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.

Um today is April 27th.

Uh we have a great agenda in front of us today.

So before we get started, let's go around the room and do introductions and then we can get started.

I'll start on my right.

Southwest Denver is district two.

Jimmy Torres, West Denver District 3.

Hi, everybody.

Sarana Gonzalez Cuchetas, one of your council members at large.

Ronaldres with Lucky District 7.

Sarah Perdy, your other council member at large.

Uh Darrell Watson, fine district nine.

Diana Romero, Southeast Denver, District 4.

All right.

And I'll pass it over to Luke.

Great.

I am sitting at the head of the table, Luke Palmasana, senior policy analyst for Denver City Council.

I'll run through the couple slides real quick.

We're here to talk about council's new budget policy and proposals for ahead of our May work session.

Here's City Council's commitment to equity and inclusion.

This is for council members to briefly explain on uh their newly proposed budget policies and funding proposals.

Each council member will have the same amount of time, eight minutes, uh, to use however they want.

Members can present on on one or two that other members might not have heard of, or can try to tick off all the ones that they've submitted.

Um this is uh an opportunity to explain the new proposals.

It's you're not necessarily making a pitch.

We'll save that for the May 14th workshop.

Um just to be respectful of time, we'll ask that other council members hold up on questions until either the end or um offline if we don't have enough time.

And then this is not we're not talking about micro district specific policies or proposals to today today.

Um so with that, these are the 2027 half of the 2027 budget goals.

I won't go ahead and read through those.

Um, but then with the exception of the president going last, this is just in order uh by my favorite.

I'm just kidding, by the district, by the district number to my at large uh council members.

Um, but this is just uh um just by district.

So little known fact the council of chairs we call district twelve and they call me district fifteen.

Yeah, those are the nobody cares.

All right, non-mine.

All right, and then sorry, council president.

I'll I'll be keeping the timer and I'll just kind of shout out when the eight minutes are up.

All right, and colleagues, for a reminder, Luke sent out on Friday at 223 the Excel docs.

So I'm a visual person, I have to like read along.

Um so if you want to pull that up, I believe the first one are the ones the first Excel doc is the ones that we wanted to keep from last year.

The second SAL doc is the new ones.

All right, so Councilmember Flynn, take it away.

Thank you, Madam President.

I don't need eight minutes unless I uh do maybe a song and dance after a brief presentation on my item, and that is uh and we we added restoring basic services because after uh the cuts that we had to take, uh, that's a very difficult for a lot of folks in the out in the neighborhoods in the in the city at large.

Um we need to look at restoring basic services, improving delivery of essential city services, restore trust.

The taxpayer dollars are stewarded effectively.

Uh so my uh item is to the extent that estimated revenues will allow.

Restore staffing to basic services, starting with such agencies as the DMV, which generates revenue, uh parking ticket magistrates, which mitigates revenue, if you will, because uh neighborhood inspection department of finance, uh, so that they can mail property tax bills on request.

Uh restore the street paving program.

I don't know if all of you looked at your neighborhoods which ones are getting which streets are getting repaved this year, but there are not many.

And there weren't many last year either.

And this is a penny wise and pound foolish policy that could result in a need for more heavy reconstruction of streets if we let them go for too long.

So the only thing I'll add um to illustrate the need for this is the Bear Valley Denver Motor Vehicle Office has been closed, well it's closed now because of an unforeseen issue with construction where we found asbestos when they were doing some work at the shopping center.

So it was closed for two weeks in March, not just the one rolling week, but for two weeks because of other circumstances elsewhere in the city.

And we were the ones that took the hit.

So we can complain as much as we want or field complaints from constituents about expired tags and whatnot, but if we don't give them a place to go get their tags, we have no complaint.

So we gotta find a way to keep these places open.

There's tens of millions of dollars that come in from DMV, for instance, every year.

So to the extent that estimated revenues will allow.

I'm not asking for uh you know to take money from fund balance or anything else.

Just let's take a look at the estimated revenues, maybe starting tomorrow.

And um restore those basic shares.

And that's that uh Madam President, my only item.

Thank you.

Next step we have Councilman Corex.

Thank you.

I have um seven, I think.

Um so I'll start with the go ahead.

Yep.

Yeah.

I'll start under the goal increase community safety, and I've got two uh requests in here.

Um is to support um the community-led safety grant pilot, which will uh see its first year of grant distribution in likely in 2027.

If you'll remember, this was an amendment that we added to use three million dollars from the Broncos Fund um to put toward um this uh uh community proposal called the community-led safety grant program.

So it's to get out that three million into local nonprofits and um uh really try to address some of the uh deepest and and heavily unaddressed issues regarding particularly youth and involvement with criminal justice system.

So um uh that will likely see the distribution of those funds in 2027.

So we're looking for a commitment to find a matching three million for 2028 to keep that going.

Um my next one is um uh just a star uh expansion request.

Um that one's um um um I don't think I need to share too much about that one.

Why?

Um under empower communities goal, I've got four items.

Um is um truly build out a robust licensing and rezoning notification system by neighborhood.

Cashman and I have been requesting this for um year over year, and while it was opened up, it's still a little cumbersome and clunky, and you can't um do it by um neighborhood system.

So that is just a tech services piece, I believe.

Um the next one is maintain funding, do not reduce funding for participatory budgeting.

