A Denver sheriff’s deputy accused of punching a man in a wheelchair while on duty in 2019 — in a lawsuit the city has now settled — was also arrested on accusations he punched another man in a wheelchair in December.
The Denver City Council approved the $325,000 settlement in the case over the 2019 incident involving Deputy Jason Gentempo, now 44, during a meeting Monday.
Gentempo, who has been a sheriff’s deputy since 2005, is now on investigatory leave from the sheriff’s department following his arrest in the newer matter in December. Both of his cases also involved allegations that other law enforcement officers attempted to cover up or change the factual records of the events.
Gentempo was cleared of any wrongdoing in the incident, according to internal investigation documents.
In December, the Denver Police Department arrested Gentempo and his wife, Sgt. Carla Gentempo, after they were accused of assaulting another man in a wheelchair while they were off duty. The couple learned that a 17-year-old they knew was at a Denver apartment where they believed there was a “sexual torture chamber,” according to affidavits filed in that case.
Jason Gentempo told investigators that he believed the man in the wheelchair met the teen in a chatroom and took the teen to his home, where he showed them “sexual bondage items” and put some of the items on the teen with their consent, an affidavit says.
When the Gentempos drove to pick up the teen, the man in a wheelchair, who is paraplegic, met them in front of his apartment building. The Gentempos then beat the man in an attack that was captured on surveillance footage, the documents say. They were arrested on suspicion of third-degree assault.
The man in the wheelchair, whose identity was redacted in court records, told The Denver Post in December that he didn’t do anything sexual with the teenager and refuted the deputies’ characterization of a “sexual torture chamber.”
A Denver police officer is accused of trying to cover up that assault. Officer Henry Soni, 26, was the responding officer who reviewed surveillance video of the attack and gave the man in the wheelchair a case number, according to an affidavit. He then failed to file a report or enter the surveillance video as evidence in the case.
In official records, Soni wrote that the man in the wheelchair “does not want to file a report at this time.” The officer’s body-worn camera footage of his response to the man’s home was automatically logged into the police evidence storage system as being connected to an assault call, but Soni manually changed the footage the next day to be classified as “All Other/Non-event,” according to an affidavit.
Soni was arrested on suspicion of attempting to influence a public servant, forgery, evidence tampering and misconduct. He was also accused of on-duty sexual assault in an unrelated case. In December, he was suspended without pay, pending the outcome of the criminal investigation.
Internal investigators found Gentempo improperly stored his firearm in 2021 and that he disobeyed rules related to his body-worn camera in 2024, disciplinary records show.
One of the largest emergency shelters in Denver’s system is again offering refuge from the cold this weekend after Mayor Mike Johnston unilaterally opened the site Friday — despite the City Council rejecting a contract for it late last year.
The Aspen, formerly a DoubleTree hotel in northeast Denver, has space for up to 250 people in its ballroom and will be open as freezing temperatures pummel the Mile High City for the next few days.
Johnston’s decision came after the city’s four other emergency shelters reached capacity on Thursday, the first night of the cold snap. The temperatures, expected to fall to near-zero Friday night and early Saturday, have the potential to cause frostbite in less than 30 minutes without proper attire.
“With life-threatening cold settling over the city and people at risk of suffering serious injury or death, Mayor Johnston informed Council this morning that we will be opening the ballrooms at 4040 Quebec (St.) for temporary emergency cold weather shelter,” spokesman Jon Ewing wrote in a statement Friday.
During a meeting on Dec. 8, 11 of the council’s 13 members voted to reject a contract to use the Aspen’s large space as a cold-weather shelter. (A separate contract with another provider, Urban Alchemy, covers the Aspen’s day-to-day use as a noncongregate shelter in the city’s homelessness initiative.)
Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, whose district includes the shelter, said at the time that the mayor had promised her in 2023 that the site wouldn’t be used for the purpose of cold-weather sheltering.
“My district is already overrepresented with shelters, with eight of them,” Lewis said. “This is ridiculous.”
Only Councilmen Kevin Flynn and Darrell Watson voted to approve the contract last month.
Another council-approved contract with Bayaud Works allows the city to use the ballroom space for short-term emergencies, Ewing said, and that is how the mayor’s office was able to open it Friday.
Lewis has repeatedly asked the mayor’s administration to spread out the locations of the city’s homelessness services since she joined the council in 2023. Now, she says the mayor’s office is manufacturing an emergency to sidestep her continued protestations.
Johnston “has failed to run the city with a long-term strategy,” she said in an interview Friday.
Lewis said there shouldn’t be a cold-weather shelter at the same place as noncongregate housing. Instead, she asked for the Aspen’s ballroom to be used as a navigation center offering resources to homeless people.
But Johnston’s team said they were taken by surprise when the council rejected the contract just as the winter months were setting in and hadn’t had nearly enough time to find enough shelter space since then.
“The real emergency is that it is 5 degrees outside and people are going to die if we don’t get them inside,” Ewing said.
The Aspen made the most sense to use, he said, because it’s already set up with cots, showers and bathrooms. A site that’s well-known among the city’s homeless population, it also mostly serves people who are already in that area, he said.
“We do not just have shelter sites lying around. There are only so many spaces, and there is a likelihood we would need to hold community meetings, go through a full council process and potentially even rezone,” Ewing said.
He added that the city didn’t plan to use the Aspen for cold-weather shelter next year. A new site for emergencies hasn’t been chosen yet, in part because of the limited options.
Lewis said Friday the mayor has “had three years to figure out what cold-weather sheltering should look like.” She also said: “Of course I don’t want folks dying in our streets.”
The city’s sheltering needs have increased since 2023 because of a revised policy that now calls for opening emergency shelters when temperatures drop below 25 degrees, rather than 10 degrees back then, Ewing said.
While Denver’s weather is forecasted to be warmer on Monday, there’s no sign of thaw when it comes to the relationship between some council members and the mayor.
“It’s the mayor’s responsibility to run the city as the executive, and if he doesn’t run the city as the executive, then … we might need to switch seats,” Lewis said.
Ewing had his own retort: “It is not fair to cause a disruption and then blame us for scrambling to solve that issue.”
Across Colorado, in bustling municipal courtrooms and council chambers, in city attorneys’ offices and public defender headquarters, legal professionals and elected officials are scrambling to make sense of a new normal.
The world of city courts was upended in late December, when the Colorado Supreme Court unanimously ruled that municipalities cannot impose harsher punishments on lawbreakers than state statute would allow for the same offense.
Now, weeks after the court’s decision, cities are reexamining their local ordinances, judges are altering their courtroom advisements of defendants, and defense attorneys and prosecutors are negotiating plea agreements in an entirely different landscape.
“These are uncharted waters,” said Colette Tvedt, Denver’s chief municipal public defender.
Her office on Monday gave a presentation to the Denver City Council, outlining the implications of the state Supreme Court’s ruling while expressing urgency that the legislative body act quickly to bring the city’s code into compliance.
“Without council action, applying this rule to our sentencing ordinances will lead to endless litigation, confusion and additional violations of Denverites’ constitutional rights,” the public defender’s office wrote in its presentation.
Until Denver’s code is amended, Tvedt’s office argued, there are legal questions about whether the city’s criminal laws are enforceable because the sentences for many offenses are unclear. There is also a risk that defendants will receive illegal sentences because municipal court judges might come to conclusions that higher courts later overturn, the public defenders said, warning that the entire process could represent a “huge expense and uncertainty for years to come.”
Councilmembers, for their part, have expressed their desire to change the city’s code so it aligns with state penalties. The question will be determining which offenses have comparable state counterparts.
Sarah Parady, one of the councilwomen spearheading the changes, said she hoped to have language outlining proposed alterations by the end of the month.
“This is cuckoo bananas if we don’t do our job,” she said.
Other cities are also taking action.
The Littleton City Council on Jan. 6 passed an emergency ordinance amending its general penalty provision in order to “comply with state law and to avoid confusion.” The updated language states that penalties for non-felony criminal violations where the prohibited conduct is identical to a corresponding state charge will be capped at the state law’s maximum sentence.
Reid Betzing, the city attorney, acknowledged during the council meeting that the city is aware of what it needs to do to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision, but that it upends 120 years of home-rule doctrine in Colorado.
“We’re not necessarily super excited about it,” he said.
The city councils in Westminster and Aurora on Monday held executive sessions with their attorneys to review the Supreme Court decision and how it impacts their cities’ codes.
“Obviously, this decision bolsters the need to look at our sentencing practices,” Alison Coombs, an Aurora councilmember, said in an interview.
Kevin Bommer, executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, said his organization was “exceptionally disappointed” in the ruling, adding that it will mean “a complete revisiting of what we thought municipal courts were constitutionally allowed to do.”
There are broader implications, he said. “It’s not a threat, it’s just facts: If municipal courts are essentially de facto arms of the state, why on earth would municipalities go through the time and expense of going through those cases?”
‘This will make our jobs a lot easier’
Local judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys, meanwhile, are already seeing the decision’s impact in municipal courtrooms around the state.
Aurora Municipal Court Judge Brian Whitney issued an order last year pausing more than 300 cases in which attorneys challenged issues under the same pretenses as those before the Supreme Court. This month, Whitney ordered that those cases can now move forward, but must adhere to the new guidelines set by the high court.
“Any sentence imposed… must not exceed the applicable state statutory maximum for the corresponding identical offense,” he wrote in a Jan. 2 order.
Arvada Municipal Court Presiding Judge Kathryn Kurtz said the ruling doesn’t change too much in her courtroom, since she already generally stuck to state guidelines. There will be some small, technical updates, such as changing the advisement sheet that informs defendants about possible penalties for their infractions.
“It’s good to have finality on it,” she said in an interview. “We now know this is the law and we can move forward. Judges work very well with rules. When you give us clarity, it provides guidance. When there’s gray, that gives us issues. This will make our jobs a lot easier.”
Defense attorneys say they anticipate the ruling will also have a significant impact on plea negotiations with their clients.
Consider Denver’s municipal code: Retail theft or trespassing are each punishable by up to 300 days in jail. In state court, those offenses carry up to 10 days in jail. In Aurora, those same offenses could mean up to 364 days in jail — more than 36 times the potential sentence in state court.
If a defendant in Denver faced 300 days in jail and had multiple prior convictions, plea negotiations might start with 30 days and go up to 120 days, said Tvedt, the Denver municipal defender chief. But if the maximum penalty for a minor offense is just 10 days, their client might take a plea that would involve just a couple of days behind bars.
Individuals might also be more willing to take their cases to trial, knowing that they don’t risk up to a year in jail, defense attorneys said.
“This is really gonna be transformative to municipal courts,” Tvedt said.
