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.

My name is Darrell Watson. I'm honored to serve all the residents of the fine

District 9 and also to be the chair of this great committee. We have two

important briefings this morning and before we jump into the briefings why don't we go around

the table for introductions and we'll start i'll start on my left thank you mr chair paul cashman

south denver district six hi amanda sawyer district five and i believe we have two council members

online if you can hear my voice jump on in councilmember flynn and councilmember gonzalez

Gutierrez. Yes thank you Mr. Chair Kevin Flynn Southwest Denver's District 2. Thank you. Hi everyone

uh Selena Gonzalez Gutierrez one of council members at large. Thank you both for joining. We have two

important briefings this morning. We have my good friend Rebecca Arno and team presenting for

Prosperity Denver Fund and Rebecca I'll turn it over to you to introduce

your team and then I'll hand over the presentation we have a little bit of an

echo I know our working on it because they are professional see there so I'll

say it again Rebecca Arno with prosperity Denver fund I'll turn over to

you to introduce your team great thank you so much councilmember Watson it is

wonderful to be here and I am here with two members of our board our board chair

Teresa Pena and our board chair elect Felica Houston and we are delighted to

be here to share about prosperity Denver funds progress for the year and I know a

couple of additional folks have come in so if you wanted to I think we're fine

once you continue we'll introduce our council president thank you so much for

joining Sandoval and comes president for Tim Romero Campbell and just to

acknowledge that Councilmember Romero Campbell is also on the board of

Prosperity Denver Fund. So welcome. So here's what we're going to do today. We're

going to share a little bit about our activity to date. We'll share with you

our partner organizations and some outcomes that they've had. Our fund

balance issue that we started to deal with over the last year and I can share

with you both our progress and our projections and then a few things that

are on the horizon for us. And before I start, I think what I'll do is let you all know that we,

as I did last year, I met with each individual council person and talked to you about your own

district and how we are working in your district. We're going to do that again this year.

The other thing that's exciting is that we now have a communications team, and we are going to

be able to create articles for your newsletters and we'll be working with your teams directly on

that. So just letting you know. All right. So our mission, we actually have tightened up our mission.

So I'm wondering, Teresa, do you want to read our mission statement?

Or would you like me to? Go ahead. Okay. Prosperity Denver Fund maximizes the investment

of Denver taxpayers to support nonprofits that help students with financial need pursue college

and career opportunities. Together we ensure Denver prospers now and for generations to come.

We have three programs through which we do this. As you will recall, we receive 0.08 percent of

Denver sales tax and we fund three programs in a reimbursement model, college and technical

school scholarships, career training which is apprenticeships and credentials, and high school

support programs. So here are our totals to date since our inception in 2019. We've worked with 89

partner organizations. We've funded over 15,000 scholarships, 1,100 credentials, 47,000 high

school students and our total fund distribution is 65 million thus far.

So to look at our growth and funding over the course of time, as you will recall in 2023 the

City Council voted to adjust our ordinance so that we are able to, we had started with just

the one program college and technical school scholarships and in 2023 we were able to add

credentials and apprenticeships and we were able to add high school support services so that

resulted in increased money out the door and we have continued to drive forward with adding new

supported organizations so that we can get more money out so as you can see we started

with four years at a relatively flat rate.

In 2023-24, we gave away $16.3 million.

And we've already, in 2024-25, in just our first funding cycle, given away $16.6 million.

We, this is our biggest funding cycle of the year.

But unlike previous cycles, we are actually going into our spring cycle for 2024-25

with about 20 organizations on the list who are coming in.

So our record for spring is 700,000,

and we are going to blow that out of the water.

It will be over a million plus.

So we are continuing the growth curve.

And our number of partner organizations continues to grow.

So we've funded a total of 89 to date.

And as you can see, we funded 74 in our most recent distribution cycle.

And again, that 20 plus that I mentioned earlier, those are all new organizations,

mostly new organizations that are coming in to work with us.

So that number will, for 24, 25, will be significant.

So just to look at a one-year change,

Our total amount distributed was up 6.4% from 24 to 25.

And while the expansion, you would think, would be in our credentials and apprenticeships program and our high school program, because those are new,

we had a 12% increase in our college scholarships.

And many new organizations under college scholarships joined us this year.

Credentials and apprenticeships, however, were up 86%.

A huge part of that has been our partnership with Emily Griffith.

The Office of Children's Affairs and Prosperity Denver Fund worked to create the opportunity for us to work directly with Emily Griffith,

and we have been able to expand significantly the amount of resources supporting credentials and apprenticeships for Denver students.

High school support services was down, but that's because in previous years we were expending multiple years of resources, and this was our first time we actually did the cap of 20% of revenue.

So we were down 26% this year, and it will just remain capped at 20% of revenue.

So just to give you a sense of what our revenue is, we receive about $15 million a year to distribute through our various programs.

And so that's about $3 million a year that goes to high school support services.

And the number of partner organizations receiving funds this year is up 30%.

So this is some small list of a number of colleges and universities in Colorado.

And the reason that we wanted to share this is because we wanted to demonstrate that institutions throughout the state of Colorado are receiving support and our students are attending these colleges and universities and technical schools.

And so that's through our collegiate program.

And here's another longer list.

These are all of the different credential pathway types that we have funded to date.

So 44 different types of credentials and apprenticeship pathways have been funded, and you can see a number of those on the list.

If you have questions about any kind of credential or apprenticeship pathway, please just let us know.

And so I wanted to, again, not expecting you to read this entire list, but we will provide you, and you obviously have this presentation.

These are all of the organizations with which we funded technical school and college scholarships.

And then our career training credentials, you can see the list there, and our high school support services.

Many of the high school support services programs are also providing the college scholarships,

but several of them are new and, for instance, Platform is a new partner,

and they have a wonderful program that helps young people think about careers in the arts,

and they do a great program helping young people think about their post-secondary journey.

And so they aren't a scholarship provider, so we do both.

Okay, so fund balance.

We maintain a commitment reserve to support our current students in the case of the program sunsetting in 2030.

So right now we are planned to sunset in 2030 if we don't receive reauthorization.

