As a part of the city’s effort to spur development of affordable housing, which would drastically increase density in Denver, lawmakers are developing a pilot project to financially incentivize developers who build affordable and mixed-income units in Denver’s high-cost submarkets like Capitol Hill and Cheesman Park.
Linkage Fee: Developers are not always required to pay a linkage fee (linkage fees are typically charged to developers and then spent on affordable housing preservation or production through existing housing programs), causing the fund’s revenue to vary greatly year-over-year.
The pilot was developed by Community Planning and Development (CPD) and the Office of Housing Stability (HOST) to test the feasibility of offering incentives, like reductions in permitting fees, to support affordable housing projects that align with Denver’s Comprehensive Plan 2040 and Blueprint Denver, both of which provide recommendations to create a more expensive zoning code.
“Our goal with this pilot program is to identify ways we can help support critical projects that share our priorities of providing deep affordability as well as taking action to address climate change,” Laura E. Aldrete, executive director of CPD said in a press release.
However, some developers are unconvinced the plan would align supply-side and demand-side economic goals, especially when it comes to developing affordable multifamily units.
“It seems backwards,” said Jim Welland, a developer with Pallisade Partners, which sits on the city’s advisory committee for the plan. “The development costs in ‘high-cost’ submarkets are higher, which makes it difficult to develop more affordable housing. The goal could be met, but the incentive needs to be higher to match the costs.”
The plan is designed to work alongside other efforts such as the Group Living Proposal and including racially-sensitive language in the city zoning code. However, Annaliese Hock, the city planner in charge of developing the plan, said Denver residents should tamper their expectations because the plan is just one tool in Community Planning and Development’s (CPD) toolbox.
“We understand there are a lot of issues with the city’s zoning code that CPD is working to address. But, this plan shouldn’t be thought of as a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s just one tool we can use,” Hock said.
Incentives
Denver utilizes several zoning incentives to attempt to bolster its affordable housing stock. One example is allowing developers to add additional height to their buildings in exchange for affordable units in the development. The goal is to cross-subsidize the affordable units with the added square-footage.
Partnership: Denver Community Planning and Development is partnering with the Office of Housing Stability (HOST) to find ways to encourage construction of affordable and mixed-income housing, particularly in transit-rich areas.
Two others include inclusionary zoning ordinances and linkage fees.
But, these efforts have not produced the effect the city intended. Denver replaced its inclusionary housing ordinances (IHO) in 2016 with the Affordable Housing Fund. According to CPD, IHOs were the city’s “primary tool to facilitate home ownership opportunities of workforce housing” for people earning between 50 and 90% percent of average median income.
However, its new tool has proven to be far less effective in incentivizing the development of affordable units. The fund partially consists of linkage fees, a mechanism that “links” market-rate development with affordable and mixed-income housing. For example, developers may pay up to $1.61 per square-foot for a multi-unit commercial building versus just $.65 for a multi-unit residential complex based on the project’s building type. These fees are adjusted for inflation in an amount equal to the percentage change from the previous year in the national Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers.
The fund is designed to provide supplementary capital for affordable housing development projects that serve families earning 80 percent or less of the area median income (AMI) in 2016. According to the City’s website, “the fund is estimated to raise $150 million over the next 10 years to create or preserve 6,000 affordable homes for low- to moderate-income families.”
But, developers are not always required to pay the linkage fee, causing the fund’s revenue to vary greatly year-over-year. Single-family or duplex additions of 400 gross square feet or less, accessory dwelling units (ADUs), affordable housing, and rebuilding due to catastrophic events are exempt. Developers who build affordable units within a quarter-mile of a development without affordable units may be exempt as well.
As a result, the Affordable Housing Fund exempted “far more projects than originally anticipated,” according to a CPD study. In 2017, linkage fees generated just over $6 million for the fund. This sum grew to over $20 million in 2018. CPD currently projects the city to accrue $10 million from linkage fees in 2020.
Supply And Demand
Even with these incentives on the books, Denver has a hard time getting developers to build affordable multifamily units, primarily because the ratio of building costs to a project’s potential return don’t add up.
For example, granting developers height waivers to build above a maximum zoning height in exchange for affordable units often discourages development because of the extra associated construction costs.
According to the International Building Code, buildings taller than five stories must be built with steel frames. Since mid-March, the price of lumber has doubled and the price of steel has increased 10 percent.
