GenXJen

Denver City Council Budget Priorities, Part 4 Support Workers and Businesses Before I get into the details about specific policy goals, I want to point out Council’s narrative frame in their deliberate, repeated use of “Workers,” a stylistic choice signaling the City’s solidarity ✊ with both 1930s-esque labor movements and socialist/marxist class struggle/oppressor frames. Rather than a more neutral term like workforce, labor force, or employees, Council chose to adopt activist language…and their policy goals make clear, once again, their collectivist orientation. On to policies. If you were hoping Council would address the policies that make Denver a very difficult place to run an independent business, you’d be wrong. ▫️The BIO fund is a Council priority; it’s what’s been used to try to keep businesses afloat during things like Colfax BRT. Fine. But I hope the impacts on business from these mode-shift projects causes at least some members of Council to question the cost-benefit of these policies. ▫️Public sector unions are a moral hazard; recipients of union campaign donations and beneficiaries of union get-out-the-vote operations are negotiating with said union. Who represents the taxpayers and good fiscal stewardship? I much prefer a neutral, merit based civil service pay system, but I was outvoted. ▫️Rather than address the City policies that are crippling Denver’s restaurant sector (see summary below), Council seeks to give tax dollars to restaurants to navigate broken systems, make ADA improvements, and subsidize operations. ▫️I’m a fan of programs that get people coming off the streets and living in the mayor’s hotels working. Missing from Council’s priorities? ▫️Economic development ▫️Funding to reform broken processes for permitting, inspections, etc. ▫️Repealing our minimum wage policy ▫️Anything that signals to the private sector that Denver wants them to succeed on their own without public subsidies. For all of Council’s 2027 Budget Priorities see my pinned post.

Denver’s Economic Development Office partnered with Visit Denver to assess the challenges in Denver’s restaurant sector, and the results are a devastating indictment of local policies that erase jobs and businesses and have made Denver a “high‑risk, high‑friction market. That does not attract capital. Investors are rightly wary. Key Findings 🔪Denver’s restaurant sector, especially full-service, is contracting, suffocating under the weight of the City and State. 🔪Denver City Council’s economically illiterate wage Lysenkoism is the biggest culprit. 🔪The Legislature’s 2023 FAMLI fee charges all businesses with 10 or more employees .45% of wages and is an administrative nightmare for independent operators. 🔪 Denver’s complex, costly and poorly executed regulatory and permitting regime takes 6 to 9 months, often longer! Much of the regulation starts with the nannies and anti-free market central planners in the Capitol, but current Denver leaders would rather pile on than rebel. ☠️ City Council’s Energize Denver climate scheme is methane gas pooling in every building in the city. National brands walking away are a canary in the coal mine we ignore to our peril. 🔪Public safety concerns harm demand and push restaurants into costly defensive measures (e.g., security). I’m shocked! “Many restaurants described multiple demand-side changes: fewer weekday lunches in central business districts; shifts toward earlier dining times and reduced late-night activity; greater price sensitivity among guests; and continued importance of off-premise channels (takeout, delivery), but with eroded margins due to third-party fees.” “Within city limits, several once-vibrant corridors, including RiNo, South Broadway, Colfax, Sunnyside, LoHi, and Uptown along 17th, were described by local operators as “dying” or significantly diminished, due to a combination of safety concerns, construction, and the erosion of both daytime office populations and nighttime traffic. Cherry Creek was characterized as the exception: a submarket with near-full occupancy and strong sales, but where costs are so elevated that only the most capitalized concepts can feasibly participate. When brands pull out of Denver deals, brokers report that they often pull out of Colorado entirely, redirecting expansion to other states where cost and regulatory conditions are perceived as more favorable.” 🚌🚴 On Colfax, restaurant revenues are down 30-40% thanks to Bus Rapid Transit construction. Expect more closures. While restaurants gave a nod to multi-modal transportation being good-ish, bike lanes are “overbuilt” and do them no favors. Recommendations I’m meh on the recommendations. I suspect they’d be radically different if this report weren’t co- produced with the City. We need serious reform to the minimum wage law, and our leaders lack the spine to do it. They won’t deregulate or back off on a host of other bad policies. Different leaders are needed for that kind of change. Denver should get it together on permitting and inspections. We’ll see if they can.

