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.

Do they think it was ours?

They really don't.

Good morning and welcome to the Health and Safety Committee meeting for January 7th.

I just ran up three flights of stairs.

My name is Darrell Watson.

i'm honored to serve as the chair of the health and safety committee um and also to serve all

of the residents of the fine district nine and before we roll into the agenda why don't we start

with introductions from city council members and we start on my right uh jamie torres west

number district three good morning amanda sawyer district five john hillis district eight let's see

and we do have virtual participation is that correct

southwest members district two

yeah so i don't know if um who's in the production if you all can turn up the volume a little bit

and i believe council member parity is also on online yes i just joined

Good morning.

Yeah, and I will fix that.

So if folks viewing can't hear, the folks are virtual.

There's something with the volume.

So we'll up that and we'll check back with you, Council Member Flynn and Council Member Perry,

just to make sure that that was fixed.

And we're still doing introductions.

So Council Member Gonzalez-Guterres.

Hi, thank you, Mr. Chair.

Serena Gonzalez-Guterres, one of your Council Members at Large.

We know that Council President is on her way and once she gets here we'll

introduce her as well. We have one briefing from the Department of Public

Health and Environment. We'll turn it over to your team. Please introduce

yourselves and the floor is yours. Hi, I'm Melanie Sobel, Director of Denver Animal Protection.

And Joshua Rolfe, I'm the Lieutenant for Denver Animal Protection.

Good morning, Marlee Bordovsky, I'm the Director of the Prosecution Section of the City Attorney's Office.

The floor is yours.

Okay.

Happy New Year.

Happy New Year.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for the opportunity for us to present to you today.

We really appreciate it.

We have several programs and services we offer.

The community will be focusing today on how we deal with animal bites and attacks.

I do want to preface this with saying we're very proud of our community-based proactive equity approach when we do enforcement.

and we'll get into that a little bit more in the presentation.

But we do take this very seriously

as this is probably the most serious responsibility

we are charged with as a department

and that is to keep both animals and people safe in our community.

And if we do not, we're happy to answer questions at the end.

If we don't have the answers or you need additional information,

we're happy to get that to you.

Okay. I also want to say Josh Rolfe is the real expert here. He's been, he started off as an animal control officer 15 years ago, was promoted to sergeant, and now he's lieutenant. Extremely well versed. And Josh, take it away.

Sure. Thank you again for letting us come and present to you.

First, I just want to explain animal attacks and bites and the ordinance in Denver that governs that is DRMC 8-61.

And under that ordinance, an owner is legally responsible for an animal attack or bite if it bites a person or domestic animal off of the owner's property.

if it bites a person or domestic animal on the property

or in a business not open to the public

or a person or domestic animal in a business that is open to the public.

There are some affirmative defenses to that

where if the area is clearly posted with warning signs

or somebody unlawfully was on that property,

that that potentially could prevent the owner from receiving a summons or having an investigation about the attack.

So the next slide is just some national animal bite statistics for your knowledge.

There's a reported, there's lots of bites don't get reported, but the reported ones are about 4.5 million in the U.S. per year.

About half of those are children, and about 20% of those actually need medical attention.

And the average fatalities per year in the U.S. is about 30 to 40 from an animal attack.

Okay.

We evaluate dog bites specifically on a scientific scale.

It's called the Dr. Ian Dunbar Bite Scale.

Dr. Ian Dunbar is a veterinarian who also has a doctorate in ethology, which is the study of non-human behavior.

And he's actually the director for the Center of Applied Animal Behavior at UC Berkeley currently.

He developed this scale, I think, in the late 80s, and it's been widely used in animal welfare since that time.

The scale rates animal bites on a 1 through 6 scale, 6 being death of a person and 1 being essentially obnoxious behavior where the dog might be mouthy and put their mouth on hand or arm but not scratch or anything like that.

I'm glad you clarified what mouthy is because I don't want a mouthy dog.

Sure, yeah, fair enough.

Level two is just slightly more than that, where the dog is mouthy but does scratch the person.

And we're particularly concerned from a public health perspective about scratches or what we call skin breaks

because that is what could lead to the transmission of rabies,

which is why, from a public health standpoint, we're concerned about animal bites.

A level three bite is where we start getting into more serious bite incidents.

This is still what we would refer to as maybe a moderate bite incident where there's one to four punctures from a single bite from the animal.

And the puncture is not deeper than half the length of a canine.

So, you know, maybe a quarter to half an inch deep.

And then level four and level five are what we would consider serious dog bite incidents.

Level four is one to four punctures or lacerations where there are deep wounds to the person.

And then a level five bite incident is multiple level four bites to one victim or multiple bites to several different victims.

from the same dog in the same interaction, right?

And as I said, level six is a fatal dog bite incident

to a person.

We will talk in just a few moments

about what the recommendations are on this scale

from those different bite levels

for the outcome of the animal inflection.

So we were gonna attach some images

to present to you some examples of these different levels,

but it's quite disturbing.

So we didn't want to include that.

We do have hard copies that show you the level of severity

within the different levels.

And I can pass that around.

And I do want to just say too that not only is our animal

attacks can be physically damaging,

but also mentally damaging.

There's a huge affinity between children and animals,

And when the children are attacked as a child, it ruins that chance for them to have a relationship with an animal, which is sad.

I've talked to many mothers whose kids have been bitten and disfigured, and it's very disturbing.

If you like, I think council members.

Thank you.

I'm going to pass.

I'm good.

Fair enough.

Thanks, though.

I just would like to talk a little bit about our bite data and the different level of severity that we just talked to and what we see at least reported to Denver Animal Protection.

I want to preface this by saying the vast majority of animal bites that occur nationally go unreported.

They generally happen within somebody's home.

Those tend to be fairly minor incidents with family members, and people don't seek medical attention for those.

Doctors and medical offices are mandatory reporters for animal bites.

In Denver, we have an ordinance that requires anyone with knowledge of an animal bite to report that to the health department.

But these statistics are only for the reported bites that we get into us, which generally are animals that are out in the community biting people that someone reported in.

So this is the breakdown of the different bite severity levels and how many of those bites we saw between October 2024 and October 2025.

I just want to touch briefly on the category where we say unverified.

Unverified bites are bites where we could not get in touch once it was reported by, say, a doctor's office or the victim themselves.

We could not then get back in touch with the bite victim to figure out what happened, where the biting animal might live.

And so we have no information other than that there was a bite reported to us.

This is just showing you, we took data from October 2024 to October 2025,

and this is just an indication of the age of the victims.

So you see most of them are between the age of 21 and 40.

Okay.

As I mentioned, this is the breakdown from the Dr. Ian Dunbar bite scale about the prognosis

for the animal that bit and what the behavior future of that animal looks like.

So for a level three bite, which is where we start getting into more serious biting

incidents, the prognosis is fair to good if the owner engages in training and behavior

management. There's a misnomer that dogs can be rehabilitated from a bite incident. You put them

through a training course and then you don't have to worry about it again because they've been

trained not to do that. That's actually not true. What the reality is, is that you have to manage

that dog's behavior for the rest of its life. So you have to get training, absolutely understand

why the incident occurred and what triggered that dog to bite. And then you have to manage that

behavior for the rest of the dog's life, right? On a level four dog bite incident, that shows that

the dog has insufficient bite inhibition. Bite inhibition is something that dogs learn as puppies

from their litter mates and from their parents about how hard to bite down and what is play

biting and what is defensive or offensive biting, right? And how hard the dog should bite when

those things occur. And so when a dog has insufficient bite inhibition, it means that

the dog has not properly learned to be safe when it's maybe playing around or

that it bites too hard when it's trying to defend itself or being offensive.

