Welcome back to this weekly meeting of the Community Planning and Housing Committee with Denver City Council.

Your community planning and housing committee starts now.

It's like we are on airlight and here are a little chimes.

So I feel confused.

At any rate, here we are apparently in the community planning and housing committee.

It is Tuesday, September 16th.

I'm Sarah Parody, one of your council members at large, chairing this committee today.

We have a couple of briefings, no action items, nothing on consent, so just a great learning day for all of us.

And I will start with council member introductions to my left.

Good afternoon, Daryl Watson.

Lewis, I think you're next.

Oh, Chantelou is District 8.

Hi, Diana.

Good afternoon.

Hi.

Good afternoon, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4.

We're all a little fried from getting a thousand-page budget book yesterday.

To read it.

Digging into that too.

Jamie Torres, West Denver District Three.

Great.

I don't think we have anyone online.

So I will turn it over to our friends at host to introduce themselves and brief us on congregate shelter, winter shelter, transportation contracts, everything coming up as we head into another winter.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I'm Polly Kyle with the Department of Housing Stability.

Hi, I'm Jared Powell, Director of Shelter System Operations.

Good afternoon, Jeff Kasitski, Deputy Director for Shelter and Stability.

All right, and you guys, the floor is yours.

Okay, thank you very much.

Um good afternoon.

Um this briefing is part of our efforts to not only get our contracts all signed on time this year, but also to present them to you in a more organized manner to help uh you understand how these contracts fit into the homelessness response system before we ask you to approve them.

Um, as Councilmember Parity said there's no action items today.

I will just say I wish that we had all the contracts uh ready for you, but we're uh unfortunately a week behind.

Um, so they will be ready uh next week um to move forward.

I also want to say um we know that uh we've been bringing a lot of briefings to you, but this is also part of our plan to get a more organized RFP process where we'll be doing uh a third of our contracts um every three years, so you won't be getting inundated with all this um host contracts all at once.

This this year is kind of a bridge year to that.

And Jeff, if I can interject on that for council members, since we don't have um the contracts ready to vote on those action items today.

I just would say um we'll plan on them going through on consent, but if you do have concerns and want to call them out for votes, um they'll be coming through in the next um one or two meetings, I think.

So just keep your eyes peeled for that, and I will try to remember a pause and check in with everybody very intentionally about those since they're tied to the presentation that's happening today.

All right, thanks, Jeff.

Um so we are today uh focusing on congregate shelter, shelter transportation, and cold weather shelter.

Um I should also talk about what we're not covering today.

Uh we're not bringing forward at this time uh family shelters, any of the day shelter or bridge or domestic violence shelters.

These are kind of the um kind of legacy straightforward congregate shelter sites.

Um also not including congregate shelter that uh host doesn't fund.

There are other shelters in the city that we're not, we may partner with, but we're not funding them.

So uh this is the list of the shelters that are in green and then the two uh transportation contracts and the two uh cold weather contracts in blue.

Um so uh for this trunche of contracts, uh it's for nine congregate shelters that serve um adults and youth over the 18 to 24.

It's a total of 1,623 beds.

Um 95% or more are occupied on any given night.

Um the shelter transportation is uh what we call the circular route, which uh transport folks from downtown shelters to other shelters throughout the city, as well as uh transportation services that we need to use during cold weather.

And then we'll be presenting the two contracts related to cold weather shelter that we anticipate serving 150 to 600 or more max single adults and then 50 to 400 families each night during the cold weather.

You've seen this slide, maybe be the third time, but how all of this kind of fits together in our homelessness response system.

We've got prevention and then diversion, which we've already talked about, outreach, which we'll be bringing forward in a few months.

Shelter, and then from shelter, our rehousing work that we do, and of course, our affordable housing units.

So what's the role of shelter in a good, highly functioning homelessness response system is to meet in a very low barrier way immediate needs to life-saving shelter for people to experiencing homelessness.

They often act as the gateway to our homelessness response system.

It's often people's first connection to us, if not through outreach.

It's not the only access towards affordable housing or towards rapid resolution, but it's the primary access.

And that includes both these shelters as well as the non-congregate shelters.

Services at all of our shelters include individual individualized assistance, rapid resolution.

First thing we're always asking people is, you know, where were you last housed and how can we help you get back there?

Whether it's somewhere in Denver or somewhere on the other side of the country.

We provide housing focused uh case management as well as resource navigation and referrals to services such as substance abuse treatments, health care mental health services.

In these cases, the city owns some of these buildings, but all of the services are provided in contract with our nonprofit partners with host staff involvement.

And just as a reminder, and this you know has come up on a lot of our contracts about how are we holding our providers accountable.

Um we have mandatory quarterly reporting with both qualitative and quantitative reports that need to be submitted.

We have monthly operational meetings.

Uh, we do regular unannounced uh visits to the shelters just to make sure things are going okay.

Um we have regular partner meetings plus uh as a group, plus we have the shelter success task force that includes both shelter providers and stakeholders.

We haven't met for a while, but we did do a good project together around shelter staff training, uh, and I'm planning to pick it up again in early 2026.

Um our admin staff does quarterly and our contracting staff do regular uh monitoring visits, and then of course uh hosts contracts all contained, I'm sure all city contracts that we can cancel contracts with notice and without um uh necessarily without without cause.

Uh and then we already talked about the RFP schedule.

Um, so that's the big kind of overview for all the contracts, and now we will get into um the um, and I'll go through this quickly, but feel free to stop me if you want me to kind of slow down.

But there are nine contracts we need to get through on the shelters.

The first being uh crossroads shelter, which is operated by Salvation Army.

Oh, I also forgot the most important thing is that these are all one-year contracts.

So we will be RFPing all shelters.

So you will see us again next year on this topic.

Sorry.

Um, but we will be RFPing all congregate shelter and coal weather shelter and transportation services in the spring of 2026.

So we will be coming back to you around this time next year for the uh contracts with the new providers.

Um, okay, so crossroads 24-7 shelter that's for unhoused men.

Uh, this building is owned by the city.

It's located in District 9, uh, has 300 beds.

Um, in 2024, their budget was 4.5 million, uh, and they spent down 97% of that.

Uh in 2026, uh, the amount is higher.

We're trying to give some of our shelter providers a Zocolos.

Uh, and you'll see those in the multi-year contracts, just recognizing the fact that costs go up and we need to support our our providers so they can continue to hire good staff who can do a good job for our unhoused neighbors.

Um, the current budget uh includes 38 FTEs, and the cost per night for crossroads um is 43 per person per night.

Um, the services pretty similar.

Most of our shelters uh they're required to maintain a shelter 365, 24-7, um, provide blankets, towels, basic hygiene services, three meals a day to the guests, as well as laundry service, and then they're required to provide the social services I discussed above, and then also um required to track their work in our uh homeless management information system.

Um, some data on crossroads performance.

Um, their average occupancy was 98.3%, which is higher than the average across the system of 96%.

Um I did at our last meeting about this.

Use maybe the unfortunate word of it's the most popular shelter.

I should have said it's the most utilized shelter uh for single adult males in the city.

As you'll see, they um they also have uh longer stays.

They're serving 3.98 people per bed per year, and the average is 5.16, meaning that people are staying at that shelter longer.

Um they had six percent of their exits were positive, meaning people get into housing, not including rapid resolution, those are separate contracts that were presented to you previously.

Uh that compares it's three percent lower than the system-wide average of nine percent, um, but does track pretty similarly to large shelters of that of that size, as you'll see.

Um, so that is crossroads.

Um, I also want to pause for a moment because uh this issue came up around there's the city does own the building, and there's been discussion about redeveloping that site into affordable housing.

Uh, we currently don't have plans to do that work.

Um, not to say it's never going to happen, but in the meantime, um we just felt like we need we need to improve the um quality of that facility, and we don't want to keep kicking the can down the road saying, oh, we're gonna redevelop, we're gonna redevelop.

We needed to do it now.

So we're in the process.

Dotti is in the process of making some major improvements to that site, um, fixing the roof, uh, making the front access more secure, fixing the emergency exits, um, and I don't think I miss any major issues.

Um, another another thing that we're doing, not only at Crossroads, but a couple of the other city owned sites is um making it to where we can easily hook up generators if we did have power outages, and that's part of this larger project, and then we're also doing some environmental remediation, putting in an air circulation system to improve the air quality at the site.

