfully.

Okay, uh so I'm looking at many years uh down the road right now.

Uh we have one class that we were able to have this year, it started about five weeks ago.

That class will be graduating, hopefully 24 recruits.

It was budgeted for 24.

We currently have 24 in that academy, and they'll be hitting the streets in March of 2026.

Uh next year we had hopes uh obviously of hiring some academies, but uh because of the our ability to keep close to our authorized strength that academy class hitting the streets in March, uh we will see some reductions uh when we have attrition, especially as summer hits.

Uh we're looking at some retirement numbers that could be you know somewhat difficult to navigate, but I feel very confident with the staffing levels that we have, um, that uh we can navigate next year.

It doesn't mean in 2027, we're not gonna have a huge ask of everyone up here because we are going to have to hire some pretty s pretty large numbers.

But I feel pretty confident going into next year that we can we can get through next year.

Appreciate that.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Matt.

That's it.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um, I just want to make a a comment because we've talked about the all in mile high and the house 1000.

Um, and um one of the things that happened is that we moved folks from one district into my district.

Um, a significant amount of folks who um were moved into district eight when it came to housing, um, or it came to um the all in my high and the house 1000 program.

And one thing that I need folks to understand is that wasn't very well thought out, nor was it built very well executed.

And you all might remember that there were a number of murders that had happened during this time.

There were folks who were overdosing in these um in these facilities.

There were folks who were just really having a hard time because we hadn't had the right service providers in place, and we also didn't have the resources that folks needed.

What we did as a council as a council office is we used our council dollars to hire a consultant to come in to both my district as well as Councilman Watson's to talk to the residents and ask what they needed.

And it turns out what they asked us for was employment opportunities, behavioral mental health supports, as well as access to transit ways to be able to get around.

And from the conversations that I was able to have and working with director or sorry, yeah, Dr.

Reif, Dr.

Reif, we were able to improve the all-in Mao High um sites, but I can tell you that it was very poorly executed.

Um and I remember as a council person that as we were going to the different communities, particularly in Central Park, where folks are really, really upset about the number of um uh the number of all in mile high sites that were coming into our district, that I remember having a moment as a council member to decide uh what was most important to me.

Was it most important to me that I that I listen to my constituent constituents and say, hey, my constituents have said no to these sites coming into our district, or was it more important for me to get folks who were on our streets into housing?

And for me, it was more important for me to get folks out of our streets and into housing.

Um, and so it is hard.

I recognize that it's hard.

I got a lot of threats during that time.

I had folks who were yelling and cursing in my face during that time, and notwithstanding, I still can continue to stand strong because I believe that folks deserve to be able to have access to housing and to move from unsheltered homelessness into shelter.

Even though I did not like the plan that the mayor's office was proposing, because I because I have worked for a very large nonprofit, the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, where I was a VP there.

And so I do understand, I do understand homelessness, not just because I worked in it, because I've lived it, and so I know how difficult that can be.

Um so it's important to me.

And so as we talk about the importance of this amendment, and folks have put my name on it, so I guess my name is on it.

I I have a deep appreciation for Councilwoman Gonzalez Gutierrez bringing this forward, and I recognize that the mayor's office has the opportunity to decide where these dollars come from.

Um it's his budget, and he has shown us over and over again that he gets to decide how he spends his money, regardless of how council members provide feedback or not.

Um I will also mention that this ask came not only through public comment, but also through the budget book club series that council members participated in.

And so I really appreciate that this is informed by the people.

When we talk about co-governance, we talk about the importance of those closest to the pain being closest to the power, and this is an opportunity for one council members to flex in their own power, but to empower our constituents to tell us what it is that they need moving forward.

And I just personally can't sleep at night knowing that there are babies that are going to be freezing in the streets.

I have a four-year-old, I have a 22-year-old, and um that's just tough for me.

So I really appreciate the opportunity.

I appreciate the opportunity to ask questions.

Um, I am a strong supporter.

I will be an absolute yes, and I think we can figure out the nine million dollars if it passes.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Tarth.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Um, one of the things that I'm um reflecting on is uh uh almost ironically, um, we've been accused of defunding the police since 2019, and we never did.

Um it never happened.

Um but uh I do want to um uh I think reflect on councilwoman Lewis's point around the fire department, and I I do think it's been really interesting to me that um we're willing to figure out what happens with the fire department with attrition with retirements, um, but not with the police department.

Um it's just the parity there real feels really unfair um for two and the third classes um to be funded in 2025.

I I have been supportive of uh potentially drawing back on one of those classes.

Um but I don't know where the services and supplies cut in, and I don't even know if five million is a class cut.

Um, and I think without knowing what are what are the we're just we're guessing oftentimes when we're just looking at these budget books.

I have no idea what this actually cuts.

Um but I do know that it's it's been a source of pain to feel like one department is um getting a lot of support and other ones are not.

Um and so that's that's my disappointment here.

Um I am willing to take a look if we if we unfairly allocate something in this amendment process to potentially correcting that that's gonna take dialogue, which we demand, I feel like on council, and which we'd what we don't always get when it comes to um the programmatic spend within um within budgets.

Um one thing that I did want to ask, because I'm seeing um the recruit budget get cut into five different times um among the 26 amendments that we've got.

Um councilwoman parody, are you would are you rescinding your amendment if this one passes?

Um I my feeling is that um if there are any council members who are able to privately indicate if they would be a no on this amendment and a yes on the other, that's the only way I would think we still needed to um vote on the second one is if it might have a higher vote vote total, and then I think we could undo this first one if the second one had higher votes.

If they're the same or the second one has less votes, then we're fine after this.

In other words, I don't want to pass nine million dollars twice by the end of tonight, but I think it's important.

Um, you know, there's a difference between seven and nine votes around here, right?

So that's all I would say to that.

Okay.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Those are all my questions.

Thank you.

Uh Councilman Torres.

Um so I had some of some of the similar questions on the where when I'm looking at the I had to have a spreadsheet created so that I could figure out where we were drawing number the the recruits from.

So I see another amendment for I think it's council member parity that has that one, and then there is another one that's council member Lewis and Cashman that are drawing from the general fund expenditure type for services and supplies.

So that would be another DPD service and supplies.

Um one thing I keep thinking about, and I don't know how to answer this question.

Is this one-time funding?

So are we gonna be here next year having a conversation about nine million dollars for families um because we've had that before?

We knew we had an ARPACLIF coming.

And so if we do this one-time funding, how would we make this sustainable?

And so I I feel like that's our biggest my biggest factor to this um budget amendment in front of me, is if we um do cut this, how do we cut it?

So if I'm looking at this correctly, council member parody and council member Gonzalez could get us just help me because council member parody, your your amendment cuts 700,000 more into recruits.

Is that correct?

Um there may be a I'm not sure if there's a difference in the recruiting number.

I calculated that number based on um the 21,80 dollars per recruit to spend that and get 168 recruits, which is consistent with the last two benchmarks that we have, and then what was left over I use towards this amendment.

They may be, I think you're right that they may be slightly different.

Yeah, I think so.

Okay, and then Chief, I have one question for you.

It's not it's related to this amendment, but it's not this amendment, but it's related.

Can you help me understand?

So back in the day, I always say I'm the old lady around here because I've been here since 2012.

You've been here much longer than I have.

Um, at the time, Commander Pazin, we did a um, we were having a lot of issues in Highland, and we would we did this LED implementation, and then we ended up doing LED lights across the city.

And then we noticed a trend in the Alma Lincoln Park and Sun Valley that if you had a porch light on, you actually deterred um crime because you were getting a lot of crime in those neighborhoods.

So he actually went up in the helicopter and did a whole entire light assessment in Denver based on that the helicopter that I think in this other one that Councilmember Parody um would bring up that if it were to pass, we would not have the helicopter anymore.

Can you talk to me about the how you use the helicopter?

I haven't asked this question in a really long time because I just haven't thought about it, but it is up for conversation tonight.

So how does DPD use the helicopter?

Um, I think it's correct that if we don't if we if took money away from the helicopter, we would lose the helicopters that and then I don't even know the process to get a helicopter back.

So can you help me with that a little bit?

That is correct, and uh thank you, Council President Ron Thomas, police chief.

So um I I happen to have those uh statistics at my disposal, and so far through October of this year, we've had 137 flights, um which covered um a little over 1,100 calls for service, um about 230 self-initiated actions by officers.

Um they were responsible for 239 arrests, and so um those arrests would not have been made had it not been for the use of the helicopter, and then they assisted in another 323 arrests, and then there was uh 50 assistance uh to outside agencies, and so certainly it's useful for doing those lighting surveys, and we continue to do that, uh recognizing where um there are those kinds of needs, but this is uh I think a significant public safety tool, one that I think has um importance for the for the entire metro region.

So, how does the um how does the helicopter how do you use the helicopter different than the joint drones that are being currently used?

There has to be a different like you have actually people in a helicopter would the one that I'm not a subject matter expert.

Sure.

So um there are uh implementations that helicopter has that drones don't have the capacity to have, like there's no opportunity to get like there are just certain things that a helicopter can do that has the tools uh on it to engage in.

The other thing is that the length of flight uh for a drone is much shorter, and so while a drone would certainly be helpful in going to a call assessing the needs and then returning to its base, um, using a helicopter would be much more effective for looking for a period of time for a suspect um um being able to safely pursue a vehicle.

Um that's another thing we like to um have a helicopter overhead so that we can draw our uh patrol resources back and not uh create danger to the to the motoring public uh through the use of or through the the continuation of that pursuit.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, but um that's all I see no other council members in the queue.

Um so what I'm gonna do for the general public is I'm not gonna talk about the amendment like number one, two, three, four, five.

It's too confusing.

So if you go on to our legislatar and you want to follow through, I'm gonna call them by their actual bill number so that we can clearly um work through all the bill numbers because that's how we have to change the budget is through the bill numbers.

Madam Secretary, roll call on 25 1772, Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez, 1772 to the Mayor's proposed 2026 budget.

Council members Gilmore?

Aye.

Albidrez, no Flynn?

Nay.

Gonzalez Gutierrez.

I Heinz?

No.

Cashman?

Lewis?

Aye.

Parity?

Aye.

Romara Campbell?

Nay.

Sawyer?

No.

Torres.

No.

Watson?

No.