And so dogs can't learn by inhibition past that puppy stage.

They're stuck with what their instincts tell them to do after they mature.

And so as an adult dog, the science and the data shows us that once a dog bites, if it's not properly managed, it's basically guaranteed to bite again.

And in these cases, the dogs have learned to bite hard and they will bite hard again and probably more severely in the future.

right? And so you have to have much more strict management if you're going to manage a dog that

has delivered a level four bite in its past history. Moving on to level five and six,

those dogs we consider and the bite scale considers extremely dangerous. Those dogs deliver very

serious bites that permanently disfigure or maul people or in some cases kill a person.

And so in those situations, the bite scale recommends euthanasia. We will talk a little

bit about the language and our tiered approach to enforcement of these different bites a little

bit later in the presentation, which is right now. So we have two different aggressive animal

ordinances in Denver. One is called potentially dangerous animal and the other is called dangerous

animal. With potentially dangerous animals, those animals are allowed to be within Denver. These

These are animals that have caused injury to a person or other domestic animal, but

it's less than serious bodily injury.

So, it's not permanent disfigurement or death of a person or other domestic animal.

These owners who have a potentially dangerous animal are required to get a permit from Denver

Animal Protection.

They're required to maintain that permit for 36 months at minimum before they can petition

the department to have their dog's designation removed. And there are a lot of conditions that

the owner needs to abide by to keep their animal within Denver. So generally it involves a leash

and muzzle. They have to report to the department if the animal gets loose from them or if they

rehome the animal. They have to keep the animal vaccinated. Generally they have to have the animal

spayed or neutered. And in some cases, we require them to build a secure enclosure if the animal has

a history of escaping the property, right? With dangerous animals, these are animals that have

caused serious bodily injury or death to a person or a domestic animal. And those animals are

illegal to maintain within the city and county of Denver. So the owner either has to surrender the

animal or they have to rehome it outside of Denver and sometimes that involves them

moving their family outside the county boundaries to maintain their job.

Those are the two levels that are codified in the municipal code in Denver. We also as a

department created a lesser bracket for our tiered approach which is not codified in the

city's ordinances and is only in our policies. And that's what we call animal of concern.

Animals of concern are animals that we have witnessed concerning behavior out in the community.

Maybe they've been running loose several times. Maybe we have reports that they've growled or

charged at people, but they haven't actually made contact with anyone. Or they persistently

are getting into the neighbor's yard and like barking at their back door and and the neighbors

don't feel safe to go outside right in those types of cases we will go out and have a conversation

with that pet owner and we will explain the complaints that we've received and talk to them

about what their management plan is for that animal and then we'll write up a formal agreement

with them about our recommendations to properly manage the dog's behavior so that it does not

escalate moving forward. And that's a voluntary agreement that the pet owner enters into with us.

They don't have to do the things that we're recommending. We're just trying to be proactive

and say this could turn into a future problem if you don't curb this behavior, right?

Okay. Moving on to enforcement of these ordinances, we have developed a

investigation protocol for the officers to try and ensure that we don't have heavy-handed

enforcement from one officer and very lenient enforcement from another officer and that as a

department we're aligned with my team of 14 field staff that they're all investigating and moving

through these investigations and making appropriate charging decisions with what the department wants

not necessarily what that particular officer might want in the case.

We do that to ensure that there's equity and that we're looking at things from a holistic perspective of what's best for the community,

what the community will tolerate out living next to them,

and that we're only sending things to court that need to go to court.

And our focus really is on changing behavior, educating the public, making sure that the animal is properly managed and that community and public safety is protected and not necessarily permanently removing animals from homes.

We do have to do that sometimes, but that's not our driving force in investigating these types of calls.

We try to consider all the different facts of the case and try and make a charging decision specific to that incident and what occurred and what went wrong that allowed the dog to bite this person or other domestic animal and how serious the incident was for the community.

We, our primary driving force again is ensuring community safety and also ensuring that future

incidents don't reoccur.

Marlee, I don't know if you want that.

Good morning.

And once they get to court, we have weekly meetings with Josh and his team to staff these

cases knowing that they're the subject matter experts and everything that you just heard

him educate us all about, but also subject matter experts in the animal itself.

They are aware of the animal's history if the animal has one.

They're aware of the severity of the circumstances, complaints, all of the things that are going

on in this particular case.

So every single week we meet with Josh and his team to go through the cases to make sure

we understand and are taking their recommendations into account.

What our goal is, as well as DAP, is to make sure that the person is a better owner if

they haven't been a very responsible owner and they understand how to be a better owner

and to protect community safety.

So that's really our goal and it's this very collaborative partnership with the subject

matter experts who are boots on the ground and my team.

We also, one of the biggest things that we see in these particular cases is restitution

issues. As you can imagine, if you looked at the photos and even if you just heard Josh's

description, some of these involve significant medical bills and or vet bills, animal replacement,

even if there was an animal killed in the event. So we are concerned about making sure that the

victims are made whole for the suffering that they endure. So those are the goals that we have

as the city attorney's office. I can say the vast majority of these cases end up in either a deferred

judgment kind of a plea bargain, which is a situation where someone enters into a plea

bargain with us, goes through the education.

Sometimes we have in-person training programs that we ask them to participate in.

And once they do all of those things, the case can be dismissed, guilty plea withdrawn,

and it can be sealed.

So again, we're not looking for guilty pleas.

We're not looking for criminal convictions here at all.

We're just looking for better owners or a situation to make the community safe.

So that's our piece of it, and very close collaboration with Josh.

I do also just want to mention before we move on that through our investigation guides for my team,

we really try to focus enforcement on the more serious, like, level four and level five incidents.

Level three is probably a mixed bag of enforcement and education,

where it's just dependent on the circumstances of what happened.

and whether we need to step in to make sure that the animal is properly managed

or that whether we have assurances from the owner they're already engaging in different things

that they're doing to prevent a future incident to guide whether we enforce on those levels of fights.

Okay, next slide is about maintaining the human-animal bond.

And again, this is something that we're really proud of as a government agency

that we supply these programs and services to people.

Our very important charge we have is protecting people and animals,

but it's also maintain the human animal barn. The last thing we want to do is take animals away

from people. And next slide. Mainly what we've seen, just you know, we have a 44% increase in

in animal intake in 2025 compared to our pre-COVID base of 2019.

Our owner surrenders have gone up 190%, and our owner surrender for euthanasia has gone

up to 178%.

So there's several factors, mostly socioeconomic, involved with that.

And we find that most people are not malicious.

They want to comply with the law.

They simply don't have the information and resources to do so.

And so we have an entire community engagement program, a section of our agency that works with people proactively to help them comply and give the resources before there's a problem with the animal.

Same thing with our field officers.

Rather than being punitive, they are constantly collaborating with our community engagement program to give referrals to say, hey, this person needs help.

they can't afford to get their animals spay neutered,

or they can't afford a microchip and vaccines.

And so we're going to give them a voucher

to go to our low-cost clinics that we have twice a year.

So we also have, and a lot of the services and supplies

that we provide are through grant and donations,

private donations.

So we try to aggressively secure those

so that we can help even more.

Right now, our community engagement program

has about a 250-person client weight,

and we try to service as many as we can within our resources.