‘Effects of this are wide and varied’
Then there’s the question of what to do with people who have been sentenced since March 1, 2022, when the new state guidelines took effect. Multiple attorneys said they believed anyone with a sentence that conflicts with the Supreme Court ruling has a legal argument that it should be negated.
“Right now, the priority has to be on individuals already sentenced and still serving illegal sentences,” said Elizabeth Cadiz, Aurora’s chief public defender.
There’s still plenty of confusion surrounding the new rules.
In Denver’s municipal court last week, a judge advised a defendant charged with trespassing that they faced up to 300 days in jail — an offense that would only involve up to 10 days in jail under the state guidelines.
Those involved in municipal court operations say it will take time to figure everything out, but the wheels are in motion all over the state.
“Most of us, our heads are spinning,” Cadiz said. “The effects of this are wide and varied.”
Michael Singer’s “Untitled (Interior Garden)” in Denver International Airport’s C Concourse. Nov. 25, 2025.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Denver International Airport’s growth is set to continue after the Denver City Council approved contracts to expand Concourse C and renovate parts of Peña Boulevard.
The $70 million Concourse C contract will add over 400,000 square feet and 11 new gates to the west side of the terminal. DIA also said the expansion will include “modern amenities” and new concessions spaces.
The seven-year contract is with construction management firm V-1 Consultants, including two one-year options to extend.
The expansion at C West will be the last possible concourse expansion. DIA has been working to expand the other concourse wings since 2020. DIA has built dozens of new gates across its three concourses, in addition to adding more concession space, restrooms and outdoor decks.
The airport also will renovate Peña Boulevard, but it isn’t the major expansion the airport has been touting quite yet.
The city council agreed to pay Hg Consult $8.8 million for a five-year contract to rebuild the road between E-470 and Jackson Gap Street.
The project will maintain the same number of travel lanes, but will realign and add several on- and off-ramps along that stretch of Peña.
While this contract only applies to the stretch of Peña Boulevard closest to the airport, the city is spending millions more to explore widening the road. Last year, Denver City Council approved a $15 million contract to study options for alleviating traffic congestion on the main road to the airport.
Cars drive over Peña Boulevard. Aug. 24, 2023.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
The decision to award the contract last year drew pushback from transit and environmental advocates, as well as some councilmembers who said a possible lane expansion is a poor choice when the city should be working on reducing emissions.
Could the end of DIA’s construction-palooza be in sight?
While the pending construction of Concourse C West marks the final expansion of DIA’s three terminals, the airport has plenty of other plans.
Construction and south security at Denver International Airport. Oct. 28, 2022.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
The airport’s Great Hall reconstruction, which has been underway for years now, recently entered its final phase. By the time it’s done — projected to be 2027 — there will be new arrival spaces for international and domestic passengers, more security lanes and a big crystal tree.
Another major project is on the horizon, too. City officials recently approved a $150 million contract to build and manage a consolidated car rental facility and a transportation link to it. Smaller projects include the planned removal of Concourse C’s interior garden above the train stop and food and retail openings.
In a windowless room at Denver police headquarters on a recent Thursday afternoon, Officer Chris Velarde activated a police drone to investigate a potential car break-in.
Officer Chris Velarde flies a drone and monitors live footage from its camera from Denver Police Department headquarters on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Several floors above, the drone launched from the roof and flew itself — essentially on autopilot — to the site of the call, reported as a man breaking into a car with a crowbar near the Santa Fe Arts District.
The drone whizzed along, 200 feet up, in a straight line across blocks, buildings and streets during the roughly mile-long flight from police headquarters at 1331 Cherokee St. Velarde didn’t pick up the Xbox video-game controller that manually pilots the drone until it reached the area of the call. Then he took control and trolled the block for the supposed break-in, watching live video footage transmitted from the drone on his computer monitor as he flew.
After a few moments, Velarde spotted two people jiggering the passenger-side window of a vehicle. He zoomed in on the pair, and on the car’s license plate. He ran the plate to see whether the vehicle was stolen; it was not. The people on the street didn’t look up. They didn’t seem to know a police drone was hovering above them, that they were being recorded and watched a mile away by officers and a reporter.
Two more people joined the pair at the vehicle’s window and Velarde made the call — this didn’t look like a vehicle break-in. More likely, someone had just locked their keys in their car. He cleared the call with 911 dispatchers and told them there was no need to send an officer to the scene. Then he sent the drone back to headquarters; it flew itself to the rooftop dock, landing autonomously on a platform stamped with bright blue-and-yellow QR codes.
The Denver Police Department began testing drones as first responders — that is, sending them out on 911 calls — in mid-October after signing up for two free pilot programs from rival drone companies Skydio and Flock Safety. The effort has raised concerns among privacy advocates, Denver politicians and the city’s police oversight group, particularly regarding the department’s contract with Flock, the company behind the city’s controversial network of automated license-plate readers.
Police see the drones as a way to speed up call-response times and provide more information to officers as they arrive on scene, improving, they say, both public safety and officer safety. If a drone arrives at a scene before officers, and the drone pilot can tell police on the ground that the man with the knife actually put down the weapon before the officers arrived, that helps everyone, police said.
“The more knowledge, information and intelligence that we can provide our officers on the ground, the better methods that they can use to respond to certain situations, which may cause them to not escalate unnecessarily,” said Cmdr. Clifford Barnes, who heads the department’s Cyber Bureau.
Critics say the eyes in the sky raise serious privacy concerns both with how the drones and the data they collect are used now, and with how they might be used in the future as the technology rapidly changes. They worry that the drones could create a citywide surveillance network with few legal guardrails, that the footage they collect will be used to train private companies’ AI algorithms or that police will misuse emerging AI capabilities, like facial recognition.
“When it comes to the decision of, are we going to use this thing that could potentially increase public safety, that will erode privacy rights — no one should get to decide the public is willing to give away our constitutional rights, except the people,” said Anaya Robinson, public policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado. “And when law enforcement makes that decision for us, it becomes extremely problematic.”
Almost 300 drone flights in 55 days
So far, only Skydio drones have flown as first responders over Denver.
Denver police signed a zero-dollar contract with Flock — without public announcement — in August for a year-long pilot of drones as first responders, but the company has yet to set up its autonomous aircraft. Skydio, on the other hand, moved quickly to get drones in the air after Denver police in October signed a contract to test up to four of the company’s drones during a free six-month pilot.
Skydio’s drones can reach about a 2-mile radius around the Denver police headquarters. The company advertises a top speed of 45 mph with 40 minutes of flight time; Denver pilots have found the drones average around 28 mph and around 25 minutes of battery life per flight.
From the first flight on Oct. 15 through Tuesday, two Skydio drones flew 297 times, according to data provided by Denver police in response to an open records request. Most of those flights — 199 — were to answer calls for service; another 82 were training flights, according to the data.
Skydio drones also surveilled events — a function police call “event overwatch” — seven times, the police data shows. Overwatch might include flying over a protest to track where the demonstrators are headed and alert officers on the ground for traffic control, Barnes said. (The police data showed that all seven overwatch flights occurred on Oct. 18, the day of Denver’s “No Kings” rally.)
The drones flew to 29 calls about a person with a weapon, 21 disturbances, 20 assaults in progress, a dozen suspicious occurrences and 11 hold-up alarms, according to data from Denver’s 911 dispatch records. The drones also flew to 39 other types of calls, including reports of prowlers, fights, burglaries, domestic violence and suicidal people.
The most common outcome for a call was that the officers were unable to locate an incident or the suspect was gone by the time the drone or police officers arrived, the records show. Across about 200 calls for service that included drone responses, police made 22 arrests and issued one citation, the dispatch data shows.
When responding to calls for service, the drones reached the scene before patrol officers 88% of the time, the police data shows. A drone was the sole police response in 80 of 199 calls for service, or about 40% of the time.
Barnes said answering calls with solely a drone improves police efficiency.
“If an officer on the ground doesn’t need to respond, and the drone pilot is comfortable with cancelling the other officers coming, we can assign those officers to more important, more pressing matters, so call-response times come down,” he said.
That approach raises questions about what the drones (which are equipped with three different cameras and a thermal imager) can and can’t see, and how officers are making decisions about call responses without actually speaking to anyone at the scene, the ACLU’s Robinson said.
“Humans have bias,” he said. Drone pilots might be more inclined to send officers to a potential car break-in in a low-income neighborhood and more likely not to in a higher-income neighborhood, he said. Or they might miss something from above that they could have seen at street level.
Officer Chris Velarde flies a drone and monitors live footage from its camera from Denver Police Department headquarters on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
But minimizing in-person police interactions with residents, particularly in over-policed neighborhoods, can also be a positive, said Julia Richman, chair of Denver’s Citizen Oversight Board, which provides civilian oversight of the police department.
“Where my head goes is the other outcome, where they roll up on those people who are trying to get keys out of the car and then they shoot them,” she said. “Actually, (the drone-only response) seems like a really good outcome.”
The oversight group has talked with Denver police over the last two years about developing its drone program, she said. The department created a seven-page policy to guide their use; the policy aims to ensure “civil rights and reasonable expectations of privacy are a key component of any decision made to deploy” a drone.
But Richman said she was surprised by aspects of the police department’s pilot programs despite the ongoing conversations with department leadership.
“What was never discussed, not once, was the idea of a third party running those drones or those drones being autonomous,” she said, referring to the drone companies. “What has changed with this latest pilot is the key features and key aspects that would create public concern had never been discussed with us.”
Both Flock and Skydio advertise autonomous features powered by artificial intelligence. Skydio uses AI for its autonomous flight paths, obstacle avoidance and tracking people and cars.
Flock, which also offers autonomous flight, advertises its drones as integrating with its automated license-plate readers. The license-plate readers — there are more than 100 around Denver — automatically photograph every car that passes by them. If a license plate is stolen or involved in a crime, the license-plate readers alert police within seconds.
Police Chief Ron Thomas and Mayor Mike Johnston defended the surveillance network as an invaluable crime-solving tool this year against mounting public discontent around how much data the machines collected and how that data was used — particularly around sharing information with the federal government for the purposes of immigration enforcement.
That privacy debate around Flock’s license plate readers unfolded in communities across Colorado and nationwide this year. In Loveland, the police department for a time allowed U.S. Border Patrol agents to access its Flock cameras before blocking that access. In Longmont, councilmembers voted Wednesday to look for alternatives to replace the 20 Flock license plate readers in that city.
When Denver City Council members, some driven by privacy concerns, voted against continuing Flock’s license-plate readers in May, Johnston extended the surveillance anyway through a free five-month contract extension with Flock in October that did not require approval from the council. Against that backdrop, Denver police quietly signed on for Flock’s drone pilot in August.
Barnes said the police department will not use any license-plate reader capabilities available on Flock drones. Such a feature would constitute “random surveillance,” which is prohibited under the department’s drone policy. The drones never fly without an officer’s direct involvement, he added.