We need to see those things um continue to follow the NPI process.

Um speaking of NPI, I would like the administration to think about what it would take to realign funding to complete all of our NPIs by 2030.

Um we need to be able to get past this particular hurdle because it keeps coming up uh with barriers, and I I think Sarah Show Welter said once these two upcoming are through, there's only about five more to do.

Um it would be great to be able to just um get those completed in um a short period of time.

Um and then the other uh under this goal is uh the request to not cut immigrant legal services fund allocation in 2027.

Um there was an interest in doing that for budget savings.

They get 750,000 from the city.

It's the only funding that goes into the uh legal services fund, um, and it is needed now more than ever.

Um the last two, um, one is under our uh infrastructure goal.

Um, you know, Councilwoman Alvidez, you mentioned that you have a similar goal.

Um, and while I don't have a particular um proposal, I want to work with Dottie and Amy Ford and I have talked about this.

They have interest as well.

We need to create a long-term funding plan for bridge repair and figure out what that is and how we actually get caught back up.

Uh we have entirely too many bridges that are failing.

Um, and the difference between good and failing is a thin line.

Um so uh uh that is gonna take, I think, some um innovation on our side.

I don't know if it's like a small bond every other year or something like that just for bridges, but we really do need to be able to cue those up and not be waiting for a citywide geo bond opportunity.

And then the last is to begin the process in 2027 to reauthorize healthy food for Denver Kids sales tax and consider expanding the scope of it.

So it runs out, it stops collecting in 2028.

That's it.

Awesome.

Great.

All right.

One thing I forgot to mention, colleagues, is if you see overlapping, um, like I have one that's overlapping with Taurus.

Um if we could work together those offices so that we could consolidate those, we decided not to do that right now because we felt like everyone's voice needed to be heard, but we really want to do that for the 14th.

Okay, perfect.

So we have Council Pro Tem Remaro Campbell.

Thank you.

Um the first one I have, let's see, I've got six total policy budget proposals.

But the first policy proposal is to increase the number of can you say which bucket?

Yes, it's in infrastructure, and so that is to increase the number of neighborhood plans across Denver.

Um, and I my language was a little different but very similar for the next budget cycle.

Uh we know that we've been talking about this, it comes up multiple times to strengthen our communities, our neighborhoods.

There are seven areas, our seven more plans that are in the queue.

Um, two of them are in Southeast Denver, and I can list off the rest of them for you.

Um, but what we're finding is that without any sort of guidance, um, it's coming up, it's reoccurring, um, it's happening more and more for things that are coming through in Southeast Denver, and I think when we also hear things through committee, it's been a reoccurring theme.

Um, I like the idea of by 2030.

Um, so I would love to work with you on that one.

The second one is within basic city services.

Um, so this is to restore previously eliminated FTE to the Dottie safety engagement team.

And the Dottie safety engagement team are the ones are the project manager, engineers, the people who help us with the planning, design, construction, um, management for our project needs.

And currently there's like two or three for the entire city.

So these are our key contacts from the council office to know where the Dottie projects are.

Um, they respond to all of our you know, um, updates and needs, and so I think with these liaisons we should just increase the number that are responding to the 13 um council offices, um, and then that way we can better track projects across the city.

And also look at our future needs.

So we're constantly just doing what is you know, what is uh what is in the queue.

We're looking in the present, but we just don't have, I don't think they have enough bandwidth to think future, and also I think that impacts like future bonds that we would be looking towards.

Um, another one within basic city services is Denver Parks and they had a significant um cut for their FTE, and um this would be for again those key contacts that we have and that we hear a lot from um that I hear a lot from constituents in District 4 for the senior planning in some of those senior roles.

So there was about an 18% reduction in 2020 for 2026, um, and how that's impacted, I think are the planners.

So as it was mentioned before, we have a lot of deferred maintenance.

We have a lot of you know, parks and trails and rec centers.

Um I sat on the bond committee with council member Lewis, and we heard multiple presentations about the deterioration that is happening and um within the entire parks and rec system, and I think that this would help us be able to plan forward and again think about future um bond projects, think about how we are just not just thinking in the immediate, but that we're thinking forward.

The next one that I have is in basic city services.

Again, I propose that we have an assessment of those city services to demonstrate the responsiveness to residents' needs and accountability for how those budget constraints affect city service quality.

So as opposed to like the first one with an idea or the you know the squeaky wheel that we're actually taking a citywide perspective as to how we are addressing what those reductions have been and how we go back and fill them.

So again, um I hear often around the DMV services.

Um we have, you know, I have multiple library closings, there's renovations that are going on, um, lack of right-of-way enforcement.

Um so I think this would also help us be broader how we think about our districts are interconnected as opposed to just a district-specific um issue.

So I'll go, I I don't know where I am on time, but this one's in infrastructure, uh, increased funding for citywide traffic audits.

So again, when we are speaking with our DOTI teams, or when people have issues, they are often referred to.

Well, this needs to be a traffic study.

Um I'm requesting that we increase the budget for traffic consultants to consult more, or um, I don't know if they're the consultants are in-house, um, but for more traffic studies citywide.

So we have a very long queue.