And we know that we will have a significant number of students, several thousand students,

who will have started college using the resources of Prosperity Denver Fund to help them.

So our board, we did a calculation and our board voted to make sure that we have a commitment

reserve to allow us to support all of those students to complete college over the course

of the years after 2030. We don't want to leave anybody hanging. And so we have an additional fund

balance. And as you can see, the fund balance is right now just shy or in 2024 was just shy of 30

million dollars. We spent 2.6 million of that in the last year. And then our projections are to

completely expended by fiscal year 2027. And in September of 27, we will have completely

expended that fund balance. And we will then be back to just giving away the $15 million a year.

So that's going to require our board to do some thinking about how we focus our funding to make

sure it's going in the right direction. The great thing about this is we will have lots of data and

information about what really works and we'll be able to make sure that we're

helping the students with the most effective programs. A few of our outcomes

this is the area of greatest need for growth in the organization. We've done a

lot in terms of outreach and expanding our cadre of partners this year in 2025.

2025-2026 is going to be the year of expanding our understanding of our outcomes.

But let me start by saying that we have data that shows that our investment in college attendance

and in collegiate scholarships has increased attendance and graduation rates in Denver by 8% per year.

The Denver Scholarship Foundation, which is the partner that receives a significant portion of our funding,

They've increased the number of scholarships by 41% and the amount of each scholarship by 28% since our founding.

So they are both giving out more scholarships and larger scholarships as a result of Prosperity Denver.

Our investments have also increased the number of students served in quality of service among all of our partner organizations.

And we also have funded support services through many of our organizations.

And these are increasingly important to students as they consider how they are going to persist in and complete either their collegiate journey or their credential or apprenticeship journey.

Some of these students are coming in as the first in their family to attend college.

everybody has challenges coming from outside when they go into higher education or go to address a new trade.

And there are so many of our organizations that are providing really robust services to help these students get through.

Things from as small and you would think insignificant as bus passes and gas cards to help with transportation,

grocery cards to help with food, clothing vouchers, but mentorship, support with summer

study, internships, mental health counseling, all of these things are being supported by

our programs. And one of the things that we're seeing is over 30% of our organizations are

seeing expansions in these support services that they're able to provide as a result of

Prosperity Denver support. On the horizon, so what's ahead? We are going to continue

to expand the number of partners and create connections. When I got here, somebody said,

well, I think we may have reached all of the college scholarship programs. And that wasn't

true. So we are continuing to expand. Our program director, Michelle Nguyen-Chwander, and I meet

every week with potential new organizations. Some of those will work. Some of them won't. But we are

always out there sharing the message. The second thing that we are very much working on this year

is expanding our partners capability to measure student outcomes. So we have a lot of measurement

of our outputs. So the money going out the door, the number of students we're helping, etc.

What we know is that small nonprofit organizations of many of the 89 organizations we funded are

quite small and don't have their own capacity to do evaluation and measurement.

We are going to be creating cohorts and funding evaluation studies and development of evaluation

studies for those partners.

And we've already started with a great cohort in our credentials program of small programs

who really want to understand the wage outcomes for their learners.

So people who are helping, for instance, the African American Trade Association is a part of that cohort.

They help students to get certified in the construction trades and are doing a great job placing their students.

But once those students get placed, it's very hard to maintain connection with them, and it's very hard to then track how you're affecting their wages.

So they're trying to make sure that we're helping them as part of a cohort, make sure that we can understand what their impact has been and how they can maintain those connections with students.

We are going to be conducting an economic impact study and have an RFP out in the field for that.

So looking forward to that.

And we should have that by summer, but we'll see how it goes.

And then we will continue to strengthen the post-secondary ecosystem.

So we have a learning community that we run with all of our partners.

And interestingly, some of our new partners who haven't even received funding from us,

one of the things they most are interested in is becoming part of that learning community and making connections.

So we are now seeing those partners starting programs together,

connecting with one another to share evaluation strategies. They're sharing ideas on funding,

and so it's really fun to see the ecosystem being strengthened because of this investment of the

city in supporting all of these organizations. So we are happy to answer any questions you might

have. Oh, I did hand out to our folks online. This is available on our website, but I'll send

I'll send it to the rest of the council members. It's just a magazine that tells a little bit about

where we are and where we've come from and a huge part of telling our story. I want to acknowledge

our communications team in the room. Adriana Lopez, who the city council just recognized for

her work with East West Neighbors United, is our wonderful communications director. And Brian

Labra Vergara, who is a Denver, longtime Denver, were you born in Denver, Brian? Denver native,

and an amazing example of the kinds of programs that we fund. So we're very proud of our

communications team, and I wanted to take a moment to introduce them. So glad to answer any questions.

Well, CEO Arno, you and I go way back, and so thank you for your leadership of Prosperity Denver

and the good work that you're doing there.

I was curious from Ms. Pena or Mr. Houston,

if there's anything you wanted to add from your voice,

and then we'll go to the queue.

I would just add two things, and Rebecca touched on it.

And so on average, we've received about $15 million a year

from the sales tax revenue from taxpayers in Denver.

And until Rebecca joined us about 15 months ago,

we were not putting that money out into the ecosystem.

And under her leadership, we have accelerated that.

She and I have a bet we're going to accelerate that 2027 time frame.

So I think we're going to have more requests than money, and that's a good problem to have.

But it's a challenge that the board will have to address.

The other thing, we're not allowed to talk about this as an organization in our professional capacity,

but reauthorization, as Rebecca said, we will sunset this initiative in 2030.

We will obviously go back to the voters because we think it's making a significant difference in the lives of Denver youth and the impact to the workforce economy in Denver.

And so we just need to have that data to make that argument with the Denver voters.

And so I will be rolling off the board in May, and Palika will be taking over as chair.

And I will join a completely separate committee to run reauthorization.

So we are in the process right now.

Rebecca and I have been having meetings in her off hours with potential people to join

the committee and also people to run the campaign.

So we will be doing reauthorization while before 2030.

Thank you, Ms. Pena, for your lifelong support of education and our communities.

Really appreciate that.

Madam President, I believe I saw your hand up and I also want to make sure Mr. Houston

has an opportunity as well.

So, um, you just had me to the queue.