The blue 2-mile-radius line seen on a computer screen shows the range of Denver police Skydio drones flown from Denver Police headquarters. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
The policy also prohibits drones from filming anywhere a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy unless police have a warrant, and says officers should take “reasonable precautions … to avoid inadvertently recording or transmitting images of areas where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Denver police do receive search warrants to fly drones for particular operations outside of the drones-as-first-responder program. In October, a Denver police detective sought and received a warrant to fly a drone over a shooting suspect’s home in Cherry Hills Village to check whether a truck involved in the shooting was parked at the wooded property.
The warrant noted that when driving home from anywhere outside Cherry Hills Village, the suspect could not reach his house without passing by Flock license-plate readers, and that photos from those license-plate readers suggested the truck was at the property.
Denver Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez and Councilman Kevin Flynn both told The Post they were not aware of the police department’s Skydio drone pilot before hearing about it from the newspaper, even though they are both on the city’s Surveillance Technology Task Force. The new group began meeting in August largely to consider Flock license-plate readers, as well as other types of surveillance technology, Gonzales-Gutierrez said.
“We haven’t talked about it in the task force, and the charge of our work in the task force is to come up with those guardrails that need to be put in place for these types of technology being utilized by law enforcement,” she said. “I feel like they just keep moving on without us being able to complete our work.”
Police don’t need permission from the City Council to carry out the pilot programs, Gonzales-Gutierrez said, but she was disappointed by the lack of communication and collaboration from the department.
Flynn sees the potential of police drones, particularly in speeding up officer response times, which can sometimes be dismal in the far-flung areas of his southwestern district.
“If a drone can get there to a 911 call and it can help an officer at headquarters assess the scene before a staffed car could get there, I would love that,” he said.
But he wants to be sure they are used in a way that respects residents’ rights. He would not support using the drones for general patrolling or surveillance, he said.
“This pilot is an excellent opportunity to test all of those boundaries and see if there are ways to operate a system that can be very useful for public safety without crossing boundaries,” he said.”…And maybe we don’t keep using them. That is the point of a pilot.”
‘These are flying cops’
The Skydio drones film from the moment they are launched until they drop in to land.
When the drone is on its way to a call — flying at the 200-foot altitude limit set by the Federal Aviation Administration — its cameras remain pointed at the horizon. In Denver’s denser neighborhoods, the Skydio drones at that height flew among buildings, sometimes at eye-level with balconies, offices and apartment windows, according to video of four flights obtained by The Post through an open records request.
“What if someone is in their apartment unit in one of these giant buildings and they’re changing, and they have their window open because they’re way up high and they don’t think anyone is watching them?” Gonzales-Gutierrez said. “That is crazy.”
The drones buzzed over rooftop decks, balconies and elevated apartment complex pools, the videos show. On one trip, a drone flew past the Colorado State Capitol Building, recording three people on a balcony on the tower under the building’s golden dome. Another time, the drone pilot zoomed in on a license plate so tightly that the car’s small, decorative “LOVE” decal was clearly visible.
Flynn noted that a 200-foot altitude would put the drones well above most of the homes in his less-dense district, and that people on their porches or balconies aren’t somewhere private.
“If someone is out on a balcony, sitting there reading a book… generally speaking, if you are out in public there’s no expectation of privacy,” he said.
The Skydio drones recorded about 54 hours of footage in the first eight weeks of their operation, according to data provided by the police department. Police leadership opted to have the drones’ cameras on and recording whenever the drone is in flight to boost transparency about how the drones are being used, Barnes said.
“It makes sense to keep the camera rolling,” Barnes said. “Then, if there’s an allegation, we just make sure that footage is recorded and treated like digital evidence, uploaded to the evidence management platform so it could be reviewed as necessary. We’re just trying to make sure we establish that balance, being as transparent as possible.”
Drone footage unrelated to criminal investigations is automatically deleted after 60 days, he said. While it’s retained, it’s stored in an evidence system that keeps a record of anyone who looks at it. The drone unit’s sergeant, Brent Kohls, also audits the flight reports monthly. (Footage used in criminal investigations will be on the same retention schedule as body-worn camera footage, police said.)
Kohls noted it would be unusual for the drone footage to be viewed only by the pilot. The feed is often displayed on the wall of the police department’s Real-Time Crime Center as it comes in.
ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the organization’s speech, privacy and technology project, would rather see police keep the recording off while flying a drone to a call, even if the camera is still livestreaming to police headquarters. In that scenario, a drone pilot might still see a woman tanning topless on her rooftop pool deck, he said, but the government wouldn’t then keep a recording of that privacy violation, amplifying it further.
“The thing we are really worried about is police start deploying drones as first responders for the majority of their calls for service and suddenly you have this crisscrossing network of surveillance all over the city,” Freed Wessler said. “You have the potential for a pervasive record of what everyone is doing all the time.”
Kohls said an officer flying a drone who spotted a different crime occurring while en route to another call would stop to report and respond to that secondary crime, just like an officer would on the ground.
“Absolutely, if an officer sees a crime happening, they’re going to get on the radio, alert dispatch to what they’re observing,” Kohls said. “Hopefully, if they have a few minutes of battery time left still, they can extend their time and circle or overwatch on that scene to provide hopefully life-saving radio traffic, whatever information they need to relay to dispatch to get other officers heading, or the fire department heading that way.”
State and federal laws have not yet caught up to how police are using drones, Freed Wessler said. The Fourth Amendment has what’s known as the plain-view exception, which allows police officers who are lawfully in a place to take action if they see evidence of a crime happening in plain sight.
“The problem here is we are not talking about police doing a thing we would normally expect them to do,” Freed Wessler said. “We are talking about police taking advantage of a new technology that gives them a totally new power to fly at virtually no expense over any part of the city at any time of day and see a whole bunch of stuff happening.”
A Denver police drone lands on its docking station on the roof of Denver Police headquarters in Denver, on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Police have broad leeway to watch suspects without first getting a search warrant — like by peering through a fence or climbing the steps of a nearby building to look into a yard. But that’s different from using a subtle video camera to record a person 24/7 for months, the justices concluded.
So far, that’s the closest ruling in Colorado on the issue of drone surveillance, Freed Wessler said. Robinson, the policy director at the ACLU of Colorado, said lawmakers should act to regulate police drone use — either at the state or local level.
“These are flying cops,” said Beryl Lipton, senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focused on digital privacy. “That is another one of those slippery slopes.”
Aside from the legality of surveillance, another question is how the drone footage and flight data is used by the drone companies, Lipton said.
“We live in a time where all these AI-fueled companies have a real drive to integrate AI into everything, and they’re really hungry for new data,” she said. “And we have law enforcement helping to feed these companies in a way they don’t really understand.”
Under its current agreement with Denver police, Skydio doesn’t use drone footage to train its algorithm or improve its product. Flock spells out in its contract that the company can “collect, analyze and anonymize” drone footage, then use that anonymized footage to train its “machine learning algorithms,” and enhance its services.
Lipton added that technology is moving fast — Axon, a company that powers many police departments’ body-worn cameras — this month started testing facial recognition on its cameras to automatically alert a police officer if a person they’re encountering has a warrant out for their arrest.
Prisons are experimenting with “movement analysis” to automatically flag a person’s movements as potentially aggressive before the person perpetrates violence, she said.
“We are technologically at a place where it would not be hard for a drone to fly over an area and basically serve as a license-plate reader for humans,” Lipton said. “… Some of this analysis is just not being done because it is not publicly palatable yet. But it is not like it is technologically difficult for some of these companies.”
Downtown Denver’s COVID-19 era slump is far from over. There are record-high office vacancies. Storefronts sit empty. People aren’t returning to work.
To fix it and make downtown “world class,” Denver City Council just passed a new Downtown Denver Area Plan — the first major downtown plan since 2007.
The plan passed the council 11-0, with members Jamie Torres and Stacie Gilmore absent. The vote wrapped up a two-year planning process.
“What we heard was that a vision for downtown must not just reflect the values of the people who live and work here, not just the people who have a direct stake in this place, but also anyone who has a fond memory of this place and the people who have yet to experience this place,” said Andrew Iltis, Senior Vice President, Downtown Denver Partnership.
Many residents said downtown needs to be safer, affordable and focused on play. During a long public comment period, city boosters from Visit Denver, the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, registered neighborhood groups asked the council to pass the plan.
Thousands of people shared their ideas for downtown in written comments and through public meetings.
The approved plan includes shorter-term projects like the redesigns of Civic Center Park, Glenarm Plaza and Skyline Park, along with long-term projects like the potential realignment of Cherry Creek and Speer Boulevard, two-way streets through downtown, a reimagining of Broadway and a new Broadway Park.
Mayor Mike Johnston plays a pick-up game with kids gathered for the opening of two new soccer arenas at downtown’s Skyline Park. Aug. 26, 2025.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
The goals of the plan are to improve public safety, affordability, downtown governance structures, fill local businesses and office spaces, and connections between downtown and the rest of the city.
Ryan Ross, a Denver businessman who proposed a gondola through the center of the city, described the plan as “deeply flawed” and argued the public was not thoroughly engaged.
“The plan, as you know from having read it, consists of a long series of micro projects that even collectively won’t do much to get the vibrancy that we need in downtown, to get it back on its feet,” Ross said.
Why all the focus on downtown?
While the city center comprises less than 2 percent of the city’s land, it generates more than a fifth of the sales tax that pays for city government.
“When downtown falters, Denver feels it,” Councilmember Chris Hinds said. “When downtown thrives, the whole city benefits.”
Around 34,000 people live in the city center, with 53 million people visiting just last year.
In the decades to come, the city center may expand into Auraria, along the South Platte, with Stan Kroenke’s development plans for the Ball Arena parking lots and the proposed River Mile district, potentially doubling the population of downtown.
The plan aims to make downtown “the nation’s largest signature ‘play’ district.”
How? Events, art, food trucks, better parks and plazas, hang-out and fitness areas, pedestrian-oriented shopping and dining, creative lighting, digital games and musical installations, and enough security for everybody – including children – to feel safe.
It also calls for a focus on arts, culture and history, environmentally resilient design, child care and affordable housing, according to the plan.
But council members still have doubts and questions.
Councilmember Flor Alvidrez raised a pressing concern informed by a recent walk with her son through downtown.
“It felt like he was constantly going to get in trouble, or someone was going to come out and get mad at him for being a kid downtown,” Alvidrez said. “There wasn’t any other children when we were around Skyline Park, and there was, you know, human feces and urine.”
People mill around Denver Pavilions, on 16th Street, on a Saturday evening. Oct. 18, 2025.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
“People experiencing homelessness are always going to go downtown because it’s where there’s transit and resources and people, and ignoring that reality creates an unsafe, uncomfortable condition for everyone, especially families, when we’re trying to be a family-friendly city instead of meeting human needs,” Alvidrez said.