On top of that, Denver’s increasing minimum wage and land values increase the risk for investors who back affordable housing projects. According to research by Realtor.com, the average land value in Denver is over $489,000. Coupled with increasing material and labor costs, developers say building multifamily affordable housing units is not a good investment.
The result is that over 75 percent of Denver’s affordable housing development goes toward building studio and one-bedroom units, according to data from CPD.
While the current pilot also includes incentives for developers based on the value of the land being developed, CPD says it does not have the ability to accurately track land value fluctuations in real time, making it nearly impossible for the incentive to have any real-world application.
“We need to consider that in the high-cost areas the different market rate and affordable thresholds is higher. Therefore, the incentive needs to be higher to account for the difference,” Welland said.
A Success Story?
As CPD and HOST continue to refine the pilot, they point to the 38th and Blake Overlay project as evidence of the plan’s success.
The project began in 2018 and provided developers height incentives that allowed buildings to stretch up to 16 stories in some areas of the Five Points, Globeville and Cole neighborhoods near the RTD A Line in District 9.
It brought 36 affordable units to the area, but spurred the growth of several office buildings, further increasing property values and tax assessments in the neighborhood. This led some to contend the project accelerated displacement and gentrification in the area.
“The affordability ‘incentive’ is unlikely to be utilized as the up-zone is substantial enough without the height incentives, and the most we can expect of the entire rezone is less than 100 affordable units,” District 9 representative Candi CdeBaca told Denverite at the time.
Since being elected in 2019, CdeBaca has committed herself to undoing Denver’s strategy to build its way out of its housing crisis. CdeBaca supports moving away from linkage fees toward the inclusionary housing ordinances of yesteryear. She also supports charging developers fees upwards of 10 percent to support affordable housing and restricting property tax increases for a given cycle.
“I think right now is the best time to tax the big builders, tax the corporations in a way that creates the padding for us to execute the plans,” she said.
As City Council prepares to vote on the Group Living Proposal in October, several neighborhood organizations and residents are sounding off against the plan, saying it doesn’t address the right issues and would negatively impact neighborhood characteristics.
Their calls are growing so loud that it’s causing some councilmembers’ support for the proposal to waiver.
Group Living Proposal
The Group Living Proposal was developed by CPD to address rising housing costs and the threat of displacement for Denver’s low-income residents. The plan seeks to overhaul several parts of Denver’s zoning code. Most notably, the number of unrelated people that can live together in a single-family dwelling would increase to eight from its current limit of four. It would also consolidate group living use restrictions into two categories — Residential Care and Congregate Living — and allow developers to build them in single-family neighborhoods.
Residential Care include homeless shelters, community corrections facilities, and sober living homes. Dormitories and tiny home villages are examples of Congregate Living facilities.
Following the bill’s hearing before the Land Use, Transportation, and Infrastructure Committee (LUIT) on September 1, Councilwomen Amanda Sawyer (District 5) and Kendra Black (District 4) penned an op-ed in The Denver Post calling for the plan to undergo a more strenuous review before it’s approved.
Op-Ed: Denver Councilwomen Amanda Sawyer, above, (District 5) and Kendra Black, below, (District 4) penned an op-ed in The Denver Post on September 1, 2020, calling for the group living plan to undergo a more strenuous review before it’s approved. Denver Councilmembers Kevin Flynn (District 2), Jolon Clark (District 7), and Paul Kashmann (District 3) co-signed the op-ed.
“We don’t dispute the need for change. However, rubber-stamping this proposal is not the best way to update the code to modern reality,” they wrote. “With CPD now kicking off a two-year project aimed at eliminating single family zoning, and neighborhood plan updates underway across the city, we have to look at group living in a broader context.”
Councilmembers Kevin Flynn (District 2), Jolon Clark (District 7), and Paul Kashmann (District 3) co-signed the op-ed.
In the op-ed, the councilmembers objected to the fact that the plan does not address the most problematic part of the city’s zoning code, Chapter 59. It was adopted in 1956 and has functioned as Denver’s second zoning code since 2010 when the city adopted its new code. Properties covered by Chapter 59 make up approximately 20 percent of Denver’s total zone districts, according to city estimates.
