Welcome back to this weekly meeting of the Health and Safety Committee with Denver City Council.

Coverage of the Health and Safety Committee starts now.

Good morning and welcome to the Health and Safety Committee meeting.

This is October 1st.

My name is Daryl Watson.

I'm honored to serve all of the residents of the flying district nine.

We have one briefing this morning and items on consent.

Before we start our meeting, why don't we begin with introductions?

I'll start on my right.

Ah, switching it up.

Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver District 2.

Sarah Hardy, one of your two council members at large.

Amanda Sawyer District 5.

Good morning, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4.7.

Good morning.

Paul Cashman South Denver.

Thanks for joining us, sir.

Sedan I think I'm scared as your other council members at large.

David Torres, West Denver District 3.

Thank you all.

Everyone, thank you all for joining.

I don't think we have anyone else.

Yes, you may.

Personal privilege.

Before we get started, could we have Councilman Gonzalez, Gutierrez?

Today's not safety day, but yes.

Next time.

There's no cop series.

Dominic Moreno, it's always good to have you here.

I'll turn the floor over to you for uh introduction and also presentation.

Great.

Good morning, Mr.

Chair, members of the Health and Safety Committee.

Thank you for having me this morning.

Pleased to present to you all uh just a little bit of an overview on Proposition 130.

This came out of the budget hearings last week.

Uh folks had some questions about how that funding would be administered, and so happy to kind of overview that with you today.

Uh we do have a couple of uh, I have a couple of phone friends in the audience.

Um, so we do have our lobby team here, uh Katie Hancock and Julie McKenna who can advise on any of the kind of legislative negotiations that happened during session.

Uh Emily Locke from the Department of Safety and Mike Hess from the Police Protective Association, who is also very involved in the crafting of this legislation.

Um, all right, so proposition 130.

This is an initiative that was passed in 2024, and it was proposed by Advanced Colorado, uh, which is run by Michael Fields.

Uh, and it required the state legislature to appropriate $350 million to the peace officer training and support fund for specifically for grants to local law enforcement agencies.

Just a little bit of background and history on that.

Here's uh the statewide results of proposition 130.

And on the right, you have the Denver specific results uh on that specific question.

This is uh essentially an overview of the original uses that was outlined in the text of the initiative.

So you can see here it was rather detailed, but in essence, the the purpose was for uh pay increases for uh peace officers, which were defined as police sheriff and other law enforcement officials.

It also contemplated one-time hiring and retention and merit bonuses, um, hiring additional police in certain geographic areas, um continuing uh initial and continuing education for peace officers, uh, and then uh a death benefit for the surviving spouses and children of uh peace officers who died in the light of duty.

Uh in the legislative session this this year in 2025, uh the legislature repealed and reenacted uh the initiative.

So they do not have the same requirement that you all do, where you can't touch an initiative for a certain period of time.

Um, and instead, uh what you had was the joint budget committee, um, trying to figure out how they were going to make this $350 million appropriation work uh when they're facing the same headwinds that the city is around budget deficits and everything else.

Um so the legislation that was passed was Senate Bill 25310.

It was a bill that was proposed by the joint budget committee.

Um, and it added specific definitions, outlined funding mechanisms, and the distribution formula for local law enforcement agencies, maintained that death benefit, and added much more specific definitions to that as well.

Um, and then specifically uh outlined what is a permissible purpose.

Um, and so you can see there it is for the initial and continuing education and training and compensation of peace officers, and then a specific definition for compensation, which means pay to a newly hired current or rehired peace officer or reimbursement to attend a training academy.

The joint budget committee had to get very creative because of the budget situation.

And so they created essentially a warrant of $500 million that they are essentially a loan that they are giving to the public employee retirement association.

So to Para, they designated this from the general fund reserve.