One of the things that we did last year,

we got a $25,000 donation from a private donor,

is the pay-to-spay program,

where we offered people underserved pet owner populations

a $100 gift card to Walmart

and a free spay, neuter, microchip, and vaccines.

and it sold out like that.

And so the donor has agreed to do it again in 2026,

which we're really excited about.

We're also thinking of including focusing in

on the all-in-mile-high sites to give these free spay-neuter.

We already do free vaccines and microchips

for all-in-mile-high sites.

And we'd like to work towards compliance

with spay-neuter as well.

And so we're trying to secure funding to provide that for free.

I think we are the only agency in the Denver metro area,

and I even believe the state, that provides absolutely free services.

There's low-cost clinics, but we provide 100% for free.

And then we, of course, have our low-cost clinics are twice a week.

on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We specifically have two hours devoted to giving microchips and

vaccines and licenses to dogs and cats. We also started, we actually started right after

the SNAP benefits went away as a pet food pantry, and we solicited the community. We got tons of

food donated, and then we're still giving out that food. We're going to continue that program

because it's very successful.

And even outside of that, our community engagement program also provided free food, collars, leashes, dog beds,

flea medication, things that will improve the quality of life for the animal.

Our pet retention program is, so again, some of the main things that have caused owner surrenders

are people cannot afford vet care, they can't get housing that allows animals,

and they can't afford training.

You know, they have an animal that has behavioral issues,

and they don't have the skills to deal

and manage those behaviors.

And it's expensive to go to a dog trainer.

So we have the clinical services, but in 2026,

we're going to include free training services for people

that need assistance with helping manage the problem

behaviors for the animals that cause them to own

or surrender to a shelter.

And then we also have humane education, which we do not only in schools, but Josh and his team go out to other social service agencies, other law enforcement agencies to talk to them about dog bites and animal handling and being safe around dogs.

Our officers also go to schools and talk to kids about responsible pet ownership.

We have schools come and do tours of the shelter and we show them all the work that we do.

Okay, next slide.

So we want to talk a little bit about dog breeds and behavior.

We know that that's something that comes up.

And so this graph talks about the top biting breeds over the last five years.

And I just want to talk because it's right there of our unknown dog breeds.

Unknown is really where the person reporting the dog bite doesn't know what type of breed that bit them or bit the person that they saw get bitten.

Or where witness reports are unreliable or conflicted about what dog breed exists.

And going back to the bite severity slide with our unverified bites where we just don't have a good description or any way to follow up on those dog bites.

We generally don't enter the actual breed of the dog until the officer's there to quarantine the animal and has eyes on it themselves.

dog bites. Dog breeds are misreported on a regular basis. You know, the general public is not great

about identifying dog breeds. They really, a lot of people are dog people, but it's for their

specific dog breed that they like or something like that. And so oftentimes we'll get, it was a

large brown short-haired dog, right? And that could be any number of dog breeds. So that's why

that category is so high because there are a lot of just dogs that bite that we don't know what

breed they are. And then moving on from there, for the dog breeds that we do know, we have a Labrador

Retriever, American Pitbull Terrier, German Shepherd, American Bulldog, and Chihuahua as our

top five biting breeds in Denver. You know one thing I wanted to mention, sorry, in the previous slide

also was our return to owner rates are really high. So just so you know for dogs in 2025 we had a 63%

rate of animals returning to their owners and the national average is 16%.

percent and for cats it was 23 percent national average is six percent so again we work really

really hard to make sure when lost animals come in that they're returned to their owner

because we want to maintain that human animal bond the other thing i want to mention is we

have the temporary pet housing program and that's for people that have a crisis in their life either

a domestic violence case or a house fire, or they have to go into the hospital and they

can't afford to put their animal or don't have a family member to take care of their

animal, we will provide housing and care for that animal for free.

And we work with people.

We don't have a specified time that they have to come get their animal.

It depends on the situation.

We will work with them as long as we can.

A lot of these animals we're able to put into foster homes too, which is nice.

so it doesn't take up space at the shelter.

Okay, the next slide is breed identification and behavior.

So just off of what Josh was saying and what we mentioned before

was that we have current dangerous dog ordinances that are very effective.

And so concentrating on breed,

there's really not a consistent or accurate method to determine actually determine an animal's breed.

It's vague, it's subjective, it depends on who's doing the evaluation.

What we try to focus on is an animal's behavior and that could be any animal.

It could be aggressive or any animal can bite regardless of breed.

And you know the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior and

And that's what we look at as an individual, that animal, and what their tendencies are.

So breed does not equal personality.

There's a wide variety of behaviors that are exhibited by the same breed.

We just had, a few months ago, we had a Great Dane.

I have a Great Dane.

They're gentle giants.

I love them.

We had a Great Dane that came in that broke her owner's arm, bit and broke the arm.

We just euthanized yesterday a Husky Shepherd nix that got away from its owner, ran across the street, and killed a dog that was walking on a leash.

So, you know, this could happen with any breed.

Again, what Josh was talking about earlier is a lot of it has to do with early socialization, with them learning bite inhibition, with it being socialized to people and other animals, not necessarily the breed.

And then the next slide just shows some stuff from the experts.

A 2022 study from Journal Science, 80% of physical traits can be tied to DNA with dogs,

but only 9% of personality traits are linked to their actual breed.

And then the Centers for Disease Control Prevention says, this is a direct quote,

targeting a specific breed may be unproductive.

A more effective approach may be to target chronically irresponsible dog owners.

So again, this is what Josh was talking about previously about there's no rehabilitation for animals that exhibit aggression.

There's management.

And you have to find people that have the skills and the resources and the will to try to manage those behaviors.

last slide is again why behavior-based laws which is our dangerous dog laws and potentially

dangerous dog laws that we have on the books focuses on behavior actually targets the actual

aggression and biting not that just the appearance of the animal owners are held accountable and

responsible for their dogs actions through these laws they're easier to

read and very easy to enforce because it's clear documented behavior and it's

not subjective and improves public safety because we're concentrating our

resources on the actual animals that are a problem in our community rather than

just by what they look like and that's it we're happy to answer any questions

that you have. Thank you so much Melanie and Josh for your presentation. Josh thank you so much for

your expert counsel and engagement to make sure that the work that the DPHE does is done an

equitable process and that we're treating all owners in all situations equally and Marley

has always your collaborative process with our departments to make sure that the city attorney's

office is executing based on not only will people, but in the collaboration and discussion with folks from our departments.

I'd like to welcome Council President Sandoval to our meeting before we go to the queue wanted to see if our friend collect that from the public defender's office.

I'm not sure if you had a quick comment you wanted to make, and then we'll go into the queue. If council members want to jump into queue.

Thank you, Councilman Watson.

And I really want to thank Lieutenant Rolf, Ms. Sobel, Ms. Bordowski for a really important presentation today.

And I can tell you that we agree with so much of what you said.

And we also care deeply to make sure that the citizens and the animals in Denver are safe.

One of the issues that we wanted to raise with City Council is we wanted some fairness and guidance.

All of the Chapter 8 animal violations expose clients to 300 days in jail and a $999 fine.

So there's so many ordinance violations contained within that chapter, animal-related noise,

leash law violations, barking dogs, rabies vaccination, and the more serious offenses

that you talked about today.

And some of these offenses, including the attack and animal bites, are a strict liability offense.

And so what that means is that there's no mens rea involved, or what is the state of mind?