Downtown could also offer more child care centers, schools and free public amenities like a library extension, she said.
Other council members raised concerns about whether the L Line — the light rail through Five Points — would be maintained. Would converting Broadway into a park create traffic problems? And was downtown getting outsized attention compared to other neighborhoods that have no plans at all?
“We need to invest in the other 78 neighborhoods that we have in Denver,” Council President Amanda Sandoval said.
DENVER – The Denver Summit FC ownership is “engaging with other jurisdictions” over a potential site of a future stadium for the new professional women’s soccer team, Denver7 has learned.
Citing “challenges we have faced in the Denver City Council process” over plans for a 14,500-seat stadium at Santa Fe Yards, the team’s ownership said in a statement it was also continuing to “engage in an open and honest dialogue with the Mayor, City Council and Community in Denver” while pursuing a “parallel path regarding the stadium site,” according to a statement.
The four measures were related to $50 million for the future site including a potential pedestrian bridge.
Denver7
“I think as a council, we want to be fiscally responsible when it comes to the use of public funds,” said Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez, who represents District 7, where the stadium is expected to be built.
There were questions raised on the cost of the bridge and from where those funds would come.
“How does that work if we don’t have the funding right now? Like, when does that come into play?” Council president Amanda Sandoval asked regarding the potential pedestrian bridge. “I’m just concerned that, like, we’re taking the cart before the horse.”
Denver
Denver plans to spend $70 million on a new soccer stadium. Is it worth it?
Denver7 asked Councilwoman Alvidrez if she was concerned about the postponement of the four measures pertaining to the stadium.
“I just think we need to get things ironed out before we get there,” she said. “What was missing was things like, how are we going to fund this bridge that is part of the infrastructure master plan?”
Watch in the video player below: City officials raise concerns as Denver NWSL team on tight deadline for future stadium
City officials raise concerns as Denver NWSL team on tight deadline for future stadium
Earlier this year, Denver7 reported the city was moving forward with plans to build the new National Women’s Soccer League stadium by investing $70 million to get the project started with the ownership group expected to spend between $150 million to $200 million to finish the project.
In the statement received Saturday, Denver Summit FC ownership added: “We are currently pursuing a parallel path regarding the stadium site.”
In response, Denver7 received the following statement for Mayor Mike Johnston’s office:
“Mayor Johnston has been steadfast in his belief that a professional women’s soccer team belongs in Denver and in this stadium’s ability to bring sustained, catalytic investment to South Broadway. Losing this team would be devastating for the thousands of people who have already fallen in love with this franchise and the small businesses who are counting on the boost it will bring.
Having worked with the team from the beginning, we have seen ownership go above and beyond to answer questions, provide details, and work with the community. Mayor Johnston is working extensively with all parties, and we are confident that we will reach an agreement that benefits the city and keeps the Summit in Denver.”
Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez, who represents District 7 – where the stadium is expected to be – told Denver7 she believes the timeline for the stadium is still on track but wants to get questions answered and details squared away.
“I think as a council, we want to be fiscally responsible when it comes to the use of public funds,” said Alvidrez.
Women’s Sports
Denver Summit FC breaks another record with 15,000-season ticket deposits
Below is the full statement from Denver FC Summit:
“Denver Summit FC ownership is committed to fulfilling our obligations to the league, our fans, our athletes and the community. That means we need to deliver a purpose-built stadium for women’s professional soccer – on time, ready for play in March of 2028. We have been planning for a permanent stadium at Santa Fe Yards in Denver’s urban core. Given the challenges we have faced in the Denver City Council process, we are currently pursuing a parallel path regarding the stadium site and engaging with other jurisdictions outside Denver. We will continue to engage in an open and honest dialogue with the Mayor, City Council and Community in Denver. We are grateful for the steadfast support that we have received from fans, the community, the Mayor, the business community and small businesses throughout Denver.”
Denver7’s Veronica Acosta contributed to this report.
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Denver City Council President Amanda Sandoval, who has attended hundreds of public comment sessions over the past decade, found herself overwhelmed Monday night.
“That was the most intense public hearing I can remember having ever,” she said after residents shared a litany of needs and requests for the city’s upcoming budget.
Speakers wanted more community-based crime prevention programs. Safer transportation infrastructure. Support for youth arts and workforce development, and more funding for the Clerk and Recorder’s election services.
The mayor has said there just isn’t enough money next year to pay for everything the community wants. The city has already laid off more than 170 workers and eliminated hundreds more positions. And Johnston says more layoffs or cuts could be necessary if the city council increases city spending.
City Council, which can amend the budget but not outright reject it, is in a bind: Should they push for amendments to the budget and risk prompting more cuts elsewhere? Or do they trust that Johnston’s budget strikes the right balance and potentially disappoint constituents?
Mouath Baesho speaks during Denver City Council’s regular public comment session. Oct. 27, 2025.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Calls for a family homeless shelter
Homeless families spoke about the long wait times they’re experiencing with the Connection Center, a family crisis hotline that is funded by the city and run by The Salvation Army. They told stories of life on the streets with their children, fearing the city would separate them from their kids.
Some spoke English. Others spoke Spanish. All were suffering with children. They asked the city to spend $9 million to buy or rent a hotel for use as a family shelter.
The city is ending funding for two shelters for individuals in 2026, which will save the city $11 million, while keeping other shelters running.
Rae Cranmer speaks during a press conference urging Denver to fund family shelters, convened by Housekeys Action Network of Denver, before the Denver City Council’s public comment session on Oct. 27, 2025.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
“No family should be punished for being poor or homeless,” said Rae Cranmer, a mother of seven, who said she lost her housing and was forced to send her children into an abusive household so they could stay sheltered and she would not have them taken from her by authorities.
Other parents told their stories of evictions, struggles to find work and deported spouses. Many described the long waitlist to come inside from their cars and the streets.
In its last report, The Salvation Army told the city there are 250 families on the shelter waitlist. As of Tuesday, it was 218.
“I hope that you guys realize that it is in your hands to decide if these kids get to have a warm, safe upbringing, a childhood,” said V Reeves with the Housekeys Action Network Denver.
Denver City Council member Chris Hinds listens during a public comment period on Oct. 27, 2025.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Transportation drama
Transportation advocates said the city wasn’t doing enough to end traffic deaths.
Neighborhood advocate Joel Noble, a former Denver Planning Board member, expressed his frustration that the Johnston administration planned to “raid” the city’s dedicated Transportation and Mobility Special Revenue Fund for $575,000 to restore the positions of laid-off parking magistrates.
Housekeys Action Network of Denver advocate Terese Howard speaks as Denver City Council hears public comment on the city’s 2026 budget. Oct. 27, 2025.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
The fund was established in 2022 from increased parking meter fees. The money was dedicated for improvements to multimodal transportation. But as DOTI’s budget has been cut in recent years, The Denver Streets Partnership argues in a statement that the special funds have been used to “backfill budget gaps.”
If that fund is tapped for the parking magistrate funding, Noble argued the city would be doing long-lasting damage to the public’s trust that special funds will be used for the purposes described.
“I’m here defending this fund because I know that we were all told what it was for, and I do not like being lied to,” Noble said.
Denver City Council President Amanda Sandoval listens during a public comment period on Oct. 27, 2025.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
June Churchill, the budget chair of the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Advisory Board, argued Johnston was treating the money as a “slush fund.”
Mayoral spokesperson Jon Ewing said the ability to dispute parking tickets without going to court is a priority for residents, the council and the administration. The Johnston administration recently agreed to create a new parking ticket appeal program after the city shut down an online appeals system.
“Understanding that the court system did not feel the program should live under them, we moved it to DOTI and utilized an existing funding source,” Ewing said. “This prevented other service or personnel cuts.”
Denver City Council listens to public comment on Oct. 27, 2025.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Churchill described the city’s overall budget as “fundamentally flawed.” The city has more assets than revenue, and it’s impossible to care for it all. She pointed to more than 60 structurally deficient bridges, eroding pavement and a city vehicle fleet that is largely outdated.
“The system won’t fail tomorrow,” Churchill said. “But it will fall apart without serious intervention.”
Advocates also asked for additional funding for Vision Zero and Safe Routes to School, programs designed to prevent unsafe speeding and preventable traffic deaths and injuries.
People held signs that read “Fund Community Safety.”
They were part of a campaign to create a new $5 million program that would fund community-based violence prevention groups.
“When we invest in youth programs, victim services and conflict mediation, we are not just addressing crises, we are preventing them,” said Kym Rae, the campaign coordinator for the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition. “We are saving lives, saving public resources, and building a safer, more connected Denver for everyone.”
Jessie Parris holds a sign reading “FUND COMMUNITY SAFETY” as Denver City Council hears public comment on the city’s 2026 budget. Oct. 27, 2025.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Hassan Latif, who spent 17 years in prison and left to create the Second Chance Center, a program to help formerly incarcerated people reenter society, said investing in such programming would strengthen communities and prevent violence before it happens.
“Denver invests hundreds of millions every year in reactive systems, policing, courts and jails,” he said. “It’s time to show that same seriousness about prevention, intervention and victim support, the work that stops harm before it happens.”
Protecting election integrity
Community members, election judges, election workers and voter advocates asked City Council to give more funding to the Clerk and Recorder’s Office.
Clerk and Recorder Paul López had asked for an extra $4.5 million. But Johnston’s budget would slash the Clerk’s budget by 1.5 percent and offer less for elections than in 2022, during the last midterm election.
Denver Clerk and Recorder Paul López listens as the City Council listens to public comment on the city’s 2026 budget. Oct. 27, 2025.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
“Next year will be an especially critical and scrutinized election,” said Pearlanne Zelarney of the League of Women Voters. “An underfunded elections office risks undermining voter access and trust, precisely when we need it most.”
Susy Johnson, the president of Denver Republican Women and an on-again-off-again poll watcher, said the council should vote no on Johnston’s proposed budget until the mayor adequately funds polling places, ballot boxes, and the election staff voters depend on.
“These changes are not just inconvenient,” she said. “They represent a direct threat to the public’s trust in our elections.”
Slashing services for children
Johnston’s proposed budget reduces funding for the Office of Children Affairs, which funds after-school programs. The city laid off 10 people, and eliminated two open positions, out of a staff of 31. Johnston’s budget proposal reduces its funding by about 56 percent.
“We suggest you continue to fund the Office of Children’s Affairs and programs that allow us to express ourselves, that allow us to build a better future for our community and possibly our world,” said Julian Adam Martinez, who attends DSST College View and works as an intern at ArtLab.