Oh, in the queue.

Okay.

So Mr. Houston.

Yes.

Um, I think, uh, thank you for your service and your time.

Um, I think I would just like to applaud, uh, the work that, um, Rebecca has done over

time.

We really greatly appreciate how she embraced the, um, approved ordinances and has been

able to increase the supported organizations and allow, um, her team to get out into the

community.

And so they're not just operating from their office, but they're a part of the community.

And that's really resulted in the increase in partnerships being visible, strengthening ties with Denver Public Schools,

and really making this an attractive option for what we like to say.

A lot of times we focus on that post-secondary, but the way that they've been doing the high school services,

as we joke and just say that this is something

that can support folks in our community

from age 14 all the way to 30.

And so I just applaud the efforts of Rebecca and the team.

Well, thank you all.

We do have a queue, Council Member Cashman,

and Council President Pro Temer, Mayor Campbell,

and then Council President Sandoval.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks for the presentation.

The question I had, and I did see maybe a paragraph

on one of the slides, but I'm aware that you give scholarships, and it was expanded to certifications

and so on, but can you talk more about the high school support services? I think some 47,000 kids.

Yes, absolutely. So the high school support services funding is we focus it in five areas,

And then we also allow for novel and innovative services.

So I'm going to try to remember our five areas.

We focus on mentorship for high school students.

We focus on financial aid support, so helping students complete the CAFSA, FAFSA.

Also investigate whether there are trade opportunities out there if those are students who are interested in that.

We work on family connection.

Our organizations work on family connection.

and let's see, oh, academic and completion of all of the prerequisites that are needed

for collegiate and or credentials.

And there is one more that I can't remember.

Mental health.

Mental health.

Thank you, Adriana.

I wasn't reading your signal.

Mental health is the final one.

What family connections, what are you referring to?

So many of the students that we work with and that our organizations are working with

are first in their family to go to college.

So the idea is to work with those families, and there's a lot of research that says if you do this,

it really helps the students to get into college and then persist in college,

to have the families understand what college is and what it means,

what their student is going to be going through,

What is this new thing that might be happening to their student?

And so the most effective programs that help students get into college and really succeed are the ones that bring in the family early and make sure that they understand what's happening.

And they need to have three of the five.

Yes, and they need to have three.

Thank you, Palika, who is the chair of our high school support services committee.

They need to have three of those five areas.

the organizations that we fund need to have three of those five areas in place that they're working

on. And many of them have five. So an example, I'm just going to go back to our list of programs.

So Colorado Uplift is a program that many of you may know. They have, they actually run classes

within DPS. So they are in various DPS schools. They have an elective class that students can

take and then the students come in they investigate they make a plan for their future they fill out

the fafsa as part of the class and their parents are invited to events at the school to understand

what the student is preparing for to to do after school so that and i could go on and on well it

sounds like it's a combination of lifting up kids who are struggling academically perhaps yes or in

other areas of their life as well as kids who are academically solid but just need direction

along the way exactly right yes that's exactly right okay thank you that's all mr chair thank

you councilmember cashman council president pro tem um thank you mr chair and thank you

for the presentation and for you both to serve with you on this board i think one of the key

pieces that I've seen over your last 15 months, which is like you're like 10 years, has been

just this acceleration and this opening of an idea and connection of listening to the

partner organizations that Prosperity Denver works with, and then looking at it as a way of there's

no wrong door for young people. So whether you are part of a huge program that's helping you prepare

for college, or you're part of one that's, you know, you're one of maybe two or three participants,

you are still having a pathway and access to Prosperity Denver. And I think about the Prosperity

Denver Fund. And I think about, you know, my experience of coming from the nonprofit community

and sometimes how difficult it is to work with a city agency to have access to those broader city funds,

it's very difficult.

And this just provides that access to so many young people that I think have fallen through the cracks,

who maybe aren't seen, who maybe are with a program that's too small, that just doesn't get to be a part.

And so I think that's just a really important thing I wanted to highlight.

when you were talking and I think tremendous value.

But not to be missed that spend down.

So there was, you know, hey, we've got dollars sitting here

and really strategically saying, okay, you don't just like go out

and throw the dollars, but you do it in a very methodical

and a very thoughtful way to be able to get those dollars distributed.

Much in the same way like Denver Preschool Program back in the day,

sat on the board, always very conscious of not leaving people high and dry in their programs.

So being able to have a way that we fulfill commitments to young people, because these

are commitments to young people to be able to continue their college education if, you

know, program sunsets are, that we are, that the program is committed to do that.

And I think oftentimes, especially in the world we live in, those kind of commitments to young people that there is an organization that's partnering with them to be able to see them to completion is huge.

So those would be my two main things that I wanted to say.

So, Councilman, as you were talking, and thank you for those comments, I would just add DPS

in their leaky pipeline leading to graduation, about 50% of their students will go on to

two and four year colleges.

So 50% just go out into the ecosystem and there's no organization like the Denver Scholarship

Foundation that works with the students who are going to two and four year colleges to

act as a resource.

So it's critical for us looking at that other 50% because there's no single organization

that's tracking where those students are going and what their outcomes are.

What we do know is that many Denver youth want to stay in Denver.

And so finding a job opportunity that allows them the livable wage to live and eventually

purchase a home in Denver is a challenge.

So that 50%, that's just of those who graduate.

There are many that we lose well before that.

So the council decision to allow us to expand the credentials and apprenticeships has been

a huge opportunity.

And the challenge that Rebecca and her team have met is finding partner organizations

that actually work with students in that environment.

Because the two and four year is pretty dialed with Denver scholarship, but it's not dialed

with a non-traditional two and four year.

And as my friend Polika will say, we would all aspire to have our students go to two

in four-year colleges, but for those students who choose not to,

we need to give them a viable economic opportunity.

And I think, as the councilman suggested,

that those commitments really count,

especially for our first-generation students

who are pursuing whatever post-secondary pathway.

And I would add the other aspect

that you talked about was the evaluation process

and being able to do an evaluation cohort.

That's huge.

Yes.

