Welcome back to this biweekly meeting of the budget and policy committee of Denver City Council.

Join us for the discussion as the budget and policy committee starts now.

Hi everyone.

While reading are you now?

Like any readers.

Um good afternoon.

Happy Monday, um, March 23rd.

And policy, I think we have two really um great briefings before us this afternoon.

And before we get started, let's go to announcements on my right.

Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver District 2.

Jamie Torres, West Denver District 3.

Amanda Sawyer, District 5.

Sit on the Kansas Oscar as one of your council members at large.

Uh Paul Cashman, South Denver District 6.

Sarah Purdy, your other council member at large.

Darren Watson, fine district nine.

Laura Vidres lucky district special.

All right.

So I'm going to pass it.

The first briefing we have is the R Note Ordnance Community Engagement Udate, and I'll pass it to all of our mighty fine council aides.

Um floor is yours.

Thank you.

Do the council members want to make any remarks before we get started?

Um well, we'll have you guys introduce yourselves um before you start with the presentation.

But um I just want to thank all the work that that you all have done in collaboration with Radian.

Um it's been a long, long haul.

Oh, it's been probably over a year now at this point um since we started this journey.

And so I think we've learned a lot of really good information and hopeful that the um recommendations and outcomes that we'll be seeing from this.

Yeah, thank you.

Um yeah, what she said, um uh I want to thank the team in addition.

Uh Claire Kelly, uh one of my aides who's uh with us as well, won't be presenting today.

They've really set uh an a new uh high bar for uh where true community engagement uh amounts to um uh 50, 60 um events uh and and uh in-person uh forums they've engaged in, gathered over eleven hundred survey responses.

It really is uh where uh shows where you need to go if you're serious about finding out what the community has to say.

So with that, do introduce yourselves and take it away.

Hi everyone, Masha Leor, Senior Council aide for Councilman Cashman.

Elise Bob, Chief of Staff for Councilman Paul Cashman.

Sino Jorge, senior aide for councilman Gonzalez Gutierrez, and then as the councilman mentioned, um senior aide for his office, Claire Kelly is in the audience today.

Um so thank you again for joining us.

Um we also want to give a uh shout out to Radian who uh uh partnered with us on this project.

They were involved in all the phases of engagement and also collaborated with our offices to write the report.

Um we'll go ahead and get started.

So uh here's a look at today's agenda.

Um we're gonna look into the purpose of our project, uh, look at a timeline of our efforts, um, and do a quick interview.

Uh sorry, a quick overview of the report, look at the community informed considerations that derive from all of our engagement work, uh, look at next steps and leave time at the end for any questions and discussions.

Um ordinance, but before we do that, we wanted to engage with a wide spectrum of community from RNO members to people who don't normally engage with ROs uh and local government.

Um we wanted the community's feedback to inform us on any proposed changes uh we would make to this ordinance.

And through this throughout this entire process, we have priorities prioritized co-designing any potential new policy with community.

Um so the next uh couple slides are the timeline of all the work that we've done so far.

Uh we presented this at Mayor's Council, so uh for the sake of time, I'm not gonna go over everything, um, but we can go back to this slide if you all uh need that at the very end.

Um so as you can see, and as the councilwoman had mentioned, this project started about a year ago, uh, March of last year.

Um and in this next slide, you can see where we are today in the process.

Uh we spent the last three months uh writing and finalizing the report um and presenting at Mayor Council uh in February.

Um and later on in this presentation, you'll see a timeline for what our next steps are.

Uh here's a look at our report that we published on Thursday and is now available for the public to read.

I sent an email to all of you all and your aides on Thursday as well, and I hope you all had a chance to give it a look before today.

And if not, then you'll get a pretty good overview of what it's about.

So I'll go ahead and pass it on to Michelle.

So just to jump into the report.

This is we start off with an overview, and we wanted to really define what policy co-design is at the beginning.

And so policy co-design enables people affected by a policy to shape it from the beginning.

The community knowledge, lived experience, and civic insight actively informed policy development.

That was a big priority for us throughout this whole project.

The initiative also employed a citywide multiphase engagement strategy that was grounded in public participation frameworks.

Residents, RO members and leaders, city staff, community partners, we all collaborated with them to identify the challenges and opportunities within the current RO framework and to explore ideas for strengthening transparency, accessibility, accountability, and support for neighborhood participation and city governance.

So then we jump into a section where we really encourage folks to get a better understanding of registered neighborhood organizations.

So we provide an outline of the existing ordinance as well as a high level summary of some previous reports and studies that have to do with ROs and community engagement at large with the city.

Those studies include the 2020 RO survey and analysis commission by Councilmember Cashman, the 2023 study on improving community engagement and constituent services, and the 2024 Urban Leaders Fellowship Report.

Then we jump into looking at the community outreach and engagement approach for the Year City Your Voice Project.

And a lot of this is going to sound really familiar.

We really grounded our community engagement and outreach in equity and policy co-design principles.

So that included creating a toolkit that we shared across all social media platforms sent through newsletters within the council offices, but also the Your City Your Voice newsletter list.

We distributed information and the survey to libraries, rec centers, community hubs, different businesses across the city.

Translated the survey and our project materials into Denver's top five languages.

We attended over 40 in-person outreach events throughout the summer and the fall.

And those were really to encourage folks to participate in the survey.

And so that map is a showcase of where we were physically in the city.

The next section in the report is the community participation section.

This is the largest section of the report.

This is where we listen to community, where we present all the findings from all of our outreach and feedback from the community.

This is why this is our presentation today.

So if you need proof there.

So these are the four ways that we got this feedback.

It was the survey findings, the neighborhood engagement workshops, the neighborhood registered neighborhood organization focus groups, and then perspectives from city departments and external partners.

Here is an example of how we represent the data in the report.

Apologies, you might uh see that the color scheme of the map does not match the legend of the map.

We are fixing that.

That was an oversight, so deepest apologies that will be fixed soon, and the report will be amended.

But this gives you an idea of how many folks in each neighborhood responded to the survey.

This question was in which neighborhood do you live in?

This next one is a pie chart.

Um this was another example of how we represented data collected from the survey.

If you recall, our survey had four sort of choose your adventure type navigations.

These are reflected here with segments A through D.

A is residents with no awareness of ROs, B with some awareness of ROs, uh, C is RO members, D, RO leaders.

This chart represents the number of respondents and how they identified with those four segments.

This is another chart that we use to represent the survey data.

Uh this question asks how would you rate your current feelings about ROs?

We grouped the segments together and represented them together in one chart to allow for comparison between segments.

Segment A is not reflected in this chart because normally when one does not have one does not have an opinion of a topic if they're unfamiliar with it, and that is what segment A is, people unfamiliar with ROs.

As for the rest, we see that residents with awareness of ROs are trending more neutral.

RO members are trending neutral to positive, and RO leaders trend very positive.

Okay, now we're jumping into each of these segments, starting with residents that have no awareness of RNOs.

The key themes were people express their personal views on citywide politics and policies.

They desire infrastructure improvements, flagged safety concerns, and had a strong desire to support and participate in their community.

I'm gonna read an example, and that is the middle one.

It's not really clear to me what value an RO has.

Some key themes are RO, the RNO effectiveness, representation, engagement, city responsiveness, and neighborhood conditions, some concerns about ROs being composed by retired affluent homeowners, relying on RNO members who don't have that much awareness of city processes due to the lack of responsiveness from city departments.

An example here is someone that said, I live as a young woman of color in a neighborhood, and I don't feel like ROs are welcoming.