Um, and we will be closing that site for probably a month in April, and we'll be setting up a temporary right after cold weather is over.

We're just we'll have a temporary site for one more month that we'll use for those guests.

And then so we're also planning to make the site a lot nicer inside.

We're gonna paint it, we'll replace furniture and fixtures as we need to, and are still kind of working on the scope, but we are gonna make that shelter um you know improve the quality of life for the guests at that shelter.

And I know Lisa Umley is here uh and thank you very much for for coming.

I just don't know if folks were gonna have any questions about about that.

Um, and then if not, Lisa can go on with her busy day.

Um we typically hold questions till the end, so I'd be afraid to do that.

Sorry about that.

Thanks for being here.

Yeah, um, I'll move on to the next shelter then if that's okay.

Uh Denver Rescue Mission, 48th Street shelters, uh 24-7 shelter for unhoused uh men or or people identifying as male.

Uh it's owned by the city and it's in District eight.

515 beds, 96% spend down in 2026 uh against the $9 million, or the nine the budget in 2025 was $9 million.

Uh again, a slight cost of living increase for 2026 uh with 107 staff and a cost of $50 per night at that shelter.

Services are exactly the same as at crossroads.

Outcomes, a little bit lower than average occupancy.

It's 95 as opposed to 96%.

So we're using 4.73 beds.

Each bed's turning over that many times, little bit longer than the average.

Positive exits of 7%, again, a little bit below, but 131 people exited that shelter into some kind of permanent housing opportunity or into a long-term care facility, again, not including rapid resolution.

Next is Denver Rescue Mission Holly Center.

This is a very different uh type of shelter.

It's an overnight shelter for unhoused men or people identifying as male.

It's owned by Denver Rescue Mission and it's located in District 8.

It has a 200 beds, but this is only an overnight shelter.

It doesn't have a lot of services or meals available.

It's kind of used as an overflow shelter by Denver Rescue Mission when there are other shelters fill up.

It's uh, and if anybody's been there, it's you know it's a narrow room with bunk beds, it's got a lot of kind of people in it, and it's um nonetheless um is is well utilized.

Uh they spent 96% of the budget in 2024.

Uh their 2025 budget was about a million dollars.

Um, we are not lowering their budget in 2026.

This was all lumped together.

We had like a bunch of shelter contracts where all the shelters were in one contract, making it very hard to track spending outcomes.

It got very convoluted, so these are one that we're breaking apart.

Um, they have only uh 15 FTE, and the cost is uh only $13 per night uh per person per night, but again, really really different than most of our congregate shelters.

Um services are again are much different.

People are really just given a place to sleep for the evening and some basic things to meet their needs, like blankets, towels, etc.

Um, they don't provide social services per se, but they do track attendance in our HMIS system, as do all of our providers.

Um, so their outcomes they were 95% occupied, uh, 13.1 uh person per bed because it's just constant turnover and um new people coming into the site.

Uh and only 12 of the guests had positive exits, um, not including their uh rapid resolution.

Um many of the men uh who use this facility are often on the waiting list for 48th Street.

Um so they're kind of there until they get a bed at 48th.

All right, plowing through um 48th Avenue Catholic Charities is a 24-7 shelter for unhoused women or people identifying as women owned by us in District 8, another large shelter site, 275 beds.

Catholic charities spent down 99% of their 2020 um budget.

Their budget in 2025 was 3.5 million, increasing in 2026, getting a cola, but also this is part of the like breaking apart of contracts.

So it's we did our best to give you an apples to apples comparison, but it's not 100% correct.

Um again, it's why we broke these contracts out so we can understand this better moving forward.

They have uh roughly 61 people budgeted.

Um their cost is about 51 dollars a night, similar to the other 48th Street shelter.

Um services exactly the same as as crossroads and the other 48th Street shelter.

Um, take a look at outcomes.

They were also 95 percent occupied, um, 4.4 uh people per bed during the year, so slightly longer stays than average, and they had six percent of their guests uh positive exit again, tracking the same as the other large shelters, but not as good as the system overall, which we will explain why in a moment.

Um, Catholic charities also has the Smith Road shelter, also for um unhoused women or people identifying as female.

Um, it's owned by Catholic charities, it's uh in District 8, 82 beds, 99% spend down.

Uh, budget is going up by about a hundred thousand dollars, a slight cola, um 38.7 FTE, which tracks with shelters this size, but cost is you'll see much higher, it's $96 per night.

And that's because uh they have work, they have to cover facility costs at our other shelter providers, cost of owning the building, cost of managing maintaining the building that our other shelter providers and city owned buildings do not have.

Um, so you'll see that most of the city owned shelters have a higher per night cost, um, because host isn't really capturing the city cost of managing the building general services that's you know in in their in their budget.

Uh same menu of services as most of our shelters um and very similar outcomes, uh 95% occupancy.

Uh people stay there shorter, so they're seeing a 7.5 um per bed, uh, and 8% of their guests exited.

So again, all everything's sort of trekking.

Um their holy rosary shelter is an overnight only shelter uh for unhoused women uh owned by Catholic charities in uh district nine.

It's a very small shelter, uh only 40 beds, um, 99% spend down.

Uh their budget was 1.3 in 2025 million in 2026 is roughly 1.4, uh 19.35 staff there, but also higher per cost due to the fact that they own uh this facility, which is in Samaritan House.

Um suite of services uh is a little bit different because it's just an overnight shelter.

It looks more like um Holly Center.

Uh they provide breakfast and dinner, uh, don't provide a lot of social services, um, basic hygiene services, and then tracking in HMIS and again, 95% occupancy, high turnovers.

People are using that shelter, different people are using it for shorter periods of time.

Uh only one percent of the folks exited from there, likely or possibly like on through their own efforts or through the efforts of a case manager from a different a different program, um, because they're not providing a lot of services.

Um, just making sure we're all staying on the same page, literally.

Um, VOA uh sit and sanctuary, 24-7 shelter um in owned for unhoused women or people identifying as female.

It's owned by VOA in district three, 25 beds, 99% um spend down.

Uh budget is unchanged.

Um, and uh they have seven staff with a per cost night of $66 per night.

Um, and because it was on the higher side and um looking at their spending patterns, we did not give them a cola this year.

We'll revisit that when we RFP it out again next year.

Um their services uh they're serving 25 women uh or uh people identifying as female who are 55 or older.

Uh used to be 60 or 65.

We asked them to lower it because it was not getting utilized as well as it should have been.

That kind of solved that issue.

Um, services are um they they invest a lot of their money in in case management.

Um, and as you'll see, their outcomes are um are really great.

Uh 98% occupant occupied, so clearly people are wanting to be at that site.

Um their uh people are staying at that shelter longer.

Um, essentially, most of them are staying until they get housed.

So they have an 86% of their guests exit to housing, which is really wonderful.

It's a smaller shelter.

Uh I also will say that they screen clientele.

Um, so it's not as uh low barrier to all of our other shelters are because of the it's located in an existing building with existing programs, and it's very small quarters, so they're a little bit more um uh they screen people a little bit more than our other shelters, most of which don't um screen folks at all.

Um right, almost there.

Promise.

Um Delars uh project shelter.

Uh 24 7 uh shelter for unhoused women and individuals who identify express and present as transgender, non-binary, or gender nonconforming.

Dolores owns the building, it's in district three.

Uh 50 beds, they spent 100% of their funding in 2024.

Uh budget was 700K in 2025.

We give them a cola in 2026.

Uh, only eight staff there.

Cost is $38 per bed per night, but they also have other funding sources that they're utilizing for this project, um, as do many of our providers.

But it's um one of the reasons why the cost on this one is so is so low, even though they they own the building.

Um, their service model is um essentially the same as our other providers.

However, they are providing, you know, a higher level of case management and a stronger focus on housing exits.

So, as you'll see in their data, uh, almost always full, 98% occupied, um, slightly longer stays than average with positive exits of 41%, um, not including rapid resolution.

Again, it's a smaller program uh with more um consistent clientele and um the ability to provide um a different level of services and last but not least, Urban Peak.

Um overnight and day shelter services were funding both in this particular program uh for youth and young adults, uh 12 to 24 who are at high risk of experiencing homelessness or experiencing homelessness.

They own their own building as you all know.

