City Council: 2012 Accomplishments, 2013 Priorities
Park Hill’s district and at-large representatives discuss the issues with GPHN
By Erin Vanderberg / Editor
Denver’s City Council kept busy in 2012. In addition to the tasks of general city and county governmental administration, including everything from land use to sanitation, economic development to urban planning, council passed an urban camping ban, secured the National Western Stock Show, took Walmart out of the equation for the TIF-funded redevelopment at 9th & Colorado, and saw Denver voters resoundingly passed its referred measure, 2A, which freed up $68 million to restore city services. Said Robin Kniech, At-Large, “It feels very affirming that the people of Denver love this city and want this city to be moving forward. We can actually talk more about governing and what our priorities are instead of simply stemming the losses, trying to go from one crisis to another.”
While redistricting changes decided in 2012 will unify Park Hill under one council member in 2015, for the next two years, the neighborhood will continue to have three district representatives: Council President Mary Beth Susman, District 5; Councilman Albus Brooks, District 8; and Council President Pro-Tem Chris Herndon, District 11. Additionally, Denver has two At-Large representatives, Debbie Ortega and Robin Kniech.
The GPHN met with these five City Council representatives to discuss their reflections on the year behind and their priorities for the year ahead. The common theme among them was a desire to work together on making Denver a better city for their constituents.
Councilman Albus Brooks, an L.A. native, intended to spend his career playing football professionally, but a knee injury led to a life in the public service — through youth ministries, then Governor Hickenlooper’s gubernatorial campaign. Thirty-nine candidates vied for the District 8 council seat after Councilwoman Carla Madison passed away; Brooks beat Wil Alston by 2,000 votes in a run-off election and assumed the seat in July 2011.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: On assuming office, Councilman Brooks set out on his Imagine8 listening tour, which covered 10 neighborhoods and 450 residents. While he expected to hear primarily about schools and jobs; instead, the number one thing people expressed on his listening tour was a desire to feel a greater sense of community. “That gave us our marching orders to try as best as we can to engage the community.” District 8 is now the city’s test kitchen for community engagement recipes – like the San Rafaelpalooza event of last summer.
URBAN DEVELOPMENT: “I’m most passionate about urban development, because it creates jobs and improves community,” said Brooks. In District 8, there are large-scale redevelopment projects slated for Five Points and Arapahoe Square, and smaller developments on Colfax and Holly streets. Brooks actively writes inquiries and letters of interest to foster development in the district. One such letter has led to the construction of a Walgreens grocer, a new prototype for the drugstore, which will break ground in the “food desert” at 35th and Colorado on January 9.
YOUTH DEVELOPMENT: Brooks is concerned with the school drop-out rate and encouraged by his work on the Mayor’s Denver Children’s Cabinet. “We have 2000 kids dropping out every year. If they drop out of school, they drop in to something: jail, unsavory activity – it’s not good,” said Brooks. “We as a city need to figure out youth development — to get ‘em motivated, excited and contributing citizens.” The Denver Children’s Cabinet was formed by Mayor Hancock in fall 2012 to organize the city’s programs and services to better serve children. According to Brooks, the cabinet is using an assessment tool that combines crime rates, poverty, third grade reading levels and teen pregnancy to target areas in need of support. “We’re tracking (the school dropouts) all to low income neighborhoods who have not received the investments that others have. We are taking charge of disparities.” North Park Hill is one of the communities of concern, according to Brooks. “The Holly Square redevelopment will be a seismic shift for that community.”
HOMELESSNESS: Brooks made headlines last year when he sponsored legislation to ban urban camping, which passed City Council 9-4 in May and went into effect in June. “Our district bears the burden of 90 percent of Denver’s shelters and homeless populations,” Brooks said. “If we don’t create a path for individuals who have fallen on hard times toward opportunity, it will kill the trajectory of where our city is headed.” The 24/7 shelter concept would be an “innovative opportunities” for the homeless population. “Most shelters are only open overnight. You turn individuals out and back into their addictions,” said Brooks. “At a 24-hour shelter, people could drop-in, receive services, connected with job training, mental health counseling.”
Councilman Chris Herndon, President Pro-Tem, hails from Kansas City, Miss., and graduated from West Point in 1999. He moved to Colorado after nearly seven years in the Army to be closer to his brother in Cheyenne, Wyo. In the Army, he spent three years based in Germany, conducting peace-keeping missions to Kosovo, and four years based in Fort Sill, Okla., leading over 100 troops on a logistics mission in Iraq – and returning with all his people and equipment. He started his post-military career at United Airlines-DIA, leaving as Operations Manager to manage a Walmart in Englewood. Missing public service, he quit in April of 2011 to make his successful bid for now Mayor Michael B. Hancock’s former council seat.
