Follow along as the mayor and city council members hear updates from city agencies and projects, discuss important city matters, and hear about what's happening across the Mile High City.

Join the discussion with your elected officials, starting now.

Thank you for your eighteen hour day that you're probably on now right now.

We will start with introductions.

We'll do some announcements, and we do have one item on general session and one item on executive session.

So I will start with the legendary leader to my right.

Would you like to start with introductions?

Good morning, Darren Watson, fine, district nine.

Good morning, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District Four.

Let's call them that today.

Good morning, Amanda Sandoval, Northwest Ember District Right.

Great.

Are there any announcements that council members have for the listening public at home or for their colleagues?

Council tourists.

Thank you.

And those of you at the table.

It is the first time that they're doing it over two days, so it'll be Friday night and all day Saturday at uh Morrison and Perry.

Um, and it is um the rare kind of space where you're gonna find Asian and Latino, uh, heritage, culture, food, music, all of that celebrated together.

So really proud of um my community, and shout out to Damaris and Mimi, um, who are um the um masters of pulling these amazing events together.

So um, we'll just love to see folks there this weekend.

It is one of the best parties in Denver.

You should definitely come.

It's a great time.

Uh, Councilman Gonzalez, Terras.

Thank you, um, Mayor.

And what Councilwoman Torres didn't mention is that we'll be singing a duet together or karaoke on Friday night there at uh trying to think of a good duet song.

Um, but anyway, we're just too many.

I know you you speak karaoke.

Oh, I have.

Just kidding.

I want to um just give a shout out and welcome.

We have a young person shadowing us for the next couple days from Molin High School.

So just want to welcome Jennifer who's joining us.

Welcome, Jennifer.

Glad to have you.

President Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mr.

Beautiful Mary.

That's my favorite.

We're getting out of this one.

We had, so in Southeast Denver on August 16th, it's our traditional our day that we have the South by Southeast Festival.

This year it's a little different.

We are going to have the Colorado Symphony perform.

And they are going to start at five, but the opening act is Thomas Jefferson High School with their orchestra.

And we are also gonna do an art project from Denver Arts and Venues dedication.

So I believe it's on your calendar as well.

And just invite people to come out to Bible Park on August 16th.

Um for the Colorado Symphony.

Free concert.

Thank you so much.

Councilman Watson.

Uh this Saturday, August 9th.

We are um celebrating in uh Park Hill, the Park Hill Day of Legends.

It starts at 12 until 1 p.m.

It's actually starts earlier, so it starts around 9-ish to about 1 p.m.

It's at Skyline Park, 5600 East 35th Avenue.

So Herman White and team are always doing great work for youth sports in um on East Side, and so uh congratulations to them for hosting another great event, and we're encouraging neighbors to come out and join us this Saturday, August 9th for our Park Hill Day of Legends.

Wonderful.

Council President.

Um next Friday, I have my movie in the park at Zoonai Park and Resource Fair.

Um, and we're gonna have the climbing law from Denver Parks and Rec.

We're gonna have Miles the Mascot and a DJ from the Denver DJ School that's located in the Northwest Denver.

Um, so come out and see a free movie uh next Friday at Zoonite Park.

What's the movie?

Do we know?

Moana Moana.

Is there more than one?

Yeah, I think everyone wanted to make it your choice.

One of the Moanas.

I can't remember.

The movie in full transparency.

Movie I wanted, got told no because it was about a dying dog, and I would say I said it was yeah, it was like the dying dog.

It was a dog story.

Oh, my staff told me.

My staff told me no.

Yeah, my staff is like no so they like kicked me off the island on that one.

Last year I got Goonies, so I won one time.

That's right.

This is why we all have good staff members who occasionally wreck our edges.

Um, uh, great to uh be with you.

Any other announcements before we move on?

This is nice.

Wonderful.

Well, the one item we have on the agenda this morning, council members, is just an update on our city goals for the year.

This is the end of quarter two, and so it's kind of our halftime update on where we are on progress on these.

So I want to walk you through a bit of high-level updates on each of these goals.