My perspective is often dismissed.

Next, we go to the members of RNOs.

Some mentioned areas of improvement are broader and more diverse participation, better communication and information sharing, city support and resources, and a stronger leadership and governance.

An example is better and bilingual communication with all residents.

It seems that many residents, including long time, don't even know about RO or its or its meetings.

RO board members are newer white residents, not representative of neighborhood makeup.

Finally, we go to the RNO leadership section where some of the common priorities were increased membership, volunteers, and board participation, improving outreach and engagement, enhancing diversity and representation of the neighborhoods, and have city support, meaning having guidance and liaison access.

An example here is reaching neighbors to get involved.

In a large neighborhood, it is extremely challenging to engage many anyone.

So those were some findings from the survey.

Next, we're going to jump into the findings from the other community engagement efforts that we held.

So between September 10th and October 29th of last year, we held four in-person and one virtual two-hour neighborhood engagement workshops where approximately 140 residents participated.

Those are just some pictures from those workshops, but we talked with throughout all of these different workshops.

We've talked a lot about like the low awareness and confusion about ROs, the communication and outreach challenges that ROs have, a disconnect between city government and neighborhoods, the resources, funding, and support needs that ROs have, participation and motivation, how to engage with your community.

So we heard very common themes from the survey and these in-person conversations.

The third community participation method that we used was the RO focus groups.

Here's some insights from those.

So Radian hosted two virtual sessions to gain feedback from RO members.

These focus groups began to build on some of the feedback we received from the survey and the neighborhood engagement sessions.

City council members and their staff were not present for these sessions as we wanted to ensure that RO members felt they could speak freely and honestly about their experiences.

Some of the themes that came up are communication with the city, representation and inclusion, governance, accountability, and structure, resources and support, awareness and identity.

And we've summed up the key takeaways here as participants identified needed changes and most frequently cited resources and support, followed closely by clearer communication and accountability from the city.

Many expressed a desire for deeper ongoing involvement of RO members and leaders in drafting ordinance updates.

Participants repeatedly emphasize the value of ROs as spaces for neighbors.

The final community engagement tactic was the perspectives from city departments and external partners.

This is the list of city departments and external partners that we interviewed.

Some of these city departments are actually all of them and more are listed in the notification chart within the RO ordinance.

Twenty-four themes were identified, and much of what we learned echoed what we heard from community, which was a nice surprise.

Okay, now we're going to the section where we're gonna share the community informed considerations.

Overall, we learned that people want ROs to come to remain community driven, but be better connected, supportive, and more inclusive in their communities.

And there was a general agreement that the RNO system is valuable but very outdated.

These are the five considerations.

We're gonna jump into each of them individually, but for now, identity and framework, membership, governance and recognition standards, outreach and communication infrastructure, training, funding, equity supports and neighborhood liaison, and accountability and collaborative conflict resolution.

Alright, so to jump into the identity and framework, the way that we're going to kind of talk about these community-informed considerations is to look at what we heard, our desired outcomes, and then the proposed approach for each of these.

So what we heard overall from all of these engagement strategies is that due to ROs being housed in community planning and development, many residents view them as resources only for taking positions on rezonings when that is not the original intent of the RO system.

And residents who are not familiar with ROs often confuse them with homeowners associations, general improvement districts, business improvement districts, or other groups, which also limits participation in ROs.

In the current ordinance, overlapping boundaries are discouraged, but they do exist.

Overlapping boundaries further contribute to confusion, questions about neighborhood identity or the intent of the organization, and low participation or membership.

The desired outcome from these community-informed considerations include greater clarity, reduced conflict, stronger legitimacy, improved coordination, and more equitable participation.

So here are the proposed approaches for this community-informed consideration.

The first one is reposition and rename.

So transitioning the ROs from community planning and development to the newly created division of community empowerment within the human rights and community partnerships office, as well as renaming registered neighborhood organizations to better reflect their role in neighborhoods.

Clarifying the purpose of ROs and defining them as representative bodies of neighborhood residents, not standalone advocacy groups.

Also clearly distinguishing them from those HOAs and business improvement districts and so on.

Then we jump into the boundaries.

So we heard that there could be a long-term goal of eliminating overlapping RNO boundaries through a phased transparent process that also engages community throughout.

Some of the desired outcomes sum it up with greater accountability, reduced conflict, stronger public trust, and more consistent citywide representation.

Proposed approaches.

I'll just highlight a few.

Sometimes there's unclear messaging or language is too technical, and it's hard for them to impart that to them.

Desired outcomes on this one is greater public awareness, improved participation, reduced miscommunication, reduced miscommunication, and stronger alignment between the city and neighborhood organizations.

And the proposed approaches on these are to launch a citywide awareness and access strategy, just to let people know what ROs is.

Basically, educate the residents of Denver.

Build a centralized infrastructure which is definitely partnering with the city to build upon that, creating citywide notification system, which is already in the works, that any resident can access, not just ROs.

And then standardize city notices.

So we want to make sure that all the city notifications are communicated, use plain language, they're accessible.

If it's a topic that's hard to understand, there's ways where they can learn about that topic or learn how to navigate through what is being asked of them.

The fourth is training, funding, equity, supports, and neighborhood liaisons.

What we heard is that ROs are volunteer-led and don't receive much support, funding, training, or resources from the city.

Some neighbors can't join due to daily life barriers such as lack of childcare, language access, or digital accessibility, among others.

And the lack of support with troubleshooting and relationship building.

For this, the desired outcomes are essentially for ROs to play an essential role and expectations must be matched with the resources and support.

With that comes training, equitable funding, direct support and stronger relationship with the city, potentially through LEI ZON, which leads me to the proposed approach.

Some of them, some of the highlights are creating and managing training such as equity and inclusion, outreach and engagement, a city 101, among others, on boarding training for new board members, have a toolkit that provides guidelines and templates to make their engagement easier.

Administer a centralized grant-based funding program and offering stipends, coordinating and funding translation and interpretation, hybrid engagement options, among other things that would make being a member more accessible, and having a team of dedicated people within the division of community empowerment to support ROs and build trust.

The fifth and last one is accountability and collaborative conflict resolution.

What we heard is that there is no clear pathway to raise concerns about governance, representation, and engagement with the city.

Sorry, another piece is like dispute and conflict management, which sometimes lead to the creation of new ROs causing more confusion.

If you move to a neighborhood, you want to join an RNO, you look it up and you see that there's three that you could be a part of, and you don't know which why there's different groups, which one to join.

Some people feel like their RNOs gatekeep information and decision-making opportunities.

Current accountability mechanisms are unclear and can feel punitive rather than supportive.

And with that, some of the desired outcomes are greater transparency, less conflict, clear boundaries, and a stronger collaboration alongside clear grievance and mediation systems.

The proposed approach for this is to establish an accountability process by having uh a clear process for residents to raise any sort of concerns.

And have an incentive-based accountability process rather than punitive enforcement.

And provide mediation and conflict resolution by encouraging and supporting RNOs in developing their own community agreements, which promotes proactive conflict resolution when they all sit on a table and come together with the rules they want to be in the same space under.

Also offer city supported mediation and conflict resolution and provide grants of technical assistance to encourage collaboration.

The report also has an appendix, and that's where you can find all the additional information, all the reports, the data.

Anything and everything you can think of should be in there.

All right, so part of our next step is to continue to gather community feedback specifically on the community informed considerations.

So these are some um four we're doing four in-person again in one virtual, hoping to again hit like all four corners of the city, and then anyone who can't participate in person, hopefully can participate virtually.

