Issues
Having added almost 200,000 new residents over the last twenty-five years, Denver stands at an inflection point, poised to join the ranks of America’s great cities. To get there, we need to deal honestly and directly with Denver’s current challenges and, at the same time, work toward an ambitious vision for the future.
But our current politics seems indecisive, uninspired, and altogether unequal to the task. We need a City Council impatient with the idea that solving Denver’s problems takes decades — and with the political courage to write Denver’s next chapter now. At the end of that next chapter, Denver can and should be the undisputed “Capital of the West” and America’s most liveable, best-value city.
Competent, Accountable Government
Denver should have high expectations of City government, and City government should deliver. For the past decade, Denver has voted to give City government more resources to fund housing, climate, and many other initiatives. There’s no reason that City government cannot provide consistent, high-quality, and efficient public services like Oslo, Vienna, or Singapore. There’s no reason that Denver cannot make progress towards public safety like Tokyo, affordable housing like Minneapolis, transportation like Copenhagen, or neighborhoods like Paris.
We need a City Council impatient with the status quo, willing to make difficult decisions, and committed to seeing initiatives through. We should strive for a city where Denverites trust City government to do the big things because City government gets the small things right.
On City Council, I’ll work to:
Ensure effective, accountable spending of City funds, including by using performance-based contracts that align private contractors’ incentives with the City’s goals; reforming or reallocating spending that does not achieve goals; devoting special attention to spending on homelessness, the airport, and other big-ticket items; as well as tracking implementation of Auditor’s Office recommendations.
Improve the availability, quality, and speed of City services, including by proactively working with departments to ensure that they have what they need, holding leadership accountable when services fall short, and requiring increased oversight and quality control of services performed by private contractors.
Strengthen the morale, retention, and effectiveness of the City’s workforce, including by engaging employees to understand their needs; offering attractive salaries, benefits, and advancement; as well as maintaining public service protections while enhancing the ability of leadership to replace underperforming employees.
Ensure prompt implementation of existing City plans — including the City’s strategic transportation plan, Downtown Area Plan, and East Central Area Plan — by aligning spending with the priorities in the plans as well as working with departments and the community to secure grants and other funding.
Ensure that District 10 receives its fair share of City funding, including in future general obligation bond packages.
Start a City grant program that supports local media organizations that expand news coverage of City government, courts, public schools, and neighborhood issues.
Housing Affordability
To sustain communities and offer economic opportunity, Denver needs affordable housing. We want a city where teachers, police officers, and artists live alongside the people that they serve. We want a city where a company can find employees and an entrepreneur can take a financial risk. We want a city that practices its values of hospitality, inclusivity, and neighborliness.
While Colorado and Denver have made progress (transit-oriented communities, single-stair reform, just cause for eviction, etc.), Denver’s affordable housing crisis remains — and continues to drive Denver’s homelessness crisis.
We should expand the supply of market-rate housing to push down prices and, simultaneously, make strategic investments to meet the portion of demand for housing that private developers can’t serve. (Meanwhile, more housing would increase City revenues, allowing the City to fund other critical priorities.) We should strive for a city where people of all backgrounds can afford a decent home, where our kids and grandkids can afford a place of their own a few blocks down.
On City Council, I’ll work to:
Simplify and streamline the permitting process, including by limiting discretionary determinations, setting a goal to approve the vast majority of projects within ninety days, as well as allowing applicants to use properly licensed and qualified third-party planners and building inspectors to review permits if the City cannot meet that goal.
Limit taxes, fees, and mandates to make as many projects as possible financially viable, including by, if necessary, adjusting Denver’s “Expanding Housing Affordability” ordinance to ensure that its mandates do not make entire projects financially unviable and, thereby, prevent construction of any market-rate or affordable housing.
Implement city-wide zoning reform, including by allowing gentle density (duplexes, fourplexes, rowhomes, etc.) city-wide as well as higher density in downtown, other urban centers, and along transit corridors; encourage Denver’s “Unlocking Housing Choices” program; and simplify and streamline the rezoning process.
Ensure effective use of the City’s affordable housing funds, including by setting guidelines and providing oversight for the $59 million dedicated to “housing and shelter” in the Vibrant Denver bond package.
