Start to my left for introductions.

Oh, that's me.

My left.

I was trying to signal the flin.

I was going like this.

I'm Sarah Perry.

I'm one of the two council members at large.

Good afternoon, Darrell Watson, fine district nine.

Afternoon, Chantillo is district eight.

Good afternoon, Paul Cashman, South Bender District 6.

Hey everyone, Sedana Gonzalez Gutierrez, the other council member at large.

Good afternoon, Floral Vidres, lucky district seven.

Good afternoon, Chris Hines.

Divers perfect time.

Jamie Torres, West Denver District 3.

Kevin Flynn, South West Denver's District 2.

Great.

We have two updates today, two presentations.

And our first presentation is from Council members Sawyer, Alvidres, and Heinz about the biofund policy.

And I turn it over to you.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

So really appreciate your time today.

This is something that we have been working on for over two years.

So you will remember in the fall of 2024, we moved a budget amendment to fund the biofund, the business impact opportunity fund, which is a fund that provides dollars to small businesses along corridors that are impacted by horizontal construction.

So think the Colfax BRT and the businesses along Colfax.

Also think uh the Broadway bike lane and the businesses along Broadway, Santa Fe and the businesses along Santa Fe up in council district one, there was a bike lane that was built in.

Um so the biofund right now does not exist.

Um can you yeah, oh I guess I should say the agenda.

Purpose background, you there's our agenda.

We have two options to discuss with you today and a bunch of questions.

Um so the the biofund has existed um as far back as we can tell, 2013.

It was created um and run through Mile High United Way and uh the Center for Collective Wealth Building, I think.

Hold on just one second.

Um Center for Community Wealth.

Um as far back as 2013 in response to the I-70 Central 70 project.

Um in sometime around 2019, it was formally renamed the Biofund, but it has existed since at least 2013 as an opportunity to support businesses during horizontal construction projects.

So the biofund does not exist anywhere except in policies and procedures, rules and regs within our Department of Economic Development.

Um we have been looking at ways to formalize it and to uh make sure that it is um providing the impact that it needs to provide in order to really help support our businesses.

Um so we did a little bit of pure city research.

You you'll hear from the administration that uh no other city does this.

That's not true.

Um so we have a couple of examples here of uh cities that do provide business impact um support.

And uh thought we would just show you some of the pure city research that is most aligned.

We have a white paper on it that has been shared with the administration as well.

So I don't know why this persists, but here we are.

Um and so it pure city research for you if you'd like to know more about it.

So a little bit of um background, huge shout out to the Department of Finance, Lisa Martinez Templeton set up a Power BI dashboard that we sent you the link to today.

Thanks, Ben, for doing that.

Um so you can actually link on it and go through and take a look at this Power BI dashboard.

It's split up into three different districts along Colfax, the Colfax bid, the Bluebird bid, and the Mayfair Colfax Mayfair Business Improvement District.

Um, and then you can kind of see sales tax revenue, you can see sales declines, you can see those different kinds of things, um, which is a really fantastic opportunity to see a lot of the information and the clear impact that construction like the Colfax BRT has on the businesses that are but that uh that line the corridor.

Um I will say we have heard a lot uh from the administration about ways um that this is not gonna work and that it can't possibly be formalized and that it's not worth doing at all.

Um and that's very concerning to us as council members given that um our general fund is made up of somewhere between 54 and 60 percent, depending on the year, sales tax revenue.

And that sales tax revenue comes from our businesses.

So uh it costs significantly more to lose a business along a corridor that is being constructed than it does to put a little bit of money into keeping that business open while they are impacted by a city construction project.

Yeah, and I would just like to add that it also creates instability for the workers that are working on those jobs that may have to move around.

And also, although this data is really great, it doesn't we can't tell you where these businesses would be if it was not for these construction projects.

And I think that's something important to note when we are still recovering from COVID and still have a lot of uncertainty.

Yep.

And are you is this are you taking over from me here?

Yeah, this one?

Okay, go ahead.

Great.

Um and so the next slide for slide six is about the eligibility criteria.

Um this talks about who would qualify for the program.

So one of the important things is that they would have to have a loss of 10% over the last 30 days in order to qualify for this program.

In addition to that, they would have to be within a certain requirements of distance from the actual construction itself.

And that um the 30-day consecutive period compared to pre-construction sales and during construction revenue.

That last requirement ensures that we're direct directing relief to the businesses with a documented measurable impact.

It also would only be available to businesses that have an annual gross revenue between $30,000 and five million, which keeps the smoke at focus on small businesses and not large corporations.

Uh so we have the two proposed um changes or proposed options.

The first option is being presented would be to establish a biofund program, formally an ordinance that ties its funding directly to project costs, specifically dedicating either about 1% or a half a percent of each qualifying project total cost to the biofund.

The inspiration here was similar to Denver's public art ordinance, which automatically sets aside a portion of capital project costs for a specific purpose.

That said, there is an important distinction that we will need to work through.

The public art ordinance deals with capital dollars while the biofund will be operational needs.

Many of these large horizontal projects are funded through federal grants and bond dollars that legally can't be used for operational costs.

So while the concept of dedicating a percentage is appealing for its predictability and having that solid amount, we need to do additional research to figure out the right percentage and which portions of the property of the project's capital stack should actually flow to this created fund.

Is that yes?

Okay.

And then option two is it takes a different approach by layering multiple tools together rather than relying on a single funding mechanism.

Under this option, we will establish the biofund program and ordinance, but we will also authorize the Department of Finance to remit a portion of the business's sales tax, um, occupational privilege tax or personal business property tax for the duration of the period when they're being impacted by the construction.

On top of that, we'd establish a revolving larger loan fund that businesses could draw from.

The goal here is not to is to give business uh more substantial and flexible relief than one grant alone can provide.

And it also would be taking from the revenue that they're generating, um, not other places.

And that's kick it over to you.

Yep.

So some of the thoughts about um you know the proposal is including a grant program.

So we want to make sure that the um the existing biofund continue continues to operate while it has existed since 2013, as far as we can tell, um, it doesn't mean that it will exist in 2027.

So just as we uh have found other opportunities to keep funds going, like the downtown Denver Development Authority Fund, uh, this is an opportunity for us to continue this funding process.

Um the idea is to get immediate relief to businesses that are impacted by city initiated um horizontal construction projects.

And uh and I just I'd point out that um the the idea of proposal one as in um getting a percentage of the uh of the the total cost of the project is really to align the um uh the relief with the impact as in the construction project is impacting the business, and therefore the relief should come from that impact.

So um really the the grant money is uh is a is a low amount.

It's not um we're not designed to make a uh a business profitable.

We're trying to keep them afloat.

Um and um uh and again we're trying to figure out exactly what the right funding source is.

Uh the uh tax rebate idea is um uh is just that we're required to collect the sales tax, um, but we can uh we can rebate uh those taxes um that that is uh uh something that we can possibly do.

Uh it's state law that requires us to uh collect the taxes.

Um so uh it would be another tool, and so the more thing, the more moving parts we have, the more opportunities for failure.

Um it can um, you know, we can do grants and loans and rebates, uh so they're not mutually exclusive.

And um uh and again that they're state laws like Tabor that require it to be a rebate.

Uh revolving loan fund um would uh would allow the economic development and opportunity office to um to have a revolving loan fund.

That the the goal here, by the way, is not to create an unfunded mandate for DEDO or development uh uh Denver economic development and opportunity.

The idea is for us to um say we need business uh support and provide them with that mechanism too.

So um so this loan fund is is one of those examples.

Um we want to uh to give the business maximum flexibility because not every in uh business industry is the same, not every um season is the same for different business types.

Uh so um so we want to make sure that uh we allow the business to do what the business does best and and that's forecasting their own uh revenue and expenses.

So um this is our I think this is our last slide.

Um so some of the thoughts that we have for you is um one, should we have a biofund?

Uh just because we've had it since 2013, again doesn't mean that we have to have it in 27 or 2027.

Um should there be a dedicated funding source, as in uh the uh the one percent for the arts.

Um if there is a dedicated funding source, um is it is one percent the right number?