If somebody puts in for a traffic study, they will wait nine months to a year at this point for those traffic studies that impacts quality of life for speed racing, high-entry network corridors, safe routes to school, street crossings for accessibilities to parks and other and um just other amenities, libraries, whatever the case may be, and um you know, I have there are with a lot of the um the traffic that's happening, like we have a place that has multiple um crashes through um through fences, and it's always referred back to a traffic study, and that traffic study hasn't happened, and it's been um started with my uh predecessor.

Uh the last one is climate res and climate response.

Um, this one is to create educational opportunities for residents through CASER about drought-related landscape conversions.

Um interesting how uh we also there was an announcement for those mini grants for the climate resilience, um, but that's 200,000 for citywide response for climate resilience.

And I think that it's I feel like we're we're saying what we want the it to be, but we're not doing the education piece to be able to bring people along for what those conversions could be, how they could reduce water, um, and being kind of more as opposed to saying, hey, come up with any idea that we actually have a better strategy and do more education for our residents in this area.

Um, so I would like to increase um what that would look like from CASER for water saving practices in households, etc.

So those are um those are mine.

All right, thank you.

Next up we have Councilmember Cashman.

Um he's not here.

So let's see, let me go to my handy dandy.

Which one is this under climate?

His is create a task force to arrive at a complex or comprehensive value-driven policy on how Denver addresses artificial intelligence in city operations.

Um that's the only one he had, right?

That's right.

Okay.

Next one up, we have Councilwoman Albigres.

Thank you, Council President.

Um I'll try to be as quick as possible.

I had quite a few, and I'll start with community safety.

Um, I'll start with providing proper funding to the crime lab for crime scene investigation.

Um there's a few items listed under here, so I'll just break the one bullet down into more.

Um, the crime lab's ability to operate effectively has far-reaching efforts on how law enforcement's capability to adequately respond to instances of crime, provide fast and accurate forensic evidence, and hold officers accountable or exonerate those wrongly suspected.

Um I've continued to advocate for the crime lab, so just continue to raise up that issue.

The second part of this one is about proper fleet for DPV.

Ultimately, DPD would like to be in charge of their own fleet, but right now what's happening is even if DPD were fully staffed, as it's not fully staffed right now, officers are often at the station waiting for a vehicle just to start their shift.

So we're paying them to be at the station waiting for their vehicles often, and so this is a bigger issue.

And then the third part of that was funding hiring for sheriffs and assisting them in their hiring efforts.

I know that we have extreme overtime in the department and the office of the sheriffs are the deputies are very exhausted often.

And then part of this uh bullet point was increase invest in programs and methods that continue uh the city's reduction in violent crime, prioritizing crime prevention, um, but also that's the overall arching goal.

Mine was addressing the um domestic violence uptick, so addressing rising domestic violence and assault cases.

It um this could be a wide variety across a lot of these items, including um making sure that we have housing available from people to having victim advocates and mental health clinics at the proper amount of detectives since that type of crime is going up so much, and then uh the last one is a policy one.

This came up when we were talking about flop cameras in particular, and I was able to have a conversation with Greg, who is a constituent but was the head of the crime lab around use of this type of technology, and what he suggested is that he had been advocating for many years to get a technology division within the crime lab instead of having police do these searches.

He believes that was why they were able to uh mislead us on how they were using our data, and so having actual data scientists uh that are overseeing this data, I think would be helpful as far as managing that data.

And then that was it for safety, empowered communities.

I had the strengthened residents' ability to play a meaningful role in their own governance of the district level arts and culture programming.

We need to support local communities and fund their arts and cultural events.

Um we have seen some festivals and things go away, anything from FIVA streets to the underground music showcase, which left our district, and now we're creating a new Blue Cipher Festival which has no city funding, and so thinking about how we activate places like Morrison Road, Laredo Heights, La Rasa Park, and all of these places in the future, so it's not all about out of all of our council budgets all the time.

Um and then priority that was it for empowering communities under housing needs.

I had um uplifted again foreclosure uh rates are going up.

So Denver had 677 foreclosures in 2025.

Uh, this is up from the previous year of 560 in 2024, and so I am advocating for some kind of foreclosure uh counseling and um prevention services that the city should be offering because when these families are displaced, they not only are displaced, but they lose a lot of their uh any wealth that they built.

Um, and then part of a separate item in that part is around the mile high sites having the wraparound services that they need, um, the all-in-mile high sites, and so the La Paz uh tiny home village in my district is kicking people out often for arriving drunk.

This happened and someone was a crashed into an in a pole that pole fell on a home.

And so we're not calling these sites sober sites, and we're not offering people help um until we're kicking them out when they're using drugs, but we're not offering them services if they want to stop using drugs.

Um, I know that this site in particular has a Colorado Coalition for the Homeless truck that comes and brings services once a week at the most, and that's just not enough for someone that's really trying to seek the medical treatment that they need.

Um, and so continuing to raise that up.

And then lastly, and this one might be uh for the Department of Safety, but um treatment of judges and addiction treatment for parole eligible.

So treatment judges are specifically trained to understand the complex relationship between addiction and criminal behavior rather than simply imposing punitive sentences, and then the addiction treatment for parole eligible.

Many people who are poll eligible have underlying substance use disorders which are never properly addressed during their incarceration without access to these.

Um we will see continued recidivism in a in the harmful cycle.

Um so that all just goes to supporting the people that are in our shelter system.