The mothership uh located in district seven.

Uh they have 136 beds, spent all their funding in 2024.

Uh we gave them an increase in 2025 as they expanded.

So we did not give them a cola in 2026, but we'll revisit when we RFP out.

They again uh it's 29 FTEs uh that that we're covering the cost of uh and the cost of 39 per bed per night.

But again, they are providing um some of their own resources to write down the costs of that facility um services um kind of same as our other shelters with uh, but they do have a lot more focus on education and employment, uh given the population that they're serving.

They also do street outreach connected to the shelter.

So their youth outreach workers that host also funds are finding young people in need of assistance and bringing them to that facility.

Um their outcomes also uh extraordinarily good.

Um 100% occupancy.

Um, seven they're they're seeing eight people eight people per bed per year, uh, which is higher than average, but I think young folks tend to move around a bit more, and then 43% of their clients exited uh to some type of permanent housing or long-term facility.

Sorry, that was so much.

I hope that that was okay, and then we're happy to tell us if we want us to do this differently uh in the future.

Um, can I just move on to shelter?

Yeah, please.

Um, like, yeah, yeah.

So please keep going to transport.

All right.

Transportation.

Um, so um central student transport will provide bus transport for people experiencing homelessness Monday through Friday through the terms of the contract.

They provide bus transportation also during cold weather shelter um flat funding from last year to this year of 450,000.

Uh the other contract is um Busco, which also provides transportation or arrow stage line, and they're using a 54 passenger motor coach transporting individuals.

Um, this is a circular bus.

No, this is this is the evening transportation that takes folks from uh district nine, uh Meriden House and at Denver Rescue Mission Lawrence Street Community Center out to the outlying shelters that are in District eight on 48th Avenue and Smith Road corridor.

Thanks, Jared.

So then the previous one is the circular bus.

That's right.

Okay.

Um, um, and then no change to the amount of that contract.

Um moving on to cold weather, we have uh two contracts.

Um, I want to say a couple things.

One is our plan is to not change what we did last year, which we are really proud of.

No reported deaths of people experiencing homelessness from cold weather and Denver Health reporting the lowest uh cold weather injuries amongst people experiencing homelessness, and they can recollect.

We um work really hard to not turn anybody away from shelter, and that is our plan.

I don't have the exact locations yet.

We will soon and we will let you all know as soon as we have that worked out.

Um, but we're expecting to serve you know, high or 600 plus.

We're planning for up to 900 people a night.

Last year, our high water mark was most people, so it's 780 roughly.

So we're we're assuming it might be higher.

And this is for single adults.

I'll get into families in a moment.

Um their budget on this is really challenging because it cuts across like the fiscal years and the cold weather season doesn't match our fiscal year.

Um, but essentially the total amount of the budget is 3.5 million up a little bit from last year, um, and they have seven kind of management leadership positions and then obviously many, many on call shelter staff with a cost of roughly sixty-four dollars per person per night that included 247 and meals.

Um, these are pretty expensive to operate, but they're also incredibly critical to protecting um people's lives.

Um, and again, no plan changes, no changes to temperature threshold.

Um, and um, you know, looking forward to um doing another to Jared's team doing another uh stellar job again on this next year.

Um services are I mentioned most of this, um, but you know, it also includes three meals a day, cleaning laundry, and then the constant opening and closing of the sites and the decommissioning of the sites and making sure folks have moved uh on to other locations.

Um, and they don't use HMIS, but they do provide us a daily, we have another system set up where they track daily on that.

Moving on to coal weather shelter.

Um, uh I'll slow down a little bit on this one because I spoke about this very briefly the last time I was here um and uh maybe created some confusion.

Um so U.S.

Motels uh owns the hotels that we use to provide hotel vouchers for people experiencing homelessness.

This includes 24 hour shelter as well as meal vouchers for families staying at the shelter.

Um, the 2025 budget was 2.1 million, which was way over what we expected.

Um, we have budgeted uh 2.5 for the next season coming up.

Um no FTE costs related to this uh directly host staff and TSA staff through Connection Center, do a lot of work um on getting folks um indoors.

Uh the cost is 129 per room, but this year we're gonna do something um different.

So uh last year we I was gonna we were overwhelmed by the demands in this program, um, and it was extremely expensive uh to operate.

Uh we saw about 20 percent of the people who were in uh the shelter system um either came from other counties or didn't actually meet the HUD definition of homelessness.

Um they were doubled up.

Um, do I mean we shouldn't it's hard to care about what zip code somebody came from as to whether or not we want to provide them assistance or about whether it's this definition or that definition, but um we need to also you know look at not need not wanting to close our other shelters or other housing programs under a tight fiscal year.

So what we what we looked at was we're going to ask families who need this service to first stay in a congregate shelter uh for a night or two.

Um, rather than having to call a connection center, uh connection center will be on site.

We will process the hotel vouchers that way and then we will have folks uh then go into um the uh into a hotel uh during the cold weather activation uh this we don't we can't predict exactly how much this is going to save but it's between 700 and a million dollars um in cost because we also are expecting an increased demand uh and budgeted for an increased demand so that is the the difference there um i think the you know big positive of this is that connection center will be on site because there were challenges with the phone system last year they'll still be available by phone but that's the um that's the big the big change uh with that and even with those cost savings we're still budgeting um a pretty large uh you know 2.5 million dollars which is you know a million just a million less than the single adult shelter shelter system um which serves um you know many many more individuals and that's it great thank you so much um i have most folks in the queue um so we will get going with that um council alvides is first thank you thanks for this i do appreciate the organization that helps um i'm still a little bit confused on just the cold weather versus the regular shelter but um i'll dive into that question in a minute um one of the things that came up having a cold weather shelter in my district last year was what happens when it closes and what happens when someone gets kicked out yep um so when it close i think um i hope that you saw uh that we got better at this throughout the year um so when we close now we have like a deactivation plan for each one of the sites that includes um two things that we weren't doing at the beginning of the year one is that we have um like really organized like transportation like away from the site and we encourage very strongly everybody to get on those buses um and then the other thing is that we're having security stay um like one more night after we close or it it depends on how long the activation is but we we're now we're working with Securitas to and then we're also working with um public safety as well to make sure that there's not loitering uh or any issues around the site and host outreach workers um who were usually very busy the night before getting people from cold weather into the shelter but they are also showing up during the deactivation just to help encourage people to not stay at the site.

Okay and what about if someone gets kicked out like my concern mostly is obviously if they're violent or under some kind of trauma something's happening.

And they just like obviously I think I also want to share what I've heard from people experiencing homelessness is I'm scared to go in a shelter I don't necessarily want to go in the shelter there's a lot of uncertainty going in so I definitely understand wanting to keep the shelter safe and the people inside the shelter safe but when someone is acting in a way that isn't community oriented and they get kicked out and there's no crime so you can't have DPD come take them like what is the plan there besides like pushing someone out of the shelter.

Yeah um thank you and I will tell you what's supposed to happen um it doesn't always happen but I think we're again trying to get better at it generally the only reason that we're aware of that people get kicked out of the shelter is due to violence or just like really egregious um behavior that makes people unsafe in those cases uh DPD is always called so generally if somebody's getting kicked out we are having to call the police so that um but not that many people do get kicked out I you know I don't think anybody from Bayot is here but they just do an amazing job of number one not saying no to anybody and making sure everybody gets a place to stay and and not kicking folks out.

Um but we're certainly open to suggestions if there's something else that you think um we need to do, but when folks get kicked out, generally the police have been called because they've escalated to a if they've escalated to that point where Bayod's not able to shelter them anymore, it's usually a pretty serious occurrence.

Okay.

I did you know see people sleeping outside of the shelter at times?

Um, so I know it did happen, and I don't know the whole story of why.

I mean, my concern would be obviously mental health having who can the mental health professional or having a place where they can go if they're kicked out or transportation to take them maybe to a different shelter when they are kicked out.

Um, so that's one concern.

And then when there is when cold weather is extended, which happened last year, where we thought it was gonna be 24 hours, 40, and then it gets longer.

At what point are we kind of changing our strategy, making sure the facilities re-cleaned, making sure that um the people have access to like a shower because when you're just emergency shelter is emergency shelter, sheltering with uh different supplies is different.

Yeah, thank you.