I mean, from a nonprofit perspective and from a small organization perspective, to be able

to have access to track and to measure and to have similar measurement data points across

organizations, across our city is, I mean, we're saying this in a very, I don't want

to overhype it, but you're very like, and then we're going to do this data cohort and

rolling this out and thinking about what this looks like for broader community.

This is huge.

I think very much on, it's the, everybody always talks about being able to have that

broader outreach.

And because it hasn't been done, it's really groundbreaking at this level with this, for

this data point for these organizations.

I mean, it just hasn't been collectively done in this way.

It's pretty exciting.

Well, thank you for your leadership on this board as well.

Council President.

Thank you.

My question is, how is the ordinance written

that you have to go, is it written where it says

you shall go back to the vote of the people?

Because I'd be interested in looking at how

the language is written when I sat

on the member preschool program,

we didn't go back out for reauthorization.

I was able to bring an ordinance back through city council

and have it not sunset because it was so successful.

So I know that you all are thinking about reauthorization.

I just want to make sure that what I tell my staff,

have you exhausted every resource before you go

and pull the trigger on something like that.

And so when I was, before I was pro tem, I was on the Denver preschool program.

I sat down with Elsa and we looked at the language and we, I worked with the city attorney's office and said, you know, I need an interpretation from the city attorney's office on what language does need to go for reauthorization to the vote and what language does not.

and what's the best path forward for the Denver Preschool Program.

At that time, the Denver Preschool Program had just taken on Universal Preschool.

So they were also the fiduciary for Universal Preschool that the governor had initiated.

So it was going to be a huge undertaking to go for reauthorization

at the same time that they were going to be the fiscal sponsor for a universal preschool program.

And they set up a whole other entity for the universal preschool program because we can't

commingle dollars between our sales tax dollars and the universal preschool program, right?

And so I went to ELSA, and I think Janice Senden was the board chair at that time.

And I said, hey, what lawyers have you met with that you feel like you need to go back to the vote of the people?

And they were like, oh, it's our interpretation of the ordinance.

And I said, well, I'm not, that doesn't work for me.

I want an interpretation from our lawyers to make sure that we did.

And so then we, what my strategy was, is when I was on that board, I think we came back twice that year to my colleagues with a lot of data.

And I did one-on-ones with my colleagues without Elsa.

And I said, how do you feel like this is a vote of the people?

It started by the vote of the people.

Are you having concerns about it?

We talked about how we had done three-year-old programs during COVID.

We started a whole initiative.

Couldn't get the funding out for the four-year-olds.

We started a three-year-old program during COVID and, like, backed it all up with so much data.

And I think it wasn't this new class.

It was the older class, the previous class of council members.

And everyone was like, we're super supportive.

And then so we brought that forward.

And I brought it forward through an initiative, came to city council, had it go through, and was the sponsor.

So just wanted you all to, because I know SCFD is a different beast, right?

That's seven counties.

And so when we're talking about reauthorization, this one's newer.

I would say Denver Preschool had gone forward a couple times.

And then we put it because it had been so well established and it's been the fiscal sponsor for Universal Preschool.

I, along with my colleagues and Mayor Hancock at the time, determined that we wouldn't ever have a sunset.

So that one won't sunset.

Right.

But it had been vetted.

It had been around.

We had worked through COVID.

They had been amazing fiscal sponsors.

They had done their book so that when COVID hit, we had funding that we kept coming and that they didn't have to get money from the city.

And so because of that lasting impact, I wouldn't suggest that for you all.

So my language can't be like an exact template because then it won't come back.

It won't come back around.

We would have to like literally use a different avenue.

I explored that avenue.

If we don't like it at one time, how do we go back and kill it?

And that's the responsibility of city council.

I remember having that conversation with Councilman Swire.

She was like, if we do this, how do we undo it?

And I said a city council member could come back around and bring it forward through the city council process and we can dissolve the special tax sales tax.

And so she was like, oh, okay, that's great.

So just I would really encourage you before you put all the pieces together for a special committee of reauthorization to do what I tell my colleague, my staff, exhaust every single resource.

Thank you so much.

Lift up every rock, lift up everything.

If you all have a great partnership with Elsa,

you could call Elsa and ask her how that worked on their side.

I know how it worked as the city council sponsor on my side

and the heavy lift I did in partnership with the Denver Preschool Program.

Thank you so much, Council President.

That is extremely helpful, and we will absolutely take your advice.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And see, that's why we do the briefings.

I love it.

I always want to be cognizant of folks who are virtual our technology is fantastic.

But if folks are wanting to jump in from who are virtual to ask any questions or make comments, I'm going to give you a quick moment before we transition.

See, no, 1, see, no 1.

All right, I think we're good. I want to say thank you all for your leadership, your stewardship. I'm the.

Young's of 7, the first to attend a four year college, all of the supports you are providing to community or stuff that I would have loved to have. I did fine anyway.

But what you are doing, you're changing lives, you're impacting families and you're allowing communities to stay in Denver and to be here in the communities that they love.

And so to all of you, all the work that you do

for the communication team, everything that you do,

it is so beneficial to our city.

The name of your fund is correct, Prosperity Denver.

It is to ensure that we as a community

and the folks you serve can live and thrive.

So thank you all so much.

Thank you.

And so we have another briefing from some-

Great to see you.

It looks like great seeing you all

from our Department of Public Health.

I'll give you all a moment to transition

and come to the table.

If you need assistance, Teddy Montoya,

and from our team can help you set up the presentation.

We'll give you about just a minute.

That's all you can ask for, right?

So the DDPHE team is providing an update

on flavored tobacco, ending the sales of flavored tobacco

in the city and county of Denver.

And so if you are ready, Teddy,

I'll have you introduce yourself

and the members of your team.

I'll turn over the presentation to you.

Great, thank you.

Well, good morning, City Council members.

Thanks for the opportunity for us to present today

on the implementation of the flavored tobacco ban

here in Denver.

My name is Teddy Montoya.

I'm the Tobacco Program Manager here at the City and County of Denver overseeing a prevention

and education cessation pillar, which is our wonderful team over here.

And then this is my colleague, Brendan Gentry.

Do you want to introduce yourself?

Yeah.

Brendan Gentry, Tobacco Program Supervisor that oversees the compliance and enforcement

team here in City and County.

