On September 24, 2024, the Denver City Council and Mayor convened for a weekly session. The meeting featured introductions, announcements from council members, and a major presentation on a new digital benefits screening tool called "My Friend Ben" (or "Ben for Benefits"), developed in partnership with the nonprofit Gary and Denver Human Services. The presentation highlighted the tool's potential to connect residents to over $500 million in unclaimed federal benefits annually. The meeting concluded with a unanimous vote to move into executive session for litigation discussion.
Elise (from Gary) and Anne Marie (Denver Human Services) presented the tool, accompanied by Brian and the Mayor. Key points:
Council members expressed strong support and asked clarifying questions:
Welcome to this meeting of the mayor and Denver City Council. At this weekly session, city agencies brief the mayor and council members on various proposals and projects across the city. This meeting of the mayor and city council members begins now. Good morning, everybody. And welcome to Mayor Council, the new fancy mayor council with no microphones. It is just all in the ether. Um I was gonna say I got told several times during the budget hearings I had to stop chewing so loud. The meeting was getting in the way of people being able to hear online. Yes. Um, you're always on the mic now. Um welcome. We'll start with introductions, do some quick announcements, and excited to do a presentation this morning on a new concept for uh rolling out the Circuit Department of Human Services. Let's start with the distinguished channel for Council Six. Thank you, Mayor Paul Cash from South Denver District Six. Good morning. Rodrigo's lucky district 7. Amanda Sawyer, District 5. Oh, okay. Good morning. Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4. Good morning. Darrell Watson by District 9. Good morning, Amanda Sandoval, Northwest Denver District 1. Great. Thank you all so much for joining this morning. Thanks to all the folks that are tuning in. So there are any announcements any council members have they want to make for other members of the council or for the public at large. Councilman Cashman. Thank you, sir. I just wanted to thank you. The first lady for her creation of the Give Five Mile High program. Especially for you coming out this past week and this last Saturday, along with a number of community members, a big group from uh Mountain West Recovery Homes. We cleaned up, I think about 30 bags of trash in two quadrants of the intersection of I-25 and Colorado Boulevard. And uh it was uh daunting to see that uh a whole lot of what we cleaned up was uh drug paraphernalia and remnants of but uh just the gratitude of people driving by who driven by and seeing it just lay unattended to for months and see that that the community's taken action to clean itself. It was a real positive experience. So uh I appreciated that a lot and uh uh love seeing where the program good five mile high is gonna go moving forward. Thank you so much, Councilman. It was a pleasure to be there with you. Appreciate you coming out. Other announcements, yes. Well, I'm thank you. I'm gonna dovetail on uh uh Councilman Cashman's comments. Same thing. We had a great group of people out that were helping um with the Give 5 and doing a cleanup I 25 in Hampton. Um it's just never ending. Somebody dumped some trash there today. Um but we did uh a ton of bags and a ton of help. Uh we also had another volunteer, um, an interfaith group that came together called Just Serve at one of our local um at the LDS church on Monaco and Yale, and they brought together an interfaith community to be able to do um health bat um health kits and some other things that will go to um newcomers and our in-house neighbors. So um just a lot of volunteering going on uh in the neighborhood. One last thing, Hamilton had their fall fest.