So we have represented clients that were out of town, and their dog has never been involved in a previous incident of biting or attacking.

and someone comes to walk their dog and the dog either goes off leash and a person or another dog is bitten,

the owner is charged with that violation, even though they had no knowledge of it, they were out of state,

the dog previously had not been involved in any type of incident.

And so what we were asking for is clarification.

Some of these offenses, if city councils just look through the list, many of them can be civil infractions.

And the ones that remain in our criminal DRMC code would have some type of mens rea involved, so a knowingly aspect of it.

So what we were saying is that we think that there could be a criminalization for continuously irresponsible dog or cat owners.

And that is something that we should really look at, and that would have a mens rea aspect to it.

So we're just we were just asking for we represent hundreds and hundreds of clients.

Many of them are serious offenses and some of them are not.

So what we're asking for city council on behalf of the Office of the Municipal Public Defender is just to take a look at the code,

see if there are some areas that we can clean it up, make them civil and the ones that would remain would have a mens rea element.

So thank you so much for allowing me to to give our thoughts about this.

thank you so much um in the queue we have uh councilmember parity councilmember sawyer

councilmember torres and councilmember gonzalez gutierrez so councilmember parity let's see if the

audio is working for you yeah i hope it is how can you hear me yes great thank you um i have a very

very sick kid at home so there's like a small chance i may run away um hopefully i won't have

have to. So just really quickly, the question that I had actually relates to what the PD just

got up and spoke about, which is sort of funny. This is exactly what was on my mind. And it doesn't

relate to the vast majority of the work that you all do, right? Like many of the things that you're

describing in terms of fines and fees, an animal being relinquished, a permit being required,

all of those things, even if we currently have them coming as consequences of a potential criminal

violation are more civil in nature. And so that's not really what I'm concerned or worried about.

I do think it's, I was actually really startled when I learned that, you know, under state law,

you're only criminally liable. If you have a dog that you know has bit someone before,

you know it's dangerous and you keep owning the dog and it bites someone again. Whereas under our

city ordinance, if your dog bites someone, you can be subject to that up to 300 day sentence,

even if the dog wasn't in your custody at the time, right? Like it was being taken care of by

someone else when this happened, even if there were no warning signs, even if you essentially

as an owner didn't really do anything wrong. So what I'm curious about that, or what I wanted to

ask, and it's probably really a question for Pace, is just if you could talk to us more about

in practice with your prosecutorial discretion, do you prosecute people when there really isn't

that element of mens rea?

Do you charge people if they haven't been even negligent

with respect to this dog,

or do you tend to just handle that differently

or have it handled at the DVPHE level?

Yeah, thank you for that question, Council member.

We work, as I said earlier,

we work really closely with animal protection

and Josh's team on the appropriate resolution of cases,

including these scenarios.

And I'll be honest, we do see these.

We I actually just staffed a similar case where the owner wasn't present with one of my attorneys just this week and we're ending up dismissing that case.

So, yes, we do see them and we we communicate closely with Josh and his team if whether we think we should go forward in a particular circumstance or not and dismiss if it's.

Marley, I think that's actually my question, though.

Like, would you prosecute if there was not an indication of at least negligence?

That's my actual question.

Yeah, those are the conversations we have with Josh and his team.

So if we have a situation that Ms. Tevet described, for example, where the person is actually on vacation and in California and isn't even present,

and the person who was actually negligent in that particular situation was the babysitter, dog sitter,

then we have seen cases where that owner has been charged.

To be honest, I won't gloss over that.

But we take that into account and we work with Josh's team to say, is this really what we want to do?

So I have seen them come into our office, council member, but we have very good conversations with Josh to say, I don't think we should go forward on this.

And we end up dismissing those cases.

Now, do they all get dismissed?

I can't in good conscience say that they do because I don't watch every case that comes in.

But my team knows that they can have these candid conversations with animal protection about the appropriate way forward on a case.

And we try to not go forward on cases like that, if that makes sense.

So while I see them, we try to take that into account.

We do take that into account.

Yeah, I'm glad you do that as a matter of discretion.

It sounds like you would agree then that it might be better if our ordinance was something more similar to the state.

In other words, if you're having to use your discretion and only go after cases where it's sort of fair to do so because the owner is in some way culpable, would you agree that we could make our law reflect that a little bit better rather than this kind of across-the-board strict liability that it has now?

I think that's a great discussion to have as we move forward, for sure.

I would defer.

I don't know if Josh and Melanie have anything to add to that, but I think it'd be totally worth discussion, and I'm open to that completely.

Okay.

You know, at the end of the day, it's what I said at the beginning.

I'm sorry if I interrupted you.

No, not at all.

That's great.

Thank you.

At the end of the day, it's what I think both of us are saying, that we want people

to just be more responsible owners, be more responsible handlers, if you will, dog sitters,

if you will, and to protect the public.

So whatever we can do to get to that end is where I'm open to those discussions.

Yeah.

Yeah, it just feels like we're at the moment the language in our code, it seems like it's potentially punishing people who, even if you all don't use your discretion in this way by the letter of it, it could be used to punish people that really weren't at fault and couldn't have done anything to prevent that.

So that's my area of concern.

I just would like to point out from an investigative perspective towards your question.

When we have a situation like that, usually, or the standard approach for the department is that we would investigate and likely cite the dog walker or dog sitter for the attack incident.

but then the dog sitter or dog walker cannot manage that dog's future behavior.

And so when we're talking about designating a dog as a potentially dangerous animal,

it's inappropriate to cite a dog walker for a potentially dangerous animal chart

where then they are required to permit the dog to keep it in Denver.

And so that necessitates that side of the investigation and conversation with the dog owner themselves because they are going to be responsible for managing that dog in the future, even if they were not present for the bite incident itself.

And so usually what happens is we would cite the dog walker for the bite incident, and then we would cite the pet owner for the potentially dangerous or dangerous animal charge, which comes with it the future management of that animal.

Usually in the situations that the public defender's office is raising where a dog owner gets sighted and they were out of town,

it's because either they don't want to tell us who was watching the dog at the time and they want to just take responsibility for the incident

or not going to tell us what other parties were involved in.

And the situation still needs enforcement attention.

And we do understand that.

Okay.

And just when you say cite someone, does that mean that owner could potentially be looking at jail time, even if they weren't present for the bite or having custody of the dog?

There is that maximum penalty in the city's municipal code of up to 300 days in jail.

I know that.

I'm talking about in practice, though.

I'm talking about facts.

I can count on one hand the number of times that we have soaked jail time in any animal-related case that involves animal bites, but it also involves substantial animal cruelty and animal neglect.

And that is not just municipal charges.

That is also charges that are filed as state-level charges with the district attorney's office and Denver police.

It is very rare that one, we're asking for jail time or the prosecutors are asking for jail time and even more rare that it's actually happening.

Great. Thank you. That's what I hoped was the case and what I understood to be the case.

And I think we may have some work to do as counsel because there's such a mismatch between that 300 day sentence and that strict liability from what you all are actually seeing as important to pursue.

Right. Like we're just not capturing what you actually focus on in our ordinance.

And so that is concerning to me. My other question, which is probably more of a parody.

I was going to say, I know we have another briefing. And so thank you so much for your next question, but we're going to continue into the key.

Yeah, it's just my it's actually only two questions. It just took a minute to get answered.

The second question is about the sentences. So how often have what's the highest sentence that anyone has actually seen imposed for a dog bite case?

And then what's the highest sentence that the prosecutors have sought?