So we'll be definitely sharing this out and asking you all to share this out with your communities as well.

And then we also have an online form for people to engage with community informed consideration and provide feedback on their own time.

This will be launched this week, and we'll have it stay open through April.

So again, we're bringing the report and the community-informed considerations back to community to continue to gather feedback.

That will help us draft any policy changes, um, which will happen in April, May.

So we'll offer briefings to council members and circle back with city agencies and departments as well.

And then fingers crossed, bring this ordinance through the council process late spring, early summer.

Thank you so much for listening to us.

Um we have uh so I'm gonna go in order.

I have Councilmember Flynn Sawyer, Alviderez, Pair Tim Remaro Campbell, Parity Taurus.

Am I missing anyone?

All right.

Thank you, Madam President.

Uh, first, uh I have an in-person meeting downtown on the 16th.

That doesn't end until 6.

Is it possible to push back your southwest by a half hour so that I can be there at the beginning, 6 30?

The College of U RNO typically starts their meeting at 6 30 to begin with.

We we have started uh advertising this.

I will say the format of these feedback uh meetings are gonna be more open house.

There's not going to be uh you know a presentation.

It will be we'll have boards with all the recommendations and have people be able to ask questions or comment or highlight what they like.

Um but we can can definitely talk about that.

Understood, but I'd still like to be there.

Yeah.

At the beginning.

Uh how have you started promoting it?

Because I haven't seen anything yet, if it's not too late.

Uh we sent it out through the your city, your voice uh newsletter list.

Uh, and then a few community members and RNOs that have been asking us for updates.

We've sent it out to them uh as well.

But maybe we can explain it.

I'd like to request that one adjustment.

It shouldn't be too hard to send it out to the list again.

That this one's just make it a half an hour longer.

So I'll be there at the beginning.

Uh I was at uh I was at an RNO on Saturday in Marley, Brentwood, and they had a great presentation from the green infrastructure team because there's a fabulous project that's been in the works for about eight years that's finally getting underway and is very well received.

So I really like that engagement with different city agencies.

It's not all just zoning and stuff like that.

I'm not sure how I feel yet about the geographic boundaries and not allowing overlapping.

In one sense, I don't, I wish we didn't do that, but in another sense, I see that creating some problems, and that is uh, for instance, Harvey Park, uh RNO.

I believe they exp their boundaries include Harvey Park and Harvey Park South, but not uh thankfully not the Brentwood side between Lowell and and uh federal.

And uh but there's still a lot of confusion because the city calls it all Harvey Park, even though on federal it's Brentwood, totally different neighborhood, totally different needs.

And to the point that Hipco, Harvey Park Community Organization actually had some board members who didn't live in Harvey Park, they lived in Brentwood, and they were in the South Marley Brentwood RO.

But within the Harvey Park greater registered neighborhood organization organization boundaries are neighborhoods that have their also have registered and are unique or not unique, they are different than Harvey Park.

There's green meadows, totally isolated on the Jefferson County side of Federal of Sheridan behind the old target store, feel very isolated, they're cut off from even from Lakewood because Lakewood won't allow our streets to connect to theirs.

And there's uh Dartmouth Heights are uh RO the Lake Ridge Association RO and a couple others uh that aren't coming spring to mine right away.

So I'd like to find a way, maybe if maybe the Harvey Park RO excludes the Green Meadows and the Dartmouth Heights and the Lake Ridge from their boundaries, so that they have their own, because they definitely would feel lost within the greater Harvey Park group.

Can I respond to that, Madam President?

Yeah, it's a great point, and what you'll see in the work they've done.

It talks about things we can do right now, things we can do in the near term, things things that need to get done down the road.

And and that's uh kind of a down the road discussion because I I consider and and debate with you the reasons why having it uh match with uh uh with the uh statistical neighborhood boundaries makes sense, but there's as you said, other points valid as you're making.

But that's not something that's gonna get done or even discussed immediately.

Right.

Well, thank you.

Yeah, the because the statistical neighborhood boundaries are so arbitrary.

Uh in where I live, for instance, I belong to Grand Ranch.

My neighborhood has no thing in common with Grant Ranch.

Um I think that's all I had.

Thank you.

Next step we have, Councilman Shire.

Thanks, Madam President.

Thanks, you guys.

Great job on this.

That was a ton of information that you pulled together into something that was totally understandable.

Um a couple of pieces of feedback.

So um the first one I would say I I think I am glad that you are moving kind of the boundary conversation to a long-term conversation because there are most people don't understand statistical neighborhoods and they don't consider themselves a resident of their statistical neighborhood.

They consider themselves a resident of their neighborhood.

And um I think that it would be very uh counterproductive to change that.

So um I think that you know, statistical neighborhoods exist to track data since the 1970s over time without changing those boundaries so that the data remains the same.

And that makes a lot of sense.

I totally get it.

Um, but I do think our residents identify as living in their neighborhood, and that is a part of who they are, and it's a part of you know why even they chose to you know purchase the home or rent the apartment in the location where they do, and so changing that um to a structure that like works better for us, I think is a bad idea.

So I feel like let's push that one down the road a little bit.

Um the biggest issues that we run into in our RNOs, you guys didn't touch here, you touch a little bit on the um in the report, but it's more around two sets of things.

So the first one is um the struggle to get volunteers to actually do the work, and the struggle to understand um and have like a standard framework for how ROs run.

So you guys talk about it a little bit here, but I do think that that is something like that's the kind of number one thing that we see all the time in District Five, because we have some ROs who are just like a group of friends and they get together with their glass of wine and they chat about things going on in the neighborhood, and it's great.

Um there are other RNOs that are very formalized, but maybe don't use Robert's rules of order, you know, those different kinds of things.

Um, and so when there's a disagreement, the first thing the disagreeing party does is come in and say, well, you didn't ask the right questions of the right people and determine it in the right way to like be able to take a position as a registered neighborhood organization with the city.

So I think that is like a that piece of like these are volunteers, they have a limited amount of time, and you know, what they want to do is make their neighborhood a wonderful place to live.

Um but the like formal business side of things makes that really hard to do without additional support.

So I hope that that is like in the first kind of um bucket of stuff to be addressed.

The second thing we see a lot, and um I didn't see them on your community partners list, but I might have just missed it.

Um is around events.

So our Office of Special Events has been moved into arts and venues now.

Great.

Um our office of special events was extraordinary difficult, extraordinarily difficult to work with.

They created the rules that they functioned under for festivals, right?

Street festivals, very large events.

The problem is that they were then very inflexible about um moving some of those rules or relaxing some of those rules for small neighborhood events.

So if you were having um a movie in the park as a neighborhood association, you had to, you know, that where kids would like bike around, that meant there were two agencies involved, and then the office of special events would get involved and they just burnt it all down to the point where like in my neighborhoods, we used to have multiple neighborhoods doing multiple things, hosting multiple events every year, and it was so difficult and so unrealistic to do it between the trash regulations and the AED regulations and the road closure regulations and the money that it costs and all the things, they just stopped doing them.

Like we as a city have literally forced our neighborhood organizations, our volunteers who want to just create a lovely community into a space where they aren't even willing to do it anymore because it's so difficult to do.

Um so I think that piece is like needs to be at the front of the list um to address because otherwise, like once they get out of the habit of doing these events, volunteers fade away, they start focusing on other things, they disappear, and the events stop and they don't come back.

And that is a hundred percent what we are seeing right now.

Um so I do think I would say like awesome job.