He fears that without city funding, ArtLab will be shut down and youth like him will miss an opportunity to gain professional experience and skills.
“We must invest in young people — not cut resources that help young people grow, heal and lead,” said Stephen Smith Contreras of Youth on Record.
Next steps
Next week, the council will take what they learned from the public on Monday night and deliberate on adding new amendments. With a supermajority vote of nine members, they could also revive previously proposed amendments the mayor has already vetoed.
Then they will decide whether to pass his budget, though that’s largely a formality. Johnston’s draft, as amended by the council, will take effect. Council members have no power to outright block his proposal.
Denver City Council members Flor Alvidrez (from left), Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez and Jamie Torres listen during a public comment period on Oct. 27, 2025.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Two council members expressed their frustration that the mayor provided insufficient staff to answer their questions. Some from the public were frustrated the mayor himself was not present.
“I wish he was here tonight to hear what you are listening to,” said Marilyn Ackerman, a member of Montview Presbyterian Church and Together Colorado. “When I voted for him, he said he was interested in co-governance.”
That, she said, hasn’t happened.
“Staff was present and we’re always happy to answer additional questions after the fact, as we have throughout the budget process,” Ewing said.
Editor’s note: This article was corrected to note that there are 250 families, not individuals, on the Connection Center waitlist.
Kids play in the hallway as Denver City Council hears public comment on the city’s 2026 budget. Oct. 27, 2025.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
DENVER — When Denver voters hit the polls, they’ll have the final say on whether the city should keep or overturn its ban on flavored tobacco products.
Meanwhile, the fight intensifies as both sides ramp up Saturday morning voter outreach.
The ordinance to ban flavored tobacco products was first approved by the Denver City Council in an 11-1 vote last December.
But after pushback and petitions from business owners, the issue is now in voters’ hands.
A “yes” vote on Referendum 310 means you support keeping Denver’s ban on flavored tobacco products.
In September, Michael Bloomberg donated more than $1.5 million to the campaign Denver Kids vs. Big Tobacco to uphold the ban.
Backers of the ban gathered at New Hope Baptist Church on Saturday morning ahead of door-knocking efforts to ramp up voter outreach.
They said it all comes down to reducing access for Denver kids and teens.
“I think the more that youth understand the targeting that’s happened from the industry to themselves and their peers, I think it’s really motivated them to be a vocal advocate on behalf of this issue,” said Jodi Radke, regional director for the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids.
Dozens of Denver high schoolers were part of Saturday’s door-knocking efforts, telling Denver7 they see the products their classmates use regularly.
“A lot of people are harmed by it, all the chemicals in there, and they don’t know how bad it is for them,” said Demba Dath, a senior at Regis Groff High School.
A few miles away, meanwhile, a different sort of voter outreach effort got underway — vape shop owners held signs on 16th Street to voice their side of the issue.
“I just really felt that it was a huge overreach from the city council to just push this ban through without taking reasonable considerations about small businesses, adult choice, the revenue that will be lost to other cities,” said Kristen Hensel, owner of Rusty’s Vape and Smoke Shop.
A “no” vote on Referendum 310 means you want to overturn the current ban on flavored tobacco products.
Hensel echoes the concerns of hundreds of other vape shop owners across the city who say the ban would negatively impact their small businesses and income.
Hensel said products for those 21 and over make up most sales, and the ban could close many shops.
That’s why they’re waving signs and making thousands of calls ahead of November 4.
“This is a fight between local people. So we only have our local money, and we’re not rich, so we are just calling people all day, every day,” said Mike Wing, owner of King Smoke and Vape Shop.
Final push: both sides of Referendum 310 rally Denver voters on flavored tobacco ban
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Mayor Mike Johnston announced Wednesday that the city will again extend its agreement to keep Flock Safety license plate cameras operating in Denver, despite pushback from the Denver City Council.
The technology, which police say is helpful in stopping auto theft and other crimes, has drawn fierce criticism about potential privacy violations and the threat the data could be shared with federal immigration enforcement and other external agencies.
City officials say the extended contract will come with new conditions meant to protect Denver’s data.
The city put up 111 solar-powered Flock cameras at 70 sites citywide in May 2024. Since then, the system has photographed roughly 2 million license plates per month, allowing police to track and locate vehicles. The captured images led to 352 arrests, 250 recovered vehicles and 39 recovered firearms, according to the city.
Now, the Johnston administration has another temporary solution. The mayor’s office announced that it would again extend its contract with Flock by another five months — this time at no cost, meaning council still doesn’t have to approve it.
The new agreement runs through March 31, 2026 — more than a year after the contract originally was set to expire — and comes with changes.
“I’ve made clear to Flock’s leadership that I expect total transparency and that anything less will result in an end to our relationship,” Johnston said in a press release. “To their credit, they have agreed to our terms and will build a Denver-specific package that will lead the way in using this technology for the public good.”
At the end of the extension, the city plans to present a long-term contract to council, which will require a vote.
The extended contract comes with safeguards, the city says.
Flock has faced national controversy over how its data is used. It includes functions that allow individual law enforcement agencies to search a national network of cities that use Flock cameras.
In a University of Washington report, researchers found law enforcement agencies across Washington conducted searches on behalf of immigration enforcement agencies. In Colorado, the city of Loveland allowed immigration enforcement access to its data, as did many other agencies across the country through a sanctioned Flock program that was disclosed to 9News.
The city says there is no evidence that Denver’s Flock data has been used for immigration enforcement. But thousands of agencies around the nation had access to Denver data through the “national search” function — a fact that DPD officials said they weren’t aware of until April, when they deactivated the function.
Johnston’s office said from now on, it won’t be possible for external agencies to search Denver’s Flock data without coming to an agreement with the city.
“Agencies will need to negotiate an [memorandum of understanding] with Denver, which will state that any data sharing with the federal government regarding civil immigration enforcement will result in an immediate loss of access to data sharing and referral to the Colorado Attorney General’s Office for prosecution,” a city press release said. “Additionally, no federal agents will be allowed to search Denver’s data, even if they are assigned to a Denver task force.”
The mayor’s office added that Flock has agreed to only allow search terms for a select number of crimes and will not permit searches related to immigration or reproductive healthcare.
If data is improperly released to external parties, the city said Flock has agreed to pay Denver $100,000 in damages. Flock has verbally agreed to those changes, city officials said, but they haven’t been written into a signed contract.
A representative for Flock said the company was committed to the deal.
“Flock Safety is committed to working with communities like Denver to provide critical public safety technology that helps law enforcement prevent and solve crime, while protecting residents’ privacy. We fully support Mayor Johnston’s commitment to transparency and accountability and will continue partnering with the City to ensure that Denver’s program reflects its values and priorities,” a written statement read.
Some of Flock’s critics are still skeptical.
Councilmember Kevin Flynn praised the new contract, saying it adds “strong guardrails”.
“The system has already proved its worth in solving crimes around the city. We can boost safety while ensuring the data is restricted,” he said. Numerous local cities use Flock, and police have cited the cameras as providing key evidence in cases. Aurora police this week said they used Flock to identify a suspect’s vehicle in a deadly hit-and-run, later arresting him.
But at-large Councilmember Sarah Parady said she was “stunned” to learn that Johnston had been negotiating with Flock.
“As the ACLU; members of Congress; reproductive and First Amendment rights watchdogs; multiple other local governments including Austin, Texas; and a growing chorus of voices nationwide have recognized, this company is dishonest, motivated primarily by the profit potential that comes with aggregation of data, and has no place in our city,” she wrote in a statement to Denverite.
Katie Leonard, a community organizer with the Denver branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, said in a statement that Denver advocacy groups have been largely ignored in their concerns about Flock cameras.
“For months, Denver residents and community leaders have demanded an end to Flock cameras in the city. And for months, their concerns were ignored,” Leonard wrote. “It was only because of the persistence of community advocates that we are seeing the needle move, just slightly, toward protecting the constitutional rights of people in Denver.”
The Colorado chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said Johnston’s administration should be more transparent about Flock.
“There must be full transparency from the mayor’s office when it comes to Flock Safety. There should be no more private negotiations on Flock contracts. The full Flock task force should be included in all matters involving Flock’s contract with the city, and the public’s concerns and input should be a part of that process,” the organization said in a statement.
Before Johnston had announced the contract extension, organizers had been planning a Wednesday evening town hall to discuss concerns with Flock cameras. The town hall will take place at Geotech Environmental at 2650 E. 40th Avenue at 6:00 p.m.
Editor’s note: This article was updated with comment from Flock, the Denver branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Colorado chapter of the ACLU.
DENVER — There is a program reaching into Denver Public Schools to help students on the cusp of addiction. It’s going on it’s 11th year and the need keeps growing.
Denver7 sat down with Director of Mental Health for Denver Public Schools Meredith Fatseas.
She said the program is designed to both educate kids about early signs of addiction and how to prevent it from spiraling any further.
“We’re really looking at supporting prevention, first and foremost, of really supporting those life skills on making proactive and good decisions in in your life. And substance misuse is very connected to mental health,” Fateas said. “When students are stable and have strong coping skills, they’re more likely to make better choices. So we first start focus on prevention, but then also that early misuse and really getting kids connected to intervention early.”
Fatseas said kids have been receptive to the help and the district has seen the program help change a kid’s trajectory away from addiction.
“It might look like a kid being caught with a vape or, you know, in a counseling session, sharing that they use alcohol over the weekend,” Fatseas said. “As soon as we become aware that a kid is using substances, then we really want to connect them with early intervention and talk about the effects on their body and really how to make good choices.”
Now DPS is working on growing this program, while also navigating a changing financial landscape. The program relies on a variety sources of funding, including grants and city money.
Denver Public Schools program helps students on cusp of addiction
“Our substance prevention programming is multi- grant funded. Primarily grant funded. Some of it is through the recent settlement with the Juul funds out of the district attorney’s office. Some come through grants for behavioral health, focused on youth substance prevention,” Fatseas said.
Denver City Council also just gave approval to extend its contract through the middle of 2027. The contract amount is staying the same. This makes up a significant part of the budget.
“I would say the trends that we’ve kind of been monitoring over the past few years have really stayed consistent,” Fatseas said. “I would say we’re seeing decrease in early use. In middle school, with our last Healthy Kids, Colorado, we saw an increase in vaping, and so that’s been a pretty significant focus of our programming.”
Program leaders say the program works because of the multiple community partnerships
“We have a great partnership with Denver Health and their step therapists who can come into our schools and carry a case load. It may look like us going in and doing training, so that staff in the schools are more equipped with supporting the students where those connected relationships are already in place, those trusted adults. It can look like us providing some intervention or group work as well,”Fatseas said.
If you think this could be helpful to someone you know, you can reach out to your individual school and they will connect you with the program.