Madam President Sandoval.

No.

Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results.

Five eyes.

Eight nays.

Eight.

Wait, say that again.

Eight A's.

Five eyes, eight nays.

Eight nays.

Okay.

Um, eight nays, council member Gonzalez Cutieres number seventeen seventy-two to the budget proposed 2026 budget has failed.

Councilmember Lewis, your amendment.

Sorry.

No problem.

That do you need the live link?

No, I haven't.

Okay.

I'm just further down the down this script than most people are.

Three, right?

Uh 1778.

Okay.

It's page.

Thank you.

Five.

Oh, five.

I think we all need to refresh the live script link because things were moved.

It was.

Oh.

Everything was moved.

Okay, one sec.

Everything is awesome.

Yes.

Thank you.

Everything is cool when you're part of the city here.

Okay.

Thank you.

Council President, I move that the mayor's proposed 2026 budget be amended in the following particulars.

On page 567 under the agency title, police department 351000, and the section title, police investigators 351200, and the line title Police Recruits reduced the 2000 2026, sorry, proposed column by 2 million dollars.

Two on page 409 under the agency title Department of Housing Stability 014400 and the section title budget department budget and the section title general funds by agency in the line titled Department of Housing Stability.

Increase the 2026 proposed column by two million dollars.

Three, make other appropriate appropriate adjustments to comments, tables, schedules, and figures in the mayor's proposed 2026 budget as it may be required to reflect the action directed in this amendment.

It has been moved.

Thank you.

And seconded comments by members of council.

Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you.

So this amendment takes $2 million from a DPD recruit class to fund a cohort of the Denver Basic Income Project.

The Denver Basic Income Project provides no strings attached payments to people enrolled in the program.

These payments are unique in that it is an aid program that does not entail an extraordinary amount of administrative burden, which is the last thing that people in precarious situations need to deal with, but most but must far often.

The situations are more precarious than ever now, from ever increasing eviction rates in Denver to the reduction of safety net programs at the state and federal level.

It is growing increasingly difficult for people, especially low income people, to make ends meet, and DBIP is a straightforward solution to helping those folks out.

I just wanted to read some stats that I receive.

So DBIP has an 88% response rate.

Um respondents to its October monthly survey.

This is a full year after payments have stopped, which I think is important.

Payments when the program was active doubled the amount of participants living in stable housing.

And 12.5% are with friends or family.

It is important to note both groups are not straining the city's shelter spending and capacity, and then public service interaction suggests ER visits and jail stays decreased while payments were active, saving the city $600,000.

I'm happy to take any questions, and also Mark Donovan, the founder is also here to take any questions as well.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

Sure.

Do we have any questions or comments by members of council on council bill 1778?

Seeing none of that Madam Secretary, roll call on 1778.

Councilmembers Lewis amendment 1778 to the mayor's proposed budget.

Council members Gilmore?

Aye.

Albitres?

Nay.

Flynn?

Nay.

Gonzalez Cutieres.

Aye.

Heinz?

No.

Cashman?

Lewis?

Aye.

Parity.

Aye.

Romero Campbell.

Nay.

Sawyer?

Nay.

Torres?

Nay.

Watson?

Nay.

Madam President Sandoval?

Nay.

Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results.

Five ayes, eight nays.

Eight nays.

Council members Lewis.

Council Bill 1778 to the to the proposed 2026 budget has failed.

Councilmember Parity, your amendment.

Yes, and this is not related to uncheltered homelessness.

Um Madam President, I move that the mayor's proposed 2026 budget be amended in the following particulars.

Number one on page 554 under the agency titled Public Safety 35000.

In the section titled safety programs, 350400.

In the line titled street engagement team, SET reduced the 2026 proposed column by 355 368.

Number two, on page 409, under the agency title Department of Housing Stability 014400 in the section title department budget in the section title general fund expenditures by agency.

In the line title Department of Housing Stability, increase the 2026 proposed column by 355368.

And three, make up other appropriate adjustments to comments, table schedules, and figures in the mayor's proposed 2026 budgets may be required to reflect the actions direction in this amendment.

Okay, thank you.

It has been moved.

And seconded comments by members of council.

Councilmember Parity.

Yeah, thank you, Madam President.

The this amendment transfers four vacant full-time employee positions from the street engagement team under the um executive department of safety to the housing uh the host outreach team.

Um and my explanation for this, um, I only about two weeks ago, so right before our budget hearing, um, got a firm answer about the um vacancies on the host outreach team after the budget cuts because we both have uh direct city employees that do outreach, and then we contract with um the Denver Street Outreach Collaborative to do outreach across those two buckets.

So our direct host outreach employees and our contracted host outreach partners, we have cut six full-time housing outreach workers in this budget, um, and at the same time there are currently four vacancies on um the street engagement team, the set team under Department of Safety.

And so to me, um, it would be common sense to transfer um those four positions to the housing department.

Um, because that's where outreach should be taking place anyway.

We hear constantly that those are trusted outreach teams, that they are better at connecting people to resources and from the work logs of the street engagement team that what they're typically doing, um, if someone has an interest in housing or resources is simply referring those people to the um the housing teams.

And I just want to emphasize that what we're talking about here are vacant positions, um, whereas within host, those positions were filled.

Um, now people may have been terminated.

I don't know if DSOC contractors kept those folks on staff or cut them when their budgets were cut.

Um, but I would imagine that um that those positions could be rehired and those are um proper housing outreach workers.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Questions um by members of council, councilmember Flynn.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um, I had some questions about the uh utility because of all the other changes that are occurring in the um homelessness outreach, whether this is a good idea for my district or not, or the outlying parts of the city, because my understanding is that in order to reduce costs that uh uh Denver police homeless outreach officers, for example, are gonna be consolidated and uh all assigned to district six, which is my part of town, uh and the street engagement team, the set team is basically uh would be the fallback as far as enforcement, uh would is concerned, and that's been a huge issue in my district along the Bear Creek Trail and some of the gulches.

Uh and so I I don't know that I could support moving uh these positions, even if they're vacant, they can be filled if they're budgeted, uh, so that when we lose uh the outreach in the outlying parts of town, where people have moved since we ended street homelessness downtown.

Um they've moved elsewhere and they're in out toward the you know the suburban parts of town, the farther parts of town, and they try to avoid engagement.

And when the um when the uh street outreach collaborative makes contact, um we don't we don't end up with people getting into housing.

We don't end up with people, in fact, we don't see them that often down in our parts of town.

So it's I don't know how we could go to my uh folks in Southwest Denver and say we're not gonna have very much response anymore because we're moving folks over to an uh an outreach team that we don't see down here very often.

Um so I'm I don't know that I could support this.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you, Councilmember Alvidres.

Um thank you, Council President.

I do have a question from the Department of Safety.

Um, it looks like there's four positions in the set team.

Is that correct?

Is that the whole entire set team?

Good evening, Jeff Holiday, Chief of Staff, Department of Public Safety.

Uh there are currently four vacant positions, that's correct.

Okay, so it's just the vacant positions that are being moved.

That's my understanding.

Okay.

Um what does the can you speak a little bit about what the set team does as opposed to the host outreach team?

And that might be like a double answer between you and host, but yeah, my my perspective uh, well, let me back up just a little bit.

Uh the authorized strength for set is 12 FTE.

The reason that we're currently vacant uh for those four is because uh like every other uh agency or most every other agency, we've also experienced uh hiring freeze.

Um I would say about this team is that at least in my uh uh perspective, set is somewhat unique in terms uh among civilian uh response in the city, in that it is a uh team that is uh responds very nimbly in the vast majority of cases set can respond citywide uh to a constituent uh concern uh within an hour and certainly uh within the same day.

Uh and they can do so seven days a week.

Uh and we have as a as a matter of fact, uh had set working seven days a week uh uh in the city, including holidays.

In fact, uh I was out with them uh over the previous Christmas on Christmas Day uh doing uh doing work uh alongside of SET.

Uh so uh in this plan, uh I think what's important to understand about set is uh it it's true to Councilman Flynn's uh point earlier point that as DPD starts to centralize set operations into uh district six in particular uh and moving uh DPD officers and outlying districts back into patrol functions.

We anticipate using set uh more significantly uh citywide uh in deploying set units, two-person teams out to police district to support uh continuity of operations there.

So instead of having to pull a patrol officer away from uh from patrol uh and respond with a uniform response, we can continue to respond with a civilian response and free up those police officers to continue to focus on per uh patrol operations.

Great, thank you.

Yes.

Um then my follow-up is for host and just the outreach positions.

Are there outreach positions anymore?

I'm confused about where this money is going exactly.

Thank you, Dr.

Ray.

Jamie Reif, executive director, uh host.

Councilwoman Parity, can I actually ask?

Are you meaning to add these to host staff?

Are you meaning to add it to the contractors budgets?

I don't know that it makes much difference to be completely honest, and they may be on different lines of the budget book, and I believe we added them to host staff in the budget book.

Okay, so but but I my understanding also is that agencies have some flexibility to move money between buckets, can't move money between agencies, can't move money between overall programs, right?

So I'm indifferent about that.

Um what I'm concerned about is housing outreach occurring under host.

Okay.

So do you am I allowed to ask do you have a question?

Okay, great.

Um DOF, how would it work if the way that the amendment reads now?

Would it be host outreach staff or could it be added to a contract?

I think uh what Councilman Parity shared is exactly correct that within the broad appropriations in the budget, there is some uh flexibility, and so I think this is not something that has been determined.

I think it's something we would work with Dr.

Reif and team on.

Yeah, I have a better answer for that.

It's going into host general fund expenditures.

Okay.

Great.

So we um, as councilwoman parity correctly stated, we have had some cuts in our outreach budget for general outreach workers just across the city as part of our our reductions for the year.

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Council President.

Councilmember Torres, thank you so much.

Um, this might be for finance.

Um the four positions that are vacant, were they um uh planned to be held vacant in order to meet the 2026 uh budget numbers, or will that were they gonna be able to fill those?

Stephanie Adams, Deputy Chief Financial Officer, the plan is to fill down.

They are budgeted.

Okay, thank you.

So councilmember parody, I have a question for you.

Um I think you're it this money is going, if I'm reading your amendment correct, it goes to the special revenue fund.

Well, on page 409, do you have it listed?

And so let me up again.