And I would assume that would be in a case where there really was some, you know, problematic

conduct by the owner. Off the top of my head, I don't know. I can say that in 2025, there were

no jail sentences at all imposed. Great. Okay. Yeah. So, 300 day on the books versus none imposed

in the last year seems like a mismatch. It would be really helpful as follow-up, Marlee, if you all

could get us those statistics, though, going back a few years so that we have a sense of

what's actually being pursued.

Happy to do that.

How far back would you like us to go?

Whatever you think is reasonable.

Maybe five years, if that's not too much,

maybe three, whatever you think when you look at it.

Thank you.

I can do that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Parity.

Council Member Soren.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Is there anyone here from Parks and Rec?

No.

Okay.

So my questions are more around enforcement, right?

because as we saw, the vast majority of dog bites don't ever get reported to you all.

And that makes it a Parks and Rec issue because these are off-leash dogs in our park biting other dogs and biting kids.

And they're not getting elevated to you guys.

They're under the purview of Parks and Rec.

So I feel like we're missing someone here in this conversation when it comes to enforcement,

which is concerning.

So I'll save those questions for later.

Question for you guys about how you work with other agencies, right?

So District 5 borders both Aurora and Unincorporated Arapahoe County and Glendale.

And we see a lot of stuff happen across borders all the time.

So I'm curious how you guys work with those other agencies to manage those issues.

Sure.

Happy to talk on that.

And also briefly, I don't know if you might want to ask your questions once I speak, but

the vast majority of bites do go unreported, but those are bites that are happening inside

someone's home.

The vast majority of bites that happen out in the public are reported to us.

And we also work very closely with Parks and Rec.

They don't investigate dog bites or animal attacks.

So that really comes to us through the 311 and 911 call.

Yeah, but Josh, I'm going to interrupt you just for a second to say the point is if they were enforcing our dog leash laws, those dogs wouldn't be off leash biting someone in the first place.

I hear you.

So I'm just going to leave that there.

But yeah, so how do you work with other agents?

The reason I'm asking is we got an email on November 17th that we forwarded to you guys about a dog attack on November 14th that happened on the border of Denver and Laura.

Right?

Yes.

And it was the third attack by the same dogs.

There were multiple complaints happening from 2022 and 2024 before this attack in 2025.

but this owner is a resident of Aurora, not a resident of Denver. So it's complicated. There's

lots of hands in the pot all the time, right, on these border cases. So I'm just curious how you

work with them. Yes, it's a very fair question to ask. They are the most complex situations that

we deal with because there's a lot of competing ordinances and laws that impact what different

agencies can do. For example, in the city's municipal code, any city official who does

enforcement, apart from Denver police who enforces state laws, cannot go outside the city and county

boundaries to issue criminal summons under the municipal code, right? And so related to this

specific situation I think is representative of the efforts that we put in is that we thoroughly

investigate those cases where the actual incident occurred in Denver and somebody might live outside

of the county, whether that be the victim or the pet owner. And we get the witness reports, we

take the investigation as far as we can, and then we do have to rely on someone else to

further that investigation if we're not able to catch that pet owner in Denver to issue them

a summons. And so in the first incident with this pet owner in 2022, we were able to get them to

come across the street to get a citation issued. They learned our trick the second time and would

not come in. And we actually are pretty proud of the resolution in that case currently is that

we were able to collaborate with Denver police and the district attorney's office.

that owner has been cited for both prior incidents that had been not cited.

And we are collaborating on how we do better in the future,

especially for those residents who live right on the border.

Yeah, I really appreciate the work you did in this specific case that I'm talking about.

I thank you for that.

But I do think it sort of highlights this challenge, right, of like,

if the pet owner doesn't walk across Dallas, then they're not in Denver. And yet their dogs are

attacking Denver residents or other dogs. Right. Um, so I was just curious whether you like,

do you have, um, collaborative meetings with Arapahoe County? We actually do. There's a group

called Metro, it's Medawa Metro Denver Area Animal Health

Organizations, and we meet every other month.

But I have to say, like, this type of discrepancy

goes across the board, right?

So there's, such as Aurora, they don't have the resources

that we have.

They don't maybe have the philosophy that we have.

And so there's some, you know, there's a differential there

in how things should be handled.

Another thing, you know, they don't take in all animals.

So a lot of animals come to us because we're open to missions.

So, yes, there are these constant discrepancies with how things are enforced or how the services that are provided.

But we do have a good relationship with Aurora.

And Anthony Youngla is the head of that.

He comes to the Medellin meetings.

I talk to him on a regular basis.

He's always been agreeable with us to try to find solutions.

But Aurora is not a county, right?

And this is a county function.

So it should be Arapahoe County, not the city of Aurora.

in this particular instance, right?

But it's Adams County to the north.

It's like, there's lots of...

When it comes to animal laws,

yeah, usually it's either the city or the county.

The county usually handles unincorporated areas.

Okay.

But City of Aurora would handle this specific address.

Yeah, so I'm going to finish up,

but I just, I know there's a lot of other people in the queue.

I guess I would like to ask

if there is an opportunity to do something differently

to create a better partnership with the surrounding cities and counties

because this is a really complicated area of law

and what we end up seeing happening is our residents pay the price for it, right?

Because there's so many hands in the pot when we're talking about borders.

And so I appreciate that there's like an every other month meeting.

That's great.

it doesn't feel like from what we have seen just on the district five border alone in the last seven

years it's being managed particularly well across jurisdictions and so i would just like to make

the request i know it's not an easy one that some things be done differently there to try and

kind of bring everyone together a little bit more thanks thank you uh councilmember sorry and um

Melanie and Josh, you're going to receive an email from from Dwight on my team. We'll reach out to see how we can support. We also participate on a metro county commissioners and we look at some of these overlapping boundary concerns and see how we as county commissioners can collaborate.

So, we'll see what makes the most sense and then speaking with council president. And so it's not just simply you all are seeking new solutions, but obviously customer story has great ideas.

our team will definitely reach out and see how we can be of support and maybe

bring that back later this year.

Thank you.

Does that sound like a good set?

That sounds great.

Great.

Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez is the last person.

Yeah, I'll be really quick.

Some of this stuff I think will be, some of it will be follow up.

One, I do want to thank when I met with DDPHE yesterday,

heard my request and desire to make sure that we also had OMPD here.

I know that there was a presentation and then there was like some discrepancies

and things of that nature.

So I think it's just great to bring everybody to the table.

And so that's, I guess, one of my asks is that when I heard about the discussion that's

taking place around the decision that's being made as far as which way to proceed, it sounds

like it is solely DAP and PACE.

Is there any space where you are also including public defenders in those conversations?

We do have conversations with the public defenders in our courtrooms as we talk about plea bargains and all of that and mitigating circumstances.

And if they do, and I know you have other things to ask, but if they do bring mitigating information to us that we weren't aware of, we'll take that into consideration.

Sometimes go back to Josh's team and say, hey, did you know this was going on and that kind of thing.

So it is very iterative process.

Okay, great.

Yeah, I find that very helpful.

You know, working in a different space like juvenile justice, we always did a lot of collaboration between our DA's office, our public defenders at the state level.

And so it was I felt it felt it to be always very fruitful to be able to have those kinds of conversations, even just on a systemic level.

Right. About how we approach a lot of these things and appreciate, Marley, the willingness to engage in a conversation about some of the questions that Councilwoman Parity brought up.

The last thing I'll just ask for is I know that there was a request, I think, from Councilwoman Parity about the element of bad intent or negligent conduct and what those sentences have been.