Ensure availability of diverse housing types for all situations and needs, including by engaging with developers to enable and promote construction of micro-units and co-living communities for recent graduates, three- and four-bedroom apartments for families with children, and condos for those interested in ownership.
Implement smart, pragmatic building codes, including by adopting evidence-based standards, borrowing best practices from around the world, allowing the use of factory-built housing, as well as considering every requirement’s impact on construction cost and housing affordability.
Promote the redevelopment of downtown, including by engaging with developers to enable and promote adaptive reuse of empty office buildings for housing, development of surface parking lots for housing and businesses, and provision of neighborhood services like grocery stores.
Implement intensive case management for Denver’s “Temporary Rental & Utility Assistance” program, which helps households who fall behind on rent and utility payments due to job loss, health issues, or other unexpected events avoid eviction and stay housed, reducing the number of Denverites who become homeless in the first place.
Ensure a robust set of tenant protections, including by increasing enforcement of existing tenant protections (especially Denver’s health, safety, and habitability standards for rental housing); prohibiting landlord “junk fees”; and engaging state leadership and legislators to allow anti-gouging protections.
Transportation and
Street Safety
To connect communities and expand economic opportunity, Denver needs a safe, efficient, and affordable multimodal transportation system — one that gives Denverites options to get where they need to go, whether on foot, on a bike, on transit, or driving.
But Denver’s progress toward that goal has stalled, if not reversed. Recently, traffic fatalities have risen despite the City’s “Vision Zero” goal to eliminate them; City leadership has openly questioned the importance of walking and biking; and City Council has demonstrated no political will to preserve popular pedestrian areas. (Meanwhile, Denver’s air quality remains among the worst in the country, in large part due to cars and trucks.)
We should get back on track. We should strive for a city where families can walk to the grocery store; children can bike to school on their own; and Denverites can ride a safe and reliable world-class transit system.
On City Council, I’ll work to:
Implement “complete streets” principles, including by requiring the City to make improvements contemplated in existing City plans during regular repaving; adopting NACTO design guides; converting one-way streets to two-way streets; as well as prioritizing people walking, biking, or using transit.
Ensure effective use of the City’s sidewalk funds, including by providing oversight for revenue generated by the “Denver Deserves Sidewalks” initiative; requiring use of bulb-outs at intersections to increase pedestrian visibility and reduce crossing distances; as well as leveling uneven flagstone sidewalks.
Build a complete, high-quality network of bike lanes and facilities, including by filling gaps in the existing network (especially on 15th and 17th Street, where bike lanes abruptly end and dump riders into multiple lanes of fast, one-way traffic); connecting downtown to surrounding neighborhoods; replacing existing plastic flex-posts and curbs with more permanent materials; and explore the return of a docked bike-share system.
Collaborate with RTD to improve and expand transit, including by engaging with RTD leadership and board members to understand their needs and develop a transit expansion plan; facilitating the RTD clean-sheet bus network redesign; providing City assistance to combat antisocial behavior on transit; as well as implementing transit signal priority (especially for light rail crossing Speer Boulevard) and additional bus lanes.
Implement parking reform downtown, including by creating a parking management entity to coordinate parking pricing, technology, and wayfinding (especially signs showing drivers nearby parking lots and the number of open spaces); increasing the number of loading zones; as well as pricing street parking outside businesses to make spaces available for potential customers, not all-day parkers.
Implement London-style “low-traffic neighborhoods,” using diverters and other traffic calming measures to reduce cut-through traffic and direct drivers to designated arterial streets.
Improve street quality and stormwater drainage, including by coordinating regular repaving with utilities to ensure that utilities don’t dig up freshly paved streets, requiring increased oversight and quality control of repaving by private contractors and patches by utilities, addressing areas where stormwater collects and degrades pavement, and using bioswales.
Enforce existing traffic and motor vehicle laws, including those against red-light running, driving without license plates, exhaust modifications to increase noise, and other scofflaw behavior.
Public Safety and Order
Public safety and order are upstream of everything Denverites want for our city — vibrant neighborhoods, strong businesses, great parks, and more.
While improving, Denver’s high crime rate and homelessness crisis are still significant challenges.
We should pair robust prevention and services with tough and consistent enforcement against criminal and antisocial behavior. We shouldn’t allow public spaces to become dangerous or unusable. We should strive for a city where parents let their children roam unsupervised.