The shelters, um, everybody has access to showers unless they're in like a like if we if we pop open a and even then there's usually showers like if we have to use a rec center.

Um but um there were shelters available um at this shelter in in your district for sure.

Um, and then outside in a trailer in freezing weather, yeah.

No, and we want to point that out.

Wasn't ideal.

Yeah, but um, yes, if we could not use those, um, we would be really happy because they're hard to manage in the cold weather for the guests and for people who have to clean them and watch them.

Um, but we did develop a system in which um which we didn't have again in the beginning of the year where we were closing the shelter for a few hours if we were going more than I think three or four days.

It was a little longer than that.

Okay, um, so that and we would ask people to, you know, or go to a day shelter um for a couple hours while we're while we're cleaning the site, and then we were also you know, do deep cleaning after we we deactivate, but we did have periods of time where we were open for like weeks.

Yeah, and I'll ask one more question if that's okay, and then I'd like to get back in the queue at the end.

Um, but my last question is around meals.

Um, what does that look like for the sh I was noticing some shelters were providing meals, some shelters were not, and then um for the cold weather shelters we're providing meals.

What is that all look like?

Is that the same provider that's taking these meals or it's um in most cases the um shelter providers contracting uh with somebody to prepare the meals or they prepare them themselves in cold weather, we are we are providing meals.

Um, most of our shelters provide meal unless they're overnight only, uh in which case some are just providing one or two meals and some are providing none, but most of the shelters that we're funding are are providing meals.

Bayod will again contract out for meal provision for cold weather shelter on their own.

We will not have anything to do with that.

Okay.

Well, we pay for it, but yeah, okay.

I mean, we pay for it and we oversee it and we track um you know their their meal purchases and making sure they're not under ordering or over-ordering.

Okay, and then for urban peak, I saw no meals provided or no funding for meals.

And then I thought I saw the same for Denver Rescue Mission.

So I was curious about that.

Urban P does provide meals at their site.

Um, but we don't pay for them.

Is that what the difference is?

Correct.

Okay.

So some people were paying them to provide meals, and some people were not paying them to provide meals.

Like what determines that difference?

That is an excellent question.

I think these a lot of these are legacy contracts that have existed for a long time.

Um, in some cases, like the providers have just historically been providing meals on their own, or they're bringing in other funding sources, whether it's other government grants or um, you know, not through host or or private donations.

Okay, thank you.

And um, I will and we will get back to you if it's okay in a week or so with sort of some more thoughts on what we'll do when folks get kicked out.

Because I hear that that's a big concern.

So we'll we will get back to you on that.

Great.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Um, yeah, and I think probably the whole committee would be interested to hear that.

So um uh councilmember uh Romeral Campbell, followed by Liz.

Thank you, madam chair.

Um, and thank you for the presentation.

I agree the layout that you've put it in a dashboard with FTE giving us kind of like that snapshot of the of the um contracts is really helpful.

So thank you.

I really appreciate that.

Um, but it also made me wonder.

I know we've had some shelters that have closed, um, and I was trying to do the math as we were going through, and I lost track.

Uh, what is the well, two things?

What is the contracted amount for shelter capacity with these grants that we have?

Is it maintaining current capacity or does that number change?

No, it's maintaining current capacity, and it's it's pretty static.

These buildings are all serving as many people as they can legally serve.

Okay.

Um, so it it's not expanding or decreasing shelter capacity.

Okay.

Um we're expanding cold weather capacity because we're anticipating greater demand.

Um, but as far as like the shelters that are open all year round, no, it's the it'll be the same.

Okay.

Um, what is the cold weather shelter capacity going to?

Well, um, our goal is to never turn anybody away.

Um, so we are estimating it that we may need to serve up to 900 people, which is about 150 more than our max like on on like our average was about 455, I think.

Um, but we did have nights where we were serving like over 700 people, and we're assuming this year we need to be prepared to serve 900.

Okay.

Um, and then maybe I missed it on the first slide.

What is the total amount of all of these contracts?

That is a good question.

Um yeah, so not including the cold weather shelters for what was presented today.

I think it's 623 beds that are represented in this presentation.

And the total amount is not a beds, the dollar amount.

Oh, sorry.

That's okay though.

That's great.

When did you say 600 and 1623?

1623.

Okay.

Um, I am embarrassed that I do not have that information with me, or off the top of my head, we will provide that to you this afternoon.

I was going through and trying to add it up and then don't email it.

I tried, I didn't.

And then I bring my I I know exactly where it is on a spreadsheet on my computer, but I try not to go too tethered to all my technology all the time.

But we will get you to that like soon as I get back to the office, we will email that information to you.

Okay, thank you.

Sure.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yep.

Um councilwoman Lewis, followed by Torres.

Thank you.

Um, I really appreciate this uh presentation.

I have a um a number of questions for you all.

Can you talk to me about the RFP process?

You said a third of the contracts will come every three years.

What's what's the um the thought process behind that?

Um, why three-year contracts?

And why a third?

Why a third?

Yeah, um, both questions.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, yeah.

So um so we have like roughly 120 contracts, and we've decided you know, we want to move to a very consistent three-year process.

So let me start with that.

First of all, like providers and y'all, I mean, and community members like they need to be able to plan and know like what to expect.

Like I've got this for like, oh, when's host gonna issue an RFP?

I don't know, it'll come in three years, five years, six years.

So we want, yeah, and I think we sent you all a schedule.

So um you all will know, the providers will know.

We just want to be consistent.

We don't want to go for too long because if we feel like we need to be checking in on a regular basis, our provider like one year feels too short, five years too long, three years gives us a chance.

Okay, you've done this for two years.

Now we're moving into year three.

We can we've got some data so that we can evaluate you if you want to apply again.

And then because they're three-year contracts, it just kind of makes sense to do a third, a third, and a third.

So we're not bringing them all to you at once.

So it'll be roughly instead of 120 contracts a year plus usually 120 amendments.

Um hopefully it will be you know 40 contracts uh each year with three-year contracts, and you and I spoke about this actually.

So you're partially uh to blame if you don't like this idea.

No, I don't.

I don't have a problem with it.

And you had told me, and we had talked about doing colas, um, and yeah, yes, so I, you know, we talked to a lot of folks about this, but you and I, you know, you talked to me about the general service contracts and how they worked, and you know, I started to learn some more, and it just seems like rather than constantly having to come back to you all for amendments to give somebody a two percent increase, we're just gonna try to build those into the contract.

Of course, subject to budget availability and annual appropriation, but um we're just trying to make this easier so then we can have more discussions like this rather than just constantly be doing this like 150 plus times were before you a year.

Yeah, no, I appreciate it.

And you know, I'm all on board with this, especially when we talk about accountability within the contracts.

One thing that I I noticed was missing was the outcome-based contracts as you were going through that.

But you I'm I trust that you all are still committed to moving in that direction.

So, yes, 100%.

We are piloting the move towards performance-based contracting just with the seven hotels and the sorry, the seven hotels and microcommunities, the all in mile high sites.

Um we are in the process of negotiating with the new providers.

We have all new providers.

Um if it works, like we're really excited about it, but we don't want to just assume it's gonna work.

Um, if it does, we'll start moving uh most of our contracts to either fee for service or performance-based contracting.

Um, it is also like really complicated to do, so we didn't want to just jump in because making sure like we are on the same page with the providers on the data, for example, and figuring out the rate that we're gonna pay.

Like, how much are we gonna pay you for a case management?

How much are we gonna pay you for doing a housing assessment?

Um, was a lot harder than I expected.

Um, but um, so I'm glad we're doing it as a pilot.

I'm confident it's gonna work.

If it doesn't, we'll go back to the drawing board.

If it does, um you'll start to see more of those contracts.

And I would say probably on shelter because uh shelter is it lends itself the most to um performance-based contracting because the big driver is like how many people are you serving a night?

And we'll also make everybody want to get from 96% to 100% because um them being able to draw down the full value of the contract will be tied to those kinds of goals.

Yeah, um, you mentioned case make case management.

I was curious in the context of of the congregate and non-congregate shelters for case management in particular, and I really love that you all had the 2024 data, but I was also worried about the outcomes of that data, and I wondered if there was any connection to the requirement for folks to be involved in case management or the opportunity for folks to just decide if they want to participate or not.

Yeah, good question.

Um, thank you for that.