I would love for you guys to focus on those things uh in the first bucket of short-term things that you're gonna fix because we need to we need to fix those.

The last piece, um, I would say, did you want to say something to that first?

Um to the previous point.

Yeah, go ahead.

Regular business, okay.

That it that ideally would be covered under the fourth consideration, the training funding, equity supports and neighborhood liaison.

The trainings ideally would guide people to say this is how we want RNOs to function as this in your way, like this is a regular business that you would conduct, and this is how you would engage everyone in the process.

Like ideally, all those trainings would be a resource for RNO board members to support everyone in their community and have like more structure within all RNOs while they still have some independence to run the RNO the way the neighborhood wants to run it.

So it's like a balance, yeah.

Yeah, um, I think it'll be interesting to see how that balance shakes out because at the end of the day, what happens is like they're maybe not gonna spend 20 minutes watching a training, they're gonna call the council office.

Like, you know.

Um, because they're volunteers, they have short, no one's paying them and they have a very short period of time, and everybody has to work in order to live in Denver, so it's not like the 1970s when our RNO ordinance was written where there was a stay-at-home mom who volunteered, and you know, like it's just a very different world that we live in now.

So just to add a little bit to that, a part of that would be to have stipends for like if you take the trainings like these are the sipons tools of compensate for people's times.

So that's all that that's like built into the report.

I know finances are tricky right now.

It's in the report, we'll see where that leads in the future.

Um awesome.

No, I really appreciate that.

And then the last thing is the um requirement that there be at least an annual meeting and a vote every year.

So it's written into our ordinance.

Um it is something that a lot of our neighborhood organizations struggle with, especially the vote part where you get to the part where they don't do the vote right, and then somebody else who doesn't want to be in the RNO or under the leadership of the person who got the vote because they had all their friends come out or whatever, like it gets to true story.

Happens in your district too.

So that happened.

Um I feel like there's a there's just a um we have to find a better way to.

I mean, there has to be some trigger, right?

Everybody just can't be like, we're an RNO now.

Um there has to be some sort of way to make a determination about who is a formal RNO and and how they qualify.

I just um think that I didn't see a ton about like kind of the feedback on that in there, and um again, maybe I just missed it, but I yeah, that one I think is a really like a tough one that we need to address kind of right up at the beginning, especially if you're gonna rewrite the ordinance because it's in the ordinance right now.

So thanks.

Awesome.

Next step we have, and just want to do a time check.

Um, Councilmember Flynn and Parody, do you need 45 minutes?

No, I think 42.

Okay, a little over.

Um, Councilmember Alvidres.

Thank you so much.

Thank you all for your work on this and all of the information.

I will share what I what I did share in Mayor Council, which is just disappointing to see some lower.

I mean, the map really represents on page side 14 where people already come out and speak out and where people don't, and to see that continue is disappointing.

So, like Baker's super active, super dark, lots of turnout, lots of responses.

I see college view, not district seven, but close to got not like nothing, and a Ruby Hill one to six, uh, you know, uh Overland one to six, and Overlin has three ROs now.

And so the need for figuring that out, like I'd love to have support and figuring out what do we do now.

The third one just started.

Um there's been a lot of conflict there, and I'm excited to see solutions to these issues.

Uh, I think it's very hard to have an RO.

I admire the RNO presidents in my district because they are facing challenges right now because uh quite frankly, the administration isn't doing the leadership or engagement that they need to be doing.

You know, I know you all go to the RO meetings, I go to the RNO meetings, the mayor's office isn't there, the decision makers aren't there, and so when I have Overland, which has the tiny home village, which has urban peak shelter for youth, which has the second chance center, and each neighborhood and people that live next to it feel one way, people that live a few blocks away from it feel another, and then there's other problems like the playground got burned down at the playground in Overland and doesn't sound like it is ever gonna get replaced.

I'm not sure.

Um, and so I I'm really excited about this because of the partnership and the care for the issues that we're having with these RNOs, and I worry about their safety, and I have worried about their safety.

They've gotten threats, some of these RNO leaders, and I mean that's something we sign up for, not something I expect the neighborhood person to sign up for.

So I'd like to see like some of this participation uh, you know, evolve over time where we are hitting those more of those people that aren't involved in their RNO, more of those neighborhoods that are not having struggle that are struggling.

I know I've talked to my neighborhood, Atmar Park has always struggled to get engagement from uh non-English speakers, which is a high immigrant neighborhood, and um this sounds great, like being able to provide translation at all the events.

I think providing food is huge.

Um excited about the ability to pay people for their time.

Um I think requiring maybe some turnover could be something that you all could look at.

I didn't see that on any other notes, but I think when you have the same RNO leader for 20 years, God bless them for wanting to do it for that long, but also it does it does create a silo effect where it is like one voice or one community, and I and I will say I relate to the going to your RNO and your concerns not being addressed because uh some of my neighborhoods are very diverse where you have people that have a high quality of life that don't see problems with access to food that are gonna complain about certain things that they see are important, and you have people that have real life issues like they're about to get evicted that don't have access to food or transportation, and and those concerns a lot of the RO leaders may not relate to them.

Um so I I would share that as a hope, a wish to see more equitable distribution in the feedback, and then one of the comments that was made.

I appreciate the grant too, because I'm hoping that would lead to an you said equitable funding, so I'm sure it means like lower income neighborhoods might get some more support because for example, in my district, Westwash Park wants a bunch of money so they could do three mailed newsletters this year, whereas many other neighborhoods don't have the capability of mailing a newsletter ever.

Um so curious how we can help balance that and grateful for the work together.

One of the things that was mentioned is stronger alignment with ROs and the city, and I was confused on what does that mean?

Uh, first, thank you for those comments and to your first um comment.

Um, we would love to pick your brain or partner with you if you could connect us with those communities that haven't been represented in the previous round of engagement.

Um we tried our best to you know get to to every neighborhood.

We weren't quite successful with that, but every area.

Um but you know, that's why we we reached out to all the council offices asking for any events.

So let us know.

We are happy to like engage in some way and and walk people through it.

I'll just say low-income neighborhoods don't have all of events, so that's also part of the struggle.

I think what my office has found is door knocking has been the best, but I'm happy to sit down and have a conversation about that.

Great.

Yeah, and I to that point, I think one of the the issues that we kept on being confronted with was we were trying to so find solutions for a problem while hitting up against those struggles as we were doing it, if that makes sense of you know, how do we reach every single person in Denver?

I don't think anybody working for the city knows how to do that.

Um to the alignment piece that that you asked about, um it there seems to be confusion with on a variety of of levels.

So it could be what the purpose of ROs are, uh, what notifications mean, what the city expects for uh feedback from RNOs on a certain notification, like uh a license for marijuana.

Um confusion uh from uh we we heard this a lot um from folks.

Uh you know, Dottie goes out, gets community input, um, they come back, they start doing the work, and then people ask, well, this is not what we thought was gonna happen.

Um there's some really relevant examples right now that the city are are trying to struggle through.

Um so it's that it's it's that sort of alignment.

Um there's a lot of different levels of alignment that that just there were not meeting community members.

Um and not meeting them in the sense of the way that they view things, their perspective, they might interpret something differently than the city.

So I think as a city, we need to meet people where they're at, and we need to figure out a way to engage them with how they understand a certain issue.

Um, this also came up when we were talking to the mayor's youth commission.

Um, they basically said in very in a very kind way, uh, you are failing you know, communicating with the youth of Denver.

Um, the ways that you guys, you know, try to connect with us is not working.

We don't know like what you guys are doing.