Half percent, quarter percent, um something more, I don't know.

Um should there be a special revenue fund so that it um that the fund one rolls over from year to year, but two, so that Dito knows what how much money they have in the banana stand to use a rested development quote.

As in we want to know uh, you know, Dito wants to know how much money is there, and um if they rely on the general fund, that's subject to the budget process every year and is a little less determinant than a special revenue fund.

Um should Denver rebate taxes?

Um should we uh establish a revolving loan fund?

Uh should the cost come out of the general fund, and if not from the general fund, from where um and timeline of where we uh where we have been to where we are now questions.

Okay, thank you for the presentation um and thank you for bringing this forward.

Uh we have everybody in the queue.

So we're gonna go ahead and start off with Councilman Cashman and follow with Councilman Flynn.

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks for doing this, guys.

Yeah, um answer the question absolutely.

We need the biofund.

And uh I'm a lot less concerned with um the possibility that maybe we overfund it so that maybe a business gets 45 cents more than they need than I am an underfiguring it.

I mean the uh the uh just wacle uh that a pro a project like Colfax or Broadway uh does the impact on these businesses besides the technical dollars loss, the disruption of every day for in Colfax uh a couple of years trying to get to work, uh you know, keep get the employees and so on and so forth.

It's great project, thanks for doing it.

We need we need to fund it.

And I I would uh right off the top, I like the idea of a set aside, you know, uh one percent or something like that.

But again, to make sure that we're providing enough dollars.

Thank you, madam chair.

Thank you.

Councilman Flynn.

Um thank Madam Chair.

Uh that was fast.

Uh on that one percent, option one, um, is we've talked with the Department of Finance.

Is that something that can be done?

Uh with the Department of Finance is interested in continuing the biofund, apparently.

Okay.

Yeah, and I what I will say is that it seems like it would be able to be done with the admin percentage, not the capital percentage, but there's always this admin part of those costs that seem like those could be diverted to support the local small businesses.

But yes, as Councilwoman Soyer says they haven't been very cooperative or motivated, it seems to support this effort.

What what about Dito?

They also have not been very supportive or proactive.

Okay, that's we should bring them in and ask them why.

They're here.

Why?

Why are you not supportive?

Good afternoon, Council members.

Chris Lowell, Denver Economic Development.

I didn't say I wasn't supportive of the biofund.

Yeah.

But um so of course we see the value of the biofund.

That's why we're doing the program at right now.

Um it's it's funded through the end of 2026.

That's all I have to say about that at this moment.

Um your forensics, I'm very impressed that 2013, uh going back to 2013.

That may have been related to the North Denver Cornerstone Collaborative, potentially, so I'd have to go back and like look at that.

But the more formal history is that with 200,000 dollars roughly in general fund money starting in 2019, um, the city kicked in that amount for the I-70 um project.

Um and then, of course, the year after, how could we all forget COVID happened?

We had an infusion of millions of dollars of our ARPA money.

About 80% of the biofund historically has gone to um uh COVID mitigation.

Um lack of foot traffic and um all those grants were associated with that that program.

In 2024, we can pivoted back to construction mitigation.

As I understand it, this ordinance would now be again a construction mediation program solely.

So just a few few details there.

But thanks.

Yeah, I mean, and and what we think I'm just gonna speak for us, but jump in, you guys.

Um we feel really strongly that while COVID was an extraordinary event and the ARPA dollars that um were able to support our businesses in COVID relief made a lot of sense.

ARPA dollars are gone.

So the question is how do we move this program forward in a way that supports our businesses?

Should our Department of Economic Development, which is one of the only agencies that is truly almost entirely funded out of the general fund um and therefore regularly takes bigger hits than other agencies that have funding sources, dedicated funding sources, um, be doing homeless encampment cleanup with those dollars?

Should they be doing, which is what they have been doing, um, you know, should they be using we have tens of millions of dollars in uh our homelessness resolutions, then we have a dedicated funding stream there.

We have um very limited dollars for supporting our businesses that are impacted by horizontal construction projects, and so we feel that we should focus the biofund dollars on supporting our businesses.

Right.

If there is um if the one per if we went with option one, the one percent, and at the end of a project there's a balance remaining in that fund, what would happen with it?

That's why we uh asked about the special revenue fund because we do think that creating a special revenue fund that would because these horizontal construction projects don't take a year.

Yeah, right, they take two years or three years.

And even if um like the Colfax corder are split up into three separate sections, it's not like the entire corridor is being done at the same time, right?

The part from Broadway to York is where it was started, the part from Yosemite to um you know Quebec hasn't wasn't even touched during that first year.

So there those businesses are not impacted at that time and therefore shouldn't qualify for dollars from the biofund at that time, right?

But then as it moves east from Broadway, um, you know, and the there'll be businesses impacted in the midsection, there'll be businesses then impacted in section three while section one is ready to go.

And so if I could just add one thing from my experience having the bike lane put in on Broadway, especially like Colfax is similar to Broadway, and it's a very old street.

So when you start tearing it up, the under-infrastructure is very unpredictable.

So there were blocks that were closed for a long period of time.

One of the things that I remember is at HQ on South Broadway, that it flooded the entire basement.

And so they they were closed for at least 30 days, um, which cost them over a hundred thousand dollars.

They got a 10,000 dollar grant from Dito for the biofund.

That doesn't even scratch the surface.

They were extremely grateful for the $10,000, but this is a very, very small help in a very, very difficult time for a lot of these small businesses.

I would like to make one suggestion, then it would be if this one if it we went with one percent and at the end of the project and it's buttoned up and the punch list is done, that there is a balance that it somehow return to the project that it not roll over to other projects that are also to get getting to get their one percent because one project shouldn't be subsidizing another.

At least that's my first blush at it.

Uh find if we can find a way to transfer that surplus to some other productive use of business uh related use.

Uh I would like to see that.

On option two, uh, just real quickly.

Uh again, I guess the answer is no, because my question is gonna be the Department of Finance give an opinion as to could we divert uh sales tax, personal property, business personal property tax, and whatever the the other category was.

Can we do that without being in an urban renewal district or a TIFF district?

Yes, this is the short answer.

There are um some concerns about uh like TABER and legally speaking, what we can, you know, could we what we could rebate and those kinds of things?

Um you know, we would have to get that information that we've been asking for for two years.

Okay.

Yeah from the agency.

I I like option one in that case, then go ahead.

Yeah, councilman.

Um with option one, I I'd want to make sure with your suggestion of having if the project's done, having the funds go back to the project.

Um certainly it's it's it's worth researching.

I don't want to um I hope that we can make it so that uh there isn't some uh financial incentive not to give out funds to businesses so that they go back to the project and it's um you know extra found money for the project.

So I'm sure there's a way for us to consider that, but that's that's that would be one of the things that I'd want to think about.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you.

Followed by Council Member Tars.

Thank you.

Thanks for this presentation and thanks for the work on this.

Obviously, I have an interest in this with my uh council district, and so I'll go quickly through the list that you all asked.

Um, should there be a biofund?

Yes.

Um to the second question, yes, to the third question, yes.

In terms of the rebate, let's talk more about that because I'm not really sure I understanding.

I would love to uh know a bit more about the revolving loan fund and like how you all are kind of thinking about that.

Um, should it come from the general fund?

Yes.

Um, and if we can find somewhere else, also yes.

Um I just did my homework.

Now I have some questions for um the mayor's office as well as Dito because it sounds like this is fantastic.

And so I'm curious for the mayor's office.

Why is the mayor's office not supportive of this?

Is there what's the roadblock as well as Dito?

Because it wasn't clear from the answer that you gave, Chris, if you all were supportive.

Hi, my name is Angela Cassius.

I'm the mayor's legislative director.

I want to be clear, we never said that we were not in favor of a biofund.

Very clear about that.

Number two, we raised concerns about the suggested options.

That's it.

About how to how to pay for it.

And so I don't know if someone from Finance wants to stand up and explain that, but that is what our concerns were around.

Um have you all provided the bill sponsors suggestions on what could improve the two options to be able to make it work if if the administration is of what of a biofund, I would imagine that they'd be looking for pathways more success versus saying, well, these two don't work.

