OPENPUBLICA · PUBLIC MEETING RECORD
Record of Proceedings

Denver City Council Budget & Policy Committee: 2027 Budget Proposals – April 27, 2026

Council Committees — Monday, April 27, 2026
BodyDenver, Colorado
SessionCouncil Committees
DateMonday, April 27, 2026
StatusFILED
Video Record
0:00 / 1:00:21

Transcript — Verbatim
0:02

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

0:10

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

0:26

Um today is April 27th.

0:31

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

0:34

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

0:38

I'll start on my right.

0:42

Southwest Denver is district two.

0:44

Jimmy Torres, West Denver District 3.

0:48

Hi, everybody.

0:49

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

0:52

Ronaldres with Lucky District 7.

0:54

Sarah Perdy, your other council member at large.

0:56

Uh Darrell Watson, fine district nine.

0:58

Diana Romero, Southeast Denver, District 4.

1:02

All right.

1:03

And I'll pass it over to Luke.

1:06

Great.

1:06

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

1:12

I'll run through the couple slides real quick.

1:15

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

1:24

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

1:33

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

1:41

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

1:46

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.

1:55

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

1:58

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

2:01

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

2:04

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.

2:15

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

2:22

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

2:28

I won't go ahead and read through those.

2:31

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

2:36

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

2:45

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

2:48

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

2:53

Yeah, those are the nobody cares.

2:57

All right, non-mine.

3:02

All right, and then sorry, council president.

3:04

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

3:10

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

3:17

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

3:20

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.

3:27

The second SAL doc is the new ones.

3:31

All right, so Councilmember Flynn, take it away.

3:35

Thank you, Madam President.

3:35

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.

3:59

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

4:05

The taxpayer dollars are stewarded effectively.

4:08

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

4:15

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.

4:36

Uh restore the street paving program.

4:39

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.

4:46

And there weren't many last year either.

4:48

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.

5:00

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.

5:15

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.

5:23

And we were the ones that took the hit.

5:26

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.

5:40

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

5:42

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

Discussion Breakdown — Share of Meeting
Public Safety████████████████████████24%
Procedural███████████████████19%
Fiscal Sustainability██████████10%
Homelessness████████8%
Infrastructure and Engineering█████5%
Small Business Opportunity█████5%
Housing Development█████5%
Transportation Safety████4%
Parks and Recreation███3%
Summary of Proceedings

Denver City Council Budget & Policy Committee: 2027 Budget Proposals – April 27, 2026

The Budget and Policy Committee of the Denver City Council met on April 27, 2026, to discuss and present new budget policy proposals for the 2027 fiscal year. Each council member had eight minutes to outline their priorities, covering areas such as basic city services, community safety, infrastructure, housing, and climate resilience. The meeting was a preparatory session ahead of the May 14th workshop, where formal scoring and voting will occur. Council members were encouraged to refine their proposals and coordinate on overlapping items by May 5th.

