Arts & Venues Shutters Renowned Facilities, Lays Off Staff; Drastic Cutbacks Loom For The Upkeep Of City Streets, Parks
by Glen Richardson
Even as businesses have reopened helping to jumpstart the Cherry Creek Valley economy, it has come too late for the City & County of Denver. An unprecedented crisis is brewing in city government as tax revenue has fallen off a cliff.
Red Alert: Cherry Creek Valley’s most renowned venues including Red Rocks Park & Amphitheatre are shut down until Jan. 2, 2021. Reliable cash-generator leaves a gaping hole in budget for city’s Arts & Venues agency.
Sounding the alarm this month that Denver is facing a fiscal reckoning of apocalyptic proportions is Arts & Venues, the City & County of Denver agency responsible for operating the Cherry Creek Valley’s most renowned facilities.
Effective this month through Jan. 2, 2021, it is shutting down Red Rocks Park & Amphitheatre, the Colorado Convention Center, the McNichols Civic Center Bldg., the Denver Coliseum plus the Denver Performing Arts Complex (DCPA) which includes the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, the Buell Theatre and Boettcher Concert Hall. The announcement includes full-time or partial furloughs of all 67 employees. The Coliseum and Convention Center will remain operational only for coronavirus related programs.
Cultural Crash
When the pandemic hit, the agency cut its expenses by 46% and moved capital improvement funds into the operating budget. “However, these prudent measures are not enough to sustain the agency if the fallout from the pandemic continues through 2021,” Executive Director Ginger White Brunetti declared in making the decision.
Sudden Silence: All of the venues in the Denver Performing Arts Complex (DCPA) downtown are shuttered including Boettcher Concert Hall. The home of the Colorado Symphony is the nation’s first symphony hall in the round.
In an August report, Arts & Venues said Denver’s creative industries lost $1.4 billion in sales revenue and 29,840 jobs between April 1 and July 31. Red Rocks, in particular, has turned from a reliable cash-generator to a gaping hole in not only Arts & Venue’s budget projections, but those of promoters such as AEG Presents Rocky Mountains, which books the majority of Red Rocks’ 150-plus annual concerts. Bottom line: It’s taken fewer than six months to wipe out one-third of the gains Denver’s cultural sector had made in the last decade.
“It’s hoped that by pausing things now, at a time we know our venues won’t be open, Arts & Venues can be in a financial position to reopen quickly once live entertainment returns,” explains Brian Kitts, Director of Marketing & Communications.
A $227 Million Deficit
There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it, Denver’s economic reckoning has arrived and city departments will have to take major steps to try and stay afloat through next year. The pandemic recession is eroding the city budget in many insidious ways: Lodgers tax revenue has plummeted 66.4%, sales tax revenue declined 12.3% while general fund revenue has slumped 10.6%.
Predicted to be down by $180 million in June, the city now faces at least a $227 million budget shortfall. The city has added eight mandatory unpaid furlough days for all city employees and requiring budget cuts across all city agencies, currently targeted at $185 million.
Beginning this month City Council will begin hosting hearings on budget proposals by city agencies. Council members can propose amendments to the budget. The mayor then must submit a final 2021 budget for adoption.
Topping Great Depression
The 2020 city budget included projections that the general fund would increase by 2% — the main budget area under the mayor’s control. That prognosis would have created the largest general fund in the city’s history. In reality it is already down 10.5%, driven by the sales tax and lodgers’ tax — both down significantly.
The lodgers’ tax has dropped by 66.4% so far this year and sales tax toward the General Fund has declined by 16.8%. Both of those figures are much steeper declines than the city saw during the Great Recession.
The crisis has arrived faster and the damage will be more severe than that of the 1930s Great Recession. The fact administrators and bureaucrats have become accustomed to a constant ramped-up expansion in the past few years will make it seem even worse. Nonetheless, impact from cuts will be felt far into the fiscal year ahead.