I have begun an internal conversation with our team about what that could look like.

Um so I would appreciate it if Department of Finance would come up and suggest that.

Thank you.

Hi, Carolina Flotus, Department of Finance.

We thank you.

We did um we have been connecting with the council sponsors for a while now, and actually we did talk about the one percent typically, and as all you all know, capital dollars cannot be spent on operating functions, and so that was the barrier for the one percent, making it the same as like the art um fund that we've created in the city.

That's out that's not what I heard them present.

It's in proposal number one.

It's under the consideration.

But I thought when councilwoman Albidra's presented, she said while it's similar to this, we understand that we can't use it in the same way that the art program is designed, which is capital dollars, they were suggest suggesting something else.

Am I misunderstanding that the administrative portion or other pulling in general fund dollars for that one percent instead of using the capital?

I was going through, I was going through the options, so that was all good.

That was all part of option one.

Yes, that was all part of option one.

We've also discussed um the rebate program.

I think we um you all are familiar with rebate programs.

Uh the vendors still need to collect all those taxes, and we could create a program that does not discriminatorily offer those you know benefits back to the community.

Um, and we do have a slide deck that I believe Dito created back in October that we'd be happy to share with council.

Why the second option wouldn't work?

As to the week specifically.

As to the how we could specifically okay.

Dito?

Hi Scripts, good to see you again.

Can you speak a bit about why that may or may not work from the perspective?

Tax rebates, yeah.

Not my area of expertise, unfortunately.

But um we did, yeah, like Carolina mentioned, we did meet with the council sponsors in October of 2025 to talk through three different tax mitigation options.

The only one that was deemed legal at that point was a rebate, um, as they had described yourself to collect it, but we can rebate it as a city.

Um a little bit above my pay grade, uh right.

But um and and so yeah, we had that discussion in October, and then that has now landed in this this presentation deck as an idea.

So is Dito supportive of the biofund, like maybe not the two options, but uh the biofund as a concept and a commitment to work with the bill sponsors.

Yeah, and we have that come to life.

And we totally have.

I would say I mean I've been responsive to the increase from your guys' office since I've started my tenure at Dito.

So completely yeah, happy to partner.

And um we know I think the bottom line is that these business corridors, these small business corridors are the cultural fabric of our city.

Um and that's why we're currently engaged in a in a bio program that's not even required by ordinance, right?

And we have been since 2019.

Um yeah, we understand the the tax implications of it and the cultural implications and the jobs, as councilman Heinz has also mentioned too.

So, yes.

I appreciate in in two years is a long time, right?

We think about businesses that are struggling, and so um being responsive but being progressive are different.

And so I would love to see you all make some progress on being able to put something in place that could help businesses today and not in another two years.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate that, Councilman Russian.

I just want to reiterate um one, thank you for your questions and two, you know, the rebate program actually really came to my interest in 2024 when very quickly the administration offered it to a data center that was proposed to be built that we didn't move forward, and so when they want to, things move very quickly.

And so I our frustration and why we say they haven't been supportive when they're saying they are supportive, is that speed of getting back and getting something going for I know how much you care about Colfax in your district?

Absolutely.

I really appreciate that to this.

Thank you.

Councilmember Louis, I don't I just want to give a value statement.

Um, you know, we uh the people of Denver said yes to a quarter percent sales tax that created housing stability, um, and that is providing direct support to individuals who are um uh housing insecure.

Um we also have the opportunity, and that's about 50 million dollars a year with a quarter percent sales tax.

Um we could also provide support uh for employers impacted by construction so that those employers can pay housing and transportation costs um for those uh those workers and uh and so I would say both are valuable in s in some way we should make the dollars demonstrate and align with the values do we want direct assistance for those who are housing insecure?

Absolutely.

Do we want to help um uh maybe less direct city some uh financial support and provide a little to uh to small businesses so that they can provide for housing and transportation like what housing stability does directly.

So I think that's the kind of the value statement that I that I uh think about, and if we can add some more dollars on the on the business support side, I think that will help us with the direct support as well.

Thank you.

And I will just um quickly wrap up by saying that you know we've done a lot of stakeholdering with a number of the different business improvement districts that have been impacted in our districts um and gotten the feedback from um you know from them because they are the ones who are really helping to support and in touch with the businesses on the ground um feeling the impacts of this construction, right?

And so most of the feedback that we hear is that they love the biofund and and that it's really really great.

There are some tweaks that could be made to improve it, right?

So for example, there's sort of uh break a break point um in annual income, annual revenue, where 7500 and is is enough to help and very impactful for those businesses, but that $15,000 higher level is not enough, right?

Um we have heard um concerns about uh just the the work it takes to implement the biofund just based on the number of fraudulent applications that they have to um go through to confirm, right?

And and kind of what they see there.

So there's a lot of moving parts to this.

Um I think the overarching statement that is important to us is that if we want strong cities, we have to have a strong general fund, which means we have to have strong businesses.

And when we are we, the city are impacting these businesses, which then impacts our revenue.

We have a responsibility, in our opinion, to do whatever we can to fix that.

Does that mean like council member said Councilmember Heinz said fix everything?

No.

But uh, you know, can we help?

Absolutely, and and to um not do that because the administration is concerned about um protecting the general fund for their priorities, but not ours, it's not acceptable to us.

And so that's where we find ourselves today.

Understood.

Thank you.

Um thank you.

This is a really good and robust conversation, I think very much needed.

We also have four members in the queue and 15 minutes to go.

Um so I'm gonna um have Councilmember uh Torres uh followed by uh Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Thank you so much.

Um so it was devastating to learn when I learned that Morrison Road wouldn't have any uh uh business support um assistance um knowing um how much it was needed in West Colfax and East Colfaxes.

We saw those projects go through.

So um I am really interested in um a a future path for this, and what I think is really important for us to walk away from um is uh COVID also gave us a chance, an opportunity to learn about how to do things differently.

Um whenever it when it just not not just when it comes to public health, um, but how you run a city and when we have these really um long lasting and uh like these construction projects that are like they're never going away.

Um one, we can't shy away from doing them because we want to improve those those locations.

Um but we often will because of the kind of disruption that they have when I think about the the businesses along Morrison Road, um it is heavy on my mind about how much they teeter on um kind of a a cliff of continuing to be there and not.

Um what I am interested in, and I can follow up and find out a little bit more.

I don't know if the Westwood um uh JID, the Morrison Road JID or the West Colfax bid gave you input.

Not yet.

We'd love to hear from them.

Yeah, I would too.

Um because uh one I I I I want to better understand for small businesses, is a revolving loan fund useful at all?

Because it's not always, right?

If you've got to pay something back or there's a percentage attached to it, sometimes it can be very useful.

Um is the 10,000 average rate that a business might get useful when the business may experience far greater losses.

And nobody's gonna turn down 10,000, but did it really help keep them afloat?

I'm not sure.

Um what I've heard more about is the timing of that funding, and that it has to come after they've demonstrated loss as opposed to knowing it's gonna happen and being able to do it kind of proactively.

So I'm interested in that piece.

I it is um a huge question of how you arrive at this shave, um, how you arrive at it and what is the the tool for it.

But if we have to build something around something that we know is really valuable and really necessary, I think we try to do that.

Um I don't mind the rebate conversation.

Everything is complicated in government.

Um I think we can work through it.

I just thank you for keeping it alive.

I feel like um the question for me becomes what future projects trigger the utilization of this.

Um, because um, you know, we're building a rec center.

Did that impact businesses versus horizontal digging up the street?

We know your uh entryway is not going to be accessible for months at a time.

Um things like that that could be kind kind of different.

But um I'd just be interested in kind of where you start to go with this and just kind of testing it a little bit with residents in my district.

We'd love to help.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks.

And I agree, Santa Fe's a likely um component or a likely qualifier for this.

Yeah, yeah.

And more than should have been.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Thank you, um, Madam Pro Tem.

Um thank you guys for bringing this.