And then for priority four support for workers and businesses.

I have city staffing or improved residents response times.

Hold on, let me find it on here.

Um basically we need to uh make sure we're budgeting for the collective bargaining, ensure fair market wages for city workers and that they have spaces to meet.

And then the secondary part for small businesses is to um have a place for people to incubate uh businesses citywide and a strong support of network of community organizations, and then for climate response.

I have uh I'm concerned about there not being any funding for moratorium research, and so just wanted to raise up that fund moratorium research on data centers, water conservation and tree watering program.

Uh, we need to ensure that um that basically trees are not the trees that we're planting are not dying around the city, but another part about the moratorium research when we had that presentation.

I asked them how much funding for research they had or what research they were gonna do, and they said they have no funding for research, and they were gonna just depend on research that's out there, and so that is a concern for me.

Um priority six was infrastructure I brought up again the load restricted bridges and trying to get bridges in general up to where they need to be.

Um, and then for priority seven, building healthy communities is where I listed child and family homelessness.

I know that some of my colleagues have listed that too.

I don't know if they put it under housing, but um, part of having healthy communities is that our children uh have a place to sleep at night.

And then for Office of Children's Affairs as well, supporting those efforts and the child care needs, and just support for the Office of Children's Affairs overall, and then my last one for priority eight uh basic city services is around 311 and 911 uh 911.

Um goal is to list acute dispatch options possible, is to utilize the least acute dispatch option possible.

So now that they're filtering all of these calls for behavioral health and other items, making sure they have the resources they need, and then 311 maybe meeting the metrics of response times, but is not consistently meeting the standard of the resolution that our constituents are seeking.

And my district residents regularly see cases closed without real follow-up or do not receive a meaningful response at all.

And so we need additional staffing and stronger services so that people are getting those responses that are meaningful, not just a closed ticket number, which sometimes can mean a variety of things and lead to them having to call over again and again.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you so much.

That was really quick thorough councilman Lewis.

Thank you.

Um the first one is cost savings procurement changes, which is under basic city services, and so this would be a strategy to look at how the city could save money in the procurement process by using in-house labor.

Um, for example, I met with firefighters at station 26 who let me know that there was a fairly recent change that prevented them from doing work and make an improvement in their firehouses.

And so the kitchen at the fire station had recently been renovated, and it cost $76,000 to do so using an outside contractor, and they said they could have done that a lot cheaper.

Um, this work that the fire department had undertaken.

This is work that the fire department had undertaken in the past.

Um, and it also has the benefit of building morale in the sense of ownership at the firehouse.

And I think we should look at other areas where we might be able to save some money to allow for work to be done by agency personnel.

Um, non-uniform department of safety positions.

Uh, this is under community safety, and this is an expansion of funding for important safety-related functions that are not uniform, so Denver Fire that are not uniform Denver Fire Denver Sheriff Denver Police.

Um, so services like the crime lab staffing, office of the independent monitor staffing, star expansion, um, similar to councilwoman Alvides, parity has something quite similar, and as also Councilwoman Torres.

The evaluation of BRT, this is under infrastructure, and so funding to allow community planning and development, the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, and the Department of Economic Development and Opportunity to plan for the evaluation of COFAX BRT or COFERC bus rapid transit once it's completed.

Um impacts to be considered include writers, ridership statistics, traffic analysis on neighborhood streets, changes to business revenues, other impacts, um, would also allow partnership with RTD to get the metrics all in like a one-stop shop.

Home repair and co-compliance uh microgrants.

This is addressed, this is under addressing housing.

This would provide funding to help folks repair their homes or to come into compliance with zoning codes, or would ask CPD and HRCP or other agencies to fund education programs for existing outside microcore programs, such as Habitat Metro Denver's Exterior Home Repair Program or Habitats Capable Program.

This focus focus could include aging populations who are long-term residents without the means to keep to keep up with their upkeep.

This would replace the current ADU funding priority as unlocking housing choices continues the process.

This was another priority selected by the district eight community panel as well.

The next one is the expansion of notification systems.

This is under empowered residents.

I originally submitted these as two separate priorities, but I'm combining them to create a two parts.

So the first part would expand the timing and content of a construction notice specifically with a focus on advanced notice and information regarding mitigation and other impacts.

The second part would be to expand engagement in existing organizations, community networks and providing funding for education of public education to the public as to initiatives, projects, and rules and regulations.

This could be a way of aligning city budgets with the work that Councilman Cashman and Councilwoman Gonzalez Gutierrez are doing with the RNOs.

Councilwoman's Torres has something similar, has a similar proposal for rezoning and licensing.

The next one is to expand DOTI community facing roles.

This is under infrastructure, and so it's to expand or restore DOTI positions that are most important for community engagement and design, such as project manager positions or community designer positions.

These positions are critical for disseminating and collecting information from communities to develop projects that reflect the desires of community.

And right now we have roughly one of them for every 160,000 residents, which puts a strain on them and on the process.

That were district office.

That one's a basic city services.

Oh, just kidding.

Isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Oh.

My bad.

You're good.

You're good.

I got you.

Thank you.

I will end with uh councilwoman uh Diana Remember Calmbus has something very similar as well.

Okay.

Um develop a strategy for low cost infrastructure and interventions.

Uh this is under infrastructure.

Question my question.