So what I'm seeing in the amendment here is that it's um host general fund expenditures.

If the amendment is drafted incorrectly, um I mean that what I submitted was to refill these cut host outreach positions, four of which were contracted and two of which were city employees.

Um so I'm happy to bump this to later on the agenda if there's a correction that needs to happen.

Let me look at the page number again.

Okay.

Um, but as you know, we don't draft these offices.

So, pay DF reader.

Um general fund expenditure, okay.

So it is my my spreadsheet's wrong.

So on page 409 under the in the section budget in the section titled general fund expenditures and line department.

Okay, so I have a question for the department of finance.

Um for uh Dr.

Reif.

So um each agency has a um classification.

So does the classification of the set team correlate with the classification of a host outreach team, right?

Because they're not gonna be there's not gonna they're not gonna be paid equal.

So that's where I want to understand how these would line up because I don't think that the set team gets paid as much as the host team or vice versa, I can't remember what that is.

Um I think um Jeff, what is your classification for your minor OCC3s?

That I know.

So, okay, OCC3?

Hi.

Uh, again, Jeff Holiday, uh Chief of Staff, uh public safety.

Um my uh phone of friend uh in the in the third row uh in in Chine is telling me that they're classified as street engagement.

I can tell you that we modeled those uh uh generally in the beginning, uh similar to uh park rangers.

Okay, that's it.

I think the classification's very different.

Okay, um, and uh Dr.

Reif, I have one more question for you.

Um 2026, are you set to hire any more outreach?

Um, there's one vacancy right now that we'll be looking to hire.

Uh we did just hire how many do you have currently?

Uh eighteen.

So you have eighteen, and you would have one.

I am two I'm down two right now.

I did just hire um an entire team, so four total as supervisor and three outreach workers.

Okay, so right now your author age strength is like eighteen, and then you would hire one more.

Yeah, okay, and then set if I heard you correctly.

Your how many do you have right now?

Uh I'm I'm sorry, Councilwoman.

How many set members do you have right now?

So we're authorized 12 FTE.

Uh our current adjusted um uh strength is seven.

So we have four positions that are uh being held vacant for 25, and uh then we have one uh individual that is on uh disability.

And so do you plan to hire in 2026 when the budget passes?

Yeah, our our intent would be to hire those four positions again.

As I mentioned earlier, this is uh a part of the broader continue uh plan for continuity of operations, especially as DPD starts to um uh draw people back in, especially in the outlying districts, draw them back into patrol operations.

Got it.

Justin, and and so just doing some uh quick research on the Office of Human Resources website, the street engagement liaison classifications that I understand safety uses for the set team, those are NE 11s, non-exempt 11s, uh which have a second quartile salary of 26 dollars and 25 cents per hour.

The outreach uh case coordinator that uh host uses outreach class uh outreach case coordinator three has an NE 13 uh pay grade, which has a second quartile salary of 29.49 cents.

So they are slightly higher classified positions for vacant positions.

We budget those at the second quartile salary.

Okay.

Um but I believe our contracted partners are lower than that, and four of the cut positions were contracted contractors, okay.

Um I use both in my council district.

I'll just say that.

In Northwest Denver, we have a lot of um our campers along Rocky Mountain Park, along Sloan's Lake, along um Berkeley Park, and we constantly get calls on them.

So I I do I put everybody on an email that I can to help me.

Um, and so it it's a constant um recurring um thing in Northwest Denver.

So I just want to go on the record and say I haven't experienced one doing better than the other, but I will say during the migrant crisis, I know we leaned heavily on host 100%.

We like we're like on daily calls with host.

Um so just want to say that I appreciate the work that both do um because I think it takes a whole entire puzzle to solve all of these issues that we're facing in Denver.

Um so this one's um a bit challenging for me to understand how it would all end up working out and playing out.

So I have to think about this one for a moment as we vote.

Madam Secretary will call on 1746 council member parity's amendment 1746 to the mayor's proposed 2026 budget.

Councilmember Gilmore, aye.

I'll be there.

Nay.

Gonzalez Cutieres?

Aye Hines?

No.

Cashman?

Lewis, Parity.

Aye.

Romero Campbell, uh, nay.

Sawyer?

No.

Torres?

Aye.

Watson?

Nay.

Madam President Sandoval.

Uh nay.

Madam Secretary, close the voting, announce the result.

Six ayes, seven nays.

Seven nays.

The amendment seventeen forty-six fails.

Councilmember Parity, your amendment.

I'm sorry, I think I need to refresh again as well.

I was looking at a Lewis amendment.

Okay, 1784.

Is that right?

Okay.

Um, okay.

Here we are back to sheltering.

Uh Council President, I move that the mayor's proposed 2026 budget be amended in the following particulars.

Number number one on page 567 under the agency titled police department 351 000 in the section titled police investigations, 351 2000.

In the section titled Expenditures by Activity in the line titled Police Recruits, reduce the 2026 proposed column by 5.7 million.

Number two on page 562 under the agency title police department 351000 in the section titled general fund expenditures by type in the line titled personnel services reduce the 2026 proposed column by 2,434,000.

Number three on page 567 under the agency titled police department 35100 in the section title police investigations 351 2000 in the section titled expenditures by activity in the line titled special operations, reduce the 2026 proposed column by 779,000.

Number four on page 357 under the agency title Department of Finance 25000 in the section titled risk management and workers compensation 2557 000 in the line titled insurance and loss prevention reduce the 2026 proposed column by 87,000 dollars.

Number five, on page 409 under the agency title department of housing stability 014400 in the section title department budget in the section title general fund expenditures by agency in the line titled Department of Housing Stability increase the 2026 proposed column by 9 million dollars.

Number six, make other appropriate adjustments to comments table schedules and figures in the mayor's proposed 2026 budget as may be required to reflect the actions directed in this amendment.

Thank you.

My computer screen.

Thank you.

Comments by members of council, Councilmember Parity.

Yeah, thank you, Madam President.

Um the three sources for this amendment, this accomplishes the same thing as Councilmember Gonzalez's uh Gonzalez Guterres's proposed amendment that we discussed at length.

Um the first source is the same, which is making the recruiting budget match actuals for past years, which I continue to think is entirely appropriate as a matter of transparency, um, and on the face of it should not reduce the police department's ability to recruit.

Um the second proposed source for this amendment for $2.7 million approximately, or sorry, $2.4 million dollars approximately is to remove the um proposed expenditures for uniform strength between night the 98th percentile or sorry, the 98% of uniform strength that DPD um aims to be at by the end of 2026.

So accounting for attrition, accounting for meeting that full recruiting target, and simply not budget for the remaining two percent um of uniform salaries that we do not expect to fill any time during the year.

Um again, we're over budgeting um and we don't need to be doing that.

And then the third bucket um is to end the lease for the DPD helicopter.

The provisions of that lease say that a non-appropriation ends the lease, um, so there shouldn't be any issues with penalties or those kinds of things.

Um, and this reflects the costs within DPD special ops of leasing that helicopter um and you know fueling it up and maintaining it, those kinds of things again does not impact any personnel.

Um, and then reflects the insurance for the helicopter.

Um, I think as a value proposition, the number of arrests that the police chief expressed, um, I don't have off the top of my my um head the total number of arrests that DPD makes in a year.

Um, but I think the number that the helicopter um assisted with is um extremely tiny in comparison to that full number.

Uh these used to be more common in you know, cities.

I think other cities in the state used to have them, um, and folks have moved away with it because of just the value proposition.

So again, it's a matter of priorities.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Alvidres.

Thank you.

Um, I had a question for the Department of Safety.

What does the police investigations line item do?

So, the investigations, yeah.

Should I come to Chief Financial Officer for Department of Public Safety?

So that investigations line item.

Um, and I apologize, I didn't really pay attention to council member parody's requests if the cost center was saying the investigations line item, or are we speaking to the investigations control level?

That was the 2000.

Can you clarify that?

Um so in the text of the um drafted amendment, and again, these are these line items are in the first order selected by our legislative staff working with department of finance.

Um, but the sorry, I need to scroll back up to it.

Um, because I scrolled to the bottom when I was reading.

Here we go.

Um it's under recruits is what you're talking about, Councilmember Alvidra.

So the first item is the line for police recruits, which is in the section titled police investigation.

So it's that same recruiting line item that we discussed exhaustively last time around.

Um, and then the second item that's under police investigations is under special ops, and that's the helicopter.

So those are the two investigations expenses that are named here.

Okay, so the roll-up that you were speaking in to Councilmember Alvidaris, it is investigations, which that investigations program category does include our special operations team, it does include our major crimes team, it also includes our crime lab, and our it includes our crisis services bureau, and as council member parody is pointed out, it's our uh recruit budget.

So it's all kind of consolidated under that investigations category, and it sounds like um her proposal then would um remove money from specifically the cost center allocation for police recruits and the cost center allocation for special operations.

Okay, thank you.

Um, and then I have a question for the Department of Finance around the workers' compensation and loss prevention um part of this.

Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

What is that?

Sure.

Uh so there is, and let me just pull um the page.

So if if you go to page, let's see.

357, it says.

Um, and so there's actually a description of that division in the Department of Finance.

Uh, the risk management and workers' compensation division, and this is on page uh 347 of the 2026 proposed budget, uh, oversees the identification analysis and management of the city's risk and exposure to loss related to the activities of the city and its departments, agencies and employees.

The risk management unit manages the property and liability insurance program, contractual risk transfer, and transform and perform citywide risk assessments.

The workplace safety team within this unit develops and implements citywide safety programs as required by executive board of 65 and provides consultation to agencies in a variety of risk control areas.

Both units partner with stakeholders, including the Office of Emergency Management, Denver Police Department, Denver Fire Department, and General Services to provide emergency preparedness trainings to city employees, the workers' compensation unit administers the city's self-insured workers' compensation program.

Okay, thank you so much.

Um I didn't get a chance to speak the first time we talked about the sheltering and the number of families that are experiencing homelessness in our city.

Um this is a very difficult topic.

I think it's one we all care deeply about.

I am not gonna support this, and I didn't support the last one because of various reasons, but one being that we don't have a shelter identified or a provider identified.

I also looking at the numbers for nine million dollars.

We could pay 250 families' rent at $3,000 a month for a year.

Um, and so I I have had a lot of conversations, and I've taken this conversation to heart in a deep way.