City auditor Timothy O’Brien issued a report in 2015 saying the coexistence of both zoning codes negatively impacts the “equal treatment of all citizens and long-term success of the city’s goals.” CPD agreed with O’Brien’s recommendation to undertake a cost-benefit analysis of switching to a single zoning code, but it was never implemented.
Neighborhood organizations and residents have been echoing these concerns since March, according to Jerry Doerskin, a Southmoor Park resident. Doerskin says the plan lacks practicality and should affect the entire city if it’s truly worth its salt.
“It’s grossly unfair to impose these kinds of zoning changes on four-fifths of Denver and leave the rest untouched,” he told the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle.
Doerskin says the practical application of the plan will ruin the characteristics of his neighborhood by severely taxing the city’s aging infrastructure.
In January, Colorado’s mayors united to call for more infrastructure funding after the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave the state a C- on its 2020 infrastructure report card. ASCE found the state’s roads, drinking water supply, and energy grid face significant challenge because the state hasn’t adequately maintained its infrastructure, amounting to a $14 billion funding gap.
Over the past two years, state lawmakers have given $2.7 billion to cities and counties to help pave their roads. However, this creates a paradox for the state’s budget, as it is now being asked to support local road projects when it’s proven to be ineffective at adequately funding state projects.
Exemplar 2: Developers in Colorado and throughout the country are enthusiastically backing zoning for group living which will lower the cost of living units and greatly increase urban density.
Infrastucture was a driving force behind Doerskin and other members of a group he co-founded to oppose the Group Living Proposal called Safe and Sound Denver, submitting a petition with over 2000 signatures of Denver residents who oppose the proposal prior to the September 1 LUIT meeting.
“There is very little to support in this bill,” he said. “I know addressing homelessness and high living costs in Denver are valid concerns, but to totally increase density like this is unreasonable. I could support a moderate increase of unrelated people living together. But, if that’s not acceptable to Council, they should vote it down and take up the issues one at a time.”
High Hurdles
Even if Denver didn’t have an infrastructure issue, existing state laws present hurdles to development that lawmakers haven’t figured out how to cross.
Colorado outlawed inclusionary zoning practices in 1981, thus preventing cities and counties from implementing rent control policies and requiring developers to set aside a certain amount of units for low-income residents. In 2000, the Colorado Supreme Court reinforced the law in Telluride v. Thirty-Four Venture when it added home rule municipalities to its jurisdiction.
Denver-area Democrats have tried to pass legislation overturning the Telluride decision in 2020, but it never made it out of committee.
On top of these restrictions, Denver has a hard time incentivizing developers to build affordable units because the of the city’s construction permit fees. Developers may be asked to pay permit fees which are determined based on the value of their project and an extra fee to expedite the city’s review of their permit application. After that, developers have to pay an affordable housing fee of up to $1.65 per square foot.
Once the coronavirus pandemic hit and material prices began to skyrocket, the city faced even higher hurdles. The price of lumber has climbed $300 per thousand board-feet since mid-March and steel has increased 10 percent to almost 3700 Yuan.
A Private Enterprise
While Group Living Proposal supporters claim they are looking toward Denver’s future, some residents worry the city will be dragging along historical problems.
In 2017, CPD coordinated with the mayor’s office to create the Group Living Advisory Committee (GLAC), a 48-member congregation of community members, neighborhood organizations, private and public interests tasked to identify outdated areas of the city’s zoning code.
Members represent various industries ranging from corrections to homeless services and developers. Both At-large councilwomen, Robin Kneich and Deborah Ortega, represent City Council.
Neighborhood organizations make up just eight representatives on GLAC, leading some residents like Paige Burkeholder, to suspect that the project is meant to serve private interests and help term-limited politicians like Mayor Michael Hancock line up future campaign donations.
“Overall, this is such a massive overhaul to the zoning code with very little input and dialog from residents of neighborhoods,” Burkeholder told the Chronicle.
Two GLAC members Burkeholder focuses on are Geo Group and Core Civic, both of whom are private corrections companies. Between 2012 and 2017, both companies spent approximately $718,000 to lobby state lawmakers in Colorado, according to Follow The Money, a campaign finance research database.
Core Civic runs its state-level lobbying operations through Greenberg Taurig, a firm several councilmembers know well. Since 2003, Greenberg Taurig has donated at least $23,000 between Hancock and Ortega’s campaigns, according to each candidate’s financial disclosure forms. An overwhelming majority of the donations went to Mayor Hancock.