So our mission really is clear.

It's to protect and improve and promote the health and environment of Denver, right?

So today's presentation is really going to talk about the overview of our program's role

in the implementation of the ban and the evidence-based strategy around the decision to move into

banning flavors within the city and county of Denver.

So what we know is the CDC recommends it as an evidence-based strategy to reduce initiation

and youth use.

Flavored tobacco products are a major driver of youth initiation and nicotine dependence.

They mask harsh tastes of tobacco, making it easier to start and harder to quit.

Menthol, in particular, increases addiction and reduces quit success, which is what a big component of this flavor ban was.

These products disproportionately target Black, Latino, and LGBTQ communities, worsening their health disparities here in the city and county of Denver.

And what it really comes down to is evidence shows that comprehensive bans, including menthol, reduce tobacco use and improve quit rates.

Massachusetts and other localities have seen success in that.

So just to give you a little bit about a policy journey along this flavor ban and give you

a recap, I know many of you in the room have been a part of that.

So this really started way back in 2020, 2021.

The previous administration had that come to their desk to sign that.

Unfortunately, that was vetoed.

A previous bill was.

So advocates in the community really had to go back to the drawing board.

And so as the years passed, City Council took this on and passed that in 2024.

Our program started doing work immediately after the passing of that to get resources

and materials supplied.

Unfortunately, that was stopped early in 2025 due to proposition or measure 310 going and

collecting signatures for referendum on that.

That happened in November, referendum 310.

was a public health, there was a public mandate really around this ordinance in my opinion.

71% or 70.5% of Denver voters said yes to keeping this language on the ballot.

So there wasn't just strong support from city council about this flavor ban, but the

public knew this was a policy win that we can do here in the city and county of Denver.

So Denver residents really seen that this was a thing, a health priority for the city

and county of Denver.

So this policy really aligns with our strategic priorities, you know, health equity, environmental

justice, and addressing systemic racism in our community.

Tobacco use, as I said earlier, disproportionately affects certain communities, and it really

does remain the leading preventable cause of death in our country.

And we know reducing youth initiation and chronic disease supports mental health and

economic well-being in our communities.

So some data to kind of tell the story on youth use and the flavor impact.

So past 30-day vaping among youth has dropped from 19.5% in 2019 to 6.5% in 2023.

I do want to put an asterisk.

This is self-reported data for Healthy Kids Colorado.

So this is young people completing surveys in the school settings.

Then there's percentage of youth using products because of flavor.

That also has declined 27% from 2021 to 19% in 2023.

Although this shows great progress in reducing initiation, I do want to call out the purple bar, past 30-day menthol use.

That is a statewide data statistic.

Unfortunately, we don't have Denver-specific data for that.

But that data remains around 30% here in relation to youth use in menthol flavors.

And so menthol is a part of the flavor ordinance.

And so we are very happy that that was included because that is something we feel like does need to be addressed in our communities.

So it does indicate progress toward reducing initiation of flavor appeal, but there's still a lot of work to be done on this side of things.

Another data set we wanted to share with you guys is access barriers and retail compliance.

We know retail compliance is absolutely critical to addressing youth use in our communities.

Unfortunately, the percentage of youth not refused when buying in stores has increased in our communities from 72% to about 87% in 2023.

So that's a really big area that Brendan's team is working to address here as part of his work.

The perceived ease of getting e-vapor products remains high.

Nearly half of youth believe, so about 46% of youth believe that it is easy to get e-cigarette products at stores.

So this really underscores the importance of enforcement and retailer accountability as part of our prevention education standpoint with this work.

So I'll let Brennan kind of share about his program and what they do, and we'll go from there.

So here, what my team enforces is a couple different things, sales to minors.

We also look for signage that is required by the state,

although additionally for self-service displays, Lucy cigarettes, and if they have an active license.

Those are the things that we try to identify during inspection.

We do a lot of undercover investigations, two to four to every retail in city county.

We are cleaning up that number to try to get that a little bit higher,

but unfortunately right now that's kind of where we're at.

One thing that we really did was we implemented our fine schedule and re-updated our fine schedule in 2025 in April.

What that did was that removed the secondary violations, so those self-service displays, those loosies, are now critical violations and just will move along in our fine schedule.

And then additionally, now that we have a licensing piece and component, we can track retailers.

It is actually a work in progress that we're building out this dashboard and reporting out the retailer information that we are seeing in the field with our investigators.

One thing that we really wanted to do was update our standard operating procedure to include flavored tobacco products.

So that is something that our undercover age inspections are currently doing, is trying to attempt to purchase tobacco products and then identifying if the retailer is selling flavored tobacco products.

So we did want to share with you guys the updated fine schedule that Brendan previously mentioned,

because I think this is relatively important as we implement this process across the city and county of Denver.

So we just want to provide some clarity because we had to have some community questions around from retailers

about what a fine structure looks like if they are caught selling flavored products in the city.

If they are caught selling flavored products, it is just considered a violation.

But if a young person purchased the products as part of the inspection process, that's actually two violations within a visit.

And so they automatically would go into the second violation tier.

So it would be a $1,000 fine and then another $2,000 fine plus a 30-day suspension.

So we just want to be very clear as we message out to retailers that flavor can be defined as a critical violation in this process as we implement it throughout our violation history.

As part of the ordinance as well, there's going to be a look-back period that's revised every 12 months.

So for this year, it's a 12-month look-back period for our violation history.

Going into 2027, that'll expand to 24 months.

And then going into 2028, that'll look back in 36 months.

And so, Brandon, do you want to share what that kind of gives us the power on in terms of looking back from 12 to 36?

Yeah.

So to give you a baseline, we currently have 12 months, so meaning if someone violated today,

we would be in a 12 months till 2027 of 114.27.

So with this, this holds a little bit more accountability to retailers

to maintain that compliance for two and three years in the upcoming.

So that way, if they were to violate today,

and then a year later on the 15th, on 2027, they get a violation,

it would just go back to a first level violation

instead of progressing them through the fine schedule

indicated in 2027 and 2028.

So with the revisions, if they had gotten a fine on the 15th, we would have the full authority to look back at a 24-month period now,

which would hold them a little more accountable to the violation history that they have in this space.

