It's time for this biweekly meeting of the Finance and Business Committee of Denver City Council.

Join us for the Finance and Business Committee starting now.

Welcome everyone.

Thank you for being here on this Tuesday morning, August 26th.

My name is Serena Gonzalez Gutierrez, and I am one of your council members at large.

And also chair of the Finance and Business Committee.

Before we go through what's on today's agenda, I'm going to go around so that council members can introduce themselves.

So I'll start to my left.

Good morning.

Darrell Watson representing Define District 9.

Good morning, Paul Cashman, South Denver District 6.

Jamie Torres, West Denver District 3.

Oh, you got me.

Hi, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4.

Chris.

Perfect time.

All right, great.

Well, we have two action items on our agenda today.

And so first we'll be starting with an ordinance change being brought forward with Councilwoman Torres on the nonprofit vehicle donation program.

This will also have uh public comment.

So before we get to um questions from council members, we'll do public break for public comment.

Uh and but please feel free to jump in the queue and I will track if council members have questions, and I'm gonna turn it over to Councilwoman Torres to have the folks that are joining you here today to introduce themselves.

Sure.

I'll turn it over to the general services team and city attorney to do their introductions, and then I'll just say something really quickly to kick off.

Sure, thank you.

Al Gardner, executive director of general services.

Hadrena Gibson, Deputy Executive Director of General Services.

Ron Martin, Assistant City Attorney, I assist General Services.

Chris Setmeyer, I'm the surplus manager for the city.

Great.

Um thank you all, and thank you, committee.

Um this has been um uh almost a year in progress, and so I really want to extend my thanks to this general services team uh because in November of last year, I was contacted by um one of somebody who we'll hear from in a little bit, but Emily Griffith Technical College, um, who provides certification for um uh auto mechanic uh uh workforce training, um, collision workforce training, um, that some of their vehicles they're having a hard time um acquiring vehicles.

Uh and it sounded like um the dean at Emily Griffith had approached the city in the past and been told, well, it's against our our code, our rules, we can't do it.

Um, and so talked to um Adrina and Al Gardner at that time in their team and and said, okay, there's got to be some way that we can um uh create some kind of path for um maybe it's our unused fleet vehicles, maybe it's our impound vehicles.

What is there possible that we can help these schools really be able to meet their needs because it seems like a win-win.

And um uh really grateful for this team in really looking at the code, what was allowed, what was not allowed, and creating a uh a potential pathway for the nonprofit organizations that provide um instructional and certification programs to be able to get vehicles.

And as we dug into it a bit more, um, it was illuminating to understand the difficulty that some of those organizations have in getting vehicles because they um uh they don't turn them around for revenue, they use them for instruction.

Um, and being able to find enough vehicles to meet the need is one of the reasons why um we're all here today.

So um I'll turn it over to the team um to present the um the potential changes.

Thank you, Councilwoman.

I will start it.

Um we'll go to slide next.

There we go.

I'll start there.

I'll I'll I'll preface though what I'm getting ready to cover and kind of piggyback off of uh what councilwoman Torres mentioned, and that it married really, really well with what our focus was at General Services.

Um, in addition to that, we have been focused on the piece dealing with vocational learning and started a program called GS Works uh probably a little over a year ago that partnered with um Pickens uh African American Trade Association and Emily Griffith to expose their students to vocational careers.

So this mared really, really well and already kind of went down a path that we were looking at already to find out how we could expose um folks to the trades even better.

Um so the objectives were to support vocational training, obviously in workforce development.

Um again, what I mentioned to you, which was part of the departmental focus, um, streamline uh legal and operational framework, which in going through this exercise, uh we were able to decouple uh some things that uh uh would prohibit us uh from the ability to really help in this way is really kind of discover how we could make these types of programs um much more amenable to to the folks in our community.

Um maximize community benefit uh while minimizing environmental and fiscal waste, uh, which is another aspect uh which is another aspect that was really important to us to find out to look at new ways in how we could recycle, I guess, some of the things that we do here and find new purpose and repurpose some of not just that our vehicles that are out there in ways that they can help uh the community in ways that we have not been able to before.

Establish governance, transparency, and accountability.

And that was our framework for how we began to work on it.

And I'll pass it to Adriana Gibson, who's deputy ED to dive a little bit more into how we came about, how this came about.

Yeah, so we're really excited about this program, and as much as we want to proceed down the path, we need to be legal to that point and making sure that um we're paying special attention.

So in order to stand this program up, it is going to require an ordinance modification.

Um, with that being said, this there is already an ordinance that exists related to this, uh, related to uh related to the disposal and disposition of unclaimed impounded vehicles.

However, with however, with this program under the authority of DRMC, um originally under section fifty-four eight sixteen, it allows for the disposition of unclaimed impounded vehicles through auction, sealed bids, scrap, metal conversion, and law enforcement use.

But what it does not allow for is um the donation to nonprofit educational institutions within the city and county of Denver for this program to be effectuated.

So the proposed ordinance amend amendment here will allow for eligible.

With wanting to still generate revenue for our surplus team and for the city at large, but also assist our nonprofit institutes and the few that are out there that provide this service.