What About The Future?
Colorado has been experimenting with similar rules since July when Governor Polis suspended limitations on the number of people who can live together to help unhoused and displaced people into the state’s shelter system. Similarly, LUTI passed a temporary moratorium on group living developments in Chapter 59 communities and CPD issued a memo in September staff saying the agency considers enforcement of group living rules its lowest priority in September.
But, while these changes are neither permanent nor readily noticeable for many residents, some say the focus should continue to be on the future of the proposal and nailing down how it will impact homeowners across Denver.
“The only way to make this proposal work is to go back to the beginning and start over,” Burkeholder said. “We need to make sure every voice is heard, not just the one’s the city wants to hear.”
Exemplar: Drawing of Group Living in the Five Points area of New York circa 1840.
“Civil service statutes establish a floor for police officer employment protections, which the unions can raise through collective bargaining.”
by Robert Davis
Imagine working in an office with 1,000 coworkers. Once every five days, you get a memo saying a coworker was accused of misconduct. One day you see a video from one incident — a coworker shooting someone in the back. You ask the coworker about it and they say the other person had a gun and they feared for their life. With those magic words, you know the shooting will be justified by the company, almost no matter what the video showed.
Backup: Denver Police Department called in 12 local agencies for backup amid protests.
Anywhere else and this would be unthinkable. For the Director of Denver’s public safety department Murphy Robinson and Police Chief Paul Pazen, this office is familiar. And it’s the storied history of the office that prevents police reform activists and police officers from reforming the mountain of legal protections afforded to police officers accused of misconduct.
Why? Because the city’s civil service laws were designed with a job description in mind. In turn, Denver’s police union — Denver Police Protective Association (DPPA) — learned how to coil its collective bargaining agreement around those laws to protect officer misconduct. And until this job description is reimagined, longstanding police misconduct reform seems ill-fated.
Director of Public Safety Murphy Robinson broached the topic with city council in June during a discussion on reforming DPD’s use of force policy. As a self-proclaimed student of history acknowledged that moving on from his department’s storied history is necessary to institute immediate reforms.
“We are at a place where we need to move the needle forward,” Robinson said.
His words rang hollow to protesters in attendance like Brian Hostraw, who witnessed police officers tear-gassing small children without warning, firing pepper balls and rubber bullets indiscriminately, and destroying the property of homeless individuals with impunity during the George Floyd protests.
“These are not the actions of people I trust to protect me or my family,” Hostraw said.
And there are plenty of police officers who side with Hostraw. Chief Pazen told lawmakers that a majority of his officers agree with the increased scrutiny placed on them by SB217.
But, the one reform activists are demanding most loudly in the wake of the George Floyd protests — easing the ability of police chiefs to fire officers for misconduct — is the most difficult policy to reform.
Denver began crafting legal protections for its police officers when the first settlements along Cherry Creek were staked out in 1858. Territorial governor John C. Moore organized the Rocky Mountain Rangers under a vigilante mandate to protect the miners from the prostitutes, gamblers, and thieves that followed them west. By the time the City & County was chartered in 1904, police officers were influential players in state sponsored corruption, and earned legal protections because of it.
Before being elected mayor, Robert Speer was a veteran member of the Police and Fire Board, which oversaw a diverse range of city operations from peace officer certification to public censorship. As such, he knew how to use Denver’s finest to serve his political ends and was willing to do so.
During his first two terms, Denver’s finest engaged in voter suppression, rigging elections, and shakedowns of casinos, brothels, and saloons. Speer’s motivation was obviously political — his administration of tolerated vice and honest corruption relied on an invisible hand used to ward off Speer’s competitors. Over time, Speer rewarded Denver’s finest with employment protections that unions would later use to thwart cases of police misconduct.
Clash With Police: Demonstrators clash with police at the Colorado Capitol on Saturday, May 30, 2020, during the third day of protests in Denver in response to George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minnesota. Photo Credit: (Joe Mahoney, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Realizing how important Denver’s finest were to his political success, Speer created the Civil Service Commission (CSC) during his third tour in office in 1916. The commission established a costly disciplinary and disqualification review processes that often incentivizes public officials to look the other way at police misconduct rather than pursue a moral victory of terminating a rotten officer.
