Welcome back to this monthly meeting of the Governance and Intergovernmental Relations Committee of Denver City Council.

Thanks for joining us for the discussion.

The governance and intergovernmental relations committee starts now.

Good morning, everyone.

It is Tuesday, October 21st.

This is the governance committee of Denver City Council.

I'm Amanda Sawyer.

I have the honor of representing the residents of District 5 and chairing this committee.

We have a big one today and a hard stop at noon.

So why don't we do a quick round of introductions and then we'll get going?

Okay.

I'm starting with you, Council Pro Town.

I'm staring at you.

Good morning.

Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver, District 4.

Good morning, Darrell Watson, Flying District 9.

Jamie Torres, West Denver District 3.

Sarah Parity, one of your council members at large.

All right.

So Dom, you want to introduce yourself and I want to welcome Council President Sandwell to the meeting as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Dominic Moran, Deputy Chief of Staff in the Mayor's Office.

Fantastic.

Take it away, you guys.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Parody and I were honored to be able to take on this work with Dominic and the Mayor's Office, several members from the city attorney's office, and then a really amazing stakeholder group of uh of our labor union.

So thank you all who are here and others who gave their time to this conversation.

So we'll be going through each of these items, background purpose of the bill, the stakeholding and drafting process that we went through, and then some of the summary definitions and section breakdown before next steps, and we will have uh public comment today.

Um so just want to kind of take us through what brought us to this point, and we all um can recall back uh just a year ago that voters passed uh the referred item from council to allow collective bargaining by city employees.

Um that passed by a 30-point margin in November 2024.

Um and what it requires is for us to really provide flesh to uh the framework that was provided in charter that was approved by Voro Voters, which is um which are all the items that we're bringing forward in this particular ordinance today.

Um, so um I think because this was uh such a strongly supported effort by Denver City Council.

I don't think I need to fully reiterate um what it means for city workers, uh, but we did want to make sure we gave a nod to why collective bargaining is in the public interest, the benefits that we see in collective bargaining.

Um, we currently do this um uh on a regular basis with our safety department.

So it is not uh a totally brand new uh effort on the part of the city, but for city employees it will be.

Um so uh we want to make sure that we are uh following the intent of charter and the intent of um the folks that um approved this process.

Um so we wanted to make sure that we also outlined um the eligible employees under this ordinance and under this uh charter provision, all career service employees and employees of the city council, the library commission, civil service commission, board of adjustment, and Denver Water.

It does not include all employees, so we wanted to make sure we outlined who it excluded.

Um, one of the great suggestions that we got from uh Councilwoman Sawyer was to use the existing org chart uh for uh the city and county of Denver just to give us a visual of who it includes, who it does not include, um, so we can refer back and go, oh, okay, that's pretty clear uh for us.

Because even for Denver City Council, sometimes we're constantly asking like, are our staff career service?

Are we, you know what I mean?

So um uh this is just helpful for us in making sure we know exactly who is and is not included in this um forthcoming process.

And to be clear, the ordinance doesn't change any of that.

All of that was in the charter amendment and stays the same, so this is ground you know, level setting, but nothing that's affected by the ordinance anyway.

Correct.

Uh so this is the process that we undertook um uh councilwoman parody and I um uh started by weekly meetings uh way back when.

It's not that long ago, but it feels um like ages ago.

Um, and uh immediately started working with the labor working group um and collaborating with them on what a drafts should include, what kind of language it language it should include.

Um we met frequently with um the Office of Human Resources in the city and our council and legal.

Um there was extensive back and forth, even as recently as um three days ago.

And going through a lot of the finer details.

So just a lot of um constant conversation about is this what it says, what it means to say, what we want it to say, how can we make that more clear without overworking a lot of the sections?

These are the main summary sections that we'll be going through, or that are included in the draft.

We're gonna go high level on a lot of these, but um the detail is really in there.

Um definitions and applicability, panel of arbitrators and mediators, bargaining unit determination, election of bargaining agent, payroll deductions, collective bargaining procedures, collective labor actions and lockouts, uh binding arbitration and court review, unfair labor practices, and a TBD on management rights.

So we'll go through a bit on the definitions.

This is, I think, a really helpful slide, and something maybe even for my colleagues to cut and paste.

What is the charter already give definition to, and what is this ordinance give definition to?

Um, they do not contradict one another, they definitely build upon uh the charter, but there were definitely things that we needed more clarity on and more process so that everyone knew really clearly what happens come January 1.