I remember when I was first um elected, and Councilwoman Sawyer was like sending emails about the biofund, and I was like trying to, you know, learn about all these things um very quickly, and quickly, not only from your advocacy, Councilwoman Sawyer, but also from businesses on East Colfax as these things were starting to generate um getting lots of calls to our office as an at-large office, um, and and trying to respond and you know, get them directed to the right place, and then they would get the the funding and it would, you know, just be a fraction of what um they really needed.

And so it has been really concerning because there's a lot of like immigrant-owned you know, you know, uh people of color owned businesses, and it's it's just really hard for them to be able to stay afloat, and so I appreciate the sentiment around like we aren't trying to make a profit or they're not trying to make a profit off of these funds so that they can keep their business alive um and keep it going and then after reap the benefits of like the Colfax BRT, right?

Um, because we know there's going to be benefits to that to be had by those businesses, and so they deserve to be able to get those benefits um and be able to stay intact.

So I appreciate like the entire sentiment.

Um I'm still trying to wrap my head around like the two different options, and um I'm really hopeful that you know DOF that that Dito will um help in determining what is the best option um for us as the city and how we can best operationalize either of these options, or is there a way to modify one of these options to make sure that it can be operationalized, right?

Because we all always talk about how we want to pass all these great things, and but we want to make sure that it can actually be done.

Um and so I am supportive of whatever the path is to actually make this happen.

Um and and I will continue to be supportive of that because of what we hear from our small businesses.

Um one quick question that I had was about the bond, like all of the bond projects that are getting ready to take underway.

Um would this be would those be qualify for like if something and one of these iterations were to pass, would any of those be able to qualify if they're having an impact on like one of those on businesses in those areas for any of the bond projects?

Um it depends on the specifics of the bond project, but it needs to be noted, and this is part of the challenge, right?

Bond dollars have to be used for capital investment, they cannot be used for operational.

So um but there is a large amount this is the largest bond to ever have a large amount of admin cap.

So I'm curious if that could be an option.

Yeah, I mean, so I think the the challenge is sort of um getting the administration to play ball.

Okay.

Okay.

I mean, I think that would definitely be helpful.

That's what I kept thinking was about all of these bond projects that are about to kick off and um in the impacts that might be had by businesses.

I've heard from businesses on Santa Fe who want to move, don't want to be on Santa Fe because they're worried about the what they're gonna lose.

And these are small, like local homegrown owned businesses.

I mean, we're talking about Santa Fe Art District, and I've heard that directly from the owners.

And so um I'm hopeful that this something can be done and it can be done quickly.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Um Councilmember Perry.

Um it's okay.

I pretty much had my thoughts on comments answered.

Thank you very much for the cycle.

It's important.

Great.

Uh Councilmember Watson.

Uh thank you so much, uh President Pro Tem.

Just gonna say thank you all for bringing this forward.

I know when I was um first elected, um we leveraged a bio fund for businesses across the city, but there are I think there are about 30 businesses within district nine um that receive direct support.

I think the agility of a biofund, the ability to have um rapid response and support, I think is fantastic.

And then for Mayfair and Colfax bid, I mean they've been, you know, wanting pleading and begging for additional support.

So thank the three of you for that work.

Curious on the target for the uh the all of the options, I want to make sure I'm hearing it correctly.

Um is it specific to construction related impacts?

Um there are initiated construction related.

Correct.

Okay.

That's that's good.

And I I appreciate hearing from the administration that are willing to work with y'all.

Um let's see what happens from that.

So did we hear that?

I'm not sure that we did, but okay.

Um I Angela's walking up.

Angela, my question and is the administration willing to work with the sponsors.

Legislative director, we are willing and have been willing and have worked with you since the beginning.

So, yes.

I'm sorry, but I'm gonna push back on that a little bit, Angela, because let me ask a question this way.

Has the mayor's office, the Department of Economic Development, or the Department of Finance provided any potential solution over the last two years that we have been talking about this to us as sponsors.

I think it's a lot more complicated than just what this one question is.

No, right?

There are several things that we the Department of Finance has to consider.

Dito has to consider.

And we are taking all those things and working to find a solution.

Yes.

When should we anticipate that solution?

I'll work with the team and give you an answer to that question.

Great, thanks.

Thank you.

My questions have been asked.

So I don't have anything else.

We have three minutes if anybody wants to have one last question in the queue.

One final statement again.

We have identified many potential solutions.

Thank you for all of your feedback.

If you have business improvement districts or general improvement districts, or um anyone you would like us to have a conversation with, if you can please um flag that for us via email, that would be fantastic.

Um in addition, um I am very concerned.

We are very concerned that if we do not get this formalized, there will be no biofund in 2027.

Um so I will ask you all to think through budget amendments as we start talking about the budget in April and May, because it may be that we as council need to come together to ensure that there are that there is a appropriate funding for this program in 2027 and beyond.

And I just said I think Dito has the staff and the capability to do this.

They don't want an unfunded mandate.

And so um, so we'd love to have work from the mayor's office, Department of Finance Dito, to come up with options.

If our options aren't aren't the right ones, what are the right ones?

Council McTorris.

Can I just ask for um and I I'm happy to also look into this, but people have done revolving loan funds.

So what have they learned in terms of how they can be applied well?

Like news that comes to mind uh for me and what kind of capital is needed for it to be kicked off and then replenished, right?

If you're um giving folks years to pay it back, or like when do you because it it's a circulator, like you don't need new dollars every year for the thing to be working?

So curious too about the kind of the real life cycle of a revolving loan fund.

So happy to take that offline in a future.

Yeah, I think conversation follow up on that one.

Okay, I will say I'm not sure that like there are lots of potential solutions here that we've provided you.

I'm not sure that the revolving loan fund is the right one.

Um frankly, we think that a sort of um patchwork of rebates and you know grants investment is probably the right way to go.

Um it may be a sustainable one though, right?

Um but uh I mean the other thing we could do is refer a sales tax measure, right?

That funds our small businesses.

The challenge is that the voters have to approve that, and what we are seeing based on the economy right now, I I suspect that that's not a very likely thing.

Um that would be a very tough path forward, and so um, you know, I think we need to kind of one last thing that I'll add, which is just adding a little bit of information with the rebate program for sales tax, is that a lot of the special revenue funds like caring for Denver or homelessness resolution fund, those would we wouldn't rebate those dollars, it would only be the general fund portion of the sales tax.

Okay.

Um last word, Councilman Cashman.

Thank you.

Um, in my previous career, I spent about almost four decades as a newspaper publisher dealing with small businesses.

And no matter how pretty their storefront windows may be, or how fancy the lighting is in the restaurants, there are a lot of them that are raking in the dough.

So I think people you know walk down streets like Tennyson and Gaylord and Pearl, see these fancy shops.

Well, they're really killing it.

When in fact uh a whole bunch of them are just hanging on, and you can see whether it's Santa Fe or whatever district, the turnover in these shops, you wonder where'd that one go, where'd that one go?

We've got to do better and what my colleagues are suggesting and supporting our small business.

Thank you, Madam Pro Tent.

Thank you.

Thank you again for bringing this forward, and thank you all for a great conversation.

Um forward to continuing it.

And I think we're ready for our next uh presentation, which is gonna be about municipal sentencing policy update from council members, and parody.

Give everybody a minute to musical.

Get started.

Hi everybody.

Right?

Five?

Four, three.

I don't know.

Anyway, hi everyone.

Um we're presenting on the work that we've been doing around the municipal sentencing policy, and this time we have a policy proposal.

So going back again, real quick on the current landscape, most municipal offenses have a maximum sentence of up to 300 days in jail and a $999 fine, as this is the city's general penalty in our current code in our ordinance.

This is the penalty for everything from assault to having an off-leash dog.

And this creates inequity in our code and disproportionately impacts our poor and imminent immigrant communities.

The impact is apparent with at least 75% of those charged in Denver are at or below the federal poverty line, which is $22,000 a year for a single person.

From September 2023 through September of 2025, around 500 people were sentenced to over 10 days for municipal only offenses, right?

So we'll revisit all of this, but as we know the Supreme Court ruling did not apply to municipal only offenses, only applied to those offenses that are equal to those at the state level.

Oh wait, one other thing.

