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

Thanks for joining us for the discussion.

The Governance and Intergovernmental Relations Committee starts now.

Good morning.

It is Tuesday, April 21st, 2026.

This is the governance and intergovernmental relations committee of Denver City Council.

My name is Paul Cashman.

I represent District 6 and serve as vice chair of this committee.

I'm in this seat because our chair, Councilman Sawyer will be presenting the first item on our agenda today.

All right, hearing none, we'll welcome them as they check in.

And before we get started, I will start with introductions to my left.

Councilwoman Gosala Gooster.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Good morning, everyone.

Serena Gonzalez Gutierrez, one of your council members at large.

Good morning, everyone in Manisandville, North West Denver District.

Good morning, Amanda Sorry, District Five.

I was like, do I know yet?

I don't know.

Good morning, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver, District 4.

Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver's District 2.

Well, welcome everybody.

As I said, we'll start with uh the change to the DRMC regarding prevailing wage, uh, followed up with uh a legislative update on uh what's happening at the State House.

We have a couple of items on consent that if they don't get pulled off during this meeting, we will move forward.

Uh with that, uh Councilwoman Sawyer, the floor is yours.

Well, thank you very much.

Um so today we're here to talk about um a very straightforward change to the prevailing wage ordinance.

Um so here's our agenda.

Um just as a little bit of background, the auditor's office has enforced the prevailing wage ordinance since 1950.

Um so it's been around a long time.

Um there were updates in 2001, 2008, and then significant updates into 2016 and 2023.

Um what those updates did was clarify the scope, strengthen it, and then we in 2023 we moved enforcement from um our Office of Human Resources to Denver labor in the auditor's office.

Um the goal of prevailing wage is to ensure that the government, because we're very large, very powerful, and have a lot of money, um, doesn't feel like it sometimes, but that is perception, right?

Um we want to make sure that we are not negatively influencing regional wages um by requiring so we require that prevailing wages get paid um on city invested projects because we want to make sure that uh we're not sort of destabilizing the market.

So that's kind of the purpose of the prevailing wage ordinance in general.

Um a little bit of kind of 2016 background.

Um so it uh the prevailing wage applies to work performed on city land, paid for by city funds, and is consistent with the federal Davis Bacon Act.

Um so in 2016, and we have two council members who were here in 2016, so they can talk about this better than I can.

Um, it improved processes and kind of removed outdated references and then clarified the scope of the prevailing wage.

And the auditor's office created a working group, had an entire um conversation with industry experts, um, you know, trade union unions, etc.

Um, to make sure that stakeholders were at the table for this conversation.

So um a little aside here, over the last couple of weeks, I have been talking to former council members who were here in 2016 to sort of ask and establish establish the um a clear understanding for me of the legislative history of kind of what went on during that time.

That you can see the video, it's on Legistar.

You can go back and take a look at it.

I did.

Um it's really interesting.

Every single council member I spoke to personally, um, said exact almost exactly the same thing, which was I would I said in 2016 when you had these conversations, um, you know, do you remember them and its specifics and what was kind of your intention around what um prevailing wage was meant to do and and whether city projects um where the city was investing dollars on private land were meant to be included in the ordinance.

And every single one of them said, I don't really remember that far back, which is totally fair, because if you asked me about what went down in 2020, I wouldn't be able to tell you that either.

Um but every single one of them said yes.

The that their intention was that for private projects where the city is investing dollars, prevailing wage should be paid.

Um so you can see this is actually a slide from the 2016 auditor's office presentation where it also clearly shows prevailing wage applies to work performed on city land or paid for by city funds consistent with the Davis Bacon Act.

Then I talked a little bit about the 2023 update where we really wanted to make sure we were gonna streamline these processes because OHR is uh an independent agency of the city of Denver and has a lot of work on their plate in terms of job classifications and things like that.

And prevailing wage is a really big area.

Um so what we decided to do was move prevailing wage to the auditor's office and uh and so that there could be an independent independent prevailing wage administrator in Denver labor whose entire job it is is to focus on prevailing wage, make determinations.

He uh has this person, it is a he in this role right now, but this person has the authority um to you know make determinations, et cetera.

And then there's a process that's very clear that's set in place for if there is a disagreement where a neutral third we can send we.

The auditor's office, Denver Labor can send um the case to a neutral third-party hearing officer to make a determination on it.

So um none of those processes kind of clearly existed before 2023, and we're really happy with the way that this has been working so far, and I wanna just welcome Matt Fritzmaur, um, who I'm gonna ask to make any comments at the end of my presentation.

Um, but really appreciate you being here.