I guess I would also ask from the Municipal Public Defender's Office as well.

I know we don't probably have time today, but it might be helpful to know what are the things that you are also seeing on the negotiation front, right?

When you are looking at our sentences, are there sentences that are being threatened in certain types of different cases?

When in the case, in scenario that you mentioned, Colette, where the person's out of town and how are those things being considered?

how are then sentences being negotiated at that point.

So any of that information I think will be helpful.

And I think that's all I have.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you so much, Council Member Gonzalez-Guterres.

Look around the room to see if there are any other questions.

With no one else in the queue,

thank you all for being here, answering the questions.

Know that there will be follow-up from Council Members on this.

So I appreciate you for being here and being part of our presentation for safety and health, for health and safety.

So we'll transition to our next presentation.

Donna and team, please bring forward anyone that you would like to participate in the presentation.

We'll give you a few minutes for transition.

We've got about 15 minutes for your presentation, and I can take the handouts and I can hand those out.

And then we'll open it up for about 15 minutes of questions from city council members.

Thank you, sir.

And Donna, if you don't mind sitting right up there where Ann is at.

All right, good deal.

We should be good to go.

Are there any side discussions?

We encourage folks to take those outside of the room.

Thank you very much.

I apologize, folks.

Why don't we take a side discussion outside of the room?

Let's take a side discussion outside the room so we can begin our committee meeting.

Thank you.

No problem.

Hello, everyone.

Thank you for inviting us to your discussion today.

I'm Donna Garnia.

I am here in two roles today.

One, I am the CEO of my fellow organizing committee.

But most importantly today, I think I'm here as the president of the governing board of the Fresh Low Market Initiative.

You may have already heard of us when we were, thanks to Councilwoman Lewis, we were able to get in front of you all at the budget amendment hearing.

So we appreciate the opportunity.

Since that time, we have morphed into our branded name, which is Fresh Low Market.

In the past, we have been going under the nomenclature of Denver Table Consortium.

We have four of us from the governing board for Fresh Low Market are here today.

So if you all will just quickly introduce yourselves.

Sure. My name is Willie Shepard. I'm with Flow Development, part of the consortium.

I am Annie Hancock. I am with the Denver Housing Authority. I'm the director of resident community

connections and executive director of the Youth Employment Academy and a part of the Denver Table

Board. And I am Lane Zabowski and I'm here as a community member today. Great. Several of our

other members would love to have been here but they had other commitments today. So I want to

start out by just giving a little bit of background. Now she showed me what to do.

There we go. A little bit of background. Most of us, or the four of us who are

sitting around the table and some of you at the other end of the table, have been

working on food access issues for the better part of a decade. I can tell you

that from the Montbello community, we started our whole Fresh Low initiative

because the folks in our community were tired of not having a grocery store.

We had huge issues related to food insecurity.

And as I think all of us already know, those issues have not lessened or become easier to deal with.

If anything, they are many, many times more difficult than they have been in the past.

So we put together a working group.

I have to mention that Willie and I traveled all over the country in, what, 2021 and 22,

trying to find an option, an operator that would come into Montbello and into the Denver market

and provide a grocery store opportunity, especially for people in low-income communities,

as we like to think of in Denver, the inverted L communities.

We were not successful, but we did in that effort find out about some other nonprofit grocery models,

most notably the Daily Table out of Boston, Massachusetts.

We were very impressed with this approach.

It's, as this says, a nonprofit grocery store model with a mission to provide fresh, convenient, and nutritious food in communities that everyone can afford.

Sadly, the Daily Table is no longer operating in Massachusetts.

They had a very successful, more than a decade run, serving millions of people with exactly as the mission states, affordable, nutritious, healthy food in communities where grocery stores will not come in.

Those large grocery stores, King Super Safeway, Albertsons, all of the names that most of us are probably familiar with, will not come into those low-income communities.

So we have had the opportunity to work with our partners across the city.

We have worked with the Denver Department of Public Health and the Environment.

We have been able to access data that was collected in 2024 through that department.

And all of us have collected our own data in our communities to be able to really characterize what the challenges are.

As you can see here, there continues to be a lack of food security options in our Inverted Ale communities.

Those are communities with significantly higher levels of poverty and hunger and food-related illnesses.

In the city study, 15% of residents in Denver reported lacking consistent access to food.

While all of us in our communities are experiencing extremely high usage of our charitable food resources,

resources, i.e. the pantries and the food bank. These are not sufficient to meet the need,

and we see ever decreasing, both at the federal level, at our city level, and at the state level,

funds to support charitable food options. And in fact, many people already express that they don't

want to go to a food pantry. There are many reasons. They can't get the food that culturally

works for them. They get food that they may not know how to prepare, and that there is stigma

associated with waiting in line at the food pantry. So those are some of the challenges that

we all have faced. The Fresh Low Market is a citywide effort. I will mention that not only

are we working with communities across the city, but we're already in conversations with people

across the state who are saying, wait a minute, we need this model in our community as well.

So it is intended to be, again, affordable with food being available at somewhere between 15% and 35% discounted from the typical grocery stores that many of us are accustomed to.

Some of the important elements to know is that the stores are locally owned.

They are not owned by a big corporate entity.

The Montbello store is owned by Montbello Fresh Low LLC, too.

We'll have Annie talk a little bit about the role of Denver Housing Authority at their stores.

Not only is the impetus here to provide nutritious, healthy, affordable food,

but it's also to create jobs for people who live in the community.

Some of you have visited our low-income housing Fresh Low Hub in Montbello.

I can tell you that folks there are chomping at the bit, waiting to be able to apply for the positions to work in our grocery store,

which literally will be across the parking lot from them.

It will also incorporate SNAP and WIC and double up food bucks to the extent that the federal government allows those things to continue to come into our city.

That was a sign, but I didn't mean to say all that.

And it is data-driven.

We are taking the information.

Each of our stores will operate with a community benefits agreement.

and each of those will have a local resident council that will track the metrics,

those things that we intend to impact, such as jobs that are created, jobs that are sustained,

and hopefully we'll be able to track how health outcomes,

those that are nutrition and food related, potentially will be improving.

This is the model. It is a hub and spoke model. Central to the hub and spoke model is this new nonprofit entity called the Fresh Low Market.

There are, we will be opening four stores between now and summer.

One of those is the Montbello store.

Then there will be the two stores that are owned by Denver Housing Authority, one in Mariposa Community, and one in Sun Valley.

And then Clayton Neighborhood, Clayton Early Learning will be the source.

I know you're very excited about that.

Don't be giving out all of the good stuff yet.

Right, right.

And so that store will be opening hopefully in the summer as well.

One of the reasons that mom and pop shops are not able to succeed those small grocery stores in communities

is that they don't have the buying power.

that large institutions are able to secure.

In this model, we will have our own warehouse storage.

We're working with We Don't Waste and some other entities across the city

that can provide 15,000 to 20,000 square feet of storage.

We also are working with our own locally grown food producers.

Each of our communities has an urban farm located in it.

All of us have been working for a number of years to create that infrastructure,

which also produces jobs and produces locally grown, very healthy food.

Thank you. Five minutes. I'm almost there, but I've got to turn it over to Annie for a minute.

And then the other piece that is really critical to the financial health of the stores is to be able to provide grab-and-go meals.

And so, Annie, we'll talk about that for a couple of minutes there.

So those are the elements of this approach that we've taken.

It is important to know that the Fresh Home Market Initiative is a nonprofit model.