And by simply having larger potential sentences on the books, this can lead to additional consequences related to one's immigration status.

In 2021, um myself, along with my colleagues in the state legislature, passed Senate Bill 21271.

That reduced the punishment for many state misdemeanors and petty offenses, which then resulted in municipal sentences that have a same type of offense at the state level had a higher penalty at the municipal level, and things became unbalanced.

In December of 2025, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that municipal sentences cannot be higher than state census for similar type of conduct conduct, and it was deemed unconstitutional.

As we have heard from our municipal prosecutors, pace uh and from the municipal public defenders and our courts, uh, that they work every single day to ensure that they are in compliance with the law, litigating case by case because our code isn't, but our code, however, is not in compliance, and that's where the issue stands right now.

So, although they're doing this at in the courtroom, um, you know, amongst one another, and trying to, you know, propose the care clarity.

Um, our code does not reflect what is current law.

This is why we need to rewrite the sentencing ordinances to be in compliance with the law.

So um, we came up with five solutions.

The first is to revise the DR DRMC to match sentences to the maximum sentences for comparable state offenses in line with the camp decision that Councilman Gonzalez Gutierrez just mentioned.

One thing to note is the judges, the PDs, and the DAs were working out between themselves post the camp decision to determine whether or not something is comparable conduct.

Um they have been taking that feedback, and uh we're going to codify that feedback so that it doesn't exist in agreement between the attorneys and the judges, but that is is instead built into law.

The second is to cap sentences for all the offenses in the municipal municipal code that do not compare to state law as petty offenses, so i.e.

10 days, 300 fine.

Our third proposal will align certain offenses to more stringent, stringent, excuse me, state requirements that will allow us to retain the ability to oppose impose higher sentences.

Fourth, we are rewriting offenses, just offense descriptions that will not change the severity of the sentences available, but that will clearly align with the state penalties at the relevant levels.

And then finally, we are eliminating mandatory fines on prostitution, which will align us with state law, and we'll talk about that in turn.

Yeah, so to start reviewing the proposed legislation, um, the first, and I want to um highlight that two of the items on the last slide are new since the last time we came through budget and policy and are um incorporating quite a bit of feedback that we got from um the city attorney's office from Pace specifically.

Um their preference was for us to lean further into outlining where our municipal code and state law align, and actually to change a lot of our municipal offenses to just borrow the exact language of state law so that there would be no doubt.

And that's actually pretty much precisely the intent of the sponsors here is to add that kind of clarity into align with state law where we can, and so we um were able to make a most of the changes that you'll see in this draft versus the last time we were in budget and policy are a result of that.

Um what we learned was a shared preference for overclarifying, basically, and for um even changing if our uh if our municipal code had certain offense elements for changing those to match state elements to make it super clear that we literally mean this to be the same offense carrying the same sentence.

Um so numbers one and two on the previous slide, um, which just talks about again revising the actual sentencing levels in our code to match equivalent state laws, um, and then also revising the few things that we as the city criminalized that the state does not to match state law petty offenses because they are of that nature.

We've talked this is probably the thing we've talked about the most in briefings, um, but the difference here between our last draft is that um we went ahead partly based on suggestions from Pace in the direction of overclarifying and created um five tiers of offenses to correspond to every available state law sentence that lines up with any municipal crime.

So um we just sort of leaned in further to the direction of what we were doing.

In our last draft, more of this was um sort of inferred, and so we we took that feedback and um and made this extra crystal clear, I guess.

Um you'll notice that the class one offenses that's the same list that we already have in in our Muni code, and it's the most serious things that we prosecute that have always been called out as having that higher sentence.

Um, and then the other classes um each hit a level of sentence that exists under state law and and puts the same offenses within them.

All right.

Um we are also making sure that longer jail census, as uh councilwoman parody said, for some of our most serious offenses, such as in the case of domestic violence, um, we have amended the assault ordinance in order to align it with the class one misdemeanor under state law.

This actually came um to light even back when the state bill was going through the process last year as a concern that was raised by the DA and by Pace, and so this was uh, you know, we were already in line to mitigate that issue, and that's what this ordinance also, this ordinance change would also do.

Um, domestic violence provision is to allow the Denver municipal court to continue to impose the current maximum punishment in our code up to 300 days in jail when there is an assault or threat made due to physical harm to another person.

This is a key part of the bill, and without this, our prosecutors are limited in seeking a higher penalty for domestic violence type of cases.

And then this is the list of offenses that I was referring to where um we are now going into the actual how these are defined and aligning the definitions to state law.

So these are cases where we just want to make super clear to any future readers of the code that yes, we intend our city um violation of court orders ordinance to align with the equivalent state ordinance.

You'll notice that some of these um mention a class two or a class three offense, and that's because our city code was often framed at much much more broadly than state law, and so we would have one city offense that included a whole big range of conduct, where at the state they would have two sort of sub-offenses, like they would have that conduct broken up into two levels of seriousness.

So when you see here that we're now um breaking this into two classes, petty theft is a great example because we've talked about this about a million times.

Um, our cutoff for petty theft has been everything from zero dollars to a thousand dollars is all treated the same.

The state has a tier from zero to three hundred and a tier from three hundred to a thousand, and so you'll see that we're breaking petty theft up into those two tiers, which camp requires a class three and a class four, zero to three hundred, three hundred to a thousand, so that it clearly tracks and there's no ambiguity there.

Some of these, um, a lot of these actually have that kind of dollar level um, like uh destruction of property, we're breaking it apart by the dollar value of the property to match the state, whereas we had one big amount.

Um, but some of them it's breaking apart again a whole scope of conduct that's defined and and pulling it apart into more serious and less serious conduct within that to match state law.

Um so currently Denver's prostitution ordinance and po ordinance imposes mandatory fines for prostitution.

So 500 for the first offense, 750 for a second offense within five years, and 999 dollars for a third offense or subsequent offense.

The fines are imposed on some of Denver's poor's defendants, and there are no mandatory fines for prostitution under the state law.

This bill would better align different sentences for prostitution with the state by eliminating these mandatory fines.

And instead, judges will have the discretion to decide whether they want to impose a fine for each offense, and the maximum fine allowed would be the standard $300.

Okay, and this is our um stakeholding list today.

We definitely, with many of these people and entities have had many, many meetings, and so we've tried to kind of note the most recent.

Sometimes we put the first meeting, sometimes we put the most recent meeting.

I don't know why.

Um it's been an evolving slide.

Um but basically the the main point that I want to give after this is we were able to meet with the mayor and a number of people from City Attorney's Office and the Mayor's Office.

It was really productive.

Um they, like everyone else, have been waiting to see this latest draft of ours and react to it, and so we don't have any kind of final positions, but we've definitely um come closer to um to what pace had been requesting of us in in the written feedback they gave us on the 26th.

Um and we'll keep working away at that and sort of um seeing how how how much of this we can get to be sort of agreed upon, basically.

So we'll report back to everyone uh when we know where we land with that.

Um and then the other thing I wanted to say here is that um you may start hearing from some of these stakeholders.

Um one of these bullets is doing a lot of work here because the um the municipal sentencing coalition led by the Colorado Freedom Fund is really large.

There's a whole bunch of constituent organizations in that um that have done a lot of work on this overall issue, both at the state level and at the city.

So I just wanted to um really thank all of them for that work, even though they're all kind of compacted into one bullet.

Anything else about the stakeholding?

That's it.

Is that yeah, thank you.

Um thank you, Council members, for bringing this forward and all the hard work you've been giving us.

Um we're gonna start with council member Heinz and followed by Councilmember Alvidres.

Um Yeah, so uh the impetus that this specific conversation is about a Supreme Court decision.

I mean, obviously you were starting the stakeholder outreach well before the decision of the Supreme Court, but I think the reason why this has become a pressing topic is the state Supreme Court decision.

So um I I just I want to make a value statement.

Um our uh you know, our community comes up with a system of values and um uh and then we say, you know what, we should commemorate those.

Yes.

We called them laws.

And um, and so if our values and our uh what's written in our ordinances don't align, uh we should align them.