So there's a lot of and and that's across the board, city council included.

I think we can all do a lot better job.

Thank you.

Thank you, committee chair.

Yep, Council President.

Next up, um, Pro Timer Mirror Campbell.

Uh, thank you.

Uh thank you for the presentation and and to the council members that have been working on this.

I just appreciate that we are having this conversation because for many reasons, you know, statistical neighborhoods in Southeast Denver are there.

People don't always know what neighborhood they live in.

Um things are often, you know, you talk to five different people, they give you five different names of the place where they live.

Um, sometimes it's even just the builder for those neighborhoods.

So being able to identify and have that sense of place, I think is an ongoing challenge.

Um so what I do I think there are a lot of things in the report and what you shared that are also very confirming for the RNOs that we do have that exist um for folks who've been um leading those and new voices um at the table, it's really difficult to get more and new voices in.

Um, and so however a process happens for you know the elections and the communication or you know, whatever standard that's put out there, I think that that would be really helpful for some of the RNOs.

Um in Southeast Denver, we have a lot of HOAs, and so HOAs often get confused with RNOs.

Um there are groups that are very robust that are HOAs, but because they're not RNOs, they don't get that information about the zoning, about you know, um different city issues, they're not like on the you know uh approved list of who people need to reach out to.

So any thoughts that you have of being able to you know bridge that for RNOs and HOAs would be incredibly helpful in Southeast Denver statement.

I don't know, you'd look like you were gonna say something too, but uh go ahead.

Yeah, we're we're working through okay.

Um that's great.

So I'm glad that you guys are looking into that.

And then the map that was shown, it was more of like who responded, um, and you talked about overlapping boundaries.

I would be curious as to what neighborhoods are parts of the city or what we're seeing for who isn't represented.

Like where do we have those gaps?

Because I can think of some in you know, in my district um of places that don't have any representation, um, or you know, an RNO said, hey, you know, they kind of pulled in people, but they don't know that they're part of that RNO.

Um, so do you have any thoughts or have you guys looked into that?

Are you talking about sorry?

I want clarification.

Are you talking about where we received responses to that, or are you talking about where RNOs currently exist?

Uh, where RNOs currently exist, what I understood was that there are some RNO boundaries that overlap.

But I would be curious, I can think of strips or places within my district where I know they're not represented by an HOA or an RNO.

So I don't think we have a map of that.

Yeah, I I don't think we we have a map of that either.

Um, but I just want to highlight um if any of you that read this report and and especially reading the considerations portion, have any ideas of how to start affecting uh these ideas?

These are not policy recommendations.

Uh that's the next step, and we look to all of you as thought partners in that process.

So if you do start reading through these considerations and start thinking of, oh, this is a really this is how this could translate into uh policy reform or something to add to it to the ordinance, would love to hear it.

Um just want to reiterate that that these are not final policy recommendations.

This is just what we've heard from community, and we need to start um you know moving these into that realm.

Great.

Um I don't have any other questions, but I appreciate the offer to think about specifically like the HOAs and where we don't have any representation because the statistical neighborhood thing is real and it's a real challenge that we have happening in Southeast Denver.

But thank you all for your work.

I appreciate it.

There's just one comment I'll make on that front is that you know the intention behind gathering the feedback from not only people who are involved in ROs, we were very intentional making sure that we heard from community members who have never even heard of an RO, have never been a part of them.

So we might have captured some of that in from those folks, and I think it was like 29%, it said, right, that had never been part of an RNO.

And so I feel like that's a pretty big amount of large amount of people that you know, percentage-wise of the whole that we did get feedback on like why in the you know, some of those questions were like, you know, what are the barriers, what keeps you from being involved, or you know, how do you just their their knowledge of what an RO is and that is how that helped kind of guide um you know the information that we've received, and then is gonna guide you know what we can see as possible outcomes of that and policy.

So there was some of that captured, but I think it's it's noted, and so we can see what we can find out.

Great.

Um remind me in the questions that were asked, did you ask people to identify whether they are homeowners or renters?

Thank you.

Okay, we have six minutes and we have still like five people in the queue.

So if you could if you have thoughts on like I've we've heard engagement several times if you could reach out to the council members to keep that because I know I'm having you at my RO dinner, right?

So um councilmember parody Watson, and then council member parity, Torres Watson and myself.

Council member party.

Um I can not ask questions because a lot of them are covered in just say thank you.

That's it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Um good job, everyone.

I know I saw you a lot in um events in in district three, so thank you for for coming out.

Uh, just a few things I think that I want to um uh bring up because I think it is what you're aiming to do is trying to bring order to what feels like is a lot of chaos, right?

And I think it's really hard to figure out where is where does a line exist between true neighborhood autonomy and being able to drive your own direction and it being way too closely associated or run by a government agency.

So I appreciate trying to figure that out.

What I am wondering, and and I don't know if it's in the report, is there any like an asset-based assessment of RNOs where folks feel like I feel like my RNO does a great job?

Or here's um positive experience when it comes to grants management, things like that.

Because I know a lot of our RNOs end up becoming nonprofits, basically, so they can get money in.

Um just manage finances in a lot of ways.

So I don't know if that's uh a trend of a successful or an efficient running nonprofit or RNO.

Um, but if it is, it creates a different kind of relationship too with uh with governance.

Um but I also feel like the RNOs in my district, those who do not have that, um, are better able to meet some of the demands and the need than others who do not.

So um uh just an observation, but I am interested in did did you come across any folks that said here's I think what we do well, especially RNO um interviews.

Um the other is um there's a lot in here about things that should be funded.

Uh were you implying should be funded by the city, or just in general should be funded or should have.

I think yeah, I think when you look at funding and support, sometimes the lines get really blurred and they're intertwined.

Um funding could mean like here is a sum of money to do community community benefit work.

Um it could also be what one idea that that came up multiple times was this is the city providing um a website for all RNOs, where just like our offices uh have a web page on the city web page, you create that within the city.

So they have their own open cities login and they don't have to spend money on somebody to manage their website or to buy a domain.

Um the city can provide that for them.

Yeah, okay.

I think that's really helpful.

I was thinking too, even about um like newsletters and um like is there or can we identify um you provide your list of emails, you drop in content, and like an auto-formatted newsletter goes out.

So you don't have to spend time formatting and figure cleaning up your list.

But a lot of that, like you just have to, somebody has to do it, right?

Um, and I find that volunteer fatigue to be one of the biggest um factors of success or failure in um uh who's able to stay on in leadership.

So um appreciate being able to think about like what are maybe low-hanging fruit to help support um ROs now.

Um I will say the biggest issue that I've seen um since having come on to council are other people in the city who think they know best what my district needs or my neighborhoods need, and that happened a lot after um the George Floyd protests and the pandemic, um, where I had somebody from council district 10 creating RNOs in my district, didn't even live there, but felt like we were underrepresented and nobody was voices.

It was like it was so rude.

Um, and and my nep my community didn't even know them.

Like it was just such a um imprecise way of talking about the issue that we all want to talk about, which is getting information out, feeling like you have a representative um uh way of making your voice heard.

So I appreciate you taking it on.

It's definitely a challenge, but I look forward to kind of where you take it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Watson.

Thank you so much.

Two quick points.

So thank you to each of you and uh good work you did within your council offices as uh council aides, your outreach and your community engaged process.

I know I heard about it on East Side.

Um also thanks to Radian if they're watching as well.

First question what was your engagement with INC, if any interneighborhood cooperative.

We engage with individuals.