Um so a couple things.

Um, and in the future, we can provide more outcome data.

Okay, um, it's hard to hold the shelter providers accountable for housing exits because they don't have access necessarily to the housing exits.

Like we're, you know, it's a big pool of housing exits.

There's not enough.

Um, and what so what we're uh what we're doing for the non-congregate shelters, which I think we should do for all shelters, is if you have a client, um, the client has to be assessed for housing if they're gonna get housing.

So we're requiring in the performance-based contracting that everybody has an active housing assessment and is in the queue for housing.

So whereas we can't hold them accountable necessarily for um whether or not somebody exits housing.

We can hold them accountable to make sure that people have been assessed, and then and again in the performance-based contracting pilot, we're requiring that every client has a weekly housing focused case management meeting.

Um, so that at least we can be, and then they're also required to do rapid resolution.

So we're trying to hold them accountable for the things that they have control over and not hold them accountable for things that they have really no control over.

Yeah, that goes beautifully into the next question I had for you because you all give us a presentation on the rapid rehousing, and one of the things that you pulled out was the um self-sufficiency, I believe.

Um, and I I guess I'm curious is in terms of what you all measure, um exits is one of them, but are there other things that you would put into a the category to measure self-sufficiency to get folks into?

For rapid rehousing or just in general?

Just in general, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think the big um, yes, there's there's a couple of things.

Um, do people have uh all the benefits that they're eligible for?

Um when people, so one of the things that we're looking at now, um uh, you know, that the mayor's very interested in, and that we've started tracking more carefully is um increasing income upon exit.

Um so you know, how much did your income increase either from employment or from benefits upon upon exit?

Um, because rent is expensive, so people need money to pay the rent.

So I think that's for rapid rehousing, especially that's really the most important indicator are people's incomes going up, um, either by you know getting people on SSDI or whatever benefits are eligible for, or if they're you know, able to work, um, you know, are we helping you know drive them in that uh supporting them in that in that direction?

Is that a part of the contracts, or is it difficult to include that in the contracts because it's called demand?

Uh it is not part of it's a part of some of our contracts, um, where the ones where it's like kind of job one and rapid rehousing, for example.

So if you've got a one or two year rent subsidy, and then after that, you're not gonna have a rent subsidy.

Increasing your income is like critical, or you're gonna end up back out on the streets again or back in one of our shelters.

So those kinds of contracts, but we are kind of moving in that direction.

Um, again, it's hard to hold uh shelter provider accountable for the things that they don't necessarily have control over, but we are like driving towards you know, are you having benefits meetings with people?

Are you referring them to employment?

Um, so trying to make sure that the services are happening.

Um, probably going, wait, I'll try not to go too far down this rabbit hole.

But one of the things that we saw, like the way our HMIS system was set up, it is like so confusing for case managers and staff to understand like what services people actually got.

So we are we have simplified that down to like instead of like 45 different employment related services, there's like two, um, and then there's an outcome attached to it.

So we're trying to get better at using our data to track how our providers are doing, but again, trying to find that balance between not holding them accountable for things that they don't have control over, but holding them accountable for um, you know, doing the work.

You can't make somebody apply for benefits, you can't make somebody apply for housing, but you certainly can ensure that you're sitting down with them every week and talking through with them, like where they're at in their journey, okay.

And then the the positive exits, so across the board they were pretty low, but there was an outlier.

And so I'm I'm curious.

Does that mean that folks are going back to the streets or they go in to stay on their parents' gas?

Like what is what what are people doing?

Are they staying in shelters for long periods of time?

Yes.

Okay.

Um, yeah, all of the above.

And as we saw, like the smaller shelters that were like very specialized in who they're serving, are seeing um, you know, higher um, and they have a higher case manager to um client ratio.

Uh you know, are seeing are seeing different outcomes.

Yeah, and councilwis, I'm we all share these questions, I think, but I want to switch presentations in about seven minutes that we saw for other members.

So can I just ask one question about the bus?

The D8, the D9 to D8.

Does that take folks from any other district to any of the shelters around our system?

Yeah, it goes specifically from those locations downtown where folks may queue for shelter, okay, to um to the 48th Avenue shelters and to Smith Road, also to the Holly Center, which is near Smith Road, um, and then back from that Holly site to downtown each morning.

So that's been a long, a long standing kind of transportation route that we've had uh to support our shelter system.

Thank you.

Okay, thanks.

Um council member Torres followed by a swear.

Thank you.

Um on those transportation ones, because they're just for cold weather, those are on call or as needed, or will we pay out the entire amount?

Um both.

Um the company that does is gonna do some cold weather shelter is also doing the circular bus.

So they're they're running a regular route, and then we call on them for cold weather.

Got it.

And this, so this is for all service.

Yes, okay, thank you.

Um for crossroads for the one-month construction project.

Yeah, when will that be?

Uh in April.

Um I don't know the exact dates, but sometime in April.

We want to wait till cold weather shelter is over so that you said that.

Uh our staff have a chance to breathe, and then also uh so that um we're not putting anybody in harm's way if they choose to not go to the temporary site.

Where's the temporary site?

We don't know yet.

What's the budget sourcing both the work and the temporary site coming from?

The temporary site budgeting will just come from the crossroads operating budget because they'll be closed down for that period of time.

Jared, can you give the deep sum of the capital?

Yep.

Uh capital improvement um project dollars for the um the improvements at crossroads, but we also have improvements at uh the 248th Avenue shelters that are part of that same larger project.

Um that's a project that has been in the works for quite a while.

Initially with um ARPA dollars that then got moved and replaced with um capital dollars.

It was ARPA that was gonna do the construction work, yeah.

But that no more now it's gonna be CIP.

Correct.

Okay.

Um, what happened to the ARPA dollars?

I believe they may have been repurposed.

Okay, so they got moved out.

Or something else.

Got it.

All right.

Um, if you can send me just the amount for the CIP as follow-up, that'd be great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sawyer, followed by Watson.

Um I will go super fast.

First question is your budget is on three page 375 of the budget book for fellow council members.

Um just wondering what line item this is coming from.

Anybody have a copy of the budget book for me to look at?

Your options are expenditure by activity, uh, all in mile high EOC homelessness, homelessness resolution, housing opportunity, housing stability and operations.

Uh homelessness resolution.

Awesome.

But I will break this out for you.

No, that's great.

I just wanted to, because I'm looking at it right now, appreciate that.

Um, second question, not necessarily a question, more a bit of feedback.

I'm very concerned about the rapid sheltering um uh new plan where we're gonna save dollars by having people, including families go to congregate shelters for a couple of nights because there are a lot of reasons we know why those people are not accessing those shelters in the first place.

Um, and so I'm really concerned that the strategy here is to save dollars by having them access shelters in the first place, because they won't go, which means we're gonna miss out on those people.

So, what are you?

You must have considered this.

You are the expert, not me.

Um, so like what are what is your thinking around that?

Yeah, so well, one is like it's a pilot, so if it doesn't work, we'll stop doing it.

Um, and uh it happens we're gonna be using the ballroom of one of the hotels that we're already in.

So it's kind of an easy um uh just to stop doing it.

Um I you know spent a good part of my career running a large family um uh a program that served people families experiencing homelessness and had congregate shelter.

Um, and it it was if it's well done, it's well utilized.

Like it was always it was always full, fortunately, because there shouldn't be any families who need to have any shelter, but the reality of it is um, and then people can still call connection center for the hotel vouchers.

So if we see people, you know, not accessing um we'll we'll adjust, but we honestly like needed to try, we need to try something, because what we did last year really did not work.

Okay, it was just like both from a staffing perspective and just a financial perspective, it was it just really overwhelmed us, and then when we were looking at our budget, like you know, we're trying to figure out, you know, what are we gonna do that's gonna ensure we can maintain cold weather shelter at the size that it was and bigger because we think it's gonna need to be bigger.

You know, how do we not close programs and how do we not do things that make people end up homeless again?

And so when we like are looking at our cuts, that's sort of the lens that we we looked at.

We only had so much money, right?

So we have to fit all the things that were top priority into a bucket that was much smaller than it was this year.

Okay, I really appreciate that, and I know that you're in the same boat as every other city agency on the planet.

So I hear you loud and clear.

I just worry that this isn't the spot where we should be saving our money.