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FILE – Scott Gilmore, then-deputy executive director for Denver Parks and Recreation, addresses Denver City Council, Aug. 7, 2018. Gilmore was one of the nearly 200 city workers laid off during 2025’s major budget deficit.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Updated 8:39 p.m.
The husband of a Denver city council member is among the 171 city workers being laid off this week. Scott Gilmore, who is married to Councilmember Stacie Gilmore, had been an executive with the parks department for more than a decade.
“Thirteen years of service to the City and County of Denver. That means that when he started serving, our youngest daughter was 7 years old,” Councilmember Stacie Gilmore said at Monday’s regular council meeting.
The council member was visibly emotional, pausing at times to compose herself.
Scott Gilmore served most of his city career as a deputy executive director, a job that frequently put him front-and-center for media interviews and conversations with neighbors. But he recently became deputy executive director of mountain parks and special projects, a seemingly more specialized job.
He started working for the city before Stacie Gilmore was first elected in 2015. In her comments, Gilmore seemed to imply that he was fired as retaliation for her battles with Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration.
“He is a 61-year-old man that only wanted to serve out the last four years of his time until he was 65,” Councilmember Gilmore said. “And because of his sassy loudmouthed wife, he got let go.”
Scott Gilmore agreed with his wife — he said he felt targeted because he and his wife have been outspoken behind the scenes.
“Ever since this administration took over, I’ve had questions about communications, transparency,” he said in an interview. “And this hasn’t been a very transparent process.”
District 11 City Council member Stacie Gilmore at the legislative body’s weekly meeting. Oct. 16, 2023.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Scott Gilmore alleged a hostile work environment.
Scott Gilmore originally was appointed to parks leadership by former Mayor Michael Hancock. But in 2021, the Hancock administration converted Gilmore’s job and a colleague’s to career service authority positions, as CBS Colorado reported.
The change made it more difficult for the city’s mayor — including its new mayor, Mike Johnston — to dismiss Gilmore. The change included a raise to a salary of $170,000 a year and drew criticism from Councilmember Amanda Sawyer, CBS reported at the time.
Now, Gilmore said he is only one of seven people who are being laid off from the parks department, including himself.
“I have had a very influential position and role within the city and department over the past fourteen years. I have directly hired a large majority of the Park Operation staff and the removal of my leadership of this team could have been done to minimize my influence on decision making within the department,” he wrote in an email, adding that the elimination could be “perceived as a retaliatory action of this administration.”
In the email, he said that he had encountered a hostile work environment since July 2023, which is when Johnston’s administration took power.
Scott Gilmore said that Stacie Gilmore had criticized the city’s budget decision and its spending on homelessness. The councilwoman also raised concerns about the administration’s plan to study nuclear power at the airport, which was recently delayed as a result.
Stacie Gilmore ended her remarks on Monday by saying the “dog muzzle” had been removed from her and her husband.
Mayoral spokesperson Jon Ewing said the city couldn’t comment on individual personnel decisions.
The city used a formula to determine layoffs, with decisions based on an employee’s years of service, skills, abilities and performance. Agency leaders could adjust those factors’ weights on a department level. But administration officials said last week the system was designed to avoid reverse engineering that could target individuals.
Scott Gilmore pointed out that his current job was not paid from the general fund. The city is looking for savings in the general fund and targeted most of the layoffs and job closures to related positions. But city officials said last week there were some circumstances where a person could be laid off even if they weren’t paid out of the general fund.
Councilmember Gilmore represents far northeast Denver and is one of the longest-serving members of council. Scott Gilmore’s brother owns Gilmore Construction, a prominent local company; the connection has occasionally drawn criticism.
Other council members called for more transparency and denounced parts of the layoff process.
City Council did not get a say on whether there would be layoffs and how they would be administered, a decision that vexed some council members.
“I cannot safely say that these are the steps that needed to be taken, [a] direct to hit to our city workforce,” said at-large Councilmember Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez. “I would’ve loved to partner with the administration and our Department of Finance to find some other creative solutions.”
City Council member Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez at her desk during the body’s weekly legislative meeting. Jan. 16, 2023.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
The criticism lined up with a similar one from Michael Wallin, the president of AFSCME Local Union 158 and an employee of the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, who told Denverite that the city should have explored other options, like early retirement, before resorting to layoffs.
Council members also expressed their condolences for the scores of other workers who will be laid off on Monday and Tuesday. The city is trying to close a $250 million budget gap for this year and next year.
“It’s a loss for our residents. It’s a loss for people I know in my family,” said council president Amanda Sandoval.
Editor’s note: This article was updated with additional information and comment from Scott Gilmore.
In total, Denver City Council voted on five different agenda items related to the redevelopment.
KSE plans to transform roughly 70 acres surrounding Ball Arena into a mixed-use development, complete with apartments, retail and office space. In order to do so, the land first needed to be rezoned.
Specifically, KSE was seeking an exemption from the view plane in that area, which dictates how high buildings can be. The goal is to protect mountain views.
In the only vote that was not unanimous, the Denver City Council exempted KSE, allowing them to build higher than the view plane.
Officials with KSE told Denver7 that without this approval vote on the view plane, they would have withdrawn their plans.
Kroenke Sports & Entertainment
The only ‘no’ vote from the council regarding the view planes came from Councilmember Amanda Sawyer, who represents District 5.
“So the question is, are we setting a precedent here? I understand that this specific view plane is defunct, then we should have repealed the whole thing. But allowing for a precedent where we are piercing a view plane where in fact you do have a right to that view, it’s in our zoning code,” Sawyer said before voting.
Other councilors considered the increase in affordable housing units that comes with constructing higher buildings. KSE has pledged to allot 18% of its units as affordable housing.
“The basic idea is the more they can build, the more affordable [housing] that they can build,” said Councilmember Chris Hinds before the public hearings. “If they get the height extension, they can build 6,000 units. Eighteen percent of that is 1,080 units. And so, having 1,080 units is pretty substantial when we’re in an affordable housing crisis.”
More than two dozen people signed up to express their opinions to council members on Monday evening.
“The unique beauty of Denver will be compromised forever with the addition of approximately 40 high-rise buildings blocking the view of the mountains,” said Casey Pitinga.
Other members of the public in support of the plan said it would ease the affordable housing issues in the city while creating a place designed for people, not cars.
Denver
Denver City Council to vote Monday on Ball Arena redevelopment plans
Matt Mahoney, a representative of KSE, spoke with Denver7 about the concerns regarding parking in the area since the redevelopment will essentially transform the large parking lots surrounding Ball Arena into a community. He said there will still be parking available for people who drive to games at Ball Arena. There are also plans for parking garages above ground and underground.
Most of the parking will be shared, according to Mahoney.
He said the transformation could increase the number of parking spots in the area since it will utilize more space. However, KSE hopes the trend it has seen — where people choose other methods of transportation to commute to Ball Arena — continues to grow in the next few years.
Mahoney said they hope to break ground on the project in either 2026 or 2027. He did not provide an exact dollar amount for the project as of Monday evening.
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The Denver City Council on Monday cleared the way for Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche owner Stan Kroenke to build new skyscrapers on the expanse of parking lots around Ball Arena where those teams play.
They also ensured the teams will stay on Kroenke-owned land in central Denver for another quarter century.
The ability to construct buildings as tall as 30 or 40 stories around the arena is a critical component of plans to greatly expand downtown Denver. That density will provide room for up to 6,000 new apartments and condos in a city desperate for more housing, according to Matt Mahoney, senior vice president for development at Kroenke Sports and Entertainment.
“We are committed to downtown. Our company offices downtown. Our teams win championships downtown,” Mahoney told council members Monday night. “Our plan is a pedestrian-focused development, placing a priority on open space and people, not cars.”
View protections pierced
The first in a series of six bills related to the future of the 70-acre Ball property that the council voted on Monday amended the city code to provide an exemption to the Old City Hall view plane.
That view plane is essentially an invisible triangle the caps building heights on the properties that fall within it. It’s a legal mechanism to protect westward views from a specific point on the ground at the intersection of 14th and Larimer streets where the city’s original city hall once stood.
City planning and legal staff informed council members that the view plane is already largely defunct. The Auraria Higher Education Center campus buildings along Speer Boulevard — built by a state agency exempt from city rules — have already blocked it out.
That was reason enough for some council members to vote for the exemption Kroenke and company were seeking even if they had concerns about the broader impact on mountain views.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that I am going to vote yes on this exemption … because of the fact that this view plane no longer exists,” Councilman Kevin Flynn said. “I would have actually preferred the (Community Planning and Development) had come to us and just said repeal this view plane.”
Flynn voted with the majority in a 10-1 decision to allow properties with a specialized zoning to pierce the plane.
The council also approved rezoning the arena property. The land was already zoned for buildings as tall as eight stories in places, according to city planning staff, but the specialty zoning that the council unanimously signed off on Monday allows for buildings that are much taller in exchange for the inclusion of more affordable housing on site.
While the view plane vote allows Kroenke Sports and Entertainment and its namesake billionaire owner to move closer to its goals, some neighbors from the Lower Downtown neighborhood had their hopes of preserving their largely unobstructed views of the Rocky Mountains dashed.
Casey Pitinga was among the residents of the Larimer Place condo tower at 1551 Larimer St. that urged council members to vote no on the view plane changes. She argued that it was not just her building that would be impacted by the appearance of new skyscrapers west of downtown. Businesses that tout rooftop views — including the recently expanded Colorado Convention Center which added a terrace as part of its $233 million expansion completed last year — could also be hurt, she said.
“Most importantly, the unique beauty of Denver will be compromised forever,” Pitinga said.
Amanda Sawyer was the one council member who sided with those neighbors. She noted that residents of her eastern Denver district benefit from a view plane that protects westward views from Cranmer Park.
“It’s not a precedent I am willing to set,” she said of amending those legal protections even for a development she acknowledged may be something that could benefit the city.
Benefit agreements inked with community group and the city
An overwhelming majority of speakers who testified during a public hearing covering the rezoning spoke in favor of allowing dense development on the land and the new housing that it is expected to bring.
“It’s exactly the type of project we need as a city,” Denver resident Matthew Larsen said. “It’s dense. It’s infill development. We need projects like this to meet our greenhouse gas goals in the state.”
KSE last week signed a detailed community benefits agreement with a committee representing nearby neighborhoods and community organizations. That agreement, which was created with support from city leaders but independent of the authority of the city, includes a bundle of specific obligations that KSE must fulfill.
Those include dedicating $3 million to programs, internships, and scholarships for young people who are from surrounding neighborhoods, are Indigenous or are from families that were displaced from the historic Auraria neighborhood that is now home to the arena and the neighboring higher education campus.