Uh I I had lunch with uh a couple of people in leadership.

We were members of INC were at a number of events.

We have offered repeatedly to meet with I take meetings with anybody that wants to meet.

And uh have made that available.

We've asked them directly as far as what are your recommendations?

What do you want and what you do not want, what do you not want?

Haven't heard from them yet on it.

Their INC's an important part of the IN of the RNO structure.

We look forward to working with them as this moves forward.

Can I just add to that?

So our staff did attend an INC meeting and presented to them as well about the process and what we were doing.

Many INC members actually attended there was there was I don't know, you guys probably know how exactly how many INC members were at each of the neighborhood workshops we had.

So they've had a lot of access.

Um and then we also met with the leadership councilman Cashman and I also met with their leadership as well.

And so I feel like there's been quite a bit of engagement.

I think the one thing that we should note because you know we have heard from them, they they want to continue to be involved.

We said great, we are having additional opportunities for that involvement and and to provide feedback to of the um recommendations.

But I will just say that you have to pay to be a member of RN of INC, right?

RNOs have to, you know, right?

They have to pay a fee to be part of it.

So they do not necessarily equally represent all of the RNOs in the city and county of Denver, because unless your RNO can afford to pay and send somebody to the INC meetings, you're not represented there.

And so I just want to be clear about like that part.

Like, yes, they are important, and yes, we need their feedback, and yes, they've been a part of it through this entire process so far.

Excellent.

And no discussions with INC, it just was curious, uh question of curiosity.

And the INC uh fee can be waived for neighborhood associations.

So I think that is important.

I at least want to say that on the record.

I I think that's a great step, but my my next question is I'm uh um uh two times RNO president, and one of the things that I felt that was really important, and I was curious from your research.

Um, when you're thinking of funding, um, and you're looking at asset-based community development type work that uh communities, nonprofits do in community.

Um we always and we uh we had a grant writer and we did grants um from whether it was Denver Foundation or it was from whomever.

I'm curious as to that intersection and if you are looking at kind of the utility of building um skills that part of the work of the whatever the organization is in the city that overlide would provide grant writing support or grant support for that.

Was that something y'all discovered or considered?

Yeah, that was something that came up talking to community.

Um community had a bunch of really great ideas.

Um the report is very lengthy.

We wanted to put as much of that in as possible, but that definitely came up.

I mean, they Arnolds they want trainings, they want templates.

The word template was used a million times.

They want templates, they want guidance, they want to be able to reach their neighbors.

So, yes.

Awesome.

What I would say, if I can just comment um early on in my re research, um, other cities are providing legal assistance, providing grant writing assistance that uh seven, eight years ago.

Um had a budget of like seven million dollars for their 99 district councils, and they didn't just send them blank checks, but it you have a worthy project submitted to us, and we've got this budget.

Um we're looking at other cities that are far better structured to do this.

So this is our time to do it, and I I think uh your team's given us a great jumping off point.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um thank you all for this word.

Thank you for coming to Northwest Denver.

Thank you for agreeing to come to the I host a neighborhood association.

I don't even call it RNOs because people don't even know what that means.

So I just started getting away from it and calling it neighborhood association dinner.

Um and you all we invited you, so thank you all for coming.

My one um comment, and then I'll I'll provide more later, is when I was looking at the meeting code under section 12 96 notification.

It seems like it's overwhelmingly CPD that has notifications there, and I don't remember what the new Office of Excise and License is, but it seems like it's equally divided between the two.

Um I understand the thought process of moving it over to HRCP.

I'm concerned about that because HRCP doesn't have a comps team.

Whereas and they were just recently added to the charter.

I think that that was in they were put under CPD because at the time that this was written, CPD was a charter agency, and so when you have a charter agency, you're mandated to make sure that they're funded, right?

Um that's why I don't like writing host in ordinances because when I started at the city, there was no there was no agency called host.

When I started at the city, the mayor created the um North Denver Cornerstone Collaborative.

That doesn't even exist anymore, and so we have some of that written in.

So then it creates um ambiguity of who's in charge and who actually is in charge of it.

So now that HRCP is part of the charter, they just don't have huge staff.

They don't have a communications person like they do, like CPD does have they have a small monthly newsletter.

So I am always thinking about who like the win.

So it made sense to me that it is CPD, right?

At the time.

Um, but I do when I was looking at that notification, I was like, oh yeah, it's CPD because it's Board of Adjustment, it's licenses, it's all the things that happen.

Um I always so the the office the division of community empowerment is one one person now uh Stephanie Lang, a great hire as director.

Uh I I owe uh uh equate it to when the uh Office of Sustainability was created with Jerry Tignano and a couple of aides struggling to get a budget, struggling to do work.

Now they're CASHR with dozens and dozens of folks doing incredible work.

I hope this that you may be right that today, maybe it it stays for a few minutes in one location.

Ultimately, I do hope it all becomes a much more robust community.

So that could totally go away in whole cloth, right?

Not while I'm alive, yeah.

So um, but thank you all for the work.

Um I would say in it I found your map detail exactly how I have issues in my neighborhood.

I can't get a hold of certain people.

I can't get people to pay attention to unhoused locking housing choices right now in exactly the neighborhoods that you didn't get high turnout for.

Exactly.

Um, so that it wasn't um it wasn't a surprise to me.

I just have to and I even have the movie in the park in Traffe Park, and we still only got like six responses, and I think you all were there, which is sad day.

Um, but I will say that some of the unintended consequences that we see in our city when we don't get engaged, that's when we get the biggest um complaints, like when we were doing group living.

Man, that whole thing exploded when I became on council, and it was like, oh, this is and one of the sponsors, like count Councilman Black, really stepped in and helped guide that conversation, and it was a lot of the ROs who had issues, right?

And then they were like, I never heard about this.

Um, the only thing that we did when I was a counsel aid was we changed the rule where if you're an applicant and you're rezoning, you have to mail to the 200 feet because it used to be the onus was on the red neighborhood association to get to the 200 feet, and I was like, that's ridiculous.

Make the applicant pay for that.

Um, so that did get better responses.

I do think people you don't hear as many people coming to city council right now saying I didn't know about the rezoning.

You do, but not as often as that as in my lived history working for Espinosa.

Um, so I think that these are really important, and I'll just say the council person who wrote that was Sal Carpio, and it was really important.

We had predatory practices in Northwest Denver.

We had liquor stores going on in the north side, and then we had cash checking places, and that's why he wrote this ordinance is because we had all these, they were predatory practices because people were just going there and losing, they would go, they'd go to their go cash the check, and then they go to the bar next door or the liquor store next door, which sold all the shooters, and it just was predatory, and you saw all of that happening in the areas that were redlined.

So he wanted to make a notification to actually empower the people, and I think that's what you all are doing.

That's my philosophy lately is power to the people.

So thank you for giving it back to the people, and I look forward to next steps.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Count Haredy and Flynn on a single unit development in certain zone districts.

This could be uh relatively quick because this is we're introducing the concept, it's more like a concept plan.

Uh it's not even on the stove yet.

The cook.

Uh we're still opening.

You don't cook.

We're still opening the why do Harry.

Uh just as an introduction, uh, we came across this uh inspiration during the one of the planning board joint sessions on unlocking housing choices, and councilwoman parody was sitting across from me, and I don't know who did who first, but it was like why are we why have we upzoned areas for duplex and greater, but we still have single unit as a as an allowed use.

So we pursued this, and uh this is sort of just to introduce the concept.

Councilwoman, do you want to chime in also?