Uh, there are a couple areas we want to open conversation about places we're seeing the impact of some of the federal and state cuts that are coming down, so I do want to flag those for you, but mostly just want to give you that update and see if there are any questions that people have, and or some members of the public can be following along.

We want these roles to be open and transparent so you can see how the city's doing, whether we're doing great uh or not doing well enough.

We'll share both of those with you.

So if you remember, uh these were the six citywide goals we set uh for Denver this year, focused on vibrant, affordable, safe, our all in mile high efforts, climate resilient, and family friendly.

I'll give you a quick overview of each of those uh next slide.

Here's a bit of the update on uh our vibrant uh strategy and the goal for this year.

As you know, our first goal was to develop a comprehensive plan to drive strategic investments across Denver's neighborhoods.

Thanks to your late work last night.

Uh that bond package is now referred to voters, which is a historic success.

Uh before last night, we had had mostly focused on the process of community involvement.

7,000 community members who've been involved, 50 plus community meetings, and the five subcommittees with 55 community members and your council representatives.

Thank you all for your leadership on those, as well as of course the executive committee that the council president led and did fantastic work.

In addition to that citywide effort on investments in all of our communities, we continue to focus on revitalizing downtown and fully reopening 16th Street.

As you know, we did open that just at Memorial Day.

It is up and running.

We had 100,000 people in the first kickoff weekend.

More importantly, perhaps we have 41 signed leases in downtown year to date, which are new retail and commercial businesses returning to or coming to downtown for the first time.

Those are all exciting points of progress.

We did launch the Denver permitting office this year, as you know, which is also a focus on making it easier to do business and faster to do business.

That comes with a 180-day promise that both uh site development plan and permit will be done within 180 days of time in our hands.

That is up and running.

We're getting good feedback on that.

So grateful for all the city employees working hard to make that a reality.

On SAFE, we are very excited about the progress here.

You may have seen last week.

Another national study came out that showed Denver has the largest decrease in all categories of violent crime of any of the top 50 cities in the country.

It's not enough, but the progress has been very significant for us.

The goal was to decrease shootings by 15%.

We're well beyond that right now.

We've seen our homicide rate down just about 50% year over year.

People involved in shootings all down 27%, and firearm homicides, particularly where we've been focusing on reducing gun crimes, are down more than 55%.

So all those moving in the right direction.

We also focused on coordinated strategies to address nonviolent crime.

We have folks who say yes, we're delighted that the homicide rates are going down when I'm worried about people stealing groceries from IKEAN supers or about people coming in to buy small business and taking stuff and running out.

And so we've been focused on more uh efforts to address regular quality of life crimes, and we've been focusing on making sure we're responsive to those calls when they come in.

Both the number of calls we're getting around folks that are experiencing homelessness has also been down significantly.

So our belief was if we got people off the streets into transitional housing, they would be safer, and also the city would feel safer.

That's true, as we've seen now a 66% drop in resident calls with concerns about people experiencing homelessness over the last two years.

So that I think shows that the community is acknowledging it and seeing it, and we're obviously still focused on getting folks that are inside into permanent housing, but that's a bit of update on safety.

Next one, uh, on affordable units.

The goal here was to bring on 3,000 affordable units.

That means both building new units, that means converting existing units to be affordable.

It means helping uh with rapid rehousing or rental subsidies to make units that currently exist affordable.

We have created about 1,100 affordable units so far to date, a little bit behind our goal to 3,000 at the halfway point.

I want to update you on some progress there and some challenges there.

I think the good news is in terms of our other goal, which is to develop innovative solutions to close that affordability gap.

We did launch a middle income housing program, which will help people that make up to 140,000 dollars a year but still have a hard time paying rent in Denver to be able to do that.

Did it in partnership with Denver Housing Authority does not require new taxes but does allow us to have an open call for anyone that wants to build affordable housing to say we will give you a property tax abatement for about 10 years on a unit that stays affordable for about 30 years.

So it's actually a great long-term investment for us.

We've seen a lot of interest so far and are excited about that as a step forward.

Um we also sent out an invitation for people that want to work in partnership with us to build affordable housing on city-owned land.