La Alma-Lincoln Park resident Simon Tafoya co-chaired the committee that brokered that deal with KSE. In comments Monday night, he delved into some of the specifics including a guranteed that 50 housing units built in the forthcoming neighborhood will be reserved for people making 30% of the area median income. That’s $27,000 per year for a single person and $39,100 for a family of four.
Councilwoman Jamie Torres is a descendant of people displaced from the Auraria neighborhood. She noted how important that agreement was to her constituents and her comfortability in supporting the package of bills.
“The city did not dipalce 900 residents in the 1970s for us to build a shiny neighborhood that was inaccessible to them,” she said. “I could not be a part of something like that.”
The council also approved a bill cementing the city’s own development agreement with KSE.
That sets requirements including mandating that 18% of all new housing built on the Ball lots been reserved as income-restricted affordable housing. That figure exceeds the city’s existing affordable housing requirements by at least 3% and could result in 1,080 new units of affordable housing, according to city planners and KSE officials.
The city ensured the agreement mandates that the affordable units be spread across the property instead of concentrated in one area, according to senior city planner Tony Lechuga.
Property tax plan leaves some council members uneasy
The council approved three other measures related to Kroenke’s ball arena plans before calling it a night on Monday.
The very last of those bills amend an existing arena agreement between the city and KSE tying the Nuggets and Avalanche to the property until 2050.
The chamber, largely filled with KSE staff members as the final was cast after 10 p.m., enrupted in applause when that passed unanimously.
Another bill approved at the meeting extended the timelines for a development agreement governing the neighboring River Mile property, also owned in part by Kroenke. That agreement also now runs until the middle of 2050, matching with the Ball Arena timeline.
The city agreed to vesting language that provides some zoning certainly for both properties for the next 26 years. Manhoney emphasized that KSE is approaching the combined 130 acres as one interconnected neighborhood.
He acknowledged that Elitch Gardens Theme and Water Park will be moved as part of the company’s long-term development plans though a landing place for the park has not yet been determined.
Only one bill drew multiple no votes. That measure established five metro districts, special property-specific taxing entities with the power to take on $1.2 billion in debt to pay for the construction and upkeep of infrastructure around the arena. That included essential items like roads, sewers, parking structures and parks.
While the residents of affordable housing on the property would be shielded from some of associated taxes needed to pay back that debt, KSE estimates that the mill levy rate associated with those cost for market-rate residential and commercial property owners could reach as high as 70 mills.
Thatt was too steep for Councilwoman Sawyer. She voted no, as did council members Sarah Parady and Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez.
Council president Amanda Sandoval acknowledged those future taxes could be a burden on residents but metro districts are the mechanism the city relies on to build new infrastructure in many cases. She was the eight members who voted yes.
“We don’t have any other tools right now,” she said.
DENVER — Supporters and participants of the Denver Basic Income Project rallied at the state capitol and outside Denver’s City and County Building on Wednesday, calling for more funding to continue and expand the program.
As Denver city leaders comb through Mayor Mike Johnston’s 2025 budget proposal, supporters of the project are asking city leaders for more support.
“We’re asking for $1.7 million to complete the second year,” said Maria Sierra, a community engagement manager with the Denver Basic Income Project. “And we’re also asking for money to extend the project for future cohorts so that we can replicate this on to the greater community and impact more cohorts.”
The Denver Basic Income Project provides direct cash to people experiencing homelessness with no strings attached.
The project’s founder, Denver entrepreneur, and philanthropist Mark Donovan spoke with Denver7 earlier this summer.
“I was seeing this growing wealth disparity and income disparities, and I wanted to find a way to give back,” Donovan said. “This is a group of people that are largely often overlooked, looked down upon, and not given the same opportunities.”
Critics of programs like this say they discourage people from working and make them more dependent on the government.
Michael Neil says he, too, was skeptical — until he saw the data.
“I’m a data guy,” Neil said. “Looking at the qualitative data, who was helped, how many were helped, and how many are now in stable housing, whatever that may look like for them is, I think, tells the story.”
Neil volunteers with the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition, one of several groups that make up the Denver Guaranteed Income Now! Coalition.
The Denver Basic Income Project says 45% of participants found housing.
They also say participants reported fewer emergency room visits and hospital and jail stays.
They say the project saved taxpayers $590,000.
They say the results will improve if the city provides additional funding.
“Our results speak for themselves,” said Sierra. “We don’t understand why they’re not seeing that.”
Last year, the city provided $2 million for the program.
However, the program is not included in the mayor’s 2025 budget proposal.
Denver7 contacted the mayor’s office to ask why but did not hear back Wednesday.
The mayor’s budget proposal will likely undergo changes as the city council reviews it.
Last week, Johnston said next year’s budget will be tighter than in recent years as pandemic-era funding runs out and sales tax revenue softens.
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Denver city officials for the first time issued subpoenas in an attempt to recover wages for dancers at a trio of strip clubs.
Denver City Council in April voted unanimously to give Denver Labor subpoena power to use during wage-theft investigations.
“It’s a win for Denver’s workers that we had this process in place in time,” Denver Auditor Timothy M. O’Brien said in a Tuesday news release. “This is the first time we are using this subpoena power and without it we would be unable to conduct our investigation into whether dancers’ rights are being violated.”
City labor investigators have been working to determine whether PT’s Showclub, Diamond Cabaret and PT’s Centerfold misclassify their dancers as non-employees to avoid paying them minimum wage, overtime, paid sick leave and all of their earned tips.
The city issued subpoenas for these clubs after the businesses failed to produce records related to contracts, contact information and dancers’ payments, the news release stated.
The strip clubs have until Sept. 24 to fully respond. If they don’t, they will face fines of up to $1,000 per day.
The investigation, city officials said, remains ongoing.
The new subpoena power comes amid years of effort at the city and state level to crack down on wage theft and misclassification.
Before the April ordinance, the Denver auditor’s office could only issue fines to companies that did not hand over requested documents in wage theft investigations. Businesses could pay the fines rather than comply with the investigation.
The law change also empowered the auditor’s office to charge 12% interest on unpaid wages as well as to levy fines up to $25,000 per violation. Denver Labor can collect up to 300% of unpaid wages as civil damages to compensate workers.
In 2023, Denver recovered more than $2 million in unpaid wages — nearly double the amount recovered the year prior.
“Wage theft is devastating,” Councilmember Sarah Parady, one of the bill sponsors, said in April. “What we need is for our enforcement agency to be empowered to get whatever information is needed to get to the truth.”
Another ordinance, passed by the City Council in 2023, allowed complaints to go straight to the auditor, as opposed to the court, helping people to get paid faster.
The law also provides for upstream liability — meaning a general contractor on a construction project would be liable for wages and penalties if their subcontractor fails to pay its employees.
The sidewalk by Walsh Manor, the Ruby Hill apartment building where Phyllis Mack once lived. May 15, 2024.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Starting January, most Denver property owners will be charged $150 per year for sidewalk upkeep and expansion, as part of a voter-approved repair program passed in 2022.
The Denver City Council unanimously approved final changes to the fee structure Monday, which means that after a year of delays, Denver will finally get started on the ambitious infrastructure project.
Previously, residents were responsible for their own sidewalk upkeep, which led to many sidewalks in disrepair and portions of the city with no sidewalks at all.
After voters passed the Denver Deserves Sidewalks program in 2022, responsibility for sidewalk infrastructure shifted from individual owners to the city — with funding from a new fee on properties.
The plan will levy a fee on owners and use that new fund to completely fix and build out Denver’s sidewalks, supposedly within a decade.
The program will give the City of Denver tens of millions of dollars and marching orders to fix a huge chunk of infrastructure. It’s something not many other cities have tried.
“Everybody is watching very closely and we’re all going to learn a lot, and I’m really confident that Denver’s going to become a model that other cities are going to look to around the country that proves it is possible, we can build pedestrian infrastructure too. We don’t just have to limit ourselves to car infrastructure,” said Jill Locantore, executive director of Denver Streets Partnership and one of the leaders who pushed for the bill.
Denver spent the past two years figuring out how to actually make that happen.
The original fee structure, based on how much of the property faced the street, had the largest group of owners paying between $100 and $200 per year. But some residents with corner lots could get stuck with $400 to $800 bills every year.
Under the new fee structure, passed by city council Monday, most owners will pay a flat $150 annually. A small portion of homeowners whose property stretches a long distance on major streets will pay an extra $3.50 per linear foot of street edge, but only for the length in excess of 230 linear feet.
That means some residents with extra-large lots, plus parks and schools, could still get stuck with bigger bills. It’s not clear exactly how much — city staff said a calculator tool will come in the next few months for large properties.
“All I’m asking is, larger lots should pay more, but that it be a reasonable amount in relation to the fees that are being charged,” said Thomas Herrington, who told council he could still face thousands of dollars in sidewalk bills per year.
Councilmeber Paul Kashmann, who serves on a committee working on the program, said the group will continue to meet and could potentially tweak the program down the line to address big bills.
The changes also mean property owners who live on private streets will be charged fees, even though they will continue to be responsible for their own upkeep. That’s a change from the original plan, which would have exempted those residents.
“There are hundreds of property owners who will pay a fee now, who under the original owners would not, and … the rationale for that is that we are all pedestrians,” said council member Kevin Flynn, who originally opposed the bill but served on the committee and ultimately voted yes on the changes.
Fees could rise above $150 in the future.
Under the new changes, property owners could also face annual fee increases based on inflation if necessary. The original program only included the potential for increases every five years.
The changes also expand who can access low-income discounts and add a discount for eligible apartment owners whose buildings include at least a quarter of income-restricted affordable housing.
It’s still unclear how long fixing and building out Denver’s sidewalks will take.
The program’s original language called for the city to get the job done in nine years, but part of the changes passed Monday recognized that might not be possible, expanding the timeline to “soon thereafter.”
Estimates have ranged from nine years to nearly 30 years from now. And with construction costs and potential property acquisitions for sidewalks, that final price tag is unclear too.
In 2022, proponents of the plan estimated it would raise more than $40 million per year, which could be used to secure $850 million in debt — but a city analysis from that year predicted the total costs would range from $2.8 billion to $7.3 billion. That’s such a wide range, and the plan has changed so much since then, that those initial costs are likely unreliable. The city hasn’t yet released new estimates.
While the program gets fully underway, Denver is offering money from a smaller fund to get started on fixing the worst offenders. But a master plan covering how the city will prioritize sidewalks and how the new money will be spent will not come until 2025.
Larry Leszczynski stands over the sidewalk outside of his Congress Park home that was fixed and then subsequently broken by garbage trucks. Aug. 24, 2023.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Starting in January, most property owners will likely pay a flat $150 fee as part of Denver’s new sidewalk repair program.
The goal is to fix Denver’s broken sidewalks and build others where there are none.
The city has more than 300 miles of missing sidewalks and 800 miles where the sidewalks are too narrow, according to the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure.