Um I also just I like that something that I have learned thoroughly since joining this body is just that um there's so much complexity into changing anything in our zoning code that um I always see the way forward as like just finding um every overlap that we can, kind of, and you know, Councilmember Flynn and I probably have different opinions about some of the recommendations from the unlocking housing choices committee.

I think this is a concept that kind of feeds into some of those concepts.

Um but where we have overlaps, we should, you know, we should um take advantage of those.

And I think that um there's this reminds me a little bit actually of the single stair policy in that um it's a way to try to add um growth that is already zone four, as council member Flynn said.

And I I see the value of doing that, even though I also um think we probably need some more density where it's not yet zone four.

So um, yeah, thank you.

You want to do this one?

Yeah, so um this is the uh just the slide that to the point that I was just making that identifies how many new um households we need.

It's this staggering that seems like it goes up every time we this is blueprint, so this number has been the same, but every time we do a needs assessment, and there will be a new one coming to um committee soon, this number grows because people want to live here.

Um and then the the salient point here is sort of that um blueprint attempted to project and plan for where that growth could go.

Um and so I am really interested in the conversation about like what is preventing growth in the areas where um blueprint identified that it would primarily grow, and of course that's 80 percent in um regional centers, community centers, corridors, high, high medium residential um downtown and urban center.

So and then uh this is the map of uh what was referred to as all other areas of the city, it's the yellow on the map.

I just noticed uh I don't know when Kyle and uh Rob snuck in the room, but uh noticed that they were sitting there the whole time.

Well I'm just noticing that.

So I want to thank uh and and Andrew also for uh meeting with me in January to provide this uh this first overview.

So uh many residential areas that uh still have single family units as used by right, although they're they're where we intentionally plan to have greater density.

Uh this happened uh you know when the 2010 code and actually way before that.

This is just we put the zoning in place that reflected what the neighborhood typically looked like.

So if there were a lot of duplexes in the area, like in Overland, uh it got R2 or now uh the TU zoning.

Uh so there are 28,000 dwelling units built in Denver since 2019, so the last seven years, six years actually.

Uh 3374 of them uh citywide were single family homes.

So of the uh that's about 12 percent of the total housing units built in Denver uh were single family homes.

Uh 247 of those three 3374 were built in zone districts that call for higher density.

Uh 150 of them were in the duplex zone, and uh 97 were in row house and mixed-use zones.

Uh this is a map that shows where they are, where those where we've planned for added density, uh, mostly and most of it being the middle miss uh middle housing types.

Um I don't know if you want to grab this one.

Yeah.

Um so this is just the same sort of by by land area of the city, um, which I think is really interesting to look at that um two-unit zoning is a little higher than multi-oregal house.

It's three percent of the city, so it's not a huge part of the city.

Um collectively, those three all together, which this would apply to covers about seven percent of numbers by land area.

Um it'd be interesting to see that by units.

Maybe we just did anyway.

Um, so it's a cookingizable chunk, uh, not huge, but a chunk.

And of those, I found this very interesting that in the duplex zone, 57% of the units in duplex zone are actually single units.

Uh in the road house zone, 40% of housing units are single family homes.

And even in the multiple uh the uh multi-unit zones, uh a little over 16 percent are single family homes.

Are those new builds or those pre-established?

Because I have road houses.

You're exactly right.

They're generally we overlaid the basically the what existed in the neighborhood.

There was a lot of multi-unit homes already, so we gave it multi-unit.

But a lot of the homes were single family, not many of them are new at all.

So there's gradually the point of this, the concept behind this is to encourage that transition to continue by disallowing new single family when a house is when a house is demolished.

So we'll get into that here.

So the the question that uh the councilwoman and I are looking at is should Denver consider either a limit or a prohibition on new single unit uh dwellings in areas where the city planned and zoned for higher density.

And uh with the help of uh Rob and Andrew and Kyle, we came up with uh they came up and we're presenting it as a concept, two different approaches.

One is simply remove single unit as a permitted use in the table.

When I went through all the different zone districts we have outside of just SU that still have a little dot that you can still build SU here, it was phenomenal to see how widespread it was.

Uh the other approach is to keep SU as a permitted use, but disallow new single unit, and there's a reason for that.

Uh but this approach one would present prevent any new single unit home in TU, RH or MU.

The problem is it would make existing homes non-conforming, which presents a problem to the homeowner going forward.

If they want to finance any improvements, if they want to add on a little bit, um it's considered a new unit if you demolish uh from what I understand from my briefing, 40% of the exterior wall or more, it counts as a new single unit.

So you could add a bedroom or a family room on the back of an existing house and it's okay.

But if we were to do approach one, just remove it from the from the use table, it would cause a lot of problems for homeowners uh because it would be non-conforming.

So um uh councilman, you said this was your favorite.

Yes, well, uh so I do think that the right thing to do is that this should only be forward-looking, and part of the reason for that is because one of the like balances that I think we're always trying to strike is figuring out how to make sure that we're not just incentivizing a scrape and rebuild of you know a bigger, like more lot filling single family home.

And so instead we're balancing between, okay, this can be the existing single family or it can be duplex, um, and those are the choices.

And so hopefully that gets us one of those two outcomes which we want more than the big new you know, law filler, right?

Um that's happened on my block, actually, and I wish that my block were still um my block is now single family only.

Um, but I live in a duplex on that block, and we've seen several um small houses get scraped and turned into gigantic houses when they probably otherwise would have been turned into two-unit, um, if we had two unit zoning and this rule.

So the next step uh now that we've introduced the concept and you've seen what we're doing, as I said, we're just at the starting line.

In fact, we're just coming up to the gate more than anything else.

But we'd love to hear your feedback.

Uh suggestions on how we can uh work this engagement in cooperation with uh CPD.

I th I believe we're gonna present this to the uh advisory committee for UHC at some point down the line and get their feedback as well.

But this goes beyond unlocking housing choices.

This is this talks about intentionally directing and incentivizing densification where we actually planned it.

So with that, um well, the other thing I will say before we go to you can go to the question slide if we can show that we're going to questions.

But um I just want to say that I do think it's really important to understand as the chair of um the housing committee.

I've definitely seen the capacity issues within CPD.

So just calling out that like um we want to think really carefully about all of these different pieces um and in my mind try to move a lot of them together at the same time.

Um but I think this is an interesting piece, and I just also think it's I'm really curious to hear what you all um think and have to say about it.

Thank you, Councilman Flynn.

We have Council Blumen Sawyer and Pro Tim Romero Camilla and myself.

Thanks.

Um really appreciate this.

This is I think a totally worthwhile concept um for us to consider because it does make a lot of sense.

If we have zoned something for additional um use, then we should be using that land for that, right?

We should build to the zoning that exists um as opposed to you know all of the many, many other things that we're doing.

I am curious if anyone has ever looked in CPD to see what the difference is between what we could build if we built to the zoning that already exists and what is there now.

We had this conversation along Colfax.

So because Colfax, the vast majority of Colfax is zoned for three stories.

When you get closer to downtown Heinz's, it's um zoned for eight stories or even twelve.

But what's on that land, almost all of it right now is one-story buildings.

And so I'm very curious to see if anyone has ever done that work because I think it would be really valuable to be able to show as we're having a conversation about this, what the potential is in our city right now versus what is actually on the ground in our city right now.

Yeah.

I actually asked that question, but it was years ago when I was at the newspaper.

So I'm sure it's changed since then.

Kyle, I don't know if uh are you able to say whether that's a data point that we can derive.

I'm Kyle Dalton with CPD.