So we have about 40 different partners who have put in applications to want to work with us to develop affordable housing on city-owned land.

One of the things that we talked about last night that you all talked about and was in the bond this morning is the housing package to allow us to acquire more land we could use for affordable housing projects like this one.

So there's a bit about affordable.

I do want to come back to that in a minute because we do have are seeing some concerns about uh the drop in federal vouchers that are helping people get access to housing, and so I'll come to that right after we talk about our all-in progress as well.

You'll see here two big goals on homelessness.

One is getting folks off the streets and into transitional housing.

On that, our progress is well ahead of schedule.

Our goal was to bring 2,000 people off the street and indoors.

We've already crossed 1500 at the halfway point, so we are on pace to significantly outperform that goal, which is great for folks that were getting off the street.

The second one is helping those people exit into permanent housing.

And that is one where we are a little behind our goal.

We wanted to be at a thousand so far, but only about 743 people into permanent housing.

And I want to talk to you about that because that affects both our all-in goals and our affordable housing goals.

You can go to the next slide.

We are seeing right now so far a cut of about 180 of our vouchers that we use to support people in access to housing.

A hundred of those vouchers we've lost through our partners at DHA and the federal government because they are worried about federal funding cuts that has led them to be more cautious in the allocation of vouchers.

So that's a hundred exits.

We had planned for this year.

We will not have vouchers for.

And we've already seen 80 vouchers cut through the state budget cuts of the last round.

Our fear is, of course, as the state prepares to make a new set of cuts, we could see more of those.

But that is about the gap we see between where we wanted to be on our housing goals and where we are.

Is if we have more and more cuts in these vouchers, those are really critical resources we need to help people get into housing.

So we want you to know we're pushing hard on the federal government to move more of those.

We're pushing hard on the state government to do more of those and our local partners.

Also worth noting, we have seen because of some of the changes at the VA, significant slowing in the VA's ability to process vouchers.

And so our placements there have gone down both on some budget cuts and some personnel cuts we've seen at the federal VA.

So as you all are watching some of the federal changes, these are really starting to trickle down to local impacts in terms of resources for us, and so wanted to update you on those.

We'll keep pushing our federal representatives to try to restore those.

We'll keep pushing our state partners to protect and restore those.

We'll keep working with our local housing agencies to try to be as creative as we can to get those out to people, but that is a concern I wanted to flag for you.

Last two and then open to questions.

These are our goals on climate for the year, focused on cutting carbon pollution by adding 2,000 heat pumps, EV chargers, and solar arrays.

We have made good progress there.

We've already installed about a thousand, and we have contracted more than 3,000, and so that is all in process.

We feel good about the progress there.

The other one was on climate resiliency and focusing on both planting trees in Denver as a way to protect areas of shade from what could be real heat pockets and heat islands, and also focusing on reducing water usage so we can conserve that for other areas of critical need and growth.

We have already planted 3,000 trees, which is a great tribute to our team at Parks and Rec.

We're about 70% of the way there.

I think we'll be able to fill out and finish that goal.

We are on path on gallons of water saved.

You'll know part of these savings are coming from natural landscaping of medians or parks, where rather than doing Kentucky bluegrass that is very, very water reliant.

We're looking at more natural landscapes that will preserve uh water usage.

Those are being installed this year.

We think we're on path to get all those sites renovated.

I think some of that water savings will come in 2026, but we think we'll have the infrastructure built by the end of this year to make sure we're on track for that.

Last one, and we'll open up, is making sure that Denver is a family-friendly city and focusing on a couple of key goals here.

Two areas of focus were one on after school programming.

So the goal was to get to almost 60,000 children and high quality out-of-school programming for the school year in the summertime.

We are a little more than half the way there.

We're about 34,000 kids connected, and so we think we're on target to do that.

We are most excited about our goal to try to put young people to work.

We had a mayor's youth works program we launched last summer with a thousand students.

We had an even more ambitious goal to do 2,500.

We have already well surpassed that goal of 2500.

We'll have more than 3,000 young people who got placed in summer jobs this summer, which we think is great for them, great for us.