Denver City Council 2027 Budget Priorities, Part 3 Address Denver’s Housing Needs 🚩Fiscal red flag. The first bullet point urges the Mayor to fund Temporary Rental and Utility Assistance (TRUA) based on need for the last two years. ▫️This is a fiscal red flag because the primary source of funding for TRUA in recent years is the now-expired federal ARPA funds. To maintain funding levels will require significant new general fund dollars. ▫️Also, is the last two years the appropriate measure? Given that captures the newcomer surge, I’m not sure. Also, need for assistance will always exceed available funds, especially as utility costs rise. This has the potential to starve other budget priorities if not reined in. 🚩The second bullet is another cost increase. I believe in 2027 the property tax rebate program will finally be restricted to homeowners. Now Council wants to create a new mortgage assistance fund. I’m not saying it’s not a need, and there are certainly federal mortgage assistance programs. Is it prudent to create a City fund? I’m not sure. More detail needed. As always, any City funds giving out cash and rebates come without restrictions that tax dollars be expended only on those living in Denver with legal status. I’m not a fan, for a host of reasons. Aside: Council’s approach to affordability needs never seeks to eliminate policies that increase costs. No, they seek always to extract more and redistribute, further squeezing the middle class. ▫️I look forward to hearing more about the proposed family shelter, its mission, costs, scope, etc. ▫️I’m very curious about the goal to “fund and implement recommendations from the Residential Health Stakeholder Group.” There is no info about this group or its recommendations on the City’s website. My search on Legistar for 2025 and 2026 yielded nothing. I emailed DDPHE requesting a report or details on the recommendations. I’ll update when I receive them.

Denver City Council Budget Priorities (Part 2) Budget Goal: Empower Communities This one is a mixed bag. I fully endorse citizen involvement in our City. Making information easier to get is awesome. If the City sincerely wants and will weigh citizen perspectives, I dig it. However, the devil is in the details. Given Councilwoman Lewis’ interest in outsourcing decision making from our elected representatives to a curated Civic Assembly last year, goal merits watching during the budget process. (Details in a post below.) ▫️What level of funding is appropriate for the Office of Community Engagement? While the City’s website is always light on content, my screenshot is the sum total of info available on this Office. ▫️I think the City is over-regulated and inspections delays are part of the reason for increased housing costs and delayed business openings. Sadly, I don’t think those are the inspectors Council seeks to fund. In addition to stepping up enforcement, I suspect Council hopes that third bullet point will be a net revenue generator. An aside: Wouldn’t it be cool if Council started a process to deregulate across multiple domains? To truly evaluate the impacts of our regulations? Sadly, that’s not in the cards. ▫️Finally, among all of Council’s budget priorities they want to make sure we’re still funding immigrant legal services. I disagree that a City should fund such services at all. Charities and pro bono legal work are the proper source of funds and personnel, not grants to NGOs by the taxpayer. Council’s complete list of budget priorities are in the next post 👇

Tomorrow, Denver City Council will hear a presentation by Councilwoman Lewis to fund and support the creation of a Civic Assembly on Affordable Housing. It sounds benign, like an in-depth community engagement process, but it really is a SUBVERSIVE effort to shift local governance authority from our elected representatives to a "co-governance" model of deliberative or participatory democracy--global governance models endorsed by the OECD (the source for Denver's proposal), the EU and UN. As one of the people I consulted about the presentation described the Civic Assembly: "It injects and infuses global governance mechanisms from within, effectively dissolving the constitutional republic in function and using the cant of ‘democratic processes’ and ‘participation’ to elicit public buy in. Global democracy - soft power totalitarian tyranny essentially." This isn't an "advisory" group of citizens. This isn't a survey of resident preferences, a design charette, or community engagement seeking citizen input. It is an NGO-designed*, facilitated process with an "Information Committee" of expert stakeholders that forwards policy recommendations, including legislation, to Mayor/Council, explicitly challenging our elected representatives to explain to this UNELECTED body why they are not 100% adopting all their recommended policies. Built into the proposal is the assumption that Mayor/Council will sign off on proposals. Denver City Council MUST reject this proposal to shift the sovereign power that rests in WE the People through our elected representatives to this global governance model of "deliberative" or "participatory" governance. We do not vest our power in randomly selected residents (note: not even CITIZENS) guided by NGOs to shape policy for our representatives to rubber stamp. If Denver wants more community engagement on affordable housing policy, go for it, but not this way. *Note that this $450,000 proposal does not identify a funding source. I suspect that the costs are being born by a donor or grant by one of the "partner" organizations listed in the presentation. Again, WHOLLY inappropriate.