Stephen Rushin, assistant law professor at Loyola University — Chicago, argued in his 2017 article in Duke Law Journal that police union contracts use civil service laws like a double-edge sword. First, they “establish a floor for police officer employment protections, which police unions can raise through collective bargaining.” Second, they tilt the political scales in favor of the unions during negotiations.
Employment protections are established through case law, which often results in costly legal bills for the city. In Denver, city representatives must present their entire case to officers accused of misconduct before the officer decides whether to fight it in arbitration. If arbitration returns an unfavorable result, the case is appealed through the courts, where it hopes to find a judge who will accept an assertion of qualified immunity.
Judge Carlton Reeves of the Southern District of Missouri described qualified immunity as “manufactured fiction” that has had a damning influence on how courts handle cases involving police officers in his decision in Jamison v. McClendon.
He cited a decision from the Fifth Circuit Court where qualified immunity was successfully asserted by corrections officers who were accused of keeping an inmate in a jail cell covered in fecal matter for a weekend before transferring the inmate to a cell in solitary confinement that didn’t have a working toilet or sink.
The Court’s reasoning? Qualified immunity can be asserted in cases where a law is not clearly established. In terms of the case from the Fifth Circuit, the court reasoned the timeframe in which the inmate was kept in unsanitary conditions was unsettled and, therefore, qualified immunity could be asserted.
Judge Reeves specifically addressed this logical quagmire in his opinion, stating “it is a fool’s errand to ask people who love debating whether something is debatable.”
University of Virginia law professor Rachel Harmon observed in her article The Problem of Policing in the Michigan Law Review that civil service laws empower frontline police officers “to challenge any internal managerial action that affects them on both substantive and procedural grounds in a formal adversarial process.”
In May, Denver paid $1 million to settle a case against two police officers who were terminated in 2013 after they lied about assaulting two club-goers in downtown four years earlier. Over the past three years, the city has coughed up over $14.5 million to settle cases involving officer misconduct, according to an investigation by The Denver Post.
Moral Hazard
Because of the cost of disciplining police officers, departments where misconduct is rampant are thus incentivized to withhold information unless an incident rises to a level warranting action. Whistleblower Brittany Iriart revealed in June that DPD, in fact, alters information on its internal misconduct reports to protect its officers before she was fired for violating the confidentiality clause of her employment contract.
DPD: Denver Officers clear a man who fell to the street after they used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd of protestors on May 28, 2020.
Politically, Rushin says, because municipal expenditures such as court settlements can dominate local headlines, the result for lawmakers is a moral hazard. On one hand, they are tasked to upholding the law, yet rely on a third party who is prone to turning the other cheek to prosecute miscreant police officers.
“Municipal leaders may be incentivized to offer concessions on police disciplinary procedures because they are less likely to bear the costs of those concessions in the immediate future,” he wrote.
This issue is further complicated by the political activities of DPPA and its members individually. Since 2012, DPPA has donated over $200,000 to city council candidates, according to the city’s campaign finance data. Over the same time frame, more police officers reported donating to Mayor Michael Hancock than any other candidate for office.
Likewise Denver’s statewide union, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #27, contributes to General Assembly candidates as in local District Attorneys races.
In her Iowa Law Review article titled Who Shouldn’t Prosecute the Police, law professor Kate Levine argues that a “structural conflict of interest arises when local prosecutors are given the discretion and responsibility to investigate and lead cases against the police,” because “prosecutors rely heavily on the police for their success.”
Levine acknowledges that no criminal case would exist without first contact from a police officer and officers can create and control facts by collecting evidence from the crime scene, interviewing witnesses, or through undercover work, all of which prosecutors can admit in court.
But, the relationship between prosecutor and officer doesn’t end when a case is closed.
DA’s need campaign donations to be elected to office. Then, they rely on police officer conduct to determine negotiating leverage during grand jury cases. The Department of Justice estimates approximately 90 percent of prosecutions end with a plea bargain.
“While cases of police brutality are unlikely to go completely unnoticed, issues of “testifying” by the police, as well as evidence planting, tampering, or withholding, and illegal intimidation tactics will never emerge unless another officer or a prosecutor addresses them,” Levine wrote.
Meanwhile, even though DPPA is a public-sector union, its negotiations with city council are kept confidential. This puts councilmembers at a political disadvantage by keeping them from crowd-sourcing reform ideas from their districts.