If there are, you know, other places that we could be saving money across a 1.7 billion dollar general fund.

Um, it feels like particularly for you know, we get a lot of calls in district five from families who maybe it's a husband and a wife and she's pregnant and they're living in their car.

Yep, right.

Like they're gonna just keep living in their car.

They're not gonna like go through this whole process.

Um, if they could go to a hotel room, they would go to hotel room.

But if they can't go to hotel room and they have to live in the ballroom of one of our congregate shelters, they're just gonna stay in their car.

So that's like that's my concern.

You know, if there are like so we have a protocol for like, you know, and I don't have it in front of me right now, but like high-risk situations.

Um, and again, it's hard to have to do this because we don't want any children to be in this situation or any human being, but um so somebody who's pregnant or has uh children under two or three, um, like we'll automatically go into a into a unit, a hotel unit.

Okay, so that's really great to know.

I really appreciate that.

That was like a very key piece of information you didn't tell us.

Sorry.

Well, yeah, so I'm yeah, just I assume everybody can read my mind.

Um, so it's the same protocol that we have for like when we, you know, we have a limited number of hotel vouchers that we can use for emergency situations, and I know that there were some families, you know, looking for assistance last night.

Like we have a protocol because we need to we think about, and again, I don't have it off the top of my head, but it also includes families with uh an adult or a child who's disabled.

Like there's a list of like these are the top priority folks.

These these folks, if we can't get them a shelter bed, they will get a hotel voucher until we can get them a shelter bed.

And we'll follow that same protocol for cold weather.

Okay, I appreciate that.

Um, and then I know that DPD like oftentimes those hot officers will like even use their P cards to end up um buying hotel rooms for people they encounter on the streets on freezing nights to get them inside, so um that has an extraordinary cost to it as well.

Has there been some discussion about combining those two options?

Host host funds that okay, yeah, great.

And we we work with them and kind of monitor that, so yeah, that that that funding comes out of our budget.

Okay, appreciate that.

Oops, thank you.

Okay, um, Council Member Watson.

I'll be very quick on on it for crossroads.

Really would love uh a little bit more information on as we're contemplating kind of the transitioning from that.

I know we're going to do the due diligence and work necessary for crossroads, but um, if the long-term decision is that we are going to have a change in that sheltering, we'd love to kind of know how that's impacting your contract.

Are we gonna focus on a three-year contract again?

Or are we going to look at having um a shorter-term contract based on any actions changes happening there?

Yeah, thank you for that question, and that's a really good point.

Um, and Lisa's oh, still here.

So this year it's a one-year contract.

Yeah, so um I would say that it makes sense that before we come back to you with a three-year contract, we have that plan figured out.

Helpful, very helpful.

Um, also on curious, actually, thank you for the uh the transportation um piece and whoever is coordinating that for listening to D9 residents when it comes to that morning drop-off.

Your teams used to drop off at a space where there really weren't services, and so being flexible and having drop off of folks coming back to D9 where services can be provided.

So they're not just wandering the streets, I think was um really fantastic change.

And two council members, you should be receiving an email from me as soon as this meeting ends.

Um, the Metro County Commissioners, uh, Jeff and I uh presented priorities for things that we think need regional support.

I was very happy you spoke to the cool weather sheltering piece.

Uh we presented on that, and that was elevated by all of the county commissioners as one of their priorities.

Um, we have two other priorities.

We just need a temperature check from you.

It's not a vote, it's not like the legislative stuff, uh, Councilman's sword that you do.

We just need to know are any three of these more uh passionate for you or not, and we'll send that out.

But Jeff, thank you so much for the background work that you've done with me and Metro County Commissioners and Dr.

Cog on helping to identify regional um solutions for um coal warehouse sheltering and helping on shelter also.

And thank you, council member, because one of the issues is as we learn together, you know, some of the counties um thresholds very different from Denver, and that kind of is um, some counties are a zero.

Yep.

So they so people will come to Denver, and again, we don't want to care about a human being's what zip code they came from, but it would be nice if uh the surrounding counties, you know, tried to partner with us to get kind of a standard threshold in the region is the goal.

Thank you so much, Joe.

Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.

We'll follow for the email.

Um, all right, I have two quick questions.

Um, first of all, with the what you're calling the cola increases, I'm glad to see the contracts going up a little bit.

Are we specifically increasing um the presumed rate of staff compensation under that, or is that more than across the board?

Okay, great.

Um I would love to.

Well, we will see them in the contracts, but I'm curious to see where that gets the um staff pay, and I'm super happy to see that because I know that's been um just a real need, and I think should really improve the ability to retain folks.

So thank you for making that happen.

Um, the other question is around kind of what the communications plan is for um the changes to cold weather sheltering if you all are there yet, both for um people experiencing homelessness providers and then residents who may live near some of the um spaces that we're gonna be using.

Yeah, I don't have an answer for that right now, but probably in Derek.

Like early October.

Okay, um, we'll have uh our communications plan for it.

Yes, Derek said.

Great.

Yeah, I figured I figured we would be phoning Derek on that one.

So um okay.

Well, we'll check in about that.

Um, and then I think with that we will transition over to the team who's gonna talk about the people's budget.

Thank you all so much.

That was a lot.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, great job.

Oh, thank you.

Writing that out that way was so helpful.

Okay, thank you.

I'm not so I have a question for you.

Hello, everyone.

Welcome.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, I was gonna say, once you're settled, you can introduce yourself and um take us away.

Yes, thank you so much for having me, Kiki Turner.

I am the program administrator for the Denver People's Budget, which will be providing a quick update for you all.

And I promise I will talk through these slides very quickly.

So, what we'll cover today is what is the people's budget, what projects have we funded the last couple of years, and who are the people that are leading this process.

So, to start, the people's budget is a participatory budgeting program.

It's Denver's participatory budgeting program, which is a direct democracy process where the people of a community and municipality have the opportunity to invest a portion of their own taxpayer dollars.

And in Denver's case, that goes towards neighborhood infrastructure projects.

So to date, the people of Denver have been charged with spending five million dollars for projects throughout their neighborhoods.

Um, between cycles one and two, uh three million of those five million dollars have already been allocated towards 13 infrastructure projects, and we are kicking off our third cycle where the people will have the opportunity to spend two million dollars for their neighborhoods.

And when we talk about the funding related to the people's budget, there's sort of three budgets that we kick around.

There's the budgets that go towards projects, that's the five million.

That is what the people of Denver determine entirely.

Um, then there's the budget we have to operate the program, and then you'll see we've recently started allocating budget towards contingency.

So we've been working towards a best practice outlined by the Department of Finance to set aside 15% of our project budgets for contingency.

So this ensures that if there is unforeseen inflammation uh inflation or escalation, their projects can still be completed as outlined in the ballots.

So we've started allocating those funds.

Our operating costs, we operate the program about 10% of what our project costs are.

Um I want to note that 40% of our operating budget, though, goes directly into the pockets of our community members who lead this work.

So we provide various stipends of different ranges to several different community groups that lead the work.

Our steering committee, a group we call project delegates, and a group of what we call our mini grant outreach recipients.

This is a very unique but important part of our program.

We've realized over the last several years that a $400 stipend to participate often does make the difference in many of our community members being able to come forward and get involved.

Any given year we have up to half of our community leaders are those who are earning less than $25,000 a year.

So this is a part of the program that we are very careful to ensure we can allocate funds towards.

The next biggest slice of our operating budget goes towards our technology platform, which is actually brought to us by a local partner called Civic Trust.

We've got Matt here.

This is our digital experience.

So from start to finish, residents are able to participate in one platform to submit ideas.

It's also the process we use to create a digital ballot that is backed with cell phone verification, so we know that ballots are unique.

We found this helps make the process not only exciting and engaging for people, but a little more familiar for those who aren't used to working with government.

An accessible tech platform certainly helps with that.

So that's a look at our funding for the people's budget, what we actually are doing with it.

Each cycle of the people's budget has about four community-led phases, followed by implementation and then a recruitment phase.

So for cycle three, it will run from 2025 this year through the end of 2026.

As you might recall, we have $2 million that was allocated towards this cycle, and we do sort of a two-prong approach.

So with that $2 million, a million of it can go anywhere in the city and county of Denver.

This is how we ran the process the very first year.

We found it creates a very inclusive process, kind of brings everyone who might be interested in getting involved with the government.