Uh there so there are many, many infrastructure needs across the city.

I'm proposing that we make it a priority for DOTI to develop a strategy to identify and implement low-cost infrastructure interventions whenever possible, prioritize interventions with low complexity or technology unless higher interventions already exist or being funded through like the bond or they're already identified through the capital improvement plan for 2027.

The thinking here is that we could theoretically achieve more by doing smaller interventions at the expense of higher ones, unless again those are already funded or cleared for work in the CIP or through the bond.

And then the final one is uh resourcing and volunteering under basic city services.

I withdrew that one.

That's all.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Next up we have Councilmember Hines and his is remind me, Luke, where uh basic citizens city services, the last one.

City services ensure people who have who receive parking tickets can as a first-level response dispute parking citations without having to physically present somewhere.

So I believe it's restore the magistrate, um, similar to a couple other ones that we have.

So that might be able to be combined.

Next up we have Councilman Gonzalez Gutierrez.

All right.

Well, thankfully, some of my colleagues have done uh some of the work for me.

So I'll start off with the um community-led safety grant program.

I will just um be really short and ditto that everything councilwoman Torres has said, and we've been involved in many conversations and working on that.

So um, but yeah, it's really just figuring out how we can fund future um in the future for the community-led safety grant program, because I think we're getting things off to a great start.

Um, the next two are um with regard to the Office of Independent Monitor.

The first part, I think this is similar.

I think, and then Councilwoman Lewis, you can let me know when we get to that portion if it is true that yours where you talked about the Office of Independent Monitor and um uh non-uniformed employees, that that one um I might just have the subset there, and this is to make sure that there is that they are providing uh that they have capacity to be able to perform their duties of investigating complaints that come through.

We just had a recent presentation of their annual report in the community alongside with our our safety department and um the chiefs and sheriff and it's it's interesting to just learn like how are they able to actually get through all of the complaints that they're receiving and the fact that their budget is not proportional to um Department of Safety's budget and in who they're actually supposed to be investigating and have oversight over.

Um and so there seems to be a disparity there.

So looking at um the possibility of bringing that um not to the same alignment but a proportion to them.

Um the other one with the Office of Independent Monitor.

So through the surveillance task board is task force, it has become evident that there should be some type of an independent entity to have the auditing power of surveillance technology.

Um we've talked about this.

We talked about this during the acts on contract um conversations, and I think at one point there were some questions to our independent monitor of whether or not they felt like that this could fall would fall under their purview, and and I then it does.

Um, but they don't have the current um capacity in order to provide that oversight, but they are situated to do so.

Um it kind of goes along with you know, should DPD be auditing themselves, which is currently what is happening, or should an independent agency that is already set up to do that be doing it.

And so that would be for that policy and budget.

Um, and these are those all fall under community safety.

Under housing needs, um, this would be a budget request.

Um, there could be potential policy with this, but I believe this one is similar or has some uh correlation with Councilwoman Alvidez's um, and then I think councilwoman parity as well.

Um so this is addressing family homelessness by providing proper funding and appropriate shelter facility and programming to help families gain access to stable housing options.

So I've had uh some meetings with host, and I understand that this is also a priority, I believe, um to prioritize this population, but I want to make sure that we do it in ways that can be actually effective, right?

It's not a band-aid, it's how do we help folks to be able to move on to the next step.

And so just really taking a serious look at this.

I know we had a similar conversation last year around family homelessness, and I know we all continue to hear about it, and it's super concerning.

So want to be able to address it.

And I believe my last one is under healthy communities with healthy communities.

This is uh looking at creating a process and measurable outcomes to meet the needs of the Department of Public Health and Environment, Community Health Assessment, and the common community health improvement plan.

Um I'm I know that Councilwoman Torres brought this up last year around fully actualizing it, right?

And then I've even heard some of my colleagues talk about that should be our guideline to our budget uh process to the mayor's budget making process.

And so um, you know, I think it's important to note like this information is coming to us from community, right?

This is surveys, this is feedback, this is engagement that's happening out in our community.

Um, so it's great that we have a goal, right, to try to like make this happen and and to actualize it, but I think we need some more some more teeth to that, right?

We need to be able to have uh metrics, how is it actionable?

How are we getting reports back showing that we are either meeting or we're failing to meet these goals based on how we're investing our dollars in our budget?

So um that's probably more of a policy.

There might be some budget needed if there's a need for additional um reporting or data analysis and things like that, or community engagement, even.

Um, but that's that wraps up all of mine.

Great, thank you.

Uh next up we have council member parity.

All right, so I think in the realm of safety, uh, other colleagues have covered the things that I wanted to address, which include um the crime lab, um, which I've I'm just very very alarmed by what's happening there.

Um hoping we can hear about that in safety committee sometime soon, hopefully.

Um, and then in addition, I want to emphasize the um sort of staffing emergency in the jail.

I know that um last I've heard from the sheriff, the recruiting is getting a little better, retention is still a problem, and I just have um it's been very difficult to understand.

Uh we can see those line items in the budget, but it's been difficult to understand what they're spent on and and what we could fund that would improve that, and I'm sure that something's there.

So it's just time, I think, for that to be addressed in a more serious way.

Um the only other item I had there was um I wanted to make sure and put down a marker for continuing to respond to the overdose crisis.