When I have talked to providers that help our families experiencing homelessness, they're telling me these people can't find jobs because they're parents, and the parents don't have child care.

And there's all these issues with CCAP funding, homelessness resolution uh funding being cut from the state.

So the state's cutting funding, we're missing federal dollars, and the problem is just so wide.

It's much bigger than just throwing money at a problem.

And although I would love to throw money at this problem, we need to be strategic in how we address it.

And when I talk to people that um do the housing vouchers, finding landlords that'll take people that may not have a work history that can't get jobs because they could be undocumented is it's a very very complicated thing, and I don't feel great taking this large amount of money and just hoping that it will help in a way that I'm not sure that it will.

I want to also say that the administration reaching out to the neighborhoods in my district is not right, and telling them that my colleagues are defunding the police in this extraordinary like expanded way is not a good thing to do.

And I am very disappointed in them for doing that.

Um, and I want to just state that on the record that this misinformation that they're emailing our RNOs is not okay.

Um, and I don't appreciate that or attacking my colleagues who are trying to do the right thing for people that are on our streets.

So for that, I really appreciate all the work that has gone into these things.

I think it is complicated, unfortunately, more complicated than this amendment will allow for.

Um, and I'm extremely grateful to them.

So I just wanted to echo sentiments brought up previously that this isn't some kind of huge define to the police um thing.

There does seem to be some overallocation here that makes sense, um, maybe not in this full amount.

And we have a huge problem, which is um families experiencing homelessness.

I just don't feel confident that this is going to actually solve that problem based on my conversations and research over the last two weeks that we get to really think about these things.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you.

Councilmember Flynn.

Um thank you, Madam President.

Similar to the last one.

Um again, I'm just seeing this for the first time when we came in the building.

And in the brief time we've had to, uh well, it was brief, but maybe didn't seem that brief to you all sitting out there, uh, to go over the first one and then again this one.

Uh I think I find this one to be uh even more detrimental to the public safety uh than the first one and the amount that it would take from police recruits.

I know that we've um all the budgets since 2020 have shown a consistent level of about 49,000 per recruit being budgeted.

And whether we hit that mark or not is a is a factor, a result of many factors, including the Civil Service Commission and the Academy staff and how many people stay and how many people uh leave the academy and how many people graduate.

And so we always hope for the best.

I would love to get to full uh uh full authorized strength, but with 5.7 million taken away from police recruits, that would essentially leave only enough to uh continue the rollover class that's starting next month, and then we would see no more academy uh class being hired until toward the very end of the year, if at all.

And I don't think that's uh very good for public safety in Denver.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you.

Seeing no other questions in the queue, Madam Secretary, roll call on councilmember parody's amendment 1784 to the mayor's 2026 proposed budget.

Council members Gilmore, aye, Albitres, nay, Flynn, nay, Gonzalo.

Aye.

Heinz?

No.

Cashman.

Lewis?

Aye.

Parity?

Aye.

Romera Campbell?

Nay.

Sawyer?

No.

Torres, nay.

Watson?

Nay.

Madam President Sandoval.

Nay.

Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results.

Five ayes, eight nays.

Eight nays.

Uh Councilmember Parity Amendment 1784 to the proposed budget has failed.

Councilmember Lewis, your amendment.

Thank you, Council President.

I move that the mayor's proposed 2026 budget be amended in the following particulars.

One on page 40407 under the agency title Department of Housing Stability 014400.

And the section title budget detail and the section title homelessness resolution, SRF 6 16813-014500, and the line title Housing Assistance reduce the 2026 proposed column by 550,000 dollars to on page 407 under the agency title Department of Housing Stability 014400 and the section title Budget Detail and the section title homelessness resolution SRF 16 16 813 014500 and the line title shelter and services increase the 2026 proposed column by five five hundred and fifty thousand dollars three make other appropriate adjustments to commons tables schedules and figures in the mayor's proposed 2026 budget as it may be required to reflect the actions directed in this amendment.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded comments by members of council, Councilmember Lewis.

Yeah, thank you.

Um so this amendment will move 550,000 from the homelessness resolution SRF housing assistance line to the homelessness resolution shelter and services line to fund the Denver Day Works program.

Uh the Denver Day Works Program creates opportunities for those experiencing homelessness to obtain work while also providing people with immediate work and pay.

It's simple, unlike other job support programs offered by the city and the day works offer by the city, the day works finds immediate work for individuals over the course of 10 weeks, provides breakfast and lunch and RTD bus ticket and 30 to 60 minutes with an employment specialist or assistance and or assistance navigator to find more permanent work.

Um this is not to disparate the disparage the work that DEDO does with their workforce development programs, which are set up for those navigating traditional job markets.

However, however, this population served by the Dayworks program are different, both in terms of their immediate needs as well as the high barriers that many of them face to reenter the job market.

The program offers tremendous bank words, but since the inception of the all-in Mao High program, 86 people have used the program to fund stable housing.

It places people into roughly 100 jobs per year, and wages from those jobs have totaled 1.9 million over the past nine years.

And finally, um, when my office collected survey data on the shelter site, we found that residents were looking for work and wanted to find work.

This was and is the only program of its kind um to meet that need.

And this was also raised by the budget book club series that we held with council members.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Um, questions by members of council.

Councilmember Torres.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um, first question to Councilwoman Lewis on the sponsorship.

Um so the mayor, in the mayor's letter, he refers to leveraging economic development and opportunities, rapid rehousing workforce pilot, but you didn't take it from their budget.

It's from a SRF in host already.

So just want to understand on the sourcing of it.

So the funding from the keep Denver Beautiful and the graffites programs and to the homeless resolution fund.

Okay, okay.

So let me ask host about those two funds, or if you don't know, maybe finance.

I just want to understand what's coming, where is it coming out of and can it fund Denver Day Works?

Do we have a good mechanism for it to fund Denver Day Works?

So, Councilwoman Lewis, I just want to make sure I understand.

You're basically taking it out of our housing bucket and putting it in our services bucket.

That's what you're asking us to do.

Yes.

Because those two programs that you just referenced are not in my.

I know.

I just realized it the moment that I said it.

I was gonna correct it, but I wanted you to speak first.

I just checking out like I think that's a documentary.

That was originally what I don't think for free.

So I'm sorry.

Uh, executive director host.

Um, so if I'm understanding correctly the amendment, it's to take uh money that is both in the homelessness resolution fund from our housing and put it into our well, homelessness resolution slash housing outcomes into services and um shelter.

I think um what I would note is that's 550,000 less we can use to house people.

So that is potentially eighteen less households we will serve in rapid rehousing, and somewhere that could be 250 to 500 households less we serve in rapid resolution.

That is the bulk of where the homelessness resolution fund for the housing is going.

So that would mean cutting those programs and having less housing outcomes next year.

Okay, thank you for that.

You're welcome.

All right, um, economic development.

I deep is here.

Um because I don't know much about the uh rapid rehousing workforce pilot.

Um is the population you would be serving the same as that that was served under Denver Day Works.

Hello everyone.

Adeep Kahn, executive director of Denver Economic Development Opportunity.

Uh I can't speak to if it's the exact same population.

I would assume that it's the same population that we've been working with on the pilot.

It's intended for folks who've had uh issues with chronic homelessness, but are on the verge of being work ready, and so we have the opportunity to be able to work with those individuals case by case and identify opportunities for employment, and we work directly with employers on it.

Do you happen to know how much you're already investing in the rapid rehousing workforce pilot without um this year or this year?

We've had 163 customer referrals for the program.

And in terms of those who we've either employed uh or enrolled in training and education, it's 75.

Okay.

And we are looking at we actually are having discussions in the last couple weeks about potentially adding another uh individual who can manage around a caseload of around 150 or 200 individuals for next year.

With what you already have.

With what we have.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you.

Councilman Toyer.

Thanks, Madam President.

Um, this one is a real Sophie's choice, right?

Because I wish you would have taken it out of contingency and would have voted yes.

Really?

Yeah.

I change it.

Honestly, I don't, I mean, we need how we need this rapid rehousing dollars.

We cannot take from rapid rehousing dollars.

We do need the Denver Day Works program.

It is a different group of people than um the people that Adeep is talking about.

Director Khan is talking about sorry, Adeep.

Um, with the with their pilot program, it is a different set of needs.

It is an incredibly expensive program, but it has been very, very successful over time.

So I will just say I am a no on this because of the the taking rapid rehousing dollars away, but um really appreciate you bringing this to the forefront.

And man, I wish you would have taken it from contingency.

I would have voted yes, but thank you.

Councilmember Flynn.

Thank you, Madam Russell.

Uh wow, Councilman Sawyer, you said exactly what my comments were.

I really struggled over this one when I was researching it over the weekend, and thank you, Councilwoman Lewis, for bringing it forward.

Today works is a very important program.

And um, I'm really uh dividing on this.

Do we house fewer people next year, or do we give uh the neediest people who want to work and earn money an opportunity to do that and get back on their feet?

Um it is uh I feel like Merrill Streep.

Sophie's choice.

So uh I don't know.

I'll wait till the roll call.

Thank you.

Councilmember Perity.

Um, yeah, I just uh a couple of things.

I mean, I think um I have an amendment related to Denver Day works with a different source, which I'm happy to describe that's coming later on here.

Um, but the reason that this program is so crucial, and we heard people testifying to it tonight, um, it's our only workforce program aimed at unhoused people, and one of the biggest things that we've heard, um, including from host, honestly, um, is that we need more support for people to get into the workforce in order to free up space and shelter.

So, this is such a piece of that puzzle.

Um, I cannot for the life of me understand why this program was cut and keep in mind um coming in 2027, we're gonna have work requirements for Medicaid, and so if people are not working, um, including through a program like Denver Day Works, they will lose their Medicaid, and then CCH will not be able to treat them and get reimbursed, and then our all-in-mile high health programming falls through.

I mean, it is I I I do not understand how there was not five hundred and fifty thousand dollars somewhere in the city budget for this program.

Um, and I I'm just aghast about it.

So um, just quickly so that people know this as we're taking these two votes.

Um the Denver Day Works amendment that I have coming up later on, is drawing from a Dito fund that is used for retail incentives.

Um there is 1.6 million dollars in that fund.