There's a place for them on that citywide portion of the program.

But then we dedicate a million of the two million to a specific neighborhood planning initiative area.

So the next one that had been in the queue that we were following is the Near Southeast plan.

So happy to have both Councilman Diana Romero Campbell as part of that and Councilman Sawyer and Councilman Cashman.

So you hear me talk about those kind of separate millions, but all these up to our two million.

We've been spending most of this year in our recruitment phase.

I'll speak a little bit more to that here shortly, but we are just about to kick off phase one, and then next fall we'll wrap everything up with our community vote.

So I will step through sort of the phases of what this program is.

So our steering committee is really our governing body for the program.

It's typically about 20 to 30 individuals that we work with, and they get to set up each year sort of the main rules or frameworks for how the process will work.

So some of the core components that they get to decide are certain participation criteria.

So when we have a two-prong approach like we do this year, that's really crucial, they get to decide things like do you have to live, work, or go to school in, say, the near Southeast to participate on the projects for that area.

Oftentimes we hear communities saying yes, they want some level of neighborhood autonomy if there are funds dedicated towards a specific region.

For example, when we were in the West Side last year, that's what residents said.

They want you to live, work, or go to school in West Denver to participate.

But the steering committee also sets up other rules such as what type of voting mechanism will be used.

For two years in a row now, people have opted to create a ranked choice ballot, which is very exciting for us.

We don't have that in Denver's typical elections, so we're able to produce ranked choice ballots every year.

And this group, after they create a guidebook, which is sort of our little snapshot here, they continue to oversee the other phases of the program.

So we come to them once a month or every so often to make sure we're sort of living up to the rules that we set forward in the program that they would like us to follow.

A quick note, because this is actually a very significant part of our process.

We have a pretty unique way about identifying community leaders in our program.

Our goal is to reach those who might be the furthest removed from government.

So it creates this interesting challenge of sending out emails to newsletters where some of our traditional mechanisms don't often work to reach someone who's not connected with the city of government, the city of Denver at all.

So what we do is the vast majority of our community leaders come through a nomination or recruitment process.

So we work with city council and other community leaders to ask folks to nominate someone from their network.

So we're often going to teachers or food bank directors, nonprofit directors, housing coordinators, those types of folks to say, look into your network.

Who do you think could benefit from this program?

I would be interested in getting involved.

With those individuals, we then kind of load them up with resources.

It's a lot of one-on-one meetings with people.

We have alternate options to complete applications.

So many times it's just an interview style.

I'll speak with someone and take notes to fill out the application.

We also offer people the opportunity to kind of bring a plus one.

Government can be scary.

Not everyone is super eager to jump into community meetings with their government.

So if there's someone they would like to participate in the process with, we allow kind of a buddy system, they can bring someone in.

Sometimes this looks like a parent and a child.

We've had those situations, or sometimes it's two neighbors who get involved together.

We do also open up our application to the general public.

We want everyone to have the opportunity to come and get involved.

So once our nomination recruitment process is pretty far along, we do send out information about anyone who would like to apply.

And then we ensure that we do kind of blind diversity scans throughout the process.

So when we get down to actually evaluating people for the committee, we know we've got a diverse applicant pool to begin with.

So this has taken up most of our time this spring and summer, about 30 meetings with over 500 people, but really excited to say we've got a great looking bunch of folks.

We're not quite finalized that process yet, but we're pretty close.

Something we're really excited about this year is ensuring that youth have an even stronger role in the process.

So our goal is for about 25 to 30 percent of participants to be under the age of 18, and we're currently on track with that for our steering committee.

We've got about, we've got folks who are speaking English, Spanish, and Burmese, so quite vibrant group of individuals.

Many of our folks are coming from the near Southeast.

We want to make sure they have strong representation, given there's a special focus in that area.

But we do also look in all other sort of quadrants, if you will, of the city: the Northeast, the Southeast, Northwest, Southwest, and Central.

I will note that there are a couple members from prior years who are interested in continuing to get involved.

We ask folks, if possible, to not participate more than two years in a row.

We certainly want new people involved, but really do value some of those individuals who are interested in building long-term relationships with their city.

If there's someone who wants to come back two years in a row, we are open and excited about the possibility of having some of those long-term relationships with residents.

So after Sturin Community wraps up this fall, we kind of go out and start the idea collection phase.

A really core component of this process is what we call our Phyllis Mack community outreach mini grants.

This is lovingly named after one of our residents who passed away a couple of years ago.

This is Miss Phyllis Mack, and she received a small stipend to activate her community.

And she just went full forth.

She brought hundreds of people into the process, had incredible ideas that were generated about important improvements to her neighborhood.

We funded her again when the voting came around, and she kind of went back at it, did a lot of resourcing and activation and a project that her community actually suggested to widen sidewalks in an area for people with disabilities was the top voted projects that we saw.

So we see a lot of value in providing small stipends to people to go into their own neighborhoods.

These are often small, like $100, $200.

The largest mini grant we've issued was $1,500 for someone who worked with us from start to finish.

But the mini-grant recipients are a group that we work very closely with.

This year we'll be training them in December and January.

They'll sort of shadow many citywide events, and then we set them forth January through April to do all these sorts of community-led activities and engagements.

In addition to our Phyllis Mac outreach, the city does lead quite a bit of engagement on our own, especially some of our more unique touch points.

We go into the Denver County Jail and the downtown detention center every year to collect ideas and we go back there for voting.

So we're scheduled to go to the jails on December 16th and 17th of this year.

I think we get some incredibly thoughtful ideas coming from those spaces, and it's well, I wish people to be released.

We often see them again come voting, and it is a nice opportunity for them to see some of their ideas come to realization on an actual ballot that they're able to then vote on.

As I mentioned, we have some goals to work more with youth.

So we've been developing a stronger partnership with Denver Public Schools this year as well.

Our goal is to have a week or a day where every high school student has the opportunity to submit an idea for the program, and then every high school student gets the opportunity to vote.

So I think we're on track for some great community or some idea collection processes this year.

Proposal development will happen next spring through summer.

It's the longest portion of our process, and it's where people get to really put their hands onto the infrastructure projects that come from this program.

In this instance, this is one of our visually impaired residents, Chris, and he literally is putting his hands on these were some project ideas that we often use dots to rank favorability of projects, but when our meetings we use bedazzled beads so that people can, like Chris can feel the consensus that's developing.

But this is where sort of deliberative democracy at its finest.

It's months of work with community members coming together to talk about the different proposals, and then really collaborate with city staff.

So we have engineers and project managers in the room trying to find solutions to the problems that our residents are citing as the most important.

So it's a very iterative process.

We're narrowing down hundreds of ideas on into a specific list that will become the ballot for people to actually go forward and vote on.

Likely in this process, I don't wanna say for sure, it's a rule that our residents will decide.

There will probably be two ballots.

We often see with this two-prong approach, a ballot for the Near Southeast and a ballot that is citywide.

It's possible it could be combined into one, but that's what we've seen historically when we have sort of these two areas.

So that'll likely be what comes about.

We also anticipate having some of our sort of nonprofit-led projects this time around.

This is where we're able to, we do an LOI out to nonprofits if there's projects that the city doesn't deliver, but that residents are very interested in.

And if community organizations say they're interested in applying, there's a grant for those funds to deliver that project.

We were able to put that onto a ballot.

I'll show you later down, but there's two projects from last year that actually won that will be funded by nonprofits.

So this gets us to our final phase voting.

I'll move through this quickly, but it's a very fun phase.

Again, we go and connect with youth and some of our populations that can't vote in traditional settings.

We try to make it exciting.

We've developed a monopoly board to teach people about voting and infrastructure that will play, particularly with youth, although adults tend to enjoy it as well.

Many of our events are in person.

It's us just getting out to various community events and organizations.

Something we're excited about this year is we are looking to do a dial-out voting activity as well.

It's actually something we did during the pandemic for a different program for ARPA and the 2021 bonds, but it was quite successful, and we're able to reach thousands of residents in four different languages.

So we're playing with the idea of having an engagement like that, so we're really able to have sort of that broad citywide reach for cycle three.

Implementation, we try to ensure that the projects that win are constructed within two years.

So for cycle three, that would mean we have completed projects by the end of 2028.

I will quickly move through a couple of the projects that have been funded so far.