Yeah, so it's a it's a complex way thing to study, but it's possible to study it.

A lot of the areas that you see on that map are designated as landmark districts, right?

So tearing down a single unit house and replacing with row homes is is far more challenging than it is in areas that don't.

And of course, there's also also market considerations, lot sizes factor into, you know, can I fit more than one unit on a lot?

Because there's a lot more variety of lots um configurations are allowed in these districts than in single unit zone districts.

So it would be possible to to you know put together a market study, a historic study, a zoning capacity study to kind of try to forecast and and guess, but it's not as straightforward as you know looking at existing height, maximum height, what's the delta to be able to figure out would someone be able to or or be financially incentivized to uh scrape that one story building and put in two or three-story building and put more units in.

Great.

Thank you.

I really appreciate that.

Um the other thing I will note is just I added up and divided your information.

There's no slide number, but I think it's slide four.

Um, and what it showed is that 15% of the new homes that have new single family homes that have been built in the city and county of Denver since 2019 were built on lots that could have held more than um that have been zoned for denser use than what was built on there.

So I think that that's really um that 15% number, I think is really powerful because a lot of the things that we're looking at, like with expanding housing choices, um the the percentages we're looking at for some of the fixes are significantly smaller than 15%.

Way smaller.

So I do think that this is um something that is really worth us considering because it it looks like um if you just compare the numbers between the two, this would have a bigger impact than unlocking housing choices.

So um just really appreciate that.

Thanks.

Um pro temper Mirror Campbell.

Thank you, uh Madam Chair, and thank you for the presentation.

Uh you touched on it a little bit more of like how is this, does this have any impact or does this change anything with unlocking housing choices?

Or just is in addition to how do you I think it lives independently of it?

Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, if if that wasn't happening, I think we'd still be this would have dawned on us eventually.

And if it is happening, we don't have to do this either.

But I think it's a standalone average.

It's related to the other concept about you know, making sure that when area plans talk about corridors that could have some multi-unit, but then they're in suburban, and so there's no form for that.

That's another similar, you know, kind of concept, I think.

So um, thank you.

Is there any um thought around you know things that are already in the pipeline?

Have you thought of a timeline that things would be grandfathered?

I'm thinking of two different developments um that somebody is thinking about in in my district that they're moving forward with some multi-unit and some single family home.

So is there some thought of what might be grandfathered in?

No.

Or is there a date or no?

Literally um we just it.

This is this is like submitting a concept plan of it's gonna take like they're just gonna take two years to do.

No, okay.

Well, I don't think I still don't think that haven't built by then.

But um, maybe we can talk a little bit more offline because I think that there's there are two developments that are happening.

Um again, they're taking land that has not been developed, and some of it is single family homes and some of it is multifamily.

So maybe we can talk a little bit more about that one.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ben Chair.

Thank you all for this work.

I think it's interesting also um that you all talk about how what has been built that 28,000 dwelling units have been built since 2019, and only it seems like we have this conversation about single unit zoning all the time, and it takes most of the conversation, and only 12% of the units have been built out of the 28,000 that are single family.

Is that correct?

Say that again.

So if you go to slide four, 12%.

It's just 12% of the 28,000, right?

38,000.

I think 28, 20.

The single family homes are 12% of the 28,000 homes that have been built in Denver.

So the other 24,000, right, have been um something other than a single family home.

That's a really good point.

And so I feel like we spend a lot of time, at least in my council district, I spend all my time talking about single family zoning.

And I'm like, actually, that's not the majority of development that has happened since 2019.

That's just my point.

Um, at least in at my lived experience, I've had I and I trust me, I have McMansions in my council district, but I feel like this proves my point as well.

For your um approach, I prefer approach one.

Um the reason why is because these um non-conforming, non-compliant.

I've had I've rezoned a couple things, and I've created non-conforming structures, and then something happened to them and they couldn't get funding to to fix what they needed.

And it was really detrimental.

One was an um apartment that had some affordable housing units in it, and the HOA went to go get funding, and they couldn't get the funding because I I had changed the zoning.

And so I'm really con I'm always cognizant now about um existing homes becoming non-conforming, non-compliant.

Um so that would be my preference, but I do really like this proposal.

I could if you look at that map a lot of my council district has two unit zoning, RH zoning.

I think council district three, I think council district three and council district one are the only ones that have RH zoning.

I think councilwoman uh or maybe a couple more, remember we did an amendment on it, or we were going to do something on it.

You and I pulled all kinds of data, and it was La Alma Lincoln Park, it was um West Colfax and then scattered just a little bit more.

Um getting cue to talk about that.

Yeah.

So um, but I really like this approach, and um I hope it doesn't take a long time.

I think that you could easily pull what book building permits are in the queue for um Pro Tem's council district.

And I had a question, Pro Tem, is the areas that you're talking about, do they have higher density zoning throughout the whole thing, or is it a PUD?

Um they have actually it's a site where they have it, it's single family, it is zoned for single family homes, and they are putting multi, they're dividing it and putting multi-family on a portion of it and then single family, like smaller single family.

What's the zoning though?

It's uh I can look it up exactly, but it's zoned for single family homes right now.

Okay, so this wouldn't impact it then, right?

Well, yeah, it well, no, they would be fine, I think.

That's why I was trying to figure out with the T-U-R-H and Yeah, it's for T U R H and M U.

That's why I was trying to figure out if is it if it's a P U D, because you can have a PUD and you could have sections of that for single family zoning, like what we did with Eliches.

I have some single family zoning when Elich is the old Elych site, but then I have multi-zoning, and it's very prescriptive where the single family zoning went.

So that's why I was wondering what your that zoning would be that you think it might impact okay.

Councilman Tars?

Yeah, just real quick.

Um the RH zoning that we were concerned about is that on corner lots of a certain size, it's allowed to choose the apartment building form.

Um and that was a bit of a concern on um because it it was kind of this like asterisk kind of a thing.

Um but I will say that um West Colfax, when it came out of the last kind of rezoning effort, had a lot of zoning entitlement that it was afforded, and it's built to that, um, which is like fully turned over that neighborhood.

form um and uh that was a bit of a concern on um because it it was kind of this like asteris kind of a thing um but i will say that um west colfax when it came out of the last kind of rezoning effort had a lot of zoning entitlement that it was afforded and it's built to that um which is like fully turned over that neighborhood it is um and in in good ways I mean there's a lot of housing but it's a lot of really expensive housing because it's all duplexes um or row homes where there was an affordable home so there is I think and I I I think about that with the corridor along Morrison Road where you have that diagonal yellow patch um those are really big lots and they don't really have alleys um and um one of the things that I know is coming out of unlocking housing choices um is trying to preserve an existing affordable uh property um uh so I just don't want this to become looked at like um an incentive for here's where we want you to develop duplexes um where there might be a single family home um along Morrison Road right now um but I also it's not really where we're seeing single family homes getting scraped and just rebuilt as a single family home but um that's one of the um just eyes that I've got in terms of um property acquisition and how that might be happening in Westwood.

Um but I don't have a problem with this I think it is different than what we're seeing uh both why we have the West area memo um and what unlocking housing choices is trying to address so I think it is important to know that this change if we're whenever it would be put into effect if it were would not require any change to any existing property if a homeowner wanted to expand their house within that 40% it's it's all fine.

You don't have to do a thing with your single family house.

But if someone wanted to come in and scrape it they couldn't put it replace it with another huge single I think it very I like it.

Alright so we'll just see you back here once you have something drafted all right see no other further business um I'll see you in like 28 minutes.