Um I have been reviewing the contracts that Dito has entered into to attract um businesses to the city, and this is not the bio fund, this is not for people impacted by construction.

This is just sort of this competitive thing we do with other cities to try to attract companies to our city.

Um I personally I think the economic impact of keeping getting people out of homelessness, given that that costs us 50 grand a year, um, is higher than whatever tax revenue we get from new companies, but also um over the past many years, um, in 2025, that fund entered into a total of um a little over a half million, about maybe about $650,000 of contracts.

Um, in 2024, it entered into a single contract for $400,000 in 2023, one contract, sorry, two contracts for $250,000, nothing in 2022.

It's not going to enter into 1.6 million dollars of contracts in 2026.

And so taking $550,000 and leaving $1.1 million in that fund, is still more than that fund has ever entered into in contracts in a single year.

And that's the amount of funding that is not needed to service all of their and pay all their existing contracts.

So that would be only for new contract payments in 2026.

We do not need all that money in that fund within Dito.

Um, and so I would um encourage people if you have an issue with the source to look at the yeah, the other amendment.

And frankly, I will um make a verbal motion at the end of this meeting if that's what I need to do to take this from contingency.

I have that language right here, so we can do that too.

Thank you.

Council Pro Timer Mayor Campbell?

Um, thank you, madam president, and thank you for cueing me up, um, council member parody.

Um, because I would like to ask Jonathan, can we do a friendly amendment to change the source of where this where these dollars are coming?

And is that possible and what would be the next steps?

Uh Jonathan Griffin, Deputy Legislative Council.

So, yes, uh, what's probably easiest is to run uh just a new amendment that we'd put at the end of this uh of the amendment process.

So, so to get a new amendment 26 or whatever that should give Luke and his 27, should get Luke should give Luke and his team enough time to get it drafted uh and get it circulated.

So that's what I'd recommend.

Um, the easiest way to do it.

Yeah, thank you.

Um yeah, we definitely need those rapid rehousing dollars, but I also think that um being able to support this with the um Denver Day Works is really important, and I also think um that's one of the number one things that we also hear around the shelters is having that ability to make sure that the environment um outside is um is also good for everybody that's inside the shelter and outside the shelter.

Um so I would just like to make a friendly amendment if you are an amenable to it to have it.

So what would our next step be?

Would we go through and then you would tell us or we would vote no for this and new amendment would come up that would then have a different source of funding from contingency?

Or would that be because I think your funding source was at can we ask our staff to answer this?

I don't mind I'll withdraw my Denver Day Works amendment as well.

If people prefer if we want to draft a contingency amendment and replace it, I'm fine with that.

Yeah, um, but I just need to know from them the process of drafting that, submitting it, and moving it at the end of everything else.

Okay, uh Jonathan Griffin, deputy legislative council.

So um, this is council member Lewis's amendment.

She can either choose to still have us vote on this amendment in the current framework, or she can withdraw the amendment, um, similar to councilwoman parity asking to withdraw, and then in the interim, we can get a new one drafted that takes it from the contingency reserve or whatever that will look like.

But it's kind of, I mean, it's member preference ultimately.

If you want to vote, I can't tell you you can't vote on something.

So, I would prefer not to vote no on my own amendment.

So if we can pull it and then read rewrite um and have that source come from contingency, I'd appreciate it.

Yeah, okay.

We'll work on that.

Thank you.

So, council secretary, can you send council member um Lewis language to pull this, or does she just have to say, is there something we have to do?

Jonathan Griffin, Deputy Legislative Council.

She can just say she'd like to withdraw the amendment.

Councilmember Lewis, yeah.

I'd like to withdraw the amendment.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

I think Councilmember Flynn, you good not ask answering anything.

Asking, moving on.

Thank you, Madam President.

I just wanted to state that the invitation of uh Councilwoman Parody.

What she said.

My intention would have been to vote no on this one, but yes on the one that uses the business incentive fund rather than contingency.

I'd rather not dip into contingency again.

So that that would be my preference.

If councilwoman, if you want to continue with your um, let's I think that amendment is up next, so why don't we just read that?

Discuss it and vote on it, and then we can vote on the other the contingent version at if need be.

Does that make sense?

Okay, that's what I yep, agreed.

Okay.

So council member parody amendment 1787, your amendment.

Council president, I move that the mayor's proposed 2026 budget be amended in the following particulars.

Number one on page 340 under the agency titled uh Denver Economic Development and Opportunity in the section titled economic opportunity SRF in the line titled business incentives, reduce the 2026 proposed column by 550,000.

Number two, on page 100 under the section titled estimated expenditures, schedule 100B in the section title general fund transfers in the line titled Transfer to Business Incentives SRF, reduce the 2026 estimated column by 550,000 on number three on page 409 under the agency title department of housing stability uh 014400 in the section title department budget in the section title general fund expenditures by agency in the line title department of housing stability increase the 2026 proposed column by 550,000 dollars and four make other appropriate adjustments to comments tables schedules and figures in the mayor's proposed 2026 budget as may be required to reflect the actions directed in this amendment.

Thank you.

Hold on, just one second.

Uh it has been moved and seconded.

Councilmember Sawyer.

Oh, Councilmember Parity, do you have anything else to say?

Sorry.

Um, I don't think so, other than that.

Um this I do want to note that Denver Day Works was previously funded at 750,000, but in conversations with them, um, they believe they can continue their programming um for 550,000.

And I just want to recognize that I'm sure that was already a tight budget.

Um the the other piece is that um the again in looking at the amounts um that Deto has actually put under obligation every year as business incentives.

Um they've never it's never been close um to the 1.6 million that is in that fund for 2026, I think.

Okay, I have a procedural question for you.

What you read and what is in legislatar are different.

Great.

Hold on.

So what you read is you're taking putting money from economic development to on page 405 under the agency of housing stability, and what's in legislatar is so which one is which one is correct?

I just got messages from our staff about that about this, um, and they flagged that um they they corrected it in the script and then they're correcting it on legislatar, and there may be a lag.

So it was a drafting error that we all caught in real time.

It just had the wrong receiving agency.

So what I read is correct, and that should legislar should be reflecting that any moment, and I appreciate Luke catching that.

So it should be exactly as I read it.

Okay.

Okay, so is that makes sense, Council President?

It should be going into host.

I think the incorrect version in Detto, or sorry, in legislatar had dedo as the um had the program going into detto, which is yes, sir.

Uh I what uh Luke Palmasano, senior legislative policy analyst.

What council member parody said is correct?

The legislature version that you have, we cannot export it to the floor here once the meeting is started.

So online it is correct, but the version you have in your vote cast is incorrect.

But as council member parody stated, the script is correct, and the current version, if anybody googles it on their phone, will be correct.

And that's why I thought I was losing my mind because I just pulled it up on Legislator to check, pulled it up online, and it was correct.

So I thought I would what is happening?

Okay, okay okay thank you.

Uh Councilmember Sawyer, go ahead.

Awesome.

Thank you I just am curious Adib I would love to I would like to reinstate the Denver Day Works funding.

I don't need to do it out of your budget but um you know I would prefer I hear council member Flynn loud and clear on the issue of contingency.

So that said um I'd really like to know from you what are the impacts of this change if I were to vote yes on this amendment tonight.

Sure.

So you know just a little bit of perspective on our budget process.

We went through a very exhaustive budgeting process to get us to the point where we are today as you guys have seen in the budget book we took really significant hits uh when it comes to the general fund dollars that are allocated to Dito and we specifically set some parameters around how we wanted to make those decisions and was around one making sure that we were laying off as few people as possible and two making sure that we maintain the BIF as much as possible it is our most effective tool at bringing jobs into Denver.

When it comes to our ability to compete for these jobs it is absolutely essential we had a group of site selectors at the site selectors conference that we met with just a couple of weeks ago and the one weakness that all of them cited was our ability to offer incentives in comparison with our peer cities.

Denver has seen a huge decline in jobs uh in 23 to 24 we saw a net loss of 10,000 jobs what that does is it makes all of these decisions much more difficult.

If we're not growing jobs in Denver we're gonna continue to be at this table making hard decisions year after year and this is one of the only tools we have to be able to incentivize and attract jobs typically on average it's about four to five thousand dollars of our BIF fund goes towards a well paying livable wage job in Denver that tends to produce for around five to ten years.

The economic impact of that of that on just the actual salary is about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars when you talk about what's actually being put back into our economy per year and so the net effect is millions of dollars for our economy.

Can you not use acronyms you can I'm sorry so no one outside of the I don't even know what I which acronym I even said I apologize.

So Greg, I'm gonna hold everyone accountable because I always get people calling me and being like I don't even know what that means.

So your business incentive fund if I hear you saying that word correctly is a tool to draw businesses to Denver.

Yes and I will say that we have currently in negotiation about 1.7 million dollars in business incentive contracts those don't really flesh out over a short period of time they tend to take months and sometimes they even take over a year before we can actually execute on those and to go back to some of those companies and say those business incentive dollars that we had offered you before are something now that we have to take off the table would be a very bad message I think for us to send out into the business community.

The last thing I will say is that I understand the feeling and sentiment around uh the Denver Day Works program I have not I don't know the in-depth um understanding of the program itself what I will say though is that we are putting more resources uh and more manpower through our federal dollars out of our workforce programs to be able to serve our unhoused populations uh our folks who are experiencing homelessness are a priority population through we OA funding um and so that we can dedicate dollars specifically for some of that work uh I can't say that this specific line item is something we can dedicate these dollars for but I will say that we have plans for the 2026 budget to address this population with more resources and more programming around uh opportunities for training opportunities for um uh resume support for one-on-one coaching uh and we're working more and more with employers on hiring opportunities.

Okay, thank you so much for that.

I really appreciate that um I think that was super helpful.

I will be a no on this one um based on what you have told me, and I and I really appreciate that.

I do just want to reiterate the population of people that are served by the Denver Day Works program are not a population of people who are gonna have a resume.

They're not a population of people who are ready to go back to work.

They are a population of people who have extraordinary barriers, and that's what makes this program so amazing because so expensive, because the level of support that these workers need in order to be workers is extraordinary.

And that's why it's in host and not Dito.

It's a totally different population of people.

So I really appreciate that.

Thank you for that information.

I will be a no on this one based on what you've told me, and really appreciate that clarity.

