Speaker numbers apply only to this recording. Names come from transcript evidence. “Possibly” marks uncertain attribution.
The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of the Denver City Council met on October 21, 2026, at 1:30 PM to consider a proposed ordinance establishing best value contracting standards (Item 26-1540), hear a briefing on a proclamation opposing Amendment 82 (Item 26-1539), and approve 17 consent agenda items.
Public comment was held on Item 26-1540. The following individuals spoke:
Hey Denver. It's time for this biweekly meeting of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of Denver City Council. Join us for the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee starting now. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Denver City Council's Transportation Infrastructure Committee meeting for October 21st, 2026. We have one action item. We have one briefing afterward, and we have 17 consent items that will go forward at the end of the meeting if unless there's no objection. Unless there is objection. So let's start with introductions and let me start on my left with uh Councilman Watson. Uh good afternoon, Darren Watson, fine district nine. Good afternoon, Manisanneville, North West Denver, District 1. Rona Vitres, District 7. Chantelou is District 8. Good afternoon, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver, District 4. Thank you. The action item is uh 26-1540 an ordinance uh regarding competitive selection for uh process for certain contracts, commonly known as best value, and we have our two council sponsors here. I want to say that the council chamber is open for overflow, and uh I don't know if everybody who has signed up to speak is in the room right now. So, what I'll do is I will call out the order of speakers in the event that any of them are upstairs in the chamber so that they can be called down in time. So I'll call out like the first five, and then after each person, I'll add one after that. Um thank you. And uh Councilmembers Heinz and Albidras, we're going to uh go right into your presentation. Thank you. Great. Thank you, committee chair, uh members of the committee and of council, and to the many faces uh in the committee room and overflow. Uh thank you. I'm Chris Hines here on Giver City Council representing District 10. And uh today we're gonna talk about best value contracting. Um I'll just give a a quick uh framing. Uh Councilmember Lidra as we'll go through the first um uh five slides and then I'll um do a few of them myself. So um, why do we want best value contracting in here in the city? Um we have uh uh we have different agencies, um Dottie uh and Den that do uh construction contracts. So I guess first I should say um the city enters it enters into a lot of contracts. There are three big buckets. There are construction contracts, there's service contracts, and then there are goods. Um struction contracts, the city, uh there are a lot of city funded contracts that um that build both horizontal and vertical construction, and uh the Department of Transportation Infrastructure manages those contracts that are not at the airport, and then Den manages their uh their contracts as well. Um services contracts are more like uh contracts for housing stability or security contracts. Um those are a different set of stakeholders than construction contracts, and uh and they have um uh also uh they touch different agencies, and so um, and then goods. If you buy an F-150 from this place or that place, they're bit it's still an F-150. Um, and so uh so those three different groups. We may never go to um uh consider best value contracting for goods. Um because the communities that uh engage in services are are different and the agencies are different. Uh we decided to uh bifurcate and consider that separately. So today we're just thinking about construction, city funded construction projects. So um uh we want to make sure that the city has uh its values stamped on every project, uh every city funded construction project that that we enter into. Uh sometimes Dotti presents uh uh certain set of values, uh sometimes they present them uh in different ways, sometimes it's just cost-based uh uh bidding, and so whoever gets the lowest cost um uh wins the bid. Uh airport sometimes has different sets of values, and so the goal here is to make sure that we have the same set of values for every construction uh contract that's uh that the city enters into. So with that, just uh general context. Um I'd like to hand it over to my co-sponsor.