Saw a couple kids last night who are working hard to get to their final 100 hours to make sure they can get the city bonus if they complete their 100 hours.

So that's been an effective program.

We'll be excited about, continuing to expand.

Alright, so that is the update on goal progress for quarter two.

I will stop there and happy to jump in with any questions, comments, concerns members have.

Council Torres.

Thanks, Mayor.

So one thing on the affordable housing piece.

Denver Housing Authority comes to mind, but also some of the other community land banks and how they're preparing to utilize and make available what they've what they're sitting on.

Denver Housing in particular has a lot of dispersed sites that they could be building ADUs on.

They could be building duplexes on, like, and I think they're willing, they're very interested in figuring that piece out.

So just want to make sure that we're thinking more than just like what do we have control over, but what are our excited partners also want to contribute.

That's a great point.

So when we sent out this RFP for folks who wanted to partner with us on developing city owned land, the goal is we'll create a team of project leaders who are going to do that.

And then as we add in more parcels of land, and that could be, as you said, could be RTD, it could be DPS, could be state land, could be Denver Housing Authority.

We're looking for all of those options with the idea that we could use the same template on any public land.

P and I had the place network investigations effort, a really uh powerful impact in Lama Lincoln Park.

Once downtown was cleared out, um, or a lot of the focus then came to kind of peripheral locations.

We're not done kind of being in that space.

Um, it is for for my district, it's Colfax and Perry.

Um, and what was really helpful about the PI is it leveraged not just police response but um city attorneys if nuisance abatement was going to be needed to really apply pressure on businesses who are um totally abandoning their responsibility to their property as well, and we still need that, and I haven't heard much about PNI still, um, whether they're still meeting and if they're picking up locations based on data.

Um, and so I just want to make sure that that doesn't fizzle because it was actually a really useful um space to bring all the city departments together who needed to weigh in in some way to respond to that.

Thank you.

We are absolutely still going.

We're very excited about it.

So the meeting update on it yesterday, and as you mentioned, our data there has been uh really exciting.

In fact, we have seven sites across the city.

Um, as of last week, uh, six of those seven sites were at 100% decreases in shootings.

We literally had gone to zero in those sites, and as you mentioned, it was because it is a collaborative multi-agency approach.

It's where do we add lighting?

Where do we add more after school programming?

Where do we open vacant buildings to fill them with businesses, and where when we have bad behavioures, do we hold them accountable or close them?

And that's really really worked.

Um to be transparent, the one place that we are still working on where we still are having challenges has been lower downtown around let out.

Um that's not a it's not a traditional neighborhood dynamic, it's not a it's more of a visitor dynamic, but we are still working on ways to help make that safer.

That's the only site in the seven that's still seeing that kind of activity.

But the other six have all seen great results, and we want to keep doing that and doing more of it.

Uh, we're trying we want to not leave those sites yet because they're still being successful, but eventually we'd love to transition out of that new ones that would be budget dependent, too.

Yeah, thank you.

Council President Portown.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

I had a question specifically around all in mile high, and I know that um there are numbers and and you're on your trajectory uh for sheltering.

Um I would love to be able to dig down a little bit deeper in the numbers and to see if we have you know, there's a rise in family homelessness, and so just really looking at you know how are we doing?

How much of the percentage of our total number are families that are unsheltered right now?

Be happy to that on the on the city website, we have a full dashboard that tracks every individual and their exits, what their outcomes are, what's happening.

Um we are still seeing an overall decrease in street homelessness for families, what we call unsheltered family homelessness.

Uh, we do know we see uh more families that are sheltered that are living with a family member or a cousin or in a car, and so that is an area of continued focus and concern for us.

That's obviously why our family shelter has been so important and critical.

Um, but I'd be happy to get you a full breakdown of that data if you'd like to see it.

Yeah, that would be great.

And I think that thinking about the family shelter and that transition into affordable housing, um, and you know, that would be probably next year's goals or numbers that we're looking at, but just how do we start to think about um really developing that affordable housing pipeline?