On City Council, I’ll work to:
Prevent crime by addressing lack of economic opportunity, idle time, weak social networks, poor urban design/environments, and other contributors, including through employment initiatives, after-school programs, violence-interruption programs, and improvements to public spaces.
Ensure availability of sufficient and effective shelters; transitional housing; as well as wraparound addiction, mental health, and other services for Denver’s homeless population.
Expand alternative response programs like STAR, which dispatches behavioral health technicians and paramedics instead of police on low-risk calls to assist people experiencing mental health crises and substance use disorders.
Encourage state leadership and legislators to expand the state’s mental health treatment capacity, including through a potential ballot measure to build and operate another state mental health hospital.
Fully staff the Denver Police Department, Denver Sheriff’s Department, and 911 call center to improve response times and clearance rates, including by making Denver an employer of choice, encouraging young Denverites to pursue careers in public safety, and building affordable housing so that employees can live in the communities that they serve.
Improve the Denver Police Department’s and Denver Sheriff’s Department’s training, employee wellness, community engagement, and accountability, including by engaging employees to understand their needs, applying community policing principles, implementing clear use of force policies, and enhancing the ability of leadership to discipline or terminate employees who commit misconduct.
Ensure responsible use of surveillance cameras, automated license plate readers, and other technology, including through strict standards that allow local law enforcement to address auto theft, other crimes, and antisocial behavior while protecting civil liberties, prohibiting sharing with federal immigration authorities, and preventing other abuse.
Enforce Denver’s urban camping ban against members of Denver’s homeless population who refuse shelters; transitional housing; or wraparound addiction, mental health, and other services, always with further, simultaneous referrals to such housing and services.
Enforce existing general laws, including those against property crime (especially auto and bike theft), shoplifting, public drug use, littering, and other antisocial behavior.
Enforce existing traffic and motor vehicle laws, including those against red-light running, driving without license plates, exhaust modifications to increase noise, and other scofflaw behavior.
Vibrant Neighborhoods and Public Life
Especially in an age of big tech, social media, and rising isolation, Denver should facilitate community and, with it, local culture, business, and economic opportunity.
But Denver isn’t doing enough to improve existing public spaces as well as to create new public spaces and third places. Meanwhile, restaurant owners and local business leaders have raised alarm about widespread cost increases and poor business conditions. Last but not least, Denver’s nightlife scene has faltered. Right now, a night out on the town isn’t affordable.
We should ensure that the City enables and promotes everything that makes a city great: art, cafes, dining, events, parks, shows, etc. We should strive for a city that offers everything that people need to live successful, fulfilled lives, both professionally and personally.
On City Council, I’ll work to:
Improve and expand existing public spaces and parks, including by adding public restrooms; adding limited food and beverage concessions (beer gardens, food trucks, etc.); planting and maintaining street trees, as well as replacing temporary traffic barriers in Cheesman Park with permanent bollards.
Create new public spaces and third places, including by creating a small plaza or pedestrian zone around local businesses in each neighborhood to act as a “town square”; relaxing requirements and the permitting process for outdoor dining spaces; simplifying and streamlining the process to close streets for special events, festivals, etc.; and expanding free cultural programming.
Expand Denver Public Library as well as Parks & Recreation facility hours and programming.
Restore Denver’s culinary and nightlife scenes and make a night out on the town more affordable, including by convening landlords, restaurant owners, tipped workers, and non-tipped workers to address widespread cost increases, acknowledging that a sustainable solution will require sacrifices from all parties; simplifying and streamlining the permitting and licensing processes; requiring restaurants to include all charges except service and taxes in the menu price; and allowing nightlife establishments to stay open past 2 a.m. last call.
Transform downtown into an attractive, mixed-use neighborhood, including by engaging with the Downtown Denver Development Authority, developers, and businesses to enable and attract neighborhood services (grocery stores, childcare centers, etc.) as well as working with departments and the community to secure grants and other funding to complete the 5280 Trail and other projects.
Support businesses and economic opportunity, including by proactively engaging businesses and entrepreneurs to understand their needs; removing redundant or unnecessary requirements; working with developers and landlords to make small, less expensive retail spaces available for small businesses; and working with developers and landlords to fill vacant retail spaces (especially those in new developments).