Councilmembers also cannot negotiate with union representatives. Instead, they must negotiate through an intermediary. This year it is Legislative Services Director Linda Jamison. Denverite reported that Jamison was not invited to the meetings until three weeks after they began.
Police unions also create leverage vicariously through local news reports on crime rates. Crime statistics from DPD show that violent crime and property crime were all higher in the previous five negotiation years. Last year’s annual report by the Office of the Independent Monitor confirmed officer complaints were higher in these years as well.
Denver City Councilmember Candi CdeBaca, District 9
According to a statement by District 9 Denver City Councilperson Candi CdeBaca, the current CBA negotiations include a measure protecting police officers from furloughs as Denver faces a budget crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic and a two-percent salary increase.
Meanwhile, other government employees covered by career service mandates may be subject to budget-required furloughs. Currently, city projections estimate it will suffer a $226 million shortfall, of which $10 million will come out of DPD’s budget.
“This contract amounts to a uniquely beneficial agreement for DPD in the midst of hundreds of excessive use of force investigations and against a background of nationwide calls for police accountability and transparency,” CdeBaca said.
Violent crime is up 11 percent this year compared to last, according to city data.
Why Reform Hasn’t Worked (Yet)
Police reform activists currently can’t decide whether they advocate for completely tearing down the Denver Police Department or reimagining the role of police officers as a community support role, and this impasse is hindering their overall goal of easing restrictions and procedures for firing police officers for misconduct.
In August, Councilperson CdeBaca introduced legislation to abolish DPD and replace it with a peacekeeping department, a policy she claimed on social media was supported by thousands of Denverites.
Mayor Hancock called the legislation “reckless and irresponsible” in a statement shortly after it was introduced.
“The Councilwoman should exercise greater transparency and public accountability before putting something of this magnitude forward for a vote again instead of springing it on the public. I firmly stand by the men and women of our Police Department and will continue to hold accountable those who step over the line when dealing with the public,” he said.
The proposal lost at the Council level with only CdeBaca supporting it.
Others taking a community-centric approach include the newest appointee to the Citizen Oversight Board (COB), which oversees the body responsible for officer investigations, forensic psychologist Dr. Apryl Alexander.
As an academic, Alexander hopes to use her background to help forge new ways of thinking about community policing that doesn’t include excessive force, but includes accountability and restorative practices.
“People are looking for change in this moment,” she told Colorado Politics.
In a stunning civil lawsuit filed in United States District Court in Denver the powerful and highly politically connected Andrew S. Armatas is accused of sexual assault by a former judicial assistant. Armatas was originally appointed to the bench in 1990 by Mayor Federico Peña and was made the chief presiding judge in 1995 by Mayor Wellington Webb. He retired as chief presiding judge in 2013 but thereafter filled in when other judges were absent.
Judge Touchy Feely: Andrew S. Armatas (photo from 2000) who was the chief presiding judge for Denver County Courts for over a decade and a half has been accused of sexual assault in a blockbuster lawsuit filed in Federal District Court, at left. Armatas is a current member of the five person Denver Ethics Board.
Armatas is an active member of the five member Denver’s Ethics Commission having been appointed in 2013 by Mayor Michael Hancock who has faced various allegations of sexual misconduct himself while in office.
The Lawsuit
The Complaint in the case captioned Rebecca Norris v. City and County of Denver Case No. 20 CV 1226 was filed on May 1, 2020, and lays out a litany of alleged misdeeds by the judge regarding various women at the courthouse one of whom indicated that Armatas was known as Judge “Touchy Feely.”
The lawsuit alleges job discrimination and retaliation under federal and state law with Ms. Norris being fired in January 2019. She was hired in 2007 as a judicial assistant in Denver County Court and received Employee of the Year Award twice. She asserts she was fired in retaliation for her accusations against Judge Armatas, accusations she says the City ignored for more than two years.
According to the lawsuit, Norris claims she first complained about Judge Armatas in the summer of 2016. The lawsuit says she was working in an empty courtroom when Judge Armatas walked in and sat “uncomfortably close” to her. It also says Judge Armatas said to her, “You look like you like to get dirty. You look like you could get wild.” The Complaint declares “Judge Armatas then immediately made unwelcomed physical advances toward (Norris), kissing her and touching her breasts prompting her to scream at him to get away from her and demanding that he leave, whereupon Judge Armatas quickly left the courtroom.” The lawsuit says Norris informed her immediate supervisor that same day what had happened.