Obviously, don't know what will come from cycle three, but cycle one and two, I mentioned we have 13 projects.

Of those, six are complete and operational out in our communities, which is very exciting.

We have three that'll be breaking ground this year or early next year and are on track for completion.

And then the four that were funded most recently through cycle two are in a good space.

Trees will be coming to West Denver, and we have some great planting that'll start this fall and will end next spring with a big community planting day where our residents want to actually get their hands dirty and plant some of these trees.

We also have intersection safety improvements coming, and then two RFPs that are very, very close to being wrapped up.

They'll be bid out to community organizations who can receive those funds.

These are just quick snapshots of the work to date.

We make sure we celebrate when a project is completed.

I think the city doesn't always kind of close the loop on some of the work that we're doing, but we ensure to bring residents back together to celebrate the funded projects.

And then very quickly, I would just be remiss if I didn't give a snapshot at least of the people truly leading this work.

So this is just a glimpse of a couple of our community members.

Craig at the top here is actually one of our residents who wants to return for his second year in the program, which is very exciting.

He's told us he wants everyone to have this kind of access into their government.

We also see people that whether they move on with us or not, they're getting more involved in government.

We see the people's budget as a gateway into civic.

So Mary Fair here was a project delegate in cycle two.

The people's budget was the first city ballot that she had the opportunity to vote on, but she was pursuing her own citizenship, and we were able to write her a letter of recommendation to gain citizenship, which she got in December.

So she will actually, she's looking forward to having her opportunity to vote in a real election coming this fall.

Carol at the top here is actually working with the city.

He was one of our teenagers involved in cycle one.

Ms.

Kathy Below is part of Denver Housing Authority.

She's on a local resident council.

So we see people continuing to get involved, which I think is the biggest ROI that we have in the people's budget.

Over 6,000 people have participated with us from the beginning.

And I think a stat we're most proud of is that over half of those individuals are folks who either chose not to vote in a traditional election or they were not allowed to, either because of age or immigration status or incarceration status.

So we are often a person's first impression of government or introduction to government.

It's something we take great pride in.

We've seen some really positive feedback, both nationally and internationally.

We're really excited to be part of an international group where we've been highlighted as the only city in the US from this international study.

So we're working actually with some cities from Sweden and Mexico and Paris or in France to understand sort of how their processes work, what we can offer as a model for other cities and what we can learn from other cities.

So next steps, I'll just wrap this up very, very quickly.

Our meetings will begin in the early October.

We like to wrap up every event by kind of celebrating the end of a phase.

We really want people to see themselves in government to feel valued and heard by their government.

So in our very first phase, that means actually placing people at the heart of government.

So we do a big government meet and greet where we bring people into City Hall.

This year we'd like to, last year we toured chambers, which people loved, but they want to see a council meeting in action.

So we're hoping to crash the November 24th City Council meeting.

Let people poke ahead in for a moment.

We're actually working with council president.

We might be able to do a brief presentation at the beginning of that meeting.

And then we allow residents to submit the first ideas of cycle three, which is exciting.

Your teams are kind of welcome to come.

We'll be reaching out in the coming weeks about if anyone would like to get be involved in that tour kind of earlier in the day.

And then we'll be sending you all share kits and information to start socializing the idea collection process in early December.

So happy to take any questions.

I'm sorry, I know there's not tons of time left, but happy to answer anything there is about the program.

No, we appreciate it, and that's on us.

Councilman Vertora's first followed by Councilmanis.

Thank you.

Just want to share again.

Kiki, the people's budget was recognized by Dr.

Cog recently with the Metro Vision Award.

So congratulations.

Thank you.

It really is.

We I know it in prior years have looked at this going how can we put more money into this?

How can we do it in more places?

So it's still, I think, one of the visions that this council has, and I think it's a testament to how well of a process you run.

The other testament.

So you've got people who want to participate for another year.

When we have drop-off from like years of meetings, right?

You've got people who want to stay involved and engaged so they're able to see the fruits of that labor and feel like they've been a part of something really powerful.

So thank you so much for that.

Just one quick question.

The cycle two had a little bit of a uh, I don't know, creative bend in some of the funding going to community partners.

And are you going to continue that in cycle three?

Okay.

Yes.

We thought it was a very successful process.

We kind of stumbled into it, cycle one, cycle two.

We were more intentional.

We carve out a portion during proposal development where we sort of section off projects that would be done by community partners and we issue letter of interests and we ask because we want to make sure there is a partner to complete the work if it receives funding.

This cycle we got 11 proposals back from community organizations.

Only one of those didn't line up with what residents had intended with the scope, but all the others residents wanted to put onto the ballot.

Two of them actually won.

So now we're, you know, going into the grant process.

So we found it to be very successful, and we're hoping to evolve it or even improve upon it in cycle three.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um, Councilwoman Lewis and then Councilmember Sawyer.

Thank you.

Um, thank you for this presentation.

The $1 million anywhere in the city.

Can you explain that again?

Because that wasn't familiar with that.

Yes, so essentially we and what it often looks like is two ballots.

So I'll explain it in that way.

That's what we saw in cycle one.

I imagine that will how it will manifest in cycle three.

Essentially, a million dollars must go to the neighborhoods within the near Southeast neighborhood plan.

Um, but then the remaining million could go anywhere else in the city.

So what we see is often sort of two ballots that come up, and with proposal development, we'll probably have two committees.

So there'll be residents who Libre could go to school anywhere in Denver, and they're deciding the projects that will make that citywide ballot.

Um, and then there'll be a group of residents who are representing the near Southeast, and they'll be building up the near Southeast ballot.

So typically we say with the citywide ballot that those projects won't also go in the near Southeast because they have their own money, but any other neighborhood is essentially fair game.

So residents rank and score all the projects as they've done in each past year, and then determine the locations or the type of project that will go in place for the projects that they think are most important.

Thank you.

And then uh to clarify on the 20th the November 24th event, it's an event open to the public.

And can you talk a bit more about that?

Yeah, sorry, no, this is just for our steering committee.

So we bring everyone in, sort of the residents who are part of the steering committee.

Last year we did a tour of city council chambers, they got to bang the gavel, they saw council mentores' office, and then we reconvene to Par Widener, and they actually decorate idea collection boxes because that's the phase it's about to start.

We reveal the guidebook that they created, and then they fill out idea cards.

So this year we'd like to replicate that.

Most of our committee members have never been to the city and county building.

Many folks are people with disabilities.

There's some nerves on how to get around the buildings.

We try to just make it a very easy welcoming space for people to explore.

And we heard that they really want to see a city council meeting.

So I think we would love to try and incorporate that as part of the event so that they know how to come give public comment or other things like that.

Understood.

Thank you.

That's very helpful.

And how do our aides find out more information?

You mentioned.

I will be reaching out.

It was on my list for today.

I just didn't get to it.

So I'll be reaching out to you.

Yes.

No, you're totally fine.

And then the last question that I have for you is is with the cuts to personnel, or is there any work that's either work that you all are planning or work in the future that's not going to happen or that's going to be a little bit more difficult to be able to happen?

We're a pretty lean program.

I'm the only full-time employee on the people's budget.

Um, in the past, we were able to sort of have percentages of different staff's time, and I am remiss.

I was trying to speak quickly, but I have two of my team members here, my supervisor Ian Hoke and Kristen Brando.

So they're able to dedicate percentages of their time with some of the cuts.

There was a key member who did outreach for CPD.

It's actually Jennifer Ramos is the prior position who was also here.

Um so that was not a position that was filled, and that was certainly uh an important position for our program.

I think we feel confident we can still run the program successfully, but that that was certainly a role that we were um dependent on in many ways in prior cycles that we will be without this year.

So then the outreach won't take place or it's going a little different, or it'll sort of just be, you know, on us.

So we're this program has always been very, very lean, and I think we are used to that.

A lot leaner.

Our mini grantees, I think, do so much of that work as well.

So we're actually doubling the time of the trainings that we do with individuals so that they're able to do even more because we're quite short-staffed.

Okay, and I apologize.

Thank you.

It is three o'clock, and I am sorry to the members that were in the queue with questions.

Um hopefully you guys can stick around and ask each other's questions.

Um we don't have anything on consent, so that is a wrap for the meeting, and I'm sorry for my queue management.

It was too interesting today.