The fee is part of the voter-approved Denver Deserves Sidewalks program, which is funded through annual fees on property owners. Previously, owners were responsible for sidewalk upkeep.
The original version voters approved in 2022 charged owners based on square footage of property facing the street. But an early fee calculator found that some owners would pay between $200 and $800 per year, every year.
So city leaders postponed the program’s rollout twice to alter the fee structure, proposing a $150 annual fee for most commercial and residential properties in the city. The board of community members, city leaders and Councilmembers also proposed expanding the city’s fee discount for low-income families.
“The recommendations were also very much informed by what we heard from community,” said Jill Locatore, the executive director of Denver Streets Partnership who spearheaded the ballot measure back in 2022.
City Council’s land use, transportation and infrastructure committee voted Tuesday to pass the changes on to the full body for a vote. If passed, the fee will take effect in 2025.
Most property owners will pay the $150 flat fee.
A small portion of owners with more than 230 linear feet of sidewalk on major streets will be charged an additional $3.50 for each foot over 230 linear feet.
But according to the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, most people – 95 percent of all owners and 99 percent of single-family homeowners – will pay the $150 fee.
The $150 fee is in line with Denverite’s analysis of the original fee structure, which found that the highest volume of property owners would pay between $100 to $200 annually.
“The proposed fee structure remains aligned with the intent of the original ordinance from a revenue perspective, adding up to an estimated $40M of annual revenue,” said DOTI spokesperson Nancy Kuhn.
But it’s still unclear how long and how expensive the program will be. During the 2022 election when the program was on the ballot, estimates ranged between nine and 27.5 years.
What about my sidewalk that’s broken right now?
With responsibility shifted away from property owners, the delayed fees means that the city will not fix many sidewalks in the meantime. Plus, city staff are still working on a plan that will determine where to prioritize the new funds.
But DOTI staff have said that the city is maintaining a small portion of funds to fix Denver’s worst offenders, and that the city will prioritize the worst sidewalks when the program gets underway next year.
Mayor Mike Johnston’s affordable housing sales tax is headed to voters this November.
City Council approved a ballot measure that, if passed by voters, would dedicate $100 million a year to affordable housing using a .5 percent sales tax. Council voted 9-to-4 on Monday in favor of sending the sales tax to the voters, despite lingering concerns over a lack of detail in the ultimate plan.
The sales tax will sunset after 40 years, a last-minute amendment passed 12-to-1 by City Council on Monday over fears of overreach and an inability to know what the housing market will look like decades in the future.
“In the early 2000s we allowed developers to take advantage of our upcoming communities, displacing me, displacing my family, my community,” said Councilmember Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, who voted yes on the measure. “We needed to take control of the issue long, long ago. We are trying to pick up the pieces.”
In a statement Monday, Johnston called putting the sales tax on the ballot “an important step forward to ensuring all Denverites can live and thrive in our city.”
“We are thrilled and grateful to see City Council officially put Affordable Denver in the voters’ hands,” Johnston said.
Councilmembers Flor Alvidrez, Kevin Flynn, Stacie Gilmore and Amanda Sawyer voted no on the measure. They had concerns that the ballot measure, with its numerous amendments, was half-baked without a clear plan for the money.
Gilmore said she asked the Mayor’s office to hold the plan until the spring to work out more of the details.
“I’m still going to be a no on referring it to the ballot because I take my responsibility of good governance really seriously, and I can’t explain what this is going to look like to my constituents,” she said.
The plan, titled Affordable Denver, was designed to create or preserve 44,000 units of income-restricted housing over the next decade.
Johnston pitched the measure in early July. He was flanked by a who’s-who of community organizers and nonprofit leaders across the city, along with Councilmembers Shontel Lewis, Sarah Parady and Darrell Watson.
The mayor had just under two months to convince City Council to put the measure on the ballot.
“Denver can’t afford to wait,” Johnston said when announcing the campaign.
His hope is the tax would create affordability and prevent displacement, even as Denver’s economy grows.
“What we know is if we do nothing, 10 years from now, all of those Denverites will be gone,” he said. “They will have been pushed out or priced out or moved out to someplace else. And that is a future we refuse to accept.”
And Denver really needs affordable housing.
An annual report released last week found that overall homeless in Denver and the surrounding metro area rose by 10 percent compared to last year.
The sales tax would grow housing, not pay for homelessness services. But in interviews with Denverite, nonprofit leaders attributed the persistent rise in Denver’s homelessness to a continued lack of affordable housing in the area.
Affordable housing is something voters care about as well.
In the spring, Colorado Public Radio and other media outlets surveyed Coloradans statewide through the Voter Voices survey. Affordability is a top concern among residents of all political persuasions.
At its State of the City event, Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce members identified housing affordability, along with childcare, as two of the area’s greatest needs.
When Denverite interviewed more than 100 residents about their big concerns in the city, housing affordability topped the list.
And a recent bipartisan poll from the Colorado Health Foundation found that more than 70 percent of Denverites fear the lack of affordability will force them to leave Colorado. Nine in ten parents worry their children won’t be able to afford life here.
Despite the widespread belief that Denver lacks affordable housing, not everyone has bought that Johnston’s plan is the right one.
Some critics have argued the tax is regressive, putting the burden of funding the new housing on working people who need their money.
Voters will already be deciding on a .34 percent sales tax to fund Denver Health, the city’s safety net hospital that has faced huge funding shortages in recent years.
That’s on top of the numerous other sales tax increases Denver voters have approved in recent years, amounting to a 30 percent rise in sales taxes since 2018. One of those taxes passed in 2020 was specifically aimed at addressing homelessness.
“How many new added fees and tax increases does it take to make us affordable?” Councilmember Kevin Flynn asked in a committee meeting last month. “That strikes me as counterintuitive. And so I wonder, where does it end?”
Business leaders have been split on the solution. Some are eager for the government to take action and others arguing the city needs to slow down and roll out the plan with more details before taking it to the voters.
Other Councilmembers raised concerns that Affordable Denver doesn’t have enough of the details worked out.
Last week, Councilmembers brought a dozen amendments to the plan. They passed eight of them, including one that would add more Council oversight over how the money is spent.
Councilmembers passed even more amendments Monday, including a plan for how to prioritize using the funds and a compromise with the Mayor’s office to end the sales tax after 40 years.
“At $100 million a year for 40 years, that’s $4 billion, so if we can’t solve this in a generation and a half and $4 billion, we can’t solve this,” said amCouncilmember Amanda Sawyer, who brought forth the amendment.
Another amendment brought by Councilmember Shotel Lewis restricts portions of the funds to housing for people making 80 percent of the area median income, or $102,650 for a family of four in 2024.
The change would allow for mixed-income developments with an average of 100 percent area median income, or $130,400 for a family of four. The bill also includes exemptions for homeowners and buyers making up to 120 percent of the area median income, or $156,480 for a family of four.
That amendment passed 9 to 4, with some Councilmembers concerned that making the fund too restrictive could have unintended consequences decades in the future.
Despite concerns about the details, a majority of Councilmembers decided the housing crisis is too dire to wait.
Voters will make the final call on the sales tax in the Nov. 5 general election.
That’s along with a slew of other ballot measures, including the separate .35 percent sales tax hike to fund Denver Health. Some Councilmembers said they were concerned the affordable housing sales tax could affect the passage of the Denver Health sales tax.
Still, even the Councilmembers who voted yes on passing the measure to the voters expressed concerns about the lack of detail and quick timeline for the policy. They suggested that even if the voters approve the sales tax, more work lies ahead.
“I will support it going to the but we have to be honest, good intention exists, but the clarity and the specificity doesn’t,” Councilmember Jamie Torres said. “I will support it. I will work to get that clarity. And if it’s not there, I’m here for three more years in this term, then I don’t think we keep this fund.”
Two gas stations near the intersection of Evans Avenue and Monaco Parkway. July 30, 2024.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Along Evans Avenue in South Denver is a one-mile stretch that is home to nine gas stations.
It’s the kind of development city leaders are trying to prevent in the future.
A group of City Councilmembers are working on a bill that would restrict where developers can build new gas stations.
They’re touting it as a housing measure, one that favors new housing, neighborhood walkability and local businesses over gas stations built specifically for cars.
“What our residents have said is, ‘We want to see housing. We want to see small businesses. We want to see coffee shops where we can go hang out with our friends that we can walk to down the street from our house,’” said Councilmember Amanda Sawyer, one of the co-sponsors behind the bill along with Councilmembers Diana Romero Campbell and Paul Kashmann. “Nowhere in any of that feedback did we hear from people, ‘We want more gas stations.’”
How would the bill work?
The bill would likely prohibit building new gas stations within a certain distance of an existing pump or a light rail station. There are also potential additional restrictions in neighborhoods with lots of single- and two-family homes.
That land could instead be used for new housing, local businesses or both.
Sawyer said the team is still figuring out the exact distances for those restrictions.
The bill would not ban new gas stations altogether, just place restrictions on where they can be built.
There is nothing afoot at this Circle K on Evans Avenue,. July 30, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Crucially, Sawyer said, it would still allow for gas stations connected to grocery stories. Those pairings are often key to bringing groceries to areas without access to fresh food.
“There’s got to be a balance here,” Sawyer said. “We don’t want to effectively ban gas station development in Denver altogether, because we need gas stations, especially in areas of the city that aren’t fully built out, like Green Valley Ranch.”
The potential rezoning is the latest in a string of bills aimed at promoting new housing and walkability.
Like many Western cities, much of modern Denver was built for cars. Just look at streets like Colfax Avenue with its long-standing motels and drive-thrus.
But Denver’s housing crisis — combined with climate initiatives aimed at promoting walkability and transit and reducing car dependency — is pushing city leaders to reconsider who city streets are meant to serve.
Last year, City Council rezoned a large swath of Colfax Avenue, restricting new businesses like drive-throughs and storage facilities. The goal there is to promote pedestrian-facing businesses in anticipation of the massive bus improvement project coming to the stretch in the next few years.
“As Denver continues to grow, we look forward to responding to Denver residents’ needs, including thoughtful planning around land use near transit corridors,” said Romero Campbell in a statement Tuesday. “We hope this is a step toward creating more spaces for our communities to be healthy, connected, and thriving.”
Reactions from local businesses have been mixed.
Existing gas stations welcome less competition, Sawyer said. But big companies looking to bring additional gas stations to the city are less supportive of the restrictions.
Reactions from residents, meanwhile, have been welcoming.
“Most residents we have heard from would like to ban gas stations altogether,” Sawyer said. “People want to see local businesses in their neighborhoods and places that they can gather and be together.”
The bill still needs work before any potential vote. Sawyer expects it to go before the Denver Planning Board in August and before City Council in November.