DDPHE does a great job of funding um harm reduction and overdose prevention, but um just as a kind of a marker last year, very luckily we had a 37 homicides.

We had 562 overdose deaths, um, and every one of those deaths is preventable.

Um so I won't stress those things because we've talked about all those a lot.

Um, under community empowerment.

Under community empowerment, I have been with others here spending a lot of time talking to colleagues in Minneapolis, Chicago, LA about what happened to their cities after these abusive federal enforcement efforts.

Minneapolis has lost 300 small businesses that are probably not coming back.

They've seen a doubling or tripling of child hunger.

They've seen a tripling of eviction rates after the federal government came and just terrorized their city.

So I think we need to be prepared in a budgetary way to potentially support partner organizations that will have technical, operational, logistical kinds of needs if they're going to absorb huge demand for food, shelter, economic support, mental health services, all those kinds of things.

The philanthropy community has met about this as well.

So I think, but I just when we ask these other cities what do you wish you had done, this is what they wish they had done.

I also mentioned the immigrant legal services fund.

Our existing sub goal talked about trying to raise money for it.

I think we need to consider funding that directly because there will be just a deluge of legal needs.

And then I think we should be taking a look as we've been talking about all of our parts of our regulatory codes that involve public health and housing and all of those important things, licensure, all of those really are to protect the health and safety of our community, and those are unique city functions.

We've been talking about the incredibly rare instances when one of those enforcement efforts leads to like a criminal prosecution.

But the bigger problem, all those regulatory functions, are understaffed.

They don't have enough inspectors, they don't always have the right technology.

And so if we want to make a difference in that area, you know, the dozen cases or something where there's actually been a prosecution, fine.

But what we actually need to be doing is getting inspectors out in the field and upholding those parts of our code.

That would be the far more important move that we could make.

Under housing, um I also had a goal around making sure we have sufficient funding for shelter and rapid rehousing.

I did not frame that in terms of families alone, but I agree that the place where we have a known crisis is for families, and so I would be happy to just fold mine into the goal that council members LV Dresens and Gonzalez Gutierrez put in there.

We've again talked about that quite a bit.

Um I also think it's time for us to consider allocating, and you all will have briefings coming from um Councilmember Lewis and myself, and also from an outside coalition that's been working very hard on this.

I think it's time for us to allocate startup costs for the city to have a social housing authority.

This is the only one of my requests that is both a budget and a policy.

Um look for briefing about that, how a social housing authority would start.

But just to reiterate, the idea here is that with all of the threats from the federal government to, you know, the classic sort of vouching voucher system with the ways that the federal government is undermining DHA.

We need to continue supporting DHA in the ways that we do.

And we need housing that the city owns that is mixed income, so it's not just low income and we're stuffing people there.

It's self-sustaining because of the mix of rents, um, and we we control the quality and standards of those buildings, and we have that rental income into the future.

It's time for us to do that.

Seattle's doing it, Atlanta's doing it, Chicago's doing it.

Um then I also think we may need to consider this being the year that we put more funding into our city vouchers.

We apparently have, I don't want to misspeak, but I think we may have kept those flat and we're losing federal vouchers, and vouchers are one of the most powerful ways to keep a family housed, obviously.

They're expensive, but I think we need to look really closely when we get the host budget and consider expanding the amount of vouchers that we're doing.

Um, under workers in business, um, I have a note about making sure that um the auditor's office continues to be sufficiently staffed to implement their portion of two you.

That's mostly just a note because we put that on them.

They absorbed it for that year.

I want to make sure that they have what they need as unionization hits up across heats up across the city if they're getting complaints.

Um this is an important one.

I think we need to, as a council, be responsive to what we're hearing from small and independent restaurants, which is that they have a lot of um needs for support.

They need better permitting navigation, they need funds for things like ADA compliance and shopfront improvements.

Um, and so I think we need to look really carefully at that.

I know DETO has different funds that sometimes are accessible to small and independent restaurants, um, but I don't know that there's funding specifically for those type of businesses.

Um, and I think there are many appropriate ways that we could respond to what they're going through right now within the economy, including policies and including um this kind of budgetary support.

Um I have a placeholder to make sure that we continue funding retaining our workforce programs like work ready and day works, just because sometimes we've seen those cut in the past.

So we you know we've restored those before.

We should do that again if we need to, um, because they're proven to be very important.

Um then I have a couple of capital requests that under both workers' business and infrastructure that I will leave aside because I don't know if they count as micro priorities or not, and they're things we've talked about before.

Sorry, my phone's never on.

Um, health care.

I have raised this a lot as well, but I think it's gonna be incredibly important uh this coming summer and onward as the um federal Medicaid changes come into effect that we make sure that we're funding whatever we're finding funding for you know uh training and staffing all of our shelter and workforce partners to make sure that the people they serve can meet Medicaid work requirements and do not lose their Medicaid coverage because they will keep going to Never Health.

We know that.

So if we were the we are the as the city because we fund shelter and we fund workforce programs, we are one of the main sort of points of contact through those partners for the people who we will be most vulnerable and likely to lose Medicaid funding based on these new work requirements, and they're if we put the um the effort in, it's not that hard to help people meet them.

It's gonna be a matter of people, you know, um they can meet these requirements by, for example, um doing cleaning work right where they live in their shelter, but then they need someone there to make sure that they get the help they need to fill the paperwork, submit it, and keep their Medicaid.