Um, not only for, well, I'm thinking specifically for families.

I think we're gonna want to do both.

We're both gonna want to make sure we have a place for families to land immediately off the street or out of congregate shelter into transitional housing or non-congrant shelter sites, and then of course, opening long-term units that are available.

I think that's why I just named that that area where you'll see increasing bottlenecking in the system is access to permanent housing that are that are affordable units.

That's where we gotta keep pushing out.

Um, one last one around the um family-friendly uh goal and the out-of-school time programs.

I think you know, not to be missed, and and definitely part of broader messaging is um out of school time before and after school and during this summer, um, great for the kids to be able to have you know enriching activities and a safe place to be, but the incredible support that it is for so many families to be able to work, and so I think that those two go hand in hand, and I don't know if you have additional um information about the families that are able to um to work because of this uh, it's a great question.

Um we should see from our children's affairs team if we have that data, but you're right for particularly for our out of school and summer programming for all of us that have kids were trying to navigate during the summer months, it's not easy.

Uh, and so the ability to have someplace enriching and meaningful for your child to go that still allows you to get to and from work is a critical part of why we thought this is not just about kids, it is about families and supporting that whole ecosystem.

And so uh really excited by the success there and would love to do more.

Um, and just one last uh comment about from the federal government the dollars that were coming down for um to support out of school time programming for 21st century.

Um that was pretty much had all halted, and it was not something that was going to come through, has now been released, has now come down to the state and to the cities across you know, across Denver, in particular Denver, but I think that that just is another demonstration of these investments that aren't being from a federal level, the impact that it has would have been devastating for so many of the nonprofits here, many of them looking at like reducing staff, reducing locations, and possibly closing their doors.

So, luckily that didn't happen this summer, but it was pretty tenuous for a number of organizations, families, kids.

And thank you for your partnership in fighting to get those dollars restored.

That was really important for us and for our community partners.

So thank you.

The questions, Councilman Watson.

Uh a quick anecdote.

Um, Mr.

Mayor, I had a uh a friend from uh large uh lives in a city out east.

I'm not gonna name it because it's comparing it to Denver and it's no comparison.

Um, but he came out here for about a week and he did an air Airbnb in Five Points Um Rhino area, and he's lived out here before and moved to that city.

Um, and just he comes back every year and we hang out and stuff, and he walks around, and that's his thing, he likes to walk and run.

And it was interesting.

I didn't even talk to him about the changes and the ways in which we've been, you know, deliberately intentionally um finding um spaces for folks who are living outdoors, and he lived in five points for a very long time before he left, and um we got together and he was like, What in the world did you all do here in Denver?

Um, and um I was like, what do you talking about?

I didn't wasn't even thinking about it.