So um so I want to thank you for uh not only taking the impetus of the state supreme court decision, but then looking at um the offenses and sentence as opposed to just saying, yeah, here it is.

Um, you know, d doing some uh thought about are these in line with our with our values?

And and I would I would say is Megan here.

Um so she uh was speaking on behalf of uh council member parity in a in a conversation really kind of changed my my view and thought process on um this particular piece of legislation.

And so um just that we should if we're never doing 300 days in jail for a particular offense, then the law should not should not reflect that.

So um so thank you for the comment.

Thanks.

And um and and really that I I agree with that um pretty firmly.

Um Councilmember Perinina I talked about um you know the carve outs for specific items, I think specifically domestic violence.

Um I uh I I would encourage the sponsors, and I think specifically Councilmember Parity has offered to reach out to a few groups that I mentioned, and I think has already started that conversation.

Um maybe there are other um particular carve outs that do make a lot of sense.

I don't know.

Um but perhaps some of these uh some of these other organizations might find something like domestic violence that uh that makes sense as a carve out.

I don't I don't know, but um, but I think that it makes sense for us to at least have the conversation and um and extend um that option and if it turns out that we have all the carve-outs we need, that that's fine too.

Um but I think having the conversation makes a lot of sense.

So we owe all of you as colleagues a one sheet about this bill that you can use.

Oh, that actually was what I was supposed to say about stakeholding.

First of all, we're happy to talk to anyone you need us to talk to within your districts or you know, your ambit.

Um so please feel free to tell us if if um you're getting any questions about this bill um and you want us to help answer that, especially because councilmark's laws cut here as and I hopefully are at large, so we're there council members anyway.

Um, but we'll circulate uh a one-sheet, hopefully later today that summarizes all this that's on the slides, um, and we'll send it directly to you know many organizations and also any that any of you want us to specifically.

And I am getting questions from uh from people, and I wonder based on the way um you've described it uh here, and also uh you know, in in individual briefings, it sounds different than what I hear from the stakeholders.

So I think a little bit of education is important, um, and then again the offer of um if there is a need for another curve out or two or whatever, then we're absolutely happy to come out to wherever you all need us to be.

Um we're happy to be there and and talk about it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um we have council member Alvidres and then Councilmember Watson.

Thank you.

Thank you all for your work on this and the continued conversation.

Um I really appreciate the recent meetings talking about the um law enforcement legislation that we passed and thinking about how we carve out and make sure we're not lightening sentences that we don't need to, and I think we also need to be intentional, for example, with this executive order, if we were to enact some legislation there on where that would fall in this.

But I actually have a question for the public defender who was in on my briefing.

And the thing I'm curious about um was what was mentioned in my briefing is that um even having these higher sentences, having a higher sentence isn't leading to someone not recommitting the crime.

Um, and so I'm curious about what we're doing to actually you know help people get away from whatever crime they are committing.

And I guess part of that concern is if we are lowering sentences, are people going to be in and out more often?

Um, not that that's really an option since this is you know, because of the camp decision, but I'm just would like to hear a little bit more about that.

Yeah, I think that was the support partners uh that are housed in your office.

Thank you for the question.

Let's do that, Chief Municipal Public Defender.

Uh, two answers to that question.

The first is that in our office we work with a client support team with peer specialists.

So when someone is charged with a municipal court offense, we have four lawyers in a courtroom and a peer specialist assigned to each courtroom.

We work with over 40 organizations here, city organizations, to really find what treatment or programming would be appropriate for each individual.

So one of the things that we are doing as a public defender's office is a holistic public defender's office, is that we're trying to see that there's not going to be recidivism, that we really work hard during the entire course of the case and even after someone's sentenced, or you know, just to continue working with them.

And I'm gonna call Rachel Mercer up to answer the second part of the question regarding having a longer sentences.

Thank you.

I guess I would just say, like in response to the idea of people coming back in and out of the system more often because they're getting longer sentences or shorter sentences.

Um I think that a lot of the offenses uh that would have a reduced sentence on the books are not receiving that long a sentence in practice.

So I think in practice, this is not gonna reduce a ton of sentences significantly, such that they would be cycling out of the jail faster.

That's great.

Thank you.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you, considering thank you.

Um next up in queue, we have Councilman Watson, followed by Councilman Flynn.

Uh thank you, uh President Purten.

Thank you to the sponsors for bringing this forward.

I've had uh several um briefings and discussions.

I have some um sticking points.

First, I want to start first with the class five offenses.

Can we describe what that new the rationale for that separation for class five?

Yes, that is an eagle-eyed catch.

Okay.

So basically, this wasn't in the last draft.

Um, this is a level of offense that exists under state law.

Um scrolling back to it, which is where there are certain offenses that have only a hundred dollar fine.

In other words, that's how state law defines civil infractions.

Um to our knowledge, we don't have anything in that category right now, but we thought if we're going in and legislating and we're trying to match up every existing state law category, that we should do that.

Um, and since that's a new catch, I think there's also this piece has some ongoing conversation around it with um city agencies and the city attorney's office.

Is there anything on PD correctly?

Are you just making sure?

Yeah, I feel like that's just making sure that our code fully aligns with the state code as required by the Supreme Court to make sure that every sentence and every offense is fully enforceable.

Um, because there is this category of civil infractions under state law that has a maximum of a hundred dollars, and so to the extent our code did line up with that, then that would be the maximum sentence here as well, which makes the offense fully enforceable.

We're not aware of any that we have found that line up with a state a civil infraction under the state code.

Okay, I would love to hear from Pay.

So I have a follow-up question on I'll start with the class five offenses and um Marley, if you don't mind introducing yourself.

I'm not certain how much time you all have spent looking at this, but I'm I have great curiosity because I'm not understanding the details of this section here.

So what are when you look at this delineation of class five, what questions, concerns or anything that we have on your perspective?

Councilmember Watson.

Marley Bordowski with the city attorney's office prosecution section.

Um I I have I just saw the this bill, um, this version of the bill when that was added.

I don't know what the definition of civil infraction is.

There's no definition in the bill.

Um my concern with it is it could sweep into it our administrative citation process, which are is a civil process that we have in the city.

Um and many of you have worked with it.

We use the civil and uh administrative process for licensing issues, we use it for NADB issues, we use it for all kinds of things.

And since it's not defined, it's it's I don't know.

I have to be a response to that, Marley, because and again, we haven't we haven't yet gotten a chance to get PACE's feedback on this latest draft.

So just acknowledging that they've just gotten it.

We're still awaiting that, and I think we'll be able to work through most things as we were with the last round.

Um but Colorado state law um defines a civil infraction um usually as traffic related.

Um and and when you look at what they actually define as civil infractions, we've checked in with the traffic attorneys within OMPD, and it seems that we don't have anything that definitionally overlaps.

But if we do, um we have no desire to actually impact the fines across all civil infractions that might be defined in Denver.

Like that's not the intention here.

It's just to make sure that if there are any um civil infractions defined by state law that would be subject to the camp decision and require us to drop our fine because they match up one for one, in which case we're legally required to do it, that we're capturing that.

So far, it doesn't seem like there are any, and and you're absolutely right that this is an area of like continuing to double check because we just had this catch that there's this other um state law category of offense that we need to look at.

So we'll keep you very well informed.

So that's why my brain is uh is churning on it.

Um I know there's a just budget and policy, it's gonna be coming back uh to an actual committee more time to ask questions, but my question overarching has been and is still consistent with CAMP, CAMP was very clear uh what state Supreme Court stated to make sure that we had similar sentences for similar crimes um committed.

That seems clear to me.

The delineation or segmentation here, as far as your one, two, three, I think it's five classes now that you have.

Is it your belief that you've captured all of the other offenses, misdemeanors that um were not um uh governed by camp, and that within these segments, which was the greater concern, which I thought was going to take a lot more time for us to delineate the weighting of those um those um charges, the impacts.

We have a spreadsheet here, but I'm curious from the sponsors that I'm gonna ask Pace, and then I'm uh and then I'll have just one quick statement, Madam President.

I think I know where you're going with this too, Councilmember, and it's it's also a really good question.

So the what you're talking about actually is um, I think, and you can tell me if I'm wrong.