Thanks.

Thank you, Councilmember Heights.

Director Kahn.

Thank you.

I was able to catch you before you went too far.

Okay.

So will you let us know who you are for the record?

Executive Director Adib Khan of Denver Economic Development Opportunity.

Great.

And you also you said WEOLA.

What is WEOLA?

Um I'm going to be able to say that exact acronym.

It is federal funding specifically for uh workforce training and job placement.

If you have the current funding level, if we were to say no to this budget amendment, would you spend all of the uh the business impact funds that you have allocated?

Would you would you spend it all in 2026?

Would I spend it all if I could?

Yeah, well, so there's a there's a comment about how we have not spent um we have not drained this fund to zero on any calendar year in recent memory, and so um, and so the the question I have of you is will you you said you've got effectively 1.7 million committed.

Not encumbered, but uh uh committed.

So I just want to say if we give you funding, will you spend it?

Absolutely.

We've got 4.4 million of those dollars encumbered.

Coupled with that, we're an active negotiations uh with another between 1.7 and 2 million dollars.

Um so when if we were to execute on all of those deals, we will have spent the entirety of that of those dollars.

Okay, thank you.

Um the only thing I would say is uh I vote in favor of Trua temporary rental and utility assistance.

I'm gonna say my acronyms, because that is an important uh lever that we have to make sure that people um can have an extra hundred to two hundred dollars on their rent so that they're not um having to be on the street and buy a new couch and bed at some point in the near future.

Uh it's also very important for us to have jobs and um rental and utility assistance help help someone for one month.

Uh making sure that we uh give people jobs allows them to uh to pay rent and maintain that that rent and utility payments um into perpetuity.

So uh thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Councilmember Watson.

Very quickly, um, I think you have to put your speaker on.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Um, Director Khan, no questions for you, just a simple comment.

I attended um meeting of uh uh site selection um leaders from I think it was four different um major cities Seattle, um uh Austin.

I think there was, gosh, I can't remember two.

I'm just won't call any.

Well, it's four of them four um um uh groupings of folks that do the work of making sure that their cities are receiving investments not only from um internally, but they're winning the largest corporations to come to their cities.

And they were asked to provide direct feedback to the Sydney County of Denver as to why we're losing out.

I think Nashville was one of the others, why we're losing out more and more of those bids.

And a part of it is that our business and in and in investment funds and the dollars we provide as incentives are reducing dramatically where other cities are increasing, including cities on the east, like Nashville, which um beat us on several of those um uh corporate um headquarters.

I think it's essential that this fund remains.

I think it's essential that Dito spends those funds.

Um, I think the the work ready program is important.

It's essential that we have that as well.

This is not the source that I can support taking those funds from, and so I will be a no vote on this.

Thank you.

Or uh Department of Finance, whichever I think you might know.

Um, how do you get money into the special revenue fund?

Because the special revenue fund is very challenging to it's has a lot of constraints around it, has lots of rules around it normally.

So how do you because this is pulling money from a special revenue fund?

How do you how does money get in there?

Does it roll over?

It does roll over.

The uh the origins of it was in 2005, and it was specifically designed uh to allow for financial incentives to companies relocating or expanding in Denver that will create significant new jobs and tax revenues, uh, and for supporting critical redevelopment on projects in targeted neighborhoods or in urban renewal areas.

It allows for direct financial support of catalytic business developments that demonstrate significant public benefit, and these are typically delivered through multi-year performance based and setup agreements.

Um, so at the end of the day, it's meant to be something that will pay itself off in terms of the benefit.

In fact, we have a limit that we cannot provide a benefit that is over 50% of the returns that are going to come back on that.

And then does it come from your budget at the end of the year?

If you have extra money in the Department of Economic Development, does it go into there or does it come from the general fund?

Let just take that.

Justin Sykes, budget management office director, uh council member, the business incentive fund is funded through a transfer from the general fund.

You can find details on page 100 of the budget book.

That transfer amount was 1.2 million dollars in 2024.

For the current year, 2025, it's only 100,000.

We actually reduce that transfer in order to add dollars to the business uh impact and opportunity fund the biofund.

Uh, per recommendation from city council, and so the proposed transfer amount for 2026 would be about six hundred and four thousand dollars.

And one last question.

Does that transfer during the budget season, or is that a transfer that city council has to approve to transfer it from one fund into another fund?

So you are very astute that any transfer does require an ordinance from city council.

This is one that we would typically include in the annual long bill.

And so city council does approve it.

Uh, but kind of in combination with uh substantial number of other things.

Thank you.

Because I don't remember ever voting.

It would have been in the long bill.

I think there have been instances where we've actually pulled money out of this fund to support, for example, newcomers, but uh it's typically incorporated into the long bill that transfer into the center.

Um I just was gonna say that I think um as things have unfolded, I'm happy to withdraw this and vote on the contingency version.

Sorry for that, but the conversation is not wasted because my next amendment relates to the same fund.

So, I was like I knew it because I have my I have my Excel spreadsheets, I'm like, I'm gonna just add all these questions right now.

I figured that was what you called on that.

I really do.

Okay, so we are withdrawing 1787.

Is that correct?

Correct.

Got it.

Okay, 1785.

I'm still here.

Um, Council President, I move that the mayor's proposed 2026 budget be amended in the following particulars.

One on page 340 under the agency titled Denver Economic Development and Opportunity in the section titled Economic Opportunity SRF in the line titled Business Incentives, reduce the 2026 proposed column by 300,000 dollars.

Number two on page 100 under the section titled estimated expenditures, schedule 100B in the section titled General Fund Transfers in the line titled Transfer to Business Incentives SRF, reduce the 2026 estimated column by 300,000 dollars.

Number three on page 100 on the under the section titled, wait, okay, never mind.

Estimated expenditures Schedule 100B in the section title general fund transfers in the line titled transfer to Economic opportunity SRF increase the 2026 estimated column by 300,000 dollars.

Number four on page 341 under the agency titled Denver Economic Development Opportunity, 011000 in the section titled Economic Development Grant and Special Revenue Funds, 011700 in the section titled Expenditures by SRF in the line titled Employer Recruitment Training and Retention Program.

Increase the 2026 proposed column by 300,000 dollars, and five, make other appropriate adjustments to comments tables, schedules and figures in the Mayor's proposed 2026 budget as may be required to reflect the actions directed in this amendment.

Great.

It has been moved and segmented.

Comments by members of council.

Councilmember Parity.

Yeah, so this addresses the work ready program.

So this is moving funds from the same debt that we just discussed.

Only $300,000, so an even smaller amount, to the area of data where the work ready program has been funded for the last several years.

Sorry, from uh Myra at El Centro, who has been our contractor on the Work Ready program.

But suffice it to say, um, there are still people lining up to enroll in this program.

The services they provide are incredibly valuable.

These are targeted at recent immigrants who have work authorization, and has been built up over the last couple of years by DETO and El Centro in partnership to get those people employed in industries where we really need employment with a whole bunch of sort of workforce training partners.

I am really proud of this program, and El Centro has been working on fundraising.

So you guys, you may all recall that the prior annual amount for this program was $600,000.

And this budget amendment is only for $300,000 because they are engaging in fundraising to try to support it from other sources.

Um I wish I could open these because we just got a whole huge document of handwritten letters of testimony from Central members who went through the program.

Um I think you all got that as well.

So since I'm failing to open it, um I will just say that it's in your email inbox, and I reserve the right to get back in queue and read a tiny bit of those if I put my hands on them.

Thank you.

Yep.

Councilmember Torres, your your questions.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um for uh economic development.

Um, when we we had asked for 600,000 in this, and the uh response we got back was that Dito has sufficient funding to continue these services in 2026.

Um, so what am I missing?

Um, they have the funding to continue, but not take on new.

Is that the difference?

New participants.

Uh I think I think what we're saying is that we've got we we have sources of funding to be able to fund this specific work, the same work that El Centro is completing with the funds that we have through our federal grants.

We are going to continue to work with El Centro.

We'll continue to work with the New Americans Integration Network and other partners to be able to deliver training, job placement services for the specific population.

Is that mean you'll be able to you would be able to take on new participants in that program in 2026?

It wouldn't necessarily be through everyone going through El Centro's Work Ready program as it exists today.

It could be through other training programs that we can offer with other providers.

Got it.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Councilmember Parity.

Yeah.

Sorry about that.

And I just want to be clear, I don't I don't have the understanding that this program is funded in 2026, and I understand that we have other workforce programs, but this has been special because it's been focused on this particular population through a provider who is uniquely suited to reach them.

Um Central has 2,000 members who are primarily Spanish-speaking immigrants.

So and I just wanted to read what they said in their letter because I finally opened it up.

The work ready program has served and successfully inserted more than 70% of their participants into full-time jobs.

So these are folks who moved from shelter as newcomers into full-time work and they're able to sustain their families with good jobs, not just any entry-level job through partnerships with more than 30 companies across the metro area in industries where workers are needed to sustain our local economy.

Um they've been working um around the clock to support their workers with everything from soft skills industry or into training and job integration, and it's just been incredibly successful.

So when the conversation that we just had, you know, it's maybe been two hours now, but in this chamber tonight, about housing and shelter and how um we do have uh recent arrival of families who are falling through the cracks of all of these systems.

This program again is another one of these incredibly successful and crucial supports.

And if we cut it now, we're moving in the exact wrong direction.

This is one of the things that has um gotten people to be economically successful in the city and gotten people quite literally out of homelessness and out of shelters.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Seeing no other comments or any questions from members of council, I need to go to my script.

Madam Secretary, we'll call on council member parity's amendment 1785.

Council members Gilmore.

Albitres?

Aye Flynn, Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Aye, Heinz?

No.

Cashman?

Aye.

Lewis.

Aye.

Romero Campbell.

Uh nay.

Sawyer?

No.

Sorry, all the buttons.

Aye.

Watson?

Nay.

Madam President Sandoval.

Aye.

Madam Secretary.

Oh, well done.

Madam Secret uh.

Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results.

Eight ayes, five nays.

Eight ayes.

Uh councilmember parity's amendment 1785 to the proposed 2020 budget has passed.

Councilmember Torres Cashman Parity.

Your amendment 1762.

Yes.