It's like you knew I remember where I used to live, I was always surrounded by encampments um and um he said the fact that yes I still walk by to service providers and see that but I'm not seeing um the encampments um and he was so curious as to what was done here uh because the city he lives in it was like it doesn't smoke it's working there and so I just want to give props from someone that's visiting there's underlying numbers we're not touching all the goals for moving folks from um from congregant sheltering or from our hoteling to actual um permanent housing as yet as far as our goals but there are folks are coming to our city um that are seeing it um and it is um I think it's a benefit because he's gonna go back and share with everyone that he's around in the city that he's from that hey um Denver is doing something so I at least wanted I think it's it's good to celebrate um wins and an unexpected discussion like that I mean he was all he wanted to do is talk about what was going on he pulled up information was reading on it and he just came out here to hang out and he thought it was um quite awesome so I want to applaud um city council members the the administration and especially the the people in Holstein in um our safety committees uh safety teams for doing the work that they did my question is on um parks and treescape though um the ash borer was found um uh identified in Denver I think uh several months back um and um very curious on the city's response I know we did a lot of pre-work to ensure that our ash trees are protected via smart ash I think it's a fantastic campaign I am curious as far as any changes within city forestry um or within Denver Parks as we are now seeing actual ash borers um in well I think it was near Civic Center Park somewhere around here they they found um um uh residents that they're that they're that they're here so curious on that and the impact on tree canopy and kind of your your scaling of uh of tree shade uh throughout the city with with that coming down um great question and then thank you for your uh testimonial I think that's those are powerful for us as we're all working hard every day and we're never satisfied there's never enough we'll keep but it does matter when you hear it from folks that are outside of the city or even when you talk to I know you talk to business owners who residents in ID will say the same thing it just feels so much different and folks I think we have a path to get back in their feet that matters so we're not slowing down but that is a helpful affirmation um on uh on the ash bor we will uh that's a great question I can get the someone from Parson recognition maybe a detailed account to be obviously are aware of that phenomenon and trying to stay ahead of it um and so I can have them reach out to give you a direct briefing or bring it back to this mayor council if it's helpful um but I we are aware that of that phenomenon I think they're taking proactive steps and so I'll figure out what the next stage of being smart ash is awesome thank you sir yeah you better okay that's present um when I went on the downtown Denver partnership trip um in Detroit it's their downtown is a ghost town pretty much and they have an investor and when we were in one of the panels the investors said where do you play and so I think about your family friendly I'll say that as somebody who's in my mid-40s um there's this idea that no offense to people who have younger kids I'm at a point now in my life where I want to take my dog and maybe go hang out with other dog owners yeah other dog owners and still have kiddos but make it more like like intergenerational of a place and so as I've been um going to school downtown um I go once a month and I have a cohort of 35 from all over the all over, even when from New Mexico.

They're saying that we've done a really good job of bringing like um for us to all hang out, but I would not it the intergenerational aspect.

I think we could just so where do we want to play and what does that look like?

Play as adults, play as my mom's age in her 80s um, play as somebody who's in my mid-40s who um has older, you know, 20 year olds, and then also play with little kids.

So it doesn't just have to be play like play on a playground.

Um, and then they ask this question who's taking that away.

And so we started identifying all of the outliers of the city where they were taking away things from Denver, and so it was this fascinating um concept that we they're because they want to build this huge theme along the river there, and so we were just we were I was really and the group of Denver leaders, we had a really hard time identifying where downtown as a group of leaders where we all want to play, like you go to the theater, you go here, but where do we want to come out and hang out and play as adults as kids and intergenerational?

So just some thoughts.

I've been thinking about that since Detroit, and how could we they have a deep downtown development authority?

So I've been looking at that.

Um, how we can integrate that with all of the things that we have coming online from Ballerina, the 16th Street Mall, the downtown development authority, and how does that thinking of that as the spine?

How does that integrate with all of the other 78 neighborhoods that make Denver great?

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

I was gonna add Council President.

I think that's such a great point.

One of the pillars within the new Denver area plant is play.

Yeah.

That's one of the primary chapters.

So I think that's going to be delved in even deeper because it is a primary strategic focus is identifying play in Denver.

And I did criticize them just so you all know that.

I don't know.

You can't just have a playground with kids.

Correct.

That doesn't draw me.

That's not in my age right now, like 20 years ago, I would have really gravitated towards that.

Yeah.

Right now, I might call council tourists and say, hey, let's have our dogs hang out.

Where do you want to go to the council?

Tourists and I are gonna be like not around all the little kids.

No offense to somebody to ask you about there either.

I'm not trying to be offensive.

I'm just saying that council tourists and I think might want to take our dogs to a place that have alcohol, and our dogs could play, and we could sit back and have a little like adult beverage.

So I did create, like, take that graphic of the playground out.

We're not speaking to everybody.

So yeah, and so just want to say, I I I you know me in land use.

I was like, uh, let's think about play in a different way.

So that's what I could say.

Yeah, play spaces for all ages.

So I'm gonna go to adult beverages.

All right.

I think I should get us to executive sessions before we're any farther.

Um thank you, all members of the public for joining.

Uh I will now entertain a motion to move us into an executive session pursuant to the RMC 234A 36 and 7.

For the purpose of receiving legal advice and discussing the potential settlement, against the city.

So, sorry, Kenny.

All in favor.

Any opposed?

Great.

We will enter executive session.

Thank you, members of the public, for joining us.

You know,