Street Work Curbed: Look for city’s street maintenance to become increasingly sluggish as Department of Transportation & Infrastructure is projected to take a 23.75% budget cut in 2021.
Streets, Parks Hit
The fiscal reckoning that shut down Arts & Venues, is set to hit Parks & Recreation and Transportation & Infrastructure departments the hardest as the 2021 budget is hammered out by city council. Mirroring the Great Recession, the budget of Parks & Rec. will take at least a 25.34% cut in 2021. With more than 6,200 acres of parkland, 29 recreation centers, 309 athletic fields plus other amenities it’s a horrendous hit. Moreover, the agency has already adopted $2 million in cost cutting measures.
Planting of flower beds has been cut by 50%. Likewise, litter pickup and trash removal in most parks has also been cut 50%. Mowing of parks and athletic fields has been slashed from weekly to two or three times per month as staff is available. Finally, use of the irrigation systems — raw water, reuse and potable water systems — is now based on water source cost, least to most.
Transportation & Infrastructure — the new department launched this year with a thousand projects in its capital budget — is projected to take a 23.75% 2021 budget cut. Both the agency’s maintenance and wastewater management group had $150 million budgets. Previously known as the Department of Public Works, the agency plans, designs and builds the city’s infrastructure, aka streets, bridges, overpasses and storm sewers. They also fill potholes, handle parking enforcement and plow streets after snowstorms.
Budget Showdown
The Hancock administration has significantly expanded the size of the city workforce since taking office in 2011. Dozens of new offices and initiatives have been added. Even with the latest shutdowns and layoffs, the mayor is proposing a $71.3 million new Housing Stability Department and also refuses to cut $11.4 million in new bike lane construction.
Nipped In The Bud: Planting of flower beds in city parks has been cut by 50% as Parks & Recreation prepares for a 25.34% budget cut in 2021. Mowing goes from weekly to 2-3 times a month.
Normally city council makes only minimal changes in the mayor’s proposed budget. Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca forewarns, however, that she’s prepared to fight the administration’s budget.
Beyond this year, the pandemic economy will continue to weigh heavily on the city’s outlook. The likelihood remains for elevated unemployment levels well into 2022. Visit Denver expects lodgers’ tax collections to remain below 2019 levels into 2022. Property taxes payable in 2022 are likely to be calculated off lower commercial valuations — business closures, retail-office vacancies — and lower residential assessed values.
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.
The Chronicle is distributed in both Denver and Arapahoe counties. If you were alleged to have committed a crime it didn’t normally matter on which side of the county line it occurred, but today it can. Denver District Attorney Beth McCann is a longtime Democratic politician and she approached her job as D.A. with her political sensitivities very much intact. George Brauchler, the term-limited District Attorney for Arapahoe County, has been a Republican candidate for governor and attorney general and is considered a viable candidate for statewide office as a Republican in the future.
D.A. Beth McCann
McCann’s and Brauchler’s different views of what is a crime in Colorado has been on great display regarding political protests/ riots in both jurisdictions. In a May 28th protest at the State Capitol, demanding justice regarding the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, a group of protesters surrounded the car of Jennifer Watson, 37, who was on her way home. A protester jumped on her hood and smashed her windshield in two places which obstructed her view. She appears to turn and brush against the protester who was previously on her hood without real injury.
A petition on Change .org gathered 38,000 signatures demanding that D.A. McCann charge the driver with a crime. In response, two months after the incident Watson was charged by McCann with third degree assault for knowingly or recklessly causing bodily injury. She faces 6 to 24 months in jail on those charges. She was also charged with reckless driving. The person who jumped on the car, nor anyone connected to the May 28th events in Denver, was charged by McCann.
Over in Aurora on July 25th, protesters seeking justice in the death of Elijah McCain in the hands of that city’s police department, poured into the streets and sought to block traffic on Alameda Avenue and Interstate 225. A driver of a blue jeep sped through the protesters on I-225