They non-camp impacted.

Exactly.

So anything that we have defined as um a crime under um city law that is does not have a comparable state offense.

So it's not governed by camp.

Um what we did was we got um charging data going back a couple of years um from Pace, and we looked through that and we pulled out any of the offenses that are commonly charged, which are things we've all heard of, um, like public urination or the or the or animal offenses.

So those are very well known to sort of everybody involved, including us.

All of those things are expressly um called out as to what sentence they're gonna get in this bill.

Um but the issue is as as you also know that within our municipal code, um, not just in the actual like criminal portion of it, but all throughout the different administrative portions that that roll up to different agencies, so the health code, there's sometimes mandatory language in there where because it says shall, and you know, we the city have police power, pace uh our city prosecutors could theoretically prosecute that conduct as a crime.

So the other piece of work that we've been doing is sponsors reach out to all the city agencies to find out is there anything you're concerned about that isn't showing up because it hasn't actually been charged in many years, but maybe someday you know you might want to enforce about like what are you aware of within your code that has that mandatory language that might um really require more than a 10-day sentence?

Is there anything?

Um and we got a little stymied with that because I think the um the city attorney's office is wanting to collect that feedback instead of having it come directly to us.

So that's fine, but we're you know, we'll work through that as we get it.

We got a little bit of it after we met with the mayor and asked for it at the end of last week.

So that's a piece where it just we we can't legislate if we don't even know what these hypotheticals are.

So we've been working really hard to find out.

Yeah, I mean, we've been asking that question for a while.

Um, and if we learn of anything that is realistically likely to be prosecuted that should have more than a 10 day sentence, we're quite open to making it higher.

But what we're not open to doing is leaving the default sentence far higher than 10 days for no real reason, because we can always change a sentence.

That's our power in the city charter.

We can always come back and create a more severe sentence for a municipal only crime if one is warranted.

That is our duty as legislators, but I don't think it's right to have a default sentence on the books, sort of th of 300 days just in case when we don't even know why we're doing it.

So we're really trying to figure out if we need a higher sentence, what is it for?

And can we talk about that actual offense instead of just sort of this um having like a lazy default of a really high sentence, which is mostly gonna end up sweeping up lower level conduct.

Like most of what if there's anything we're missing in the code and it hasn't been prosecuted in years, it's probably low level, right?

So the default to our values should be 10 days from uni only.

If there's cause to set something higher, we certainly can.

But we as legislators need to figure that out.

And I'll just add that make sense.

That is helpful to me.

Can I just add one quick thing on that point?

Is that the city of Westminster, um, not that far from here, actually doesn't have any jail time for any of their municipal only offenses.

So we're already like doing the work that we're doing here, we're not even doing that, I guess.

Yeah.

Yeah, that doesn't make me feel comfortable.

Pace, just very quickly to have a uh a uh a quick comment.

What are your thoughts on the non camp?

Um because my last question to you when the last time you're you guys were that I hate to use that term, when the team was here, you were identifying those different sentences and working through a process to identify any impacts for non-camp um misdemeanors.

Where are you at on that and what's been your coordination with the sponsors on creating a process to make sure that this nicely done spreadsheet doesn't have long-term impacts for stuff that we miss?

And as I think um uh Councilmember Gonzalez has pointed out it's massive, or maybe it was council member parody.

It's massive.

The code is massive, and where there is a shell and there's a shell not, it it is criminal under the code.

So that that's a long-term process that we really haven't had time to do.

I will say that um the bill was shared with me, I believe, on February 19th.

I worked that whole weekend to come back with our feedback.

And I I appreciate that we had a meeting shortly thereafter with the sponsors, and they incorporated much of that feedback, not all.

Um really the extent of my involvement in and getting feedback has been just over the last three weeks.

Um I I my concerns remain, however.

I'm I feel this is rushed.

Um I still have some concerns about some feedback that was not incorporated and the impact that that has, particularly on our domestic violence cases.

Um, but I have been able to provide some feedback this time.

Can you please provide to to my office if not every the I want to know why you can I have not seen the case?

Well, we actually have the red line if you want it.

Well, right, but I just want to say we're happy to share what Pace sent in to us um about 10 days ago.

And also we haven't yet we we Marley and I, at the um conclusion of our meeting with the mayor, we know that there are probably um the pace will probably come back with the second layer of concern from having seen this draft.

And I would just ask if you could let us work through them, we may be able to resolve them all.

That's our plan.

This isn't the end all be all.

Right our next step is to continue that.

We just also want it to be said that in October 2023, I sent the full list of offenses that either had a state law analog where we had a higher sentence or we're muni only.

Um, and it wasn't to pace, it was to the mayor's office, asking them, saying we're trying to work on this legislation, we need feedback.

Could someone respond?

Pace at one point did send us um a general response to that list with some concerns, but it has been until post-this camp decision, we just haven't been able to get um the kind of detailed feedback that we needed.

And I'm not faulting anyone specific for that, but I want you all to understand as the person that's been working on this legislation since we were all elected for my first day here that I sent a full list of all of these offenses for feedback to the mayor's office in October 2023 on a spreadsheet, and that is a fact.

And I'll I'll end there because I'm I know this is gonna be coming back a little bit more time to talk.

I'll say I have a different perspective than Councilmember Hines when it comes to judicial discretion that has provide, I think on average uh 12 years of sentencing for many of these misdemeanors that were now um most likely, or let me not say it's set amount that we're that there have been unlikely to 300 um um days um uh sentence for these misdemeanors, and because they are not receiving um the highest, the maximum um sentencing.

My thought is I want to lean into our county courts, our judges, and our judicial disgrettion instead of us just across the board.

Because I do believe we're gonna miss um something with this.

I do believe there is a concern.

I'm not a judge, I'm not making these decisions, and I think our judges are demonstrating discretion in the sentencing.

That's why you're not seeing 300 days, etc.

You're seeing 12 or 15.

We are going across the board beyond camp.

And I still have that deep concern.

So I'll have to look through um those questions, um, responses from the police and others.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

I just say that in the city charter, one of our enumerated duties is to set criminal senses.

I I get that.

I get that.

And and I know that the judicial system also is working from my perspective.

So that's our disagreement in this process.

I will say that even though the judges may not be doing the max sentences, that when people are looking at those max amounts of times that they're often taking plea deals because they don't know that the judges have that that the judges aren't going to give them the max sentence.

We have three members in the queue.

We have less than 15 minutes to go.

Councilman Flynn, then Torres, um, and Councilmember Torres, and then Councilmember Sawyer.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll be I'll be brief then because Councilman Watson expressed a lot of what I want what I wanted to say.

I got this last night, and it's just too much to ask me for uh a firm reaction to it, other than I need more data.

Because when I see on slide two that uh 500 people were sentenced to over 10 days in jail over the last two years, that's a very small percentage, as I think as uh Councilman Watson pointed out.

Uh I want to understand the impacts of changing the other offenses that were not included in the camp decision because I'm concerned about putting everything into this massive change, and then hearing that, well, we can always go back later and and change it back.

I'd rather do it right the first time and not have to re-legislate.

So maybe the uh spreadsheet that you sent to uh city attorney's office or the mayor's office in 23, uh you sent it to all of us, so I can see the bill now.

It's literally the same lists of offenses that are in the bill, except it's also progressed.

Do you want to have that already?

In the bill?

Yeah, the bill.

The bill is on legislator.

15 pages.

Uh yeah.

Uh we can talk about this, Kevin.

But the maybe larger than that.

The there are actually not, here's the deal.

We have a huge city code.

There are not that many offenses that actively get prosecuted in reality, right?

And so there's a big difference between um this sort of concern that maybe there's something that we've never a single time needed to prosecute, but we might eventually.

That's why we have a legislative branch.

We can come back and add a sentence for that if if it turns out that we've sub neglected something.

That's also why we're asking all of the agencies what's in your code that that maybe never have been prosecuted, but that you wish were or have a concern about, right?

So we will keep doing this process, but there are a lot of things that have shall language around them that just realistically are not pursued in court, and I imagine there's probably pretty good reasons for that.