Council President, I move that the mayor's proposed 2026 budget be amended in the following particulars on page 259 under the agency titled Office of Children's Affairs 010300 in the section titled General Government SRF in the line youth activities program increase the 2026 column by 496,400.

Number two, make the appropriate adjustments to the comments, tables, schedules, and figures in the mayor's proposed proposed 2026 budget as may be required to reflect the actions directed in this amendment.

Thank you.

Comments by members of council?

Any of the sponsors, Taurus Cashman Parity.

Um I'll start quickly.

Um thank you, Madam President.

This amendment reinstates funding cut from out of school time programming with one-time funds from the Broncos Youth Special Revenue Fund.

Thank you, Councilmember Cashman.

Thank you, Madam President.

Yeah, I just think this is uh an expense that we we can pass up.

It is a relative drop in the bucket uh when compared with the overall need uh for how out of school time programming.

But uh as uh uh councilman Kenish told me one time when I was complaining about what would a uh uh a 53 unit affordable housing project do when we need 40,000 units, and she said ask the 53 families that move in, and this is the same case, it'll do a lot of good.

Thank you, Councilmember Parity.

Yeah, I just I wanted to sort of point out that um the impact of these grant funds.

This is not a lot of money in the scope of our budget, and it is um a huge blow to these providers that are so incredibly overstressed, overstretched.

The statistics that really haunt me are that um for families that take advantage of out-of-school time programming, um, something like 70 percent of them wouldn't be able to work without that funding.

Um, so that's kind of clismic.

We cannot cut this.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Sawyer.

Thanks, Mr.

President.

Question for you, Jess.

Um, do you have after significant reductions in OCA staffing?

Do you have the staff to be able to um manage these contracts?

Thank you for the question.

Jess Ridgeway, I'm the executive director of the Office of Children's Affairs.

Uh, thank you for the question, Councilwoman.

Uh the answer is yes.

Um, we will need to be able to to talk to some partners um for some support and doing some contracting, but we still intend to put out um two RFPs at the beginning of the year, one for comprehensive out-of-school time providers.

So those are out-of-school time providers that meet certain dosage requirements, provide free programming meals, full summer programming, and then another RFP for our annual out of school time providers.

And those are already moving forward, so we just need to make sure that we can get some more dollars out the door.

Okay, great.

Thank you for that.

So follow-up question, I really appreciate this and want to vote yes.

I am very concerned about the fact that it's temporary dollars, right?

We saw this during COVID when we spend temporary dollars on permanent solutions, those temporary dollars cause a massive cliff, and then those permanent solutions go away.

These Bronco dollars are temporary.

So how if we were to vote yes on this, how would you intend to fund these programs moving forward?

Great question.

Thank you, Councilwoman.

Uh, these are one-time funds, which I oftentimes make the connection to uh ARPA dollars as well, where organizations received funding.

Um I support this amendment because I do think that that restores our budget to where it was in the amount of dollars that had been going out of the door.

I am cautious and thinking about how many Broncos dollars we spend on a given year because we have uh approximately 9.7, please don't quote me on that exactly, but somewhere in that range.

And so when we're thinking about the next few years that are ahead of us, knowing that this is a really tight budget year, we can I can anticipate that I would say that next year is going to be another tight budget year.

So I'm really thinking about those Broncos dollars being um here to help sustain um programs for the next three years in an ideal world.

We would we would we could um portion some of those dollars out.

Um and so it is a similar uh cliff, but at least it gives us a three year runway to be able to say, and now let's think about some sustainable funding that we can come up with, knowing that um we've taken full advantage of of this pot of funding.

Okay, really appreciate that.

Um, and then I think last question is just in terms of the um the programming itself, right?

So some of the programming that has that used to exist within the city and county of Denver has moved to DPS or will move to DPS in 2026, right?

Like MySpark moved to DPS, Scott, not three million dollars, was the original pilot out of the Broncos fund um for after school time programming.

So I'm I guess I'm just curious like are those gaps that are being created by this lack of funding being filled in by another provider like a DPS, um, that do not that so they don't show up in our budget and they don't show up in the responsibilities of Office of Children's Affairs, but they are but the need is being met through somewhere else.

I may I paraphrase councilwoman just to make sure.

Are you asking uh in response to the 496,000 dollars?

That gap is is not specifically.

Because there is not specific to what we the dollars that we are moving in this amendment.

So first to your comment around MySpark.

So MySpark um was a program where there was seed dollars that were appropriated from the Broncos Fund to help support.

It was run actually by a foundation and then moved to the Denver Public Schools Foundation as of this summer, and that is a program that focuses solely on middle school students, so six, seventh, and eighth grade students, and it connects them to out-of-school time programs really linked to a passion of theirs.

And so, no, um, that programming does not replace um what we're talking about here.

There might be some crossover because some of the the students that were taking advantage of some of the out-of-school time um enrichment activities could have been middle school students, but for the most part, um, I would say that that caters oftentimes to elementary school students.

Okay, awesome.

Thank you so much.

Thanks, Madam President.

Thank you, Council President Pro Tem.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Um, you're still up here.

Actually, and I think uh Councilwoman Sawyer, you you covered some of the questions that I had.

Uh I just wanted to actually I'm not gonna ask you a question.

It's okay.

Sorry, I have you up here.

Um thank you to the sponsors for bringing this forward.

I think it's um super necessary, and um, and although it is a one-time funding, I think that having been on the other side of receiving these funds from um as a nonprofit executive, uh, they we know you know that these are one-time funds and always looking for um ways to diversify funding.

Um my understanding for these funds is that they would go through the RFP process um and then be allocated out.

I think one of the things that's a nugget of these kind of dollars going out for out of school time funding is the workforce support um that we often don't talk about.

These are you know asset-based dollars that go into young people for safe places to be um for an additional snack or meal after school for additional learning, but also um places where you know the majority of us don't get off at 3 p.m.

Um when school's over.

So um it does provide a safe place for young people to be.

I know not only for elementary school students, but also for middle school and high school students um are covered in this.

So just thank you.

I'll be in support of this tonight.

Thank you, Councilmember Finn.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um, I guess uh maybe uh Stephanie um I'm supportive of this amendment, but I would like to have an idea of what the spend down plan is for the Broncos Fund and how this uh allocation from it this year, and I know there's another one coming up, perhaps how that affects that spend down plan.

Because once it's gone, it's one-time money, it's gone.

So we'd be faced with having to continue and finding resources to continue these programs.

Uh Stephanie Adams, deputy chief financial officer.

That is correct, councilman.

Um, it is one time dollars as a cash fund.

Um I mean I could I will defer to Jess on what the original plan was.

I know that she has worked with other folks to talk a little bit about a a plan which will obviously have to be adjusted should this amendment come through, but you are absolutely right.

One of the concerns is that once those dollars are gone, um, we don't have a it's not a replenishing kind of fund.

So I don't know, Jess if you wanted to.

Just do you have anything to add to that?

What does this preclude something that has been in the plan for the next year or the year after?

Jessica Ridgway, the executive director of the Office of Children's Affairs.

Thank you for the question.

Uh this amendment would not um impact future year plans.

So we run several contracts that are on a multi-year basis, and those are our comprehensive out-of-school time programs that I spoke about that are, you know, provide meals, uh, all day care and engagement, and everything else we run on an annual RFP so that we're able to be able to be nimble to what budget we do have.

Great, thank you.

Thank you, Madam President.

I am supportive of this amendment.

Thank you.

Councilman Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Thank you, um, Madam President.

Um, just a quick question because I know we keep talking about this fund going away.

Um, but my and maybe it's DOF who would answer this, but my understanding is that this was put into an interest bearing account, I think in 2024.

And so we've seen um total interest accrued.

I know it's not a significant amount, however, um it is accruing interest.

So um the amount that I was that was relayed to me from I think Department of Finance that 667,507 is the total amount that has interest that has been accrued in the for the Bronco Fund.

Uh Justin Sykes budget management office director.

Yes, I believe it is around six hundred thousand dollars.

Okay, um, thank you for that.

And and so I'm not saying that that will like cover, you know, millions of dollars or anything like that, but I think that is a positive thing is that we have it in that account um to be able to to help us.

And I guess I would just say um we we have to, I mean, we're gonna we have to figure out how to spend this money.

We can't keep saying, well, because we don't know what the future lies.

Are we they're gonna is it just gonna sit there then, or are we gonna actually do something with it?

Is I guess would be my question for any of the amendments that are pulling from this fund.

Um I think we if as long as we're using it for its intended purpose, I would support that.

So thank you, madam president.

Okay, thank you all.

Um I'm supportive of this one as well.

I think it's really important.

Um, Madam Secretary, we'll call on Council Members Torres, Cashman and Parity's amendment 1762 that to the mayor's proposed 2026 budget.

Council members Gilmore.

Aye, Albitres.

Hi.

Flynn.

Aye.

Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Aye.

Heinz.

Hi.

Cashman.

Lewis.

Aye.

Parity.

Aye.

Romero Campbell.

Aye.

Sawyer.

Aye.

Torres?

Aye.

Watson.

Aye.

Madam President Sandoval.

Aye.

Madam Secretary, close the voting and answer results.

13 ayes.

13 eyes.

Cash Council members, Torres Cashman Parity, Amendment 1762 to the proposed 2026 budget has passed.

Um we are moving things around, colleagues, and now we are going to skip a couple and go to 1771.

So you'll have to refresh your um live script.

Star.

Yep.

Um so it's my amendment 1771.

I move that the mayor's proposed 2026 budget be amended in the following particular particulars on page 456 under agency titled City Council 020100 in the section that titled general fund expenditures.

In the line titled personal services, reduce the 2026 proposed column by 65,800.

On page 456 under the agency titled City Council 020100 in the section titled General Fund Expenditures.

In the line titled Service and Supplies, reduce the 2026 proposed column by 14,480.

On page 386, under the agency titled Public Health and Environment 6500 in the section titled Community and Behavioral Health 650100 in the line titled Support Team Assistance Response, increase the 2026 proposed column by 80,280.

Make other appropriate adjustments to the comments table schedules and figures in the mayor's proposed 2026 budget as may require as may be required to reflect the actions directed in this amendment.

It is moved and seconded.

This amount transfers eight 80,280 from city council's personnel and services and supplies to support the um star response support team assistance response program and specifically it would be moved to um DDPHE to help update a van that is in um much need of updating.