So it will rely upon a portion of philanthropy, philanthropic contributions in support of the earned revenue.

And what we already know from the experiences of other nonprofits,

that in this way, each dollar that is contributed will lead to a $2.

It'll be a two-to-one kind of return.

We need $2 million to launch for the first two years.

I do have some financial figures here that I can share with you.

And really what's important is to understand that this has to be a public-private partnership,

hence why we are here talking to the city.

Each of our communities has put in extraordinary amounts of money to build out stores.

Mock, luckily we just closed on our $10 million new market tax credit deal to build our grocery

store out.

We already own the site, the shell is there and renovations have already begun so that

we'll be on track to open our store in May.

So I want to skip here and have you talk for a few minutes about the Denver Housing Authority

stores. Yes, so Denver Housing Authority currently in partnership with Youth Employment Academy

operates Decatur Fresh in the South Valley neighborhood and the Osage Mercado in Lincoln

Lama Park. And YAA as a non-profit took on the operations truly out of necessity due to lack of

other organizations within the city and county of Denver to operate these grocery stores that are

designed to support the community that is living in and around the stores.

YAA has been operating Decatur Fresh since 2021 and the Osage Cafe and Mercado since

2022, the Osage Cafe since 2013, but the Mercado since 2022 after Choice Market pulled out of the

neighborhood. These stores are working, right? They are in these communities. They have significant

and followings.

Based on the sales in the stores,

we're at around 43% of our sales are SNAP

and Double Up Food Bucks.

And so they are serving the community

that is surrounding them.

And what's a really critical part is it's not just

about food access, it's about a community safe,

a safe community space.

We're providing culturally relevant, healthy,

and affordable food options, as well as employment

opportunities.

between Osage and Decatur, we currently have nine individuals

that are living in the Sun Valley and Mariposa neighborhoods

that are working in those spaces,

which are providing job opportunities to that community.

We also have longstanding partnerships

with Denver School to Work Alliance Program,

the Denver Youth Employment Program,

Colorado School Charter,

to provide young adults workforce opportunities

throughout the year and in the summer,

as well as academies for them to learn more

about the culinary arts and customer service.

And ultimately, we as the housing authority and as YAA

see this as an opportunity to really scale

and work together with other nonprofit grocery stores

that we need to open around the city

to ensure that everyone has food access

and allow for these to be successful in the long term.

As a nonprofit that is focused on youth education,

a part of a housing authority. Grocery stores were never necessarily something that DHA and

YEA were ready to take on. We've taken them on, but we see this now as an opportunity to be able

to grow and sustain these businesses in the long term because they are, have become really critical

spaces within these neighborhoods, especially as Sun Valley really continues to grow as well

as Lincoln Park and what is going to be happening in between those two

neighborhoods and the amount of building and construction that's going to be

occurring that we need to continue to provide this food access as critical

food access for the for these two neighborhoods so this is not just a

one-off situation we all of the purple squares that you see here the purple

I'll represent the Invertedale communities of Denver.

We are in conversation in all of these communities,

working with existing nonprofits, existing small businesses.

And I think that the cry in hue is that how do we make this really happen now?

It is so critical for our communities across the city.

And frankly, we need the city to be a partner in all that we are trying to accomplish.

If you want to pass those around, here's the ask.

We appreciate the opportunity to inform you all more about what's happening and how people are involved.

In order to kick off the nonprofit entity, we are looking for approximately a million dollars.

We do have local, we're in a due diligence process right now with the Denver Foundation on behalf of a number of other foundations.

And so in the budget amendment that Councilwoman Lewis had put forward, we were asking for a half a million dollars from the city.

We narrowed it down to $426,000 in a little bit.

But we would like to ask that you look to your agencies to see how and where that those

funds could possibly come forward.

You will see here the first, the second page is a pro forma for the first year of operation

once things are moving along.

Again, each of the three communities have already put significant investments in the form of millions of dollars into the community-based grocery stores.

And we're just asking for you all to look at how the city can be a partner in this solution.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Donna.

Thank you so much, Willie, Annie.

And I've got your name.

Lane.

Thank you so much for your work and your engagement.

Don, I look forward to continue working with you at Clayton Early Learning.

We do have a cue.

First up, Council Member Torres.

Thank you so much.

Thanks all for coming, for the background information.

One, representing West Denver, what you laid out in terms of the landscape couldn't be more true in what we experience every day there.

We are a district of 10 neighborhoods that have two full service grocery stores in our

district.

Some people have that in just one neighborhood in the city.

And the struggle I think that we often face, that I certainly face as a representative,

is often cases for full service grocery stores to consider moving into a community.

It's got to have a certain density.

It's also got to have a certain monetary kind of disposable income availability.

So it is a higher income kind of threshold than usually who we are as West Denver neighborhoods.

They want wealthier neighbors.

They want lots of them.

And I think our struggle is always we're not going to fully turn over in that way.

um, displaced, gentrify, um, uh, fully kind of phase out our current representation just because

it's undesirable to a full service, big box grocery store. Um, King super is at spear and

Colfa and Colfax, um, and, uh, Sheridan and Florida, like the farthest. So they are trying

to actually capture Lakewood and downtown, not so much West Denver. So I totally get what you're

saying it's been a huge blessing to see DHA come into this space and say we are going to build

markets. I will say though that the presentation makes it seem like DHA's markets came as a result

of this partnership and I don't think that they did necessarily. I think they were there already

but they're coming into as a partner in the collaboration. So I appreciate that a lot.

I love Decatur Fresh and actually their name was I named it.

But that was one of the ones I put forward as a suggestion.

So love both of those spaces.

I know you have to do a lot of gymnastics to make those business models work, right?

And so that is, I think, what we're talking about here in terms of what is a better business model.

I remember talking to Kathy.

I'm forgetting her last name.

She used to run like our food access organization, Hunger Free Colorado.

Kathy.

When she first started, she ran, I think, a WIC market.

And she had previously been a waitress at Tom's Diner.

And so she actually got put under Tom's purchasing power to actually put things on the shelves.

And it is because they buy a ton of food, right?

And so they get it cheaper than Kathy would all by herself, which is I think what you're talking about too in collaborating kind of market power.

So I think that's great.

I think it's really worthy of a conversation about how it becomes implementable and really being honest about this is not a self-sustaining venture.

You need other sources of funding.

So what are those?

where I get really caught up in kind of the process is you're here asking us for budget right now,

which makes it seem like you're asking me for some of my office budget as opposed to the city budget.

And so I'm wondering where has this come through in terms of DEPHEs and Department of Finance conversation,

which is, I think, either where this starts or where it needs to go next,

because we don't allocate budget as a body here.

So just wondering where that's at in terms of inroads with the city departments

and what funding sources, because it's always hard when we see a great idea

and see a good organization just giving them money, right?

Usually there's competitive process.

There's a fund that we're looking at to fund this kind of work.

So just wondering kind of where those stand.

Layered with, this council has been advocating for a food justice fund for three years of multiple administrations at this point.

And it is to target projects like this.

What we were able to eke out in this coming budget, this year's, is a food summit.

Really basically talking about what's the ecology of where our food comes from and who's working in this space in Denver.

I know DDPHE has a food plan. Lynn, you were heavily involved leading, I think, that piece.

But I just don't know exactly kind of how this fits into all of that.

Do any of you want to answer? Go ahead.

I can contribute some. So just to be clear for everyone, I am a former DDPHE employee, but not currently representing them.