The Termination Letter
While efforts to reach Judge Armatas by the Chronicle have not been successful, his side of the story is at least partially laid out in the City’s Termination Letter to Ms. Norris of which the Chronicle has obtained a copy. The termination letter states Norris’ supervisor denies being told anything. It says Norris told inconsistent stories about what happened with the Judge and changed the date of the alleged incident after she learned the Judge was out of state that day. The termination letter says, “The evidence is clear that you made false allegations of a very serious nature against a judge in order to avoid discipline. The accusation that you told your supervisor immediately after the assault occurred and she did nothing in response is untrue and disturbing. You have betrayed the trust of the County Court with your dishonesty and false reporting.”
The Termination Letter asserts that Norris only brought up the allegations after she was under investigation for inappropriate comments to a co-worker. The Complaint, however, asserts that Judge Barry Schwartz confirmed that Norris advised him of the alleged assault before the disciplinary investigation. In the Com-plaint there are various other individuals identified who Norris told about the alleged assault on or about time the alleged assault occurred.
Norris’ attorney Kenneth Padilla responded that “This is a classic example of victim blaming. My client reported the sexual assault to her supervisor by phone immediately and her supervisor told her to take the day off. Furthermore, it was not documented by the city whatsoever. So reconstructing it three years later is very difficult. . . . Telling them they don’t have the right date, or you don’t remember everything. This happens frequently in sexual assault cases, they try to victimize the victim.”
Denver Ethics Board
In a bit of irony Judge Armatas was appointed to the Denver Ethics Board in 2013 by Denver Mayor Michael Hancock with his most recent term ending in 2021. Hancock was accused of sexually harassing a female police officer assigned to his security detail and the City paid a significant settlement in the case, but Hancock managed to avoid any discipline. Cases of sexual harassment are handled by the Office of Human Resources who developed a new sexual harassment training program for other city officials but cleared Hancock of any wrongdoing. It has been asserted that in the City and County of Denver there is one set of rules for the powerful like Mayor Hancock and former Chief Presiding Judge Armatas and another for everyday employees.
Birds Of A Feather: Denver Mayor Michael Hancock who has been accused of sexually harassing a female member of his police detail as well as being a john for a prostitution house in Denver, appointed Judge Armatas to the Denver Ethics Board in 2013 and reappointed him in 2017.
Bankruptcy
The Norris Complaint is not the first brush with notoriety for Judge Armatas. In March 1995 just two months after being raised to Chief Presiding Judge for Denver’s County Courts by former Mayor Wellington Webb he filed for federal bankruptcy under Chapter 7. He listed a mere $16,094 in assets, with and extraordinary $2,659,035 in liabilities. Patty Calhoun in her article in Westword (April 5, 1995) stated that Armatas’ explanation of the 1980s downturn in the real estate market leaves “a real odor in the court.”
The article notes that “when Mayor Wellington Webb asked Armatas to become the presiding judge, Armatas had to know that his bankruptcy filing was imminent. Rather than show judgment, though, he accepted the appointment.” The article goes on to note of the sealing of the divorce records of Armatas and federal tax liens filed against him
Allegations By Other Women
The federal Complaint by Norris set forth a myriad of other allegations by women working in the Denver County system which will be extremely embarrassing for Judge Armatas if allowed in the court proceedings. In July of 2018 Norris retained the services of Employment Matters, an outside consulting firm to help investigate her allegations and that of others. The Complaint states (underlines added):
“Nicole Coburn . . . who was employed by the [the City] as a courtroom clerk stated that Judge Armatas asked her out for drinks several times . . . that he asked for her phone number and that she gave it to him, thinking it was just to talk about work, but ‘then it got weird’; that he texted her on different occasions; that he asked her to meet him for drinks on weekends and after work; that she thought his behavior was creepy because he kept coming to her work area asking to go out with him and because ‘he’s so old.’ Judge Armatas was in his seventies and Ms. [Coburn] is in her thirties.”
“Stacie Beckwith, the Finance Manager for the Denver County Court, informed the Clerk and chief administrative officer of the Denver Count [sic] Court, Terrie Langham, that Judge Armatas had asked her out for coffee; that when she met him Judge Armatas asked her whether she had informed her husband about their meeting, that when she told Armatas that she told her husband everything, Judge Armatas responded that he didn’t tell his wife, touching her hand as she was holding her coffee cup in a way that she felt to be flirtatious and highly inappropriate . . . .”
