Speaker numbers apply only to this recording. Names come from transcript evidence. “Possibly” marks uncertain attribution.
On October 27, 2026, the Finance and Business Committee met at the City & County Building, Room 391, with Chair Chris Hinds presiding and staff member Anne Wallace present. The committee advanced 19 improvement district budget items, approved a Downtown Denver Development Authority funding agreement for the Barth Hotel, heard an informational briefing on the Business Impact Opportunity (BIO) Fund, and approved five consent items. Attendance records list 6 present (Gonzales-Gutierrez, Hinds, Kashmann, Sawyer, Watson, and Alvidrez) and 2 absent (Gilmore, Romero Campbell); the agenda member list did not include Alvidrez. All votes on action items were 5-0, with the two absent members not voting.
It's time for this biweekly meeting of the Finance and Business Committee of Denver City Council. Join us for the Finance and Business Committee starting now. Good morning. Yeah, there we go. Good morning. It is October 27th, 2026. My name is Chris Hines. I serve on Debbie City Council. We're representing District 10. We have two action items, a briefing and five uh consent items. Before we get into the action items, let's start with introductions, starting with the distinguished gentlewoman to my right. I don't know how distinguished I am, but Amanda Sawyer district five. Good morning, everyone, Set Anna Gonzalez Cochetas at large. Good morning, Paul Cash from South Denver District 6. Good morning, Darrell Watson, fine district nine. And we don't have anyone on Zoom yet, but if uh someone shows up, then I'll introduce them. So uh the first um uh conversations action items, actually a block vote of 19 items about bids, JIDS, TIDS, and all. So Department of Finance, um, will you um not use the acronyms that I just did? So business improvement districts, general improvement districts, and tourism improvement districts. Um if uh you'll introduce yourself and and take it away. Of course. Uh good morning, council. Uh my name is Dennis Wood Jenick. I'm an analyst on the capital management financing team in the Department of Finance. Uh like with mentioned, I am here to give the annual presentation on the 2027 plans and budgets for the various general improvement districts, business improvement districts, and tourism improvement district across the city and county of Denver. Um, like like he mentioned already, there are 19 items. So I'm gonna try and go through this presentation as quickly as I can. There's a lot of material to cover, uh, but I'm going to try and uh save some time at the end for QA. Um so if there's something that I don't specifically address in my initial run through, feel free to flag that. We can circle back to uh more discussion if need be. Um, additionally, happy to have uh offer briefings um uh um if if you'd like to go into more detail about any of these items between now and the council actions uh later in November. So uh for the agenda, uh I'm gonna start off with a very high level uh discussion of the requested council actions and and what we are ultimately here to uh review and approve um to move forward today. Uh then I will start um discussing just districts at a um a general level just to refresh your memory on how they work uh and then uh pivot over to uh my annual review process just to discuss what I look at and what I collect, and then I'll spend uh a significant portion of the time going over the budgets themselves uh individually before opening up for that QA. I'm gonna get my timer going so I can just keep an eye on my time. So um we are here to approve the uh review and approve the 12 plans and but uh 19 items in total, 12 plans and budgets for the 12 BIDs, uh the work plans and budgets for the 6G IDs, and then the annual plan for the TID. Uh I do have here a summary slide of the specific items um if if you want that for your reference, but I'm not gonna spend a lot of time going over this uh right now. And so shifting over to just again just a uh refresher on how these districts work. So the business improvement districts and the general improvement districts, they fall under Title 31 of state statute, so a lot of uh state law um governs, dictates a lot uh how these districts operate in in many ways. And so just wanted to uh establish that before we go into this. And then the TID falls within uh Denver Chartered, Denver Revised Municipal Code. Uh so uh slightly different set of rules for how the TID operates relative to the Title 31 districts. So uh here I have a summary table of some of the districts across the city. We're not discussing metro districts today, so I'm gonna skip over that one. Uh GIDs, they cover uh primarily public infrastructure and maintenance uh for both commercial and residential property. Uh the city council serves as the board of directors for the GIDs. So um, as you may recall, in this week coming up here in a few weeks when when time comes to hold the public hearings, uh City Council will gavel out of city council and gavel in as the board of directors for the GIDs.