Um and it would be a huge mistake for us not to do that.

Um I have another capital note about Denver CARES, which I think is mostly being funded through the DOAC, but um, as the budget process wears on, we need to make sure that we keep our eyes on that.

Um and then as with last year, we need to make sure that we're funding um medication assistant treatment, mental health and crisis response services in the jail, and recognizing that that's not just about those specialized personnel, that's also about the level of deputy staffing because one of the biggest barriers to the jail being able to provide um as much um opioid treatment as people there could use has been the actual baseline staffing levels and the ability to you know shuttle people around to see Dummer Health within the jail and that kind of thing.

So that kind of relates back to the safety goal.

And then finally, under city services, um, something that I've really learned lately.

I had a really helpful briefing from Department of Finance because I just asked them a question about the um the seat tax for all of our city entertainment venues.

It applies to Red Rocks, it applies to um all of all of our entertainment venues.

Um, and we it applies to the convention center when they have the right kind of event and so on.

It was set in like the decades and decades ago, like the 60s or 70s or something like that, and it's never been changed.

It's been a 10% on every ticket.

Um if you read the original ordinance, it's pretty clear that the thought was that that would always totally fund everything Red Rocks needed.

And as we know, that's not true.

We just had to put Red Rocks in the bond, um, and it was probably delayed.

You know, they they needed um those renovations a lot sooner, I think.

Uh we also had you know ADA litigation about Red Rocks and had to respond to that.

Um, and so I'm really I'm thinking that we need to fund um whatever kind of staffing or consulting DOF needs to actually go back and analyze the fees and taxes that have not been looked at in the past five years and determine if they're set at an appropriate level.

And I mean that in both directions.

In some instances, it could be that um you know AXS is making huge amounts of money on Red Rocks, right?

And we've set that fee at the same time for all those years.

Um, and so maybe there are things we could be raising in order to cover our revenue needs and cover our facilities.

Um, and then on the other hand, maybe there are things that we're charging too much for and we're causing harm, especially to people that are facing all kinds of cost of living increases.

There's something in the budget book that says that DOF does this kind of thing, and it does not seem like they've done much of it lately, probably because of their own capacity.

And so I think we need to make sure that we're um it's just time to take a pass at all that stuff with this kind of a tight budget.

We can't just sort of keep like floating, and um the example of paying for Red Rocks renovations through the bond instead of through um seat tax, I think is a good example of why we need this kind of analysis.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you.

All right, um last.

So my mine is um under housing needs.

Mine's the same.

I want to make sure in 2027 fund set set three separate neighborhood initiatives.

They said they'd only fund two.

So I think to get to 2030 if we funded.

I heard five.

You said seven.

I heard I looked on the website, so I just think it's five because two are already in the queue right now.

Okay.

So that's five, I think.

They've redone the mappings.

Yeah, it looked a little different than what's online.

Okay.

She said maybe five.

She said maybe five, I thought.

That's what I thought.

So fund for in 2027, and that's under housing needs.

That's mine.

And then my last one is basic city services.

Um, I want the mayor's office to fund our third attorney for city council.

We need our third attorney back.

We have too much legislation and we have too much going on that I really want to fund our third attorney, period.

I've been saying that time put in the face.

Um, those are those are all mine.

Um do we have any questions since we got done so quickly?

Do we have any questions for the members on any of the ones that were presented?

Questions from members on how you can partner with other members because there's some under infrastructure that I'm kind of um confused on, like I think infrastructure would go under housing for Pro Tem Romero Campbell, increased number of neighborhood plans.

So I don't know if anyone is like stuck on where they go.

Um I thought about it.

It was housing needs because CP like planning goes with housing.

That was just my brain.

Um yeah, that's I I was I put it under infrastructure just because of CPD.

Yeah, yeah.

I always think of Dottie as infrastructure.

Um I think it up for committees.

Yeah.

So um I'm willing to move it around.

I think it's the it's the effort to be able to move forward.

Yeah.

Councilmember Alvidres.

Um, yeah, I think I could break some.

Can we still make some changes to this?

Because I feel like I have to break some apart and maybe move some around, and then I think a couple things were left off.

One of the things that maybe didn't get put into the form, and that's the hard thing when we fill out these forms.

Like we don't get a confirmation of the form or like what was included or not included in it.

Also, the form was just really frustrating.

Not that you didn't do a great job, Luke.

I just feel like if I could make an Excel spreadsheet and send it, that would be easier for me because I know what I'm sending.

Um, but one of mine was also about the visit Denver report and thus enacting some of those um recommendations for supporting businesses.

So I just add that.

I was laughing at myself because I fill out the form and then I'm like, what did I put in it?

Who knows?

Maybe next time what we can do is um I think Google forms or I don't know if it's ours.

You can get uh receipt.

Yeah, yeah, every seat of what you submitted.

We could do that next year so you can remember what you submitted.

Yeah, that's something.

Okay.

Um are there any other questions, thoughts?

Um I would just say some of these I would love for us to think about um what do we if it's a particularly if it's a budget request, what do we want to see when we open that book?

Right.

So um, like I appreciate um the attention on agencies and um supporting this, supporting that.

I think we have to be as specific as um additional FTE here.