“Connie Strehler, another Denver County clerk, stated that she worked in the adjoining courtroom that shared space for the courtroom clerks where Judge Armatas worked and that therefore, she had frequent contact with Judge Armatas. Also she said that after Judge Armatas retired, he filled in for her judge; that Judge Armatas always liked to hug female employees of the Denver County Court; that she did not appreciate Judge Armatas hugging her; . . . that Judge Armatas was known as Judge “Touchy Feely”; that Judge Armatas liked to hug a lot and that he hugged ‘the ladies.’ Not just her; and that on one occasion Judge Armatas caressed her hand, rubbing his hand on top of her hand, in a way she did not appreciate.”
The City has yet to file an Answer but a Scheduling and Planning Conference by phone has been set for August 12, 2020. The case has been assigned to recently appointed Federal District Court Judge Daniel D. Domenico.
Go outside at 8 p.m. anywhere in Colorado and you’re guaranteed to hear hundreds, if not thousands, of members from a Colorado-based Facebook group howling to support anyone and everything during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Founders: Shelsea Ochoa and Brice Maiurro founded the howling at the moon movement in support of healthcare workers and first responders in late March. The group has become a way for people to connect during a time when quarantines and shelter-in-place orders have greatly disrupted our way of life.
Founded by partners Shelsea Ochoa and Brice Maiurro in late March, the group has become a way for people to connect during a time when quarantines and shelter-in-place orders have greatly disrupted our way of life.
“It really shows that we can still interact within our communities and have fun while obeying the shelter at home orders, and also release some pent up feelings in a healthy and cathartic way,” Anna Beazer, one of the group’s organizers, told Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle in an email statement.
Ochoa, a performer at Denver’s Museum of Nature and Science, and Maiurro, a poet and activist, got the inspiration to howl from a friend of theirs in Topanga, California, who told the duo that they howl at the sunset together. So, Ochoa and Maiurro decided to give it a try, too. They had no idea that what they considered a “fun social distancing activity” would resonate with people around the country — and the world.
The duo initially intended the group to include about a hundred of the couple’s friends and family. However, once word got out about the group, its membership swelled to over 8,000 members in the first day.
Now, members live in all 50 U.S. states and 46 countries around the world, including Tuvalu, Columbia, and Togo.
“There’s no wrong way to do it,” Ochoa told the Chronicle. “People can subscribe any kind of meaning they want to it.”
Many howl to support the medical professionals working late into the night. Others do it to support the homeless, or in remembrance of a lost loved one. No matter the reason, the group embraces any reason for howling as long as it’s healthy and positive, according to Beazer.
Like Clockwork: Colorado residents have been howling at the moon every night at 8 p.m. as a way to support healthcare workers and first responders.
“The group purposefully is open to interpretations and reasons for howling,” she said. “We didn’t expect the amount of posts and comments dedicating their howling to lost loved ones but we embrace members sharing their stories about them.”
And there is no shortage of stories shared about grief and joy in the group’s discussion. Others purposefully ask seemingly innocuous questions like “What is your favorite quarantine snack?” but receive a wealth of positivity from members in return and connect with others who want to share their similarities.
“I had an accident last year and eventually chose to amputate my leg after several failed surgeries and being basically bedridden for the past year,” Cori Kolhagen, a Colorado resident, posted in one of the discussions.
“I finally accepted my ankle was never going to get better and that this would be the best option for me to return to my active lifestyle. My surgery was on March 3 and I have started to learn how to walk again using a prosthetic. I howl because we can get through this together, as a family.”
Every night, rain or shine, howlers from California to North Carolina, and up to Maine participate. Some howls have been capped off by fireworks or singing similar to the songs Spaniards and Italians sang from their balconies in a show of appreciation for their country’s healthcare workers.
Governor Polis has encouraged Coloradans to participate, calling it a necessary way for people to socialize and connect during this time of isolation.
For Beazer, the group’s message is more primal. It’s about letting go of all the anxieties people have been holding onto since the quarantines began. .
“We get lots of comments from first-time howlers that tell us they didn’t know that simply howling would help them release some emotions from being quarantined and help them feel connected to others when they hear howls back,” she said.