So our approach to enforcement is really community-centered and collaborative in this process.

We really aim to ensure compliance across all retailers.

So a lot of our big box retailers and our smaller businesses that we have in the community,

We try to provide them with the same amount of resources and outreach we provide to any of those retailer settings.

We also want to minimize youth access to flavored tobacco.

We've had a lot of questions from community about what that looks like in terms of our enforcement process,

whether it's an undercover inspection, et cetera.

And so we've had to message that out.

And we want to maintain fairness and transparency through this process.

You know, we know there's a lot of interest from the retailer community on this process and from city council as well.

So we want to ensure that when we report out to you guys on our annual basis, that we have

the numbers that we need and we build out our dashboards to have the indicators you

guys are looking forward to in terms of that messaging back to community.

Let's see here.

So as we were talking about with our supporting to retailers, we have developed a significant

amount of resources and provided education to them in the last, I would say, month and

a half since the measure was voted a yes on. We have sent out bulletins to all active retail

tobacco store license holders, informing them that this has been voted yes on by the voters.

The start date is January 1st, and we've sent out two big blasts to them via email.

We also have developed resources and materials that we'll share with you guys here in a second

to inform retailers about this ban and what resources we have for them in terms of the

point of sales area of their store. We also are going to give them about a year, I would say,

a year window in terms of additional support and resources that they will need to get in

compliance with this. Unfortunately, because the Prop 310 measure happened, we weren't able to do

that soft enforcement process with them that we were hoping to do. And so we had to start with

immediate enforcement on January 1st, 2026, the way the language is written and how we developed

our enforcement processes. And so I think we're trying something unique with the collaborative

approach on this in terms of the resources and materials you're developing. Did you want to share

anything on that? Yeah. As Teddy mentioned, we emailed out. So whenever we email out, when an

application comes through, they have to submit an email address to be attached to that retailer

application. So if a retailer submits a license, they will have an email on file with us. So

So this email blast was directly sent to all of those emails that were on file.

So everybody received the same email blast.

And then additionally, as Teddy mentioned, we had posted all this information on our website

and what we call it frequently or FAQ, frequently asked questions,

that answered some of these questions that we had commonly been getting about the list of products,

how the enforcement is going to measure.

So this has been on our website since 2025 after, what did you say, about January, February?

About January, February, yeah.

So we have had this on our website for some time now.

And as Teddy mentioned, we are going to be mailing out, which we'll be talking about here in a second,

this information, this packet, this FAQ will also be included in that packet

so retailers can see some of those questions that we are commonly asked.

Yeah, and through quarter three of 2025, we had an inspector.

That was their sole job was to educate retailers about the upcoming changes and things like that.

And so they were out in the field doing external public-facing inspections related to this kind of work.

And so I think that kind of was where we were trying to be, yeah, that was trying to where we were trying to get all those resources and material as efficiently as possible.

And so we did direct mail.

We have direct mail going out this month on some of those materials.

We have signage going out this month.

The FAQs have been on our website.

We are developing some compliance and enforcement videos for retailers just to kind of walk them through on what an inspection looks like,

how to what an appeal or what a violation looks like if they were to receive one,

how to apply for a retail tobacco store license and stay in compliance with that.

So we hope that comes here in the middle of the year.

That's a pretty big task there.

Then we have our compliance matrix that's publicly available to the community.

And then as Brendan mentioned, we updated our internal standard operating procedures for this work.

This is some of the resources that the program's pushed out in terms of to retailers.

So we did do a window clean for them.

This has been mailed to all retailers here this month.

So every retailer will receive this.

They can shoot.

There's no requirement in the ordinance to post this information on their store.

But we did hear through the listening sessions that retailers felt uncomfortable on messaging to their consumers that they do not sell flavored products in their stores.

So we thought that we would take that upon ourselves to give them the resources they need for that.

So if they choose to put this window clean on the front entryway of their store, it would just tell consumers there's no flavor tobacco products sold here and that there is a ban for these products in the city and county of Denver.

We also are going to be sending out a point of sale decal similar to Tobacco 21 that we rolled out a few years ago.

This will also be complementary to their point of service displays.

And so that way they can share that with consumers as well.

Did you want to share a little bit with the retailer engagement you'll be doing potentially

at the end of January, early February?

Yeah, we have been asked to present in a few different committees here in the city and

county.

One of them, the EC3 committee, East Colfax committee has asked us to come out and speak.

We are going to do our best to provide that education.

There are some questions that we know that we're going to get that we can't really answer,

However, we're going to do our best to go out and try to inform retailers about this.

And so that way they can answer and we can answer some of these direct questions.

But they are also going to provide legal counsel for them.

So if they have those prickly questions that I can't really answer, I can defer to someone.

So we are commonly working with retailers and retailer communities to get out and present to them and be a face.

So that we are not just a blank enforcement.

So, for next steps for the program, as many of you know, enforcement did begin January 1st.

We're going to continue our retailer education, regardless of the flavor ban, for all Chapter

24 DRMC laws related to tobacco.

We do this pretty annually as a routine basis for us, so we'll continue that work.

And then we have an annual evaluation report that's due to you guys, I think in June or

July of this year where we can present some of that data and the metrics we're seeing

from community on compliance rates and what flavors look like in the community setting.

So that's kind of where we're at with things.

We're happy to take any questions from you guys now.

Thank you again for inviting us to be here today.

Well, Teddy and Brandon, thank you so much for kind of walking through that and walking

through the scale of your retail communication and outreach.

We do have a queue, Council Member Sawyer and Council President Pro Tem Romero Campbell.

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks you guys.

Really appreciate this information and this update from us.

My question for you is around enforcement.

I know that it's new and kind of in this weird spot because of the vote that happened in November.

I will just give you a piece of anecdotal information.

So as you know, I have teenagers.

One of my teenagers bought with one of her friends weed and flavored vape.

Okay.

Welcome to Teenagers in Denver.

Out of the back of one of the stores on Colfax.

So I just want to be very clear with you guys that I appreciate the position that you're

in in terms of enforcement, but flagging for you, they're not selling this stuff out the

front of the store anymore, but they're still selling it.