Discussion Items

  • Councilmember Flynn (District 2) – Presented a single item: restoring basic services (e.g., DMV staffing, street paving, parking ticket magistrates) to the extent that estimated revenues allow, citing the closure of the Bear Valley DMV and the need to prevent further deterioration of infrastructure.
  • Councilmember Corex (Torres, District 3) – Presented seven proposals:
    • Community safety: funding the community-led safety grant pilot (matching $3M for 2028), and STAR expansion.
    • Empowered communities: robust licensing/rezoning notification system, maintain participatory budgeting, complete all NPIs by 2030, and maintain immigrant legal services fund ($750,000).
    • Infrastructure: create a long-term funding plan for bridge repair and begin reauthorization of the healthy food for Denver Kids sales tax (expiring 2028).
  • Council Pro Tem Romero Campbell (District 4) – Presented six proposals:
    • Infrastructure: increase number of neighborhood plans (seven plans in queue), and increase funding for citywide traffic audits (current wait time 9–12 months).
    • Basic city services: restore eliminated FTE to DOTI safety engagement team (currently 2–3 for the city), restore parks and rec planner FTEs (18% cut in 2026), and conduct a citywide assessment of service responsiveness.
    • Climate response: create educational opportunities for drought-related landscape conversions through CASER.
  • Councilmember Cashman (not present) – Had one item: create a task force on AI in city operations.
  • Councilmember Alvidez (District 7) – Presented multiple items:
    • Community safety: fund crime lab and fleet for DPD, hiring for sheriffs, address domestic violence uptick, and create a technology division in the crime lab for data oversight.
    • Empowered communities: fund local arts and cultural events (e.g., Blue Cipher Festival).
    • Housing: foreclosure prevention counseling, wraparound services at all-in mile high sites (e.g., La Paz tiny home village), and treatment judges for addiction.
    • Workers/businesses: budget for collective bargaining, small business incubation, and support for community organizations.
    • Climate: fund moratorium research on data centers and water conservation/tree watering.
    • Infrastructure: address load-restricted bridges.
    • Healthy communities: support child and family homelessness and Office of Children’s Affairs.
    • Basic city services: improve 311 and 911 response metrics.
  • Councilmember Lewis (District 8) – Presented several proposals:
    • Basic city services: cost savings through procurement changes (e.g., using in-house labor for fire station renovations; saved $76,000 on one project).
    • Community safety: expand non-uniform safety positions (crime lab, independent monitor, STAR).
    • Infrastructure: evaluate COFAX BRT impacts after completion, expand DOTI community-facing roles (currently one per 160,000 residents), and develop low-cost infrastructure interventions strategy.
    • Housing: home repair and code compliance microgrants (replacing ADU funding).
    • Empowered residents: expand construction notification systems and community engagement.
  • Councilmember Hines – Presented one item: restore parking citation dispute process without requiring physical presence (similar to restoring magistrate).
  • Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez (At-Large) – Presented:
    • Community safety: support community-led safety grant program, fund Office of Independent Monitor (OIM) to investigate complaints and audit surveillance technology (currently under-resourced).
    • Housing: address family homelessness with proper shelter and programming.
    • Healthy communities: create measurable outcomes for DDPHE’s community health assessment and improvement plan.
  • Councilmember Parady (At-Large) – Presented:
    • Safety: crime lab, sheriff staffing, and continued overdose crisis response (562 overdose deaths vs. 37 homicides in 2025).
    • Empowered communities: prepare for federal enforcement impacts (e.g., support for partner organizations, immigrant legal services fund, and regulatory code enforcement).
    • Housing: funding for shelter and rapid rehousing, social housing authority startup costs, and city vouchers.
    • Workers/business: support for auditor’s office for unionization, small and independent restaurant support (permitting, ADA, shopfront), and retaining workforce programs (WorkReady, DayWorks).
    • Health care: funding to help people meet Medicaid work requirements and avoid coverage loss.
    • Basic city services: analyze fees and taxes not updated in decades (e.g., Red Rocks seat tax set at 10% since 1960s/70s).
  • Council President – Presented:
    • Housing: fund at least four neighborhood planning initiatives in 2027 (to reach 2030 goal).
    • Basic city services: fund a third attorney for City Council.

Key Outcomes

  • Next Steps: Council members will refine proposals, group overlapping items, and submit final edits by May 5, 2026 (end of day). A workshop will be held on May 14, 2026 (8:30 AM – 4:30 PM) for formal scoring and voting on priorities. The micro-district specific survey deadline is May 10, 2026.
  • Grouping: Council members were encouraged to coordinate on similar proposals (e.g., bridge repair, DMV services, neighborhood plans). Luke (senior policy analyst) will circulate a first pass of grouped items for review.
  • Specificity: council members urged to provide detailed, actionable requests (e.g., specific FTE numbers, program expansions) to avoid ambiguity in the mayor’s budget response.
  • No votes were taken during this meeting; it was solely a presentation and discussion session.

Meeting Transcript

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.

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