REDISTRICTING COMPLETE: Councilman Herndon served as co-chair of the redistricting committee; the task was to evenly divide the city council districts according to 2010 census data. “My mantra was: Communities Stay Whole. There was no way you could draw the map without significant changes,” said Herndon. “Park Hill, for instance… has had multiple representatives for years. Who’s your councilperson? Well that depended block by block.” All of Greater Park Hill and Stapleton along with parts of East Colfax and Montbello neighborhoods were drawn together into the newly established District 8, which will be represented by Herndon effective January 2015.
GANG PREVENTION: Recently, Herndon visited Stedman Elementary School to award students for participation in Gang Resistance Education and Awareness Training. “I give kudos to DPS and the Denver Safe City Office, which is currently serving 3,000 youth through GRID (Gang Reduction Initiative of Denver). Also the GREAT (Gang Resistance and Education Awareness Training) program,” said Herndon. “As a councilmember, I want to support those kids.”
CITY SERVICES: Services are Herndon’s number one priority and, he says, the number one priority of everyone on the nonpartisan council, including: libraries, parks and recreation centers, trash pick-up, 3-1-1. “We need to equitably maximize what we do for this city.”
STAPLETON TOWER: Herndon has teamed with a group of community members in Stapleton to assess the feasibility of having a cultural center move into the Stapleton Tower. “It’s iconic,” Herndon said of the tower. “It’s something people see when they first arrive to this city, against the skyline, and I am really hoping we can move forward.”
AIRPORT: Herndon believes the DIA is essential to the Denver conversation. “Our airport is absolutely wonderful,” said Herndon. Having been in the military, Herndon has been to his “fair share” of airports; and having worked at United Airlines, he is intimately familiar with DIA. “Today, we have nonstop to Mexico City and nonstop to Tokyo,” said Herndon. “That is jobs and business attraction.” Herndon believes that the processes around developing the DIA property, Airport City, and the greater Aerotropolis, which includes the East Rail line stations, need community input to be successful. “Denver is the number one destination that young people are coming to. They need jobs and modes of transportation. We have a lot of opportunities to meet those needs.”
Councilwoman Robin Kniech, At-Large, grew up in a working-class family in the Midwest and put herself through college through a combination of work, scholarships and loans, graduating Summa Cum Laude from Drake University and as a Public Interest Scholar from the Northeastern University School of Law. Her first job in Colorado was working as the Program Director at the Front Range Economic Strategy Center (FRESC), and now has a cumulative 15 years of public policy experience.
PERMANENT AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING: “Shelters save lives, permanent housing cures homelessness,” said Kniech. With affordable housing her number one priority, Kniech is working to connect private partners and the city to problem-solve areas of the system, find funding sources and work on fixing the city’s inclusionary housing ordinance. “A lot of being a Councilperson is being a matchmaker,” she said. As a member of the Housing Task Force, which convened in the early part of 2012, she is working to address “a whole range of commitments,” from creating a city housing plan, to improving rental financing and working on retention of affordable housing.
TRASH TALK: Kniech’s research priority for 2013 is working to solve the issues around the city’s trash. The epiphany came when she learned that the city recycles less than half of the national average. “This is Denver, we’ve got this green consciousness… and we’re burying our recycling in the landfill,” said Kniech. “I saw a disconnect. The data didn’t match what I felt was the Denver culture.” Additionally, Kniech says that an estimated 58 percent of the city’s garbage is compostable. “It is an enormous waste of money and our landfills will fill up 58 percent quicker,” she said. While a fee could lend itself to a culture change, Kniech believes there has to be a corollary improvement in services. She is also thinking about simple answers, like weekly instead of biweekly recycling.
MANUFACTURING: Behind affordable housing is Kniech’s second priority, encouraging the manufacturing community to come into dialogue with the council to help bolster and attract growth in that industry. “Manufacturing is not an industry that is part of the associations that we see down at council all the time,” said Kniech. “Those are folks who have their noses to the grindstone; they’re not on our email lists or in breakfast clubs.”
COMMUNITY PRIORITIES: Kniech is working with Groundwork Denver to create an open space out of a blighted area in Globeville near Argo Park called the Platte Farm Open Space, at 49th and Grant. She is also working to address crime by having her staff engage with police districts and attend prevention strategy trainings, in order to bring information back to the community. “An arrest is great,” said Kniech, “but the crime has already occurred.”