So I don't know how you enforce that.

And I don't know what our ordinance language allows you to enforce in terms of that or

whether that sort of shifts out of civil and goes, you know, to the DPD side or whatever.

I don't know kind of the specifics, but I will just say it happened in my house.

And if it happened in my house, it's happening in houses all over the city of Denver, right?

And so just curious kind of how are the language of our ordinance?

I'm asking because I'm asking, do we need to open it back up and fix anything based on the experience that my kid had?

several months ago. Yeah, that's a great question. And thank you for that. I think anecdotally,

we've been hearing similar stories in the community this last week. Yeah. We've heard that retailers

are having reward programs or selling to the people that they know are in their system versus

non-reward programs and things like that. And so Brennan and I are developing a plan where we're

going to go do some more public facing inspections. That's not on the undercover side of things,

just to ensure that retailers are getting into compliance at a quicker rate.

Unfortunately, it's going to be hard to identify without some of that feedback

of where certain retailers are doing that in the community.

But Brennan works closely with CEOs and I forget the new name of EXL,

Licensing and Consumer Protection to work through that.

So did you want to share a little bit what you've been doing in terms of that?

Yeah, so any retailer that sells any type of tobacco products

must have a retail tobacco store license, and that is in code.

If we do find them selling out back or something like that without a legal license,

and that's when we work with, as Eddie mentioned, our partners,

and they will issue a general violation to that person

and then come back for a revisit to ensure that has ceased.

So we kind of reacted at this point to where we see some of these pop up,

the complaints that come in through the community, and we have to react.

We do have our list that we do visit of those retailers,

but unfortunately if someone's selling out the back, you know,

we kind of have to rely on the community.

As Teddy said, too, these in-persons have kind of ceased in quarter three.

We want to try to pick these back up so we can be more of that in-person and then describe

to retailers what we're seeing because we are seeing some, I'm going to say, wonky things

in these retailers where they have full-paper products, but then they are not selling them

to the investigator, but they still have them in the stores.

So it really is a unique situation that we need to investigate further.

And so that's what we're going to, as Teddy mentioned, conduct some of these in-persons to see actually what's in the store, not an undercover.

Yeah.

OK.

I really appreciate that.

I mean, you're in such a hard spot, right?

And there's no amount of enforcement in the world that is going to be able to fix all of the challenges.

These are some very creative people who felt very strongly about this labor tobacco ban and were very against it

and continue to be against it no matter the 70 more than 70 percent of the voters of the city

of denver hoop um approved this and supported it so um i really appreciate that i will just say like

i'm hearing it it's happened to me right i'm glad you guys know about it i'm sorry that you're

hearing about it too do you have a um specific suggestion for how parents can report this kind

of thing when they find out that their kids are stupid and did this kind of stuff?

Yeah, 311, perfect, because 311 comes and sends every report in.

What I've been messaging to our partners, if they hear anything, see anything from all

enforcement agencies to let us know and to send those overs in.

We have received numerous emails and requests that have come through the community just

in different various methods, but we tell people report 311 so then we can have an official

case filed and then we can continue the investigation.

Awesome. Okay. And then in terms of the language of the ordinance as written, if there are things that you come across when you do your live enforcement, right, that can be addressed in our ordinance in a better way or a different way, because we didn't know that these things were going to pop up when it was written, will you come back and let us know?

because that's something we can change as council members to kind of shore up holes that,

because with all legislation, there's unintended consequences and there are things you just don't

know, right? So if we do know it now, as your enforcement starts to roll out and there are

changes that we can make that would help shore up your ability to enforce, let us know.

Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for that. I think it's going to be very fluid in the first two

quarters of this year and kind of understanding how the law applies to these retailers, but I think

And we'll work with Alex to have conversations with you guys if any of these issues arise that we're seeing that the ordinance has some iffy language or whatever, however it applies to a violation in that sense.

Okay.

So thank you for that.

Awesome.

Thanks.

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Sawyer.

Council President, Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you for the presentation.

I'm just sitting here thinking parenting today.

Oh, my gosh.

I love that you have this open communication with your kids, and we'll unpack this all day.

That's a lot. But it's also good information and insight, which also leads to my question.

You talked about different metrics that we'd be looking at for the future.

From where you sit, it's kind of both sides of the coin, right?

So there's going to be the more punitive ones, right, that we're looking at, the violations, et cetera.

I also believe that the voters, with the intent of this moving forward or maintaining,

is are we measuring the reduction of young people accessing and using flavored tobacco?

Is that part of what we will also see in the future for data that's being collected?

Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you.

I think a lot of our leading measures will be the compliance, say, that Brendan has instant access to in terms of violation type, history, et cetera.

I think our lagging measures will be like Healthy Kids Colorado data, for example.

That provides us a glimpse of what we're seeing.

Unfortunately, DDPHE doesn't do youth-focused data surveys in the community, and so we don't have the opportunity to see what those metrics look like.

So we rely on our partners at CDPHE to conduct Healthy Kids Colorado and see those tobacco-focused questions.

I want to say there's anywhere between 20 to 30 questions that they focus on tobacco products in that.

And so our program uses Healthy Kids Colorado to see if there's a change in youth use, the menthol flavoring, the access.

That data will be published in 2026, and unfortunately we won't see a new data set for another two to three years post-2026.

So that's why I say it's kind of a lagging measure.

we won't be able to report on that real-time data in that sense.

Does that answer your question?

Yeah, and remind me, because I know about the survey.

I can't remember if it is just, if it's just a cumulative, like, for Colorado,

or will they be able to pull out Denver-specific data that's for kids who are here?

Yeah, so Region 20 is Denver, and most of the data can be accessed for Region 20.

The menthols, for example, that is not accessible for Denver.

But for the most part, Region 20 is covered within the Healthy Kids Survey that we can share that data with.

Sure. And I know year after year, it's always good to have the consistency of the same data or the same questions being asked.

But if you anticipate adding any questions that would be specific to, I want to call it an ordinance, to the ban on flavored tobacco,

thinking about what are the questions that we need to ask to be able to get down to the impact for this vote.

Yeah.

This passing.

What am I?