Are there any questions of members of council on amendment 1771?

Councilmember Flynn.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um can some uh Trishman uh maybe respond.

Uh my understanding is we have how many vans total?

Hi, good evening, Tristan Sanders, Director of Community and Behavioral Health at DDPHE.

We have 13 vans, in total.

And is what I the information I got was that it's going to enable high-speed Wi-Fi in all of the vans.

In order to for the uh clinicians and the responders to be able to have instant upload of data digitally, because uh yeah, that's correct.

So we think that with this amendment and these dollars, we could upgrade all 13 vans to include a secure Wi-Fi connection so the clinicians can do real-time case notes and work.

Okay, thank you.

I just thought it would be nice to put that out on the floor with what improvement that'll bring.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bring it my president.

Yeah, Madam Secretary, we'll call on Council President Sandoval's.

That's weird.

We'll call on my amendment to 1771 to the mayor's proposed 2026 budget.

Council members Gilmore.

Aye.

Albitres.

Aye.

Flynn.

Aye.

Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Aye.

Heinz.

Aye.

Cashman.

Aye.

Lewis.

Perity?

Aye.

Romero Campbell.

Aye.

Sawyer?

Aye.

Torres?

Aye.

Watson.

Aye.

Madam President Sandoval.

Aye.

Madam Secretary, close the vote and answer results.

Thirteen ayes.

13 ayes, Council President Sandoval's amendment 1771 to the proposed 2026 budget has passed.

Okay, now we're at amendment 1780, Lewis and Cashman.

Council members Lewis and Cashman, your amendment.

Um Council President, I move that the Mayor's proposed 2026 budget be amended in the following particulars.

On page 562, under the agency title, police department 351000, and the section title general fund expenditures by type, and the line titled Services and Supplies reduce the 2026 proposed column by 381,008 and 30 cents.

On page 551 under the agency title Public Safety 35000, and the section title General Fund Expenditures by Type and the line titled Services and Supplies reduce the 2026 proposed column by 100 118,991.70 cents.

On page 386 under the agency title Public Health and Environment 65000, and the section title Community and Behavioral Health 650100, and the line titled Support Team Assistance Response, increase the 2026 proposed column by 500,000.

Make other appropriate adjustments to comments, tables, schedules, and figures in the mayor's proposed 2026 budget as may be required to reflect the actions directed in this amendment.

Thank you, Councilwoman.

It has been moved and seconded.

Comments by members of council.

Councilmember Lewis or Cashman.

Cashman, you can go first, and I'll chime in after.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you, uh co-sponsor.

I just think this is another uh expense we can't uh uh fail to take advantage of.

It's too important.

Program that was uh growing and growing is kind of slowed a bit, and I think it's uh uh takes load off our uh traditional uh emergency response teams and places it more appropriately where it should be.

Councilmember Lewis, um the support team assistant response team is an innovative program that has over the past few years languaged and been passed by other similar programs around the country, which are better funded and have more staffing as currently constructed.

The program was as of 2024 still only responding to about half of the total calls made.

The demand is there, in other words, the amendment will restore 381,08 dollars and 30 cents of funding to star for what was cut to add an additional crew to the program.

If overfunding has been a problem with the program, I would encourage the administration to figure out a way to either add a contractor or work with the existing providers to figure out a way to increase the staffing for the program.

It's critical that we continue to fund this program and ensure that the dollars we allocate to it are actually spent as it reflects a meaningful alternative to police response, perhaps the most meaningful that the city currently has.

And this budget environment stars good value, costing the city four times less than police responses on average.

It should be funded in a way that will maximize that value.

Funding this amendment comes from a point zero one nine percent reduction in the EDOS and DPD services and supplies budget.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Questions from members of council?

Councilmember Torres?

Thank you, Madam President.

Um, Tristan, my questions will be for you.

Um, we were advised in the mayor's letter that um star, this is an alignment of STAR budget, um, going to uh reduce based on 2025 spending.

So um can you use the money like what will it go toward?

Uh again, Tristan Sanders, director for community behavioral health at DDPHE.

Um we have the contractors we have for a reason.

They provide the services that are needed for STAR.

Uh there is underspend in 2025, primarily from Denver Health, but also from Well Power.

Part of that is due to how staffing levels are budgeted versus filled.

Um, so they are budgeting for midpoint of paramedics typically at Denver Health, and we are hiring not at the midpoint and often EMTs, and so there will be at least $500,000 returned from the Denver Health budget in 2025.

And we are working on what a an appropriate budget for 2026 would look like, quite literally as we speak.

Uh, in order to adequately describe how we might use those funds is a little difficult because in 2026, we are at the five-year mark of needing to rebid those services.

And so we are currently uh negotiating eight-month contracts with both of our providers and going to be bidding in the first quarter of next year, those services, with the fourth quarter being either a transition, not saying that's necessarily gonna happen, but having some reserve there to transition providers if we need to, um, but to really address this this right sizing of budget and staffing for that matter.

So we may actually be able to get more staff with the dollars we have, and therefore we were comfortable with the reduction that we submitted and not asking for more really.

So uh I the way I would respond to that is that we are intending to grow in the way that we are more efficient in responding to calls.

So we are looking at 911 data alongside clinician data to understand what is the time length of time that stars on site, how many calls are they addressing in a day?

How can we increase and be more efficient in addressing those calls?

It does not you know allow us to expand the number of units, but we think we can achieve uh more production from the teams with the units we have.

Okay, thanks, Tristan.

Yeah, thank you, Madam President.

Thank you.

Councilmember Flynn.

Thank you, Madam President.

I struggle with this one because we all love the STAR program and a success it's had so much so that each year we try to give it more money, but each year it doesn't spend the money we give it.

So I'm I'm looking for a reason to give you more money that you can't spend and will turn back at the end of 26.

So I I'm I love the program.

I'd like to see it succeed, I'd like to see it grow.

But if you're not spending what we give you now, I can't see giving you more.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Perity.

Yeah, I just wanted to say, having kept close tabs on this program over the last couple of years.

I I um I want to acknowledge the sort of facts that um folks who are here on behalf of agencies are giving us facts and they're not advocating one way or the other, right?

Um, and I have seen this program um get much better set up for success.

Like the current staffing structure, the current contractors, um, the fact that those contracts have kind of been right sized.

Um, I think to my I feel like this is um a good year to add funding um and and see how much of it they're able to spend um because the fact of the matter is that we know that every star response saves money compared to a police response, and that's just a fact.

Um, and we know that the program isn't responding to everything that it could be, so I do feel inclined to give it every single chance to grow.

Um, and this is, you know, an amount of money that um it it's not such an enormous, it's not like an enormous uh bite to to sorry to bite off.

That was really badly put.

Um, but it's a reasonable amount of money.

It essentially equates to one team operating.

Um, the staffing structures have changed such that there's more supervisors now than there used to be, etc.

Um, and the scalability study should be coming out before the end of the year, which I have to say.

Um, I don't think there's much that will make recommendations about how to scale, um, but there's no question, I think that it will recommend scaling, but it will say how to do so.

That will come out during the year.

So I see the opportunity to spend the funds, and I would love for them to be there for the program to use.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Pro Temer Mural Campbell.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um, I just have a few questions about sources.

Um, under here we have uh police department in general fund expenditure type.

Can someone tell me a little bit about what that is and impact?

Um I don't know if that's you, Chief or somebody from uh finance, yes from finance.

I'm just trying to, I don't know what all of the the line items are.

Shinai comes as chief financial officer for a department of public safety.

Um, so the request as I read it is just asking out of the full appropriation of supplies and services for the police department for that reduction.

Is that correct?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, um, there are a few lines in here.

One is the supplies and services.

There's another one that's uh general fund expenditure type title.

So they're all supplies and services.

Why are there different line items for supplies and services?

So the first line item on the budget is the overall appropriation of supplies and services for the entire department, and then you'll see throughout the remaining budget pages, sorry, that it's broken down into the program categories of administration versus investigations versus patrol.

Okay, um, and does this take just a portion, or can you tell me the percentage that it takes out of the supplies and services of these?

The um overall appropriate.

Off the top of your head, sorry.

I'm really doing it without anything in front of you.

Oh, that's okay.

I believe the overall appropriation for supplies and services is about $18 million.

So again, as Chief Thomas has spoken to earlier, we would have to work with Department of Finance and our BMO partners to figure out exactly where our what line alloc line item allocations we will pull from from supplies and services, and again meeting those contractual demands that we have.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

I just wanted to add um that the funding for this amending amendment comes from a 0.019% reduction.

Um, to answer your question more specifically.

Thank you.

Thank you.

See no other further questions, Madam Secretary.

We'll call on members Lewis and Cashman amendment 1780 to the mayor's proposed 2026 budget.

Council members Gilmore, aye.

Albitheres?

Aye.

Flynn.

Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Aye.

Heinz?

All right.

Cashman.

Aye.

Lewis.

Aye.

Parity?

Aye.

Romero Campbell.

Aye.

Sawyer?

No.

Torres?

Aye.

Watson.

Nay.

Madam President Sandoval.

Aye.

Madam Secretary, close the voting, announce the results.

Ten ayes, three nays.

10 ayes.

Councilmember Lewis and Cashman amendment to 1780 to the proposed 2026 budget has passed.

Councilmember Perity, do you still want to keep I withdraw the council amendment 1783?

Okay, because it's now happily duplicative.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Uh now we're on 1773.

That's councilmember Lewis and Gonzalez.

Councilmember Lewis and Gonzalez, your amendment.

Thank you, Council President.

I move that the mayor's proposed 2026 budget be amended in the following particulars.

On page 72 in the section titled Budget Summary, exhibit 3, 2026 combined Funds by appropriation expenditure type in the line titled Total General Fund, reduce the services and supplies by 400,000 dollars on page 279, under the agency titled Human Rights and Community Partnerships 01500 in the section titled Department Budget in the section titled General Fund Expenditures by Agency in the line titled Human Rights and Community Partnerships.

Increase the 2026 proposed column by 400,000.

Make other appropriate adjustments to comments, tables, schedules, and figures in the mayor's proposed 2026 budget as may be required to reflect the actions directed in this amendment.

Thank you.

Comments by either the sponsors, Councilmember Lewis or Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Gonzalez Gutierrez would like to go first.