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.

Thank you so much for being here.

Welcome to Mayor Council.

We will start with uh introductions and then a couple announcements, and we have a couple of special items on the agenda for this morning, so so glad that you all are here.

Uh I will start with the distinguished gentleman rocking the leather jacket to my right to start with introductions.

Uh uh good morning, Mayor.

And in uh full disclosure, it's leather localine.

It's a vegan.

Is it a vegan coat?

There you go.

Vegan coat.

Thank you for correcting the record.

Um my vegan friend.

Uh hi, everyone, Sadana Gonzales Cuchetas.

I'm one of your council members at large.

Sorry, the other council member at large.

Uh, good morning, Garrett Watson, fine district nine.

Jamie Torres, West Denver District Three.

Thank you all so much for being here.

We'll open up with announcements before we get to the agenda if there are any announcements that uh council members have for the gathered public and for folks watching to know.

Yes, Councilman Perry.

Yes, my office is hosting a in-person town hall this Saturday at Carlo Madison Rec Center from 2 to 4 p.m.

for trans non-binary, gender non-conforming done rights, or um people who may be caretakers or allies.

We're just trying to get the lay of the land of um how people are being impacted by um new and regrettable federal policies and kind of try to figure out what we can do as a community to support.

So it's mostly a listening session, but we'll also have some organizations there with kind of health care and legal expertise to answer questions if that's wanted by people in attendance.

Um you can reach out to my office if you want to attend.

Thanks.

Thank you so much, Councilman.

Other uh councilman Watson.

Um we have um every month we have community office hours in uh District 9, and this month will be on Friday at the 14th at from 11 to 12 at Whittier Cafe at 25th, and um Franklin.

And so if folks want to stop on by, uh 11 and 12, open discussion, um, any topics of import at the Whittier Cafe in the Wittier community.

Uh thank you so much, Councilman.

Other announcements, folks have this morning.

Uh okay, great.

Um well, we have a uh couple items on the agenda this morning.

Uh a special item first to recognize one of our incredibly beloved city employees, uh, Matt McLaughlin, which I'll do first in just a moment.

Uh, then we will spend a little bit of time talking about um snow removal with our Dotti team and also a little bit about uh our human rights and community partnerships update um from uh HRCP.

Uh and so I want to um start by uh remembering uh our our friend Matt McLaughlin.

You'll see his photo here for those of you that don't.

We have many members of his family and friends uh and co-workers who are here, and in just a minute, I'm gonna invite a couple of them to share uh a few words or stories if they want to.

Um I got to meet Lindsay previously, who's Matt's wife who's here, and two of his three kids, um, Violet and Elliot.

Um, but I think what I told them is remarkable is I don't know that I've ever had as many people approach me about a single city employee as I have about Matt, um, which is people who worked with him, people who worked in the office, people who got to know him, um, people who are uh folks in the community who just had the chance to interact with Nati at some point.

Not only uh did his work make a dramatic impact on the city, there's probably most major infrastructure projects the city has built in the last 10 years, he made happen.

Um literally, you kids can walk around the city and everything you've walked by.

Your dad probably built that.

Um should be quite proud of that.

Um it was also the way he went about the work.

Uh he was just a relentlessly kind, joyful, thoughtful, um collaborative person.

Uh there's not a person that knows him that didn't feel blessed to get to be able to work with him alongside him.

And so we will miss him deeply, but are incredibly grateful that he chose to give uh 12 years of his life to us and to the city and to its 720,000 residents because we are all dramatically better off because of it.

So thank you.

Um now that I've started the crying, I want to make it safe for anybody else to join.

Uh if there are folks who want to uh who know love andor worked uh with Matt who want to come up and share a couple comments, we'd love to have you.

Thank you, Cindy.

I'll promise to not look at you while you're talking to make a mic.

Do you want me to just stare wherever you want to?

Yes.