I'm having trouble with my language.

That's good.

I'll stay in the ordinance.

You know, I think another thing I do want to bring to your attention,

because I think it's something that we will be looking for as an indicator,

is we're partnering with DPS on a pilot vape waste diversion program.

And so we are in five schools right now collecting vapes for students who have been caught with vaping in school.

And so hopefully that data will see reduction in the next few years on that.

Again, it's a pilot project.

We're only in five schools, but we're looking to expand that in this next grant year with that project.

And so we're hoping we can kind of build some metrics and data questions around that in our evaluation plans

to kind of see how those catch points can influence our data that we're reporting out on.

That's great.

I would love to hear more about the pilot program.

I imagine not only high school, but maybe middle schools are some of the schools that you're also reaching out to as well.

Yeah, our prevention program over here.

They're smiling.

I don't want to call them out.

Well, Tony, since you highlighted them, why don't you introduce the folks from the team that's there,

and if you wanted them to speak to any parts of the question from Council President Pro Tem.

But each, for the three of them, if you don't mind.

Yeah.

So Peggy Sarcomo here, she leads our multi-unit housing smoke-free technical assistance work.

Can you mind standing up so the camera can catch you?

She's our smoke-free expert in residential health protections.

So she's been with our team, and she's been doing this work for, she's well-versed in this work for a long time.

Yeah, seven years.

So Angie Kagosik, she's our program supervisor overseeing our grant funding work for our prevention education cessation pillar.

And then we have Daniel Neiman, who actually oversees the work that DPS is doing with our Vape Waste Diversion Program.

Daniel, did you want to come up and just kind of highlight that?

I'm going to the mic right here.

Just reintroduce yourself so it's official online, and then please share.

Yeah, hi.

My name is Daniel Neiman.

As mentioned, I'm a Tobacco Program Analyst with DPHE.

and I'm overseeing the the vape disposal program that we have piloted in five

Denver high schools right now we would love to expand as Teddy mentioned into

more schools and into middle schools and eventually into the community as well

the vape vapes pose a unique environmental issue they have three

different types of waste they have e-waste hazardous waste excuse me four

different types of toxic waste and then plastic waste which is the casing that

goes around the actual vape product.

So taking those to a hazardous waste facility,

separating them out, recycling what we can,

and then incinerating everything else.

It's a big process.

We want to keep these out of schools.

When they pile up, they can leak those hazardous materials.

They can actually explode and catch fire.

So I want to make sure those are out of schools

for a number of reasons.

So as Teddy mentioned, one of the things

that we are tracking is the brands that youth are using,

the flavors that youth are using.

So we do have that.

For the past year, we've been tracking that.

Wow. Well, bless you.

Thank you so much for that.

I was even thinking of the waste disposal

and the actual combustibility of those horrible gases

and chemicals inside of that plastic tube.

Yeah.

The more you know.

just thank you thank you for being here and i think that that also highlights it's a multi-prone

approach it's not a one-shot solves at all so i just appreciate the work you're doing

thank you thank you mr chair thank you council president pretend council member cashman

thank you sir thanks for the presentation guys thanks for what you're doing keep our kids healthy

what does enforcement actually look like how many people are involved

Is this, you go see 20 places a month undercover?

Are you only complaint based?

How's it all?

So we have a list of retailers.

Our goal is to visit everybody two to four times a year with an undercover visit.

So we visit everybody.

So during these undercover visits, our youth are identifying if they see a flavored tobacco product,

if they attempt to purchase as normal, and if they're unsuccessful,

They will then relay the information to the investigator.

Then the investigator will go in and purchase.

It has been a lot of times successful with the receipt to show that we were there.

So right now we are just conducting the undercovers.

We are putting pause on our TSL inspections, those forward and facings.

Retail tobacco store license, I'm sorry.

License inspections, kind of those forward and in-person facing.

Okay.

And so you said two to four times a year is your goal.

How many retailers are there?

We're at like 576, 578, somewhere right around that range.

So nearly 600 is kind of what we gauge at.

And where do the youth come from?

So they are a regular employee of the city and county of Denver.

They must apply.

They must go to the interview process.

So they are actually hired in-house.

So you can actually find them in workday, all the above.

But they are here hired as DDPH employees.

Awesome.

And they go through a standard operating procedure training on a,

we try to do it on a two-year basis with them.

So they get trained in how to go in,

they shadow other young people when they go into the store and things like that.

So it's a pretty robust undercover operation that they do.

I always say it's the greatest high school job ever.

It's literally undercover, go try to purchase,

and then you travel to the next location and attempt that.

It gets to be shady and above the line.

And we welcome you to join us on a ride-along

if you have time and are interested in shadowing the program,

we do offer that as an opportunity for you to join us

on what that looks like.

We'll definitely be in touch.

I appreciate that a lot.

That's all, Mr. Paul.

Thank you, customer Cashman.

Look around and see if there's anyone else in the queue,

anyone online.

First of all, I want to thank the co-sponsors,

the original sponsor, Council Member Sawyer,

for, okay, good.

Council Member Sawyer for your sponsorship.

We have so much communication coming at us as we're speaking, so I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anyone.

Thank you for taking the lead on this several years ago and really being a coach and a mentor to us who took it on this time around.

Thank you so much, Council Member Gonzalez-Guterres, who is online, and Council Member Lewis for co-sponsoring.

This is a lot of work on the council side and making sure that we are really putting forward, not balancing, but putting our children's health first,

as well as being mindful and aware of, and I'm getting phone calls during my, I think,

and being mindful of really the impacts to businesses as well, because this has a dual impact,

but our community's health and children's health comes first.

I want to thank our Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection,

all the folks and their attorneys that worked on this,

the amazing folks from the Department of Public Health and Environment,

and our folks from Denver Police.

I mean, it was a collaborative approach and then the coalition of folks 100 healthcare practitioners throughout the city and state that came in and for over a year work collaboratively.

Thank you to the voters for saying yes on something that we believe is common sense in our ways of ensuring that our children, our families are safe. This is great work. You absolutely will be coming back in June.

There's no ins if or buts about that and we look forward to hearing more from you. We have

No items on consent and with that the meetings. Thank you