Um so you know, that that's also something to be thoughtful about when we're using that kind of terminology, passing laws.

Before going beyond the camp requirement, though I'm I'm uncomfortable until I more fully understand what are the average sentences for these non-camp issues.

Uh that we can get you.

Yes.

So I would need a lot more data before we have a lot of the questions.

We just as we were sitting here got an email from the courts um pulling a huge amount of data that we didn't previously have that I think is gonna answer your exact questions.

All right, thank you.

Um and then I just want to say one other thing.

There's a reason why you got the draft last night and not sooner.

Um it had been prepared for quite some time, um, and apparently had not been permitted to be circulated to us, the sponsors by the the city attorney, and I think that's a huge problem.

We should have had it mid last week.

Um our assigned city attorneys had done their jobs, um, and so the fact that we didn't is a much larger conversation.

Um, but I had no intention of you getting that draft on Sunday night.

We should have had it sooner, you all should have had it sooner.

Everyone involved has been aware of this deadline.

I just like to see more input from the city attorney's office because you know, for the last couple of years, most of this input has come from the public defender.

And I think we need to have more engagement as I mentioned last week.

I agree.

I agree, and I've been asking for that for thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Torres, then Councilmember Sawyer.

Thank you so much.

Um I'm really comfortable with what you're presenting today, and I feel like you've um done the labor, particularly in being reactive to the Supreme Court decision and trying to make sure that we're um uh fully aligned there because I think the um timing uh of needing this to come through now as opposed to when it's perfect, is that people are getting sentenced now.

Because I think the timing of needing this to come through now as opposed to when it's perfect, is that people are getting sentenced now.

And we also want to make sure that we're keeping up with the pace of all of those conversations that don't wait for us to arrive at perfect language.

I will also say this is not the first time that we're diving into our municipal sentencing structure.

We did this in 2017 to try to protect folks from immigration consequences.

A lot has changed since then.

And we can get back into it now.

So it this isn't unprecedented for us to go back and make changes, um, get comfortable to where we're at, get the data that makes sense.

So I I don't have any hesitancy in where you've arrived and knowing we may come back to it in a year or two years.

Um what are those triggers I think might be helpful to know?

What brings people back together again?

What um are we maybe identifying as needs to be um uh finessed uh over time or with more data?

Um the the one thing that I keep thinking about was um maybe the operational side of this.

So maybe if you can help me understand maybe what is happening on the DPD side uh when they are booking um individuals, because the thing that rose my alarm bells was they're at booking, choosing between a state crime versus a municipal crime, and then sending somebody out down that path.

Um what does that look like now?

So luckily the what'll happen now is regardless of which column they choose, the sentence will be the same.

And so it takes out um any element of and and the irony here, as we know is that um every police officer I've ever spoken to believed that if they chose the Muni column, they were sending someone to a later sentence, and so they would do that when in their view it warranted a later sentence, and in fact they were sending someone to potentially a 30 times higher sentence.

But that's not really their job, you know.

Um they actually shouldn't be making a choice with they shouldn't be lawyers, you know.

Like that would be a really high ask of all that.

Like and is not.

Um municipal versus state charges on the ticket.

That can be changed after the fact by prosecutors talking to each other, and sometimes it is, but as far as how they initially write the ticket, that is still up to them, but then it will bear the same sentence regardless of which column is chosen.

And I think DPD uh I fully leave it to them whether um whether they think that they need an approach to choosing the side of the ticket or whatever else, but the charges can sometimes change, it can be upcharged or downcharged.

That happens fairly routinely, um, you know, sort of sent to one court or the other um once the prosecutors are looking at it.

But but now at least that original decision won't carry this huge amount of weight, um, which it really shouldn't have to begin with.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, it's good sound of that.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sawyer.

Thanks, madam chair.

Thanks, you guys.

Um I know that a lot got thrown kind of up in the air with the camp decision, so really appreciate you guys uh working through this.

I um hear from my residents really regularly, particularly with regards to shoplifting and petty theft.

Um this is a matter of serious concern for our small businesses.

So um, and to a lesser extent, um, but still I think significantly concerning uh domestic violence, right?

So those are sort of the two issues that uh district five residents have flagged for me as of concern in this bill.

So can you just sort of talk through kind of what the plan is for both of those?

Yeah.

I can briefly go through the domestic violence piece um because we did talk through that a little bit here.

Um so we basically have we made sure that that can still be prosecuted at the same level it is today in this in the bill language.

So it would allow for for that still to happen.

Now, if there are some nuances that need to be um looked at as uh Marley had mentioned from the pace, then we can make sure we incorporate if there are things that need to be incorporated to ensure that that is in fact true in the current um bill language.

We've ran this by um some of the like um violence-free Colorado.

We've talked to some of these victims' rights organizations to get their input as well, and they have not provided any flags um on their end, and so we're still in conversations with them just to make sure that we do get that portion right on the domestic violence front.

But it would mirror the um uh it would mirror the uh have in my note here, a class one misdemeanor um to be able to still prosecute up to 300 days.

So it would be a mirror to that of the at the state level, which is I think a class five mis or class five.

I don't know.

It gets too complicated.

But either way, totally would continue to prosecute at the same level that they do today.

Okay.

Okay, so domestic violence there might be some issues to work out, but there's no change to the penalty as it relates to domestic violence at this time.

And absent this bill, there will be a drop in what penalty our process is.

As of CAMP, so our current domestic violence statute is stated vaguely and generally enough that right now it most probably lines up with a lower level DB offense with a lower sentence, and we are um making clear an element of injury, which is usually present in these cases, so that if our prosecutors um prove that they can get a 300 day sentence.

If this bill does not pass, we will end up having to seek lower sentences.

If this bill does pass, we will retain higher sentences.

And that's one of the um areas that PACE focuses on, and so we want to make sure that that happens, and same thing for threats.

So absent this bill, it will it will be an issue.

Thank you.

Really appreciate that.

Um and then what about for shoplifting?

Right.

So shoplifting um, because the we're we're tearing it out in a similar way um for zero to three hundred dollar theft versus three hundred to a thousand dollar theft, that is required by camp.

Um, and so there's really nothing we could do differently there, but at least this way um we're clarifying that um the highest sentence that would be available under state law for theft of 300 to 1,000 is also available under municipal law.

Um in this instance, unlike with DV, it's probably quite clear that that's those sentences would follow anyway.

So I don't know that our bill is changing anything rather than clarifying.

Um but that's just sort of the impact of the of the Supreme Court ruling.

Okay, so um when my businesses and residents are asking me about petty theft, which is something that impacts them significantly in their businesses in their daily lives.

Um that is I just want to say back to you to make sure that I've I think I know what you're gonna say.

That is the result of the Colorado Supreme Court decision.

Entirely entirely, yeah.

And also and therefore out of our hands.

And if some change needs to be made to that, it would have to be made at the state level.

Yeah.

Great, thank you.

That's right.

Um, it's one add to it.

Thank you, Council uh member Sawyer.

That was my question about shoplifting.

So there you go.

Um we are we've got two minutes to go.

Um one last any other questions before we adjourn.

Um the last thing on the statement is thank you.

Um thank you, Council members.

Uh, you guys have been digging in on this for some time.

Councilwoman Parity started working on it like she said, the day she got elected, and I know that we have been reaching out to a lot of stakeholders for a couple of years now in trying to address this this inequity that was existing prior to the Supreme Court making their ruling.

Um, you know, we had even meetings with Pace very early on trying to get to the bottom of what we you finally see before you today.

Um, and so I do appreciate that partnership and willingness to come to the table, and and we've said it over and over again, like we are here as well, and we want to continue to work together on this, and I do want to thank all of our wonderful aides for all of their work on this.

Uh and and our plan is to bring this to safety committee next Wednesday.

Am I correct on that?

March 18th, 18th.

Yeah.

Next Wednesday.

And so we will continue to make sure we mitigate any of the things um any of the feedback that we get, and we'll make sure um, you know, looking at all our city attorney folks and and everybody um that we'll get you all a draft as soon as humanly possible.

Thank you.

Thank you again to the sponsors for um working on this.

Uh we are adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you all for the