Um program expansion here.

Um consultant for X, right?

And um otherwise it just feels a little too big to send over, and they may interpret it in entirely different way than we meant it.

Um that's my only request.

Um, the other one I've already um uh let Councilwoman Lewis know.

Her request under infrastructure for low-cost traffic interventions is the NTMP program, neighborhood transportation management program.

Um I'm a huge fan of NTMP.

We've gotten them done in most of my neighborhoods.

Um it is, I think just Dottie um staffing it and cueing those projects up to be done in six months to 18 months, which is how they organize it.

It's a great way to take care of like striping on the street, quick little bull belt, like it's not major infrastructure.

Um, but we're in like the fifth year of something that should have been done in 18 months.

So it just that that's I think the piece, but it is such a good opportunity.

Yeah.

So five years.

Yeah, I agree with the like um Councilmember Alvides for your under healthy communities support the Office of Children's Affairs.

My idea of support the Office of Children's Affairs and your idea of support the Office of Children's Affairs might look different.

So give any specificity because if you all remember when we go up to Red Rocks on March 14th, we're gonna get a certain amount of points, and we're gonna do the whole point system and allocate points to whichever one.

So if before then, if you want to give as much specific specificity as possible, I keep always thinking about the fact that we funded um an uh a report for the work that Cashman and Gonzalez Gutieris were working on for two years before the mayor funded it.

I mean, we literally had to fight for that funding.

So the more specificity you can get, the more I think that we're um clear with the mayor on actually what we what we want.

Don't lay off half the staff to say.

And then um they don't they don't have to necessarily follow committees, but with whichever I think you know, however we want to work with them.

I think um I think three of us have fund neighborhood planning initiative that goes to community planning and housing, so that's why I put it under housing.

Um it's I think it is listed under our infrastructure goal.

Strategy with that improved Emmer's infrastructure completely through safe multimodal transportation connections and neighborhood planning.

Oh yeah okay that's I thought that so my when I say neighborhood planning initiatives mine calls out fund 38th Avenue in my neighborhood plan.

So that's why yeah so it calls out funding for um roads and stuff.

Yeah move mine over yeah whatever yep I'm totally fine.

I think in I'm sorry yeah go ahead one of the other ones like basic um services um mine was more like let's do an assessment of where we have um where we have the needs across the city I think um the deal I hear about the dinner all the time um and just how I mean hours and hours that people are waiting um and then there's only a certain amount of people that get seen a day so you could be in line and never be seen and people are going back multiple times.

So I I that's just a specific call out for um councilman Flynn for the DMV but I also think you know taking a step back and looking at what are the basic services that we do need that we'd want to prioritize that um that are across council district yeah I think that would be because we can't we we can't procure an assessment unless we use our professional service fund and three council members want to do it.

So any way that you can break down conduct a citywide assessment um to understand maybe you just call all 12 of us and ask what our assessment is and what we're hearing.

You know what I mean because I don't know how we conduct an an assessment so those are what I think of the more specificity that we can have because I have a DMV site in council district one and it closes and people down the line it's ridiculous.

I can write for you all my whole experience.

Yeah it's a lot of committees and right I get it from my constituents I get it I I have call my council member people are losing like entire days of work yeah 100% and some things you can't actually go online like I have to renew my tags you can go online but if someone lost their title you can't go and you can't do all of that if your car is stolen and don't ever keep your title in your car FYI PFA.

But some people do so I think is any any um yeah Luke when do you want them to have let's get some clarity around this so that you can you and your team can get prepared for because it's coming up soon yeah we think that may for people come up soon it's coming up two weeks from this Thursday.

Council President would um I guess for that in preparation of that and are we like what is what should we be prepared with it just as a reminder like what should we come prepared with for the conversation.

Yeah that's great.

As far as uh a deadline we we try to have the the spreadsheets and all the scoring sheets and stuff built out so we need the final things by then I would say maybe mid next week the fifth or sixth I had done a first pass of items that look similar and could be grouped I can send that out to to members if that would be helpful just as a place to start and I've um I'll ask folks who I a couple people pulled me aside and said they might be polling some so you can let me know in response to that but I can send that out today so that you have that and then take a look at that as far as next steps um we'll want to get those grouped in the next week and a half um we have the retreat set up on um or I'm sorry the workshop set up on May 14th 8 30 to 4 30 and then you all should have received the survey for the micro district specific um we usually typically will send that to the mayor along with the letter that comes out of the workshop so that I think the deadline is set uh two weeks from yesterday May 10th to complete that um but aside from the grouping I think we're just kind of working on the back end to get the materials together so um that will be facilitated by Elizabeth again we'll go goal by goal um if we haven't figured out exactly where things should live there might be discussion of which is the appropriate goal um but then we'll go through the ones that are listed and on that you know about 30 to 40 minutes each and then there'll be the voting thank you thank you what when do you want them to get any edits back I would say um end of the day um Tuesday May 5th okay and that's that's your end of the day not my end of the day so you're gonna work till midnight that's fine with me I just want to look at it on the next day.

Okay.

And that's that's your end of the day, not my end of the day.

So if you're gonna work till midnight, that's fine with me.

I just want to look at it on the next day.

So to clarify.

All right.

Are there any questions around that?

No.

All right.

If not, I'll see you all in uh hour.

Thank you.