Right out of business school, Councilwoman Debbie Ortega, At-Large, went to work as a staffer for Lieutenant Governor George Brown, who served with Governor Dick Lamm. She continued on with U.S. Senator Floyd Haskel, then City Councilman Sal Carpio. When Carpio decided not to seek reelection, Ortega decided that she knew the issues, had a working relationship with the community and a commitment to the work, and put her name in the hat at the age of 30. She served 16 years as the District 9 representative (1987-2003), and returned in 2011 after working on affordable housing and human services issues through the state.
MARIJUANA REGULATION: As the state finalizes its rules around Amendment 64, cities will be having “interesting conversations about marijuana.” Ortega focuses on “bigger picture, public policy issues” from her At-Large seat. She helped push through the citywide ban on medical marijuana advertising, “which was in large part started by trying to protect our kids by keeping that away from schools and parks & rec centers.”
BRIGHTON BLVD CORRIDOR: Ortega is working with Councilwoman Judy Montero, Mayor Hancock and the city’s new Planning Director, Rocky Piro, to do a comprehensive master plan for Globeville, Swansea, Elyria, the Platte River and the River North development. “We have a chance to do it right,” said Ortega. “It’s like a puzzle: they all have many sides but they fit together and interface with one another.”
COUNCIL WORKFLOW: Ortega has a unique, veteran perspective on the city council organism. “I come in a different way, with an institutional memory,” said Ortega. “It’s not to say change is not good, but at the same time it allows me to question why are we doing things this way?” A consent agenda has made the processing of routine issues more efficient. But for those matters that require review and discussion, Ortega has helped to create a form for agencies to provide consistent information to council from contract to contract. These safeguards help ensure that council is doing thorough review, said Ortega. “That’s what the public expects us to do, not be a rubber stamp.”
DEVELOPMENT: A number of development projects are on the table at City Council, the majority of which would seek Tax Increment Financing. Ortega believes in careful consideration of the city’s debt capacity when analyzing TIF projects and “ensuring that we’re always cognizant of what that capacity is and ensuring that we never overextend ourselves,” said Ortega.
HOMELESSNESS: While council is still seeking a location, Ortega is encouraged by the $1 million dollar budget line for a 24/7 shelter. “Obviously it’s not enough, but it demonstrates commitment,” said Ortega. Along with Councilwoman Kniech, Ortega serves on the Housing Task Force. “Part of the continuum is ensuring that as we get people into housing, that we have a range of housing options for all folks who live in the city of Denver… An array of affordable housing is vitally important to the vitality and diversity of our city.”
Councilwoman Mary Beth Susman, President, grew up traveling in a military family. She came to Colorado by way of the University of Denver to earn her Master’s degree. She retired as the Vice-President of the Colorado Community College System in 2004, and then started her own business helping state college systems create online colleges. Her involvement in the PTA as a young parent precipitated her community activism, and the implications of the closure of Lowry AFB led her to become active in the city planning realm. She chaired the Lowry planning committee and served on the Denver Planning Board before running for council in 2011. Susman holds “office hours” on the first Thursday of each month from 10 a.m. – noon at Cake Crumbs.
9TH AND COLORADO: The redevelopment at the former University of Colorado Health Science Center, which is germane to council because its use of tax increment financing, or TIF, became controversial when a Walmart was part of the proposed development. Now that Walmart is no longer part of the equation, the development plan is back in the discussion phase, with tentative plans for a senior housing complex on the north end of the site and a hotel. “We have more pocketbooks and a little more density and mixed use in the plan,” said Susman. “We’re in the phase where CU, the developer and DURA are working out the finance details and we’ll have a public meeting about those when completed. We expect that to happen in January.” If everything goes well, Susman says that demolition is expected to take about a year, and development would follow over the next one and a half to two years.
HOMELESSNESS: Susman said that council is working steadily toward finding the resources to provide a 24-hour shelter. “Homelessness is a Hydra though,” said Susman. “Shelter is one thing, but services for mental illness and drug addiction are as important and in as much need of stable funding.”
LAND USE: According to Susman, Council’s bread and butter is land use. “The council is intent upon making Denver a walkable, bike-able city and is taking steps in every new development, whether in-fill or green field, to insure that there are safe walking and biking opportunities, that we build housing and job opportunities near the several light rail stations going in and that we construct areas that have various prices of housing so that Denver always remains affordable to a wide distribution of income level.”