DDPHE did submit some funds to help support Denver Table in the scoping process and bringing on board retail consultants, I think, like several tens of thousands of dollars, as well as technical assistance.

So the department is generally supportive of the initiative, but also does not necessarily have a source of funds that they can actively contribute towards this effort.

It's not eligible for Healthy Food for Denver's Kids programs because it serves the entire population and not just children and their families necessarily.

And we've had some other conversations with Dito about other sources of funding.

I mean, I think one trick that we've seen is just that the major grocers will not locate in a neighborhood if they wouldn't already, no matter how much money we would give them as a city.

That's just, they're very blatant about that.

They won't take multiple millions of dollars to move to a place that they wouldn't already think they could make money.

And in 21-22, we actually had a million-dollar incentive commitment from Mayor Hancock.

And even with Willie and I going all over the country and the mayor going all over, there was not a single either national or regional operator who would come into any of our communities.

Montbello, Westwood, Sun Valley, none.

None were willing to come there, even with a million dollars.

They mostly left in our faces.

So it was like, okay, well, let's reimagine what we need to do in our community.

Councilwoman Torres, I can't answer the question of where the money is hiding.

I'd love to.

We are 100% behind the Food Justice Summit and hope to be a big part of that.

We can actually, from Montbello, we can contribute some support in that direction.

I believe that we have a lot that we've learned through Healthy Food for Denver Kids and what works in that process and what doesn't.

And I'm pretty sure Annie and I could fill your ears up about what we think doesn't work.

But as Lane points out, you know, it doesn't answer the question about families being able to have food sovereignty, about being able to access culturally appropriate food, and to have choice about what they're feeding their families.

So we are hopeful and want to be a part of that summit.

But in order to move forward with this type of model, there needs to be a small infusion.

And we have the philanthropic world.

We've had CHAPA.

We've had Denver Housing Authority.

We have CGRF.

And we have Colorado Trust and Colorado Health Foundation have all put money into this in terms of millions.

And now we need this small amount to get the model in place.

And if I just will chime in.

So because I brought the budget amendment to, because I brought this as a budget amendment to the full body of council,

one of the requests was to have Donna and her team and folks come to one of our committees just to have the opportunity for council members to learn a bit more.

But you're absolutely right in terms of like not our council budgets, but just an educational opportunity.

But definitely plug into DOF and other city departments to see about sustainability.

And Councilman, sorry, reminded me, DDO, obviously.

Oh, yeah.

As I think a key agency.

Yeah, something like that.

The only other thing that, and you can follow up with me on this, I have no idea what your last slide map is.

Me neither.

Like what that data is supposed to tell me.

So that map itself took a look at food insecurity, higher rates of poverty, by census tract, by neighborhood, and showed the highest areas of food insecurity.

It's also part of what we use to select where we would target for partnerships.

So those numbers are those, is that data?

That's the sort of indexing rate of those different socioeconomic and poverty.

Do you know when the data came through?

We included the city studies in the notebook that you have.

Okay. I just really question how off the map is of a lot of my district, like Westwood.

I would say it doesn't include the medium rates.

There are still medium rates of food insecurity and others that we would consider at the city to be food.

And the city has their extensive maps through DDPG.

I certainly can send them to all of you or get them through the department, either one.

There's just a segment here at Sun Valley. I don't question at all.

West Colfax is not my lowest access point and it is purple here.

So I just I don't know where the data like what it's captured of my district.

So just as far as it represents mine, I definitely would want to follow up on what's feeding some of the the mapping.

So I'll stop there. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Councilmember Torres.

I look around the room and see if there are any other questions.

Council President.

I have one question.

So the funding source, the $4,426,000,

you see, you know, we don't vote on contracts

under that amendment.

And so that's not something, those all,

everything 499999 is all administrative.

And we never see them.

Like we have no idea where the money comes from.

We have no idea how it gets there.

We have no idea what's in those contracts.

And so for me, I just, as somebody who is sitting here, I was a bit confused about how we're asking this body that doesn't even approve anything for that type of money.

Actually, this was more informational for you to understand what the cost of this initiative is to launch it.

It's not that we, I'm very well aware of the fact that you don't approve anything under $499,000.

I just want the public to know that.

Because you might, but people, other nonprofits that are sitting and watching could say,

oh, can we come to a city council committee and request $425,000?

And I have lots of nonprofits in my community.

Like we have Bienvenidos, right?

And Northwest Denver has suffered a lot.

Like we have been gentrified, but we still have a lot of people who do have major insecurity and food access is an interesting term because we have access in Northwest Denver.

We have a couple of safe ways.

Can they access them?

Yeah.

But do they have the funds?

That's right.

No.

Exactly.

So access to me can mean very different things.

It does.

Do I have a food desert?

I don't.

Mm-hmm.

Is it super expensive to live in my council district now?

100%.

Is the cost of taxes, like just the assessor's taxes, like daunting for us?

Yes.

So I would just say that food access is a tip for me in my council district when I grew up.

Was it like that?

No, it wasn't.

But I will just say that as somebody who has sat through lots of budgeting processes

and wondered how things get funded, I don't know.

Okay.

Honestly, I have no idea.

I don't know if they go out to bid.

I don't know what happens under 499999.

And I have attempted to figure it out

and, like, find out how those processes work,

and I am not in the mayor's office.

So it's not told to us.

So I don't even know, like, even telling you,

giving you suggestions on where to make up those funds,

is challenging for me because I know Bienvenidos in my council district there they rent and they've

been looking for a location to actually be housed in like own but then they have to have

refrigerators and storage and freezers and so I've been working with that partnership for 10 years

since I started working in council district for probably longer than that and they've asked me

for money and I'm like well I'll do a fundraising on my with my own council district budget but

other than that I have a hard time finding resources for them as well so I think it's

I just was I didn't realize that that's the cost of how because I heard a million and then I was

like you're like oh you're coming into the city to ask for this so is it a million to run it or

We're trying to launch and honestly, you know, it's hard to know exactly what information

all of you would like to have in this informative presentation.

Usually entities want to know, well, what does that cost look like?

And so that was at the last minute I decided to throw this in so that you would have a sense.

This does not fund individual grocery stores.

This is not about the grocery stores.

This is about creating that hub and spoke model and again we have philanthropic funders who have stepped up who will be helping us reach that million dollar goal that we just asked the producer for one additional minute.

So because we are a little bit over they have to extend the recording so I don't know if there's any final comments.

I know councilman Lewis had a final statement or councilor president.

I want to make sure your comment was clear.

Thank you.

Council Member Lewis, and then we'll close out the meeting.

I'll be brief, yeah.

And I didn't get a chance to really frame the conversation prior to you all speaking,

but this was simply for education for you all to get a better understanding

because I was able to bring this as a budget amendment,

and we can talk about it in terms of the context in which we have the authority

and opportunity to be able to bring forward and to fund as council members

with those budget amendments or what we might do in mid-budgets.

I also want to let you know that we are setting up meetings with agencies to figure out what a program could look like.

And that would be subject to a competitive bidding process.

So I want to make sure that I say that on the record.

But this is just certainly an opportunity for us, for you all to educate us on the things that you all have.

And I really appreciate you all taking this opportunity to come and give us this presentation.

I want to say thank you to all the good work you're doing.

Donna, obviously we're going to continue our work with Clayton.

Everyone else, the innovation is definitely impacting our communities and it's absolutely necessary. So thank you so much for your leadership with that.

We have 200 consent and have not been called off to the meetings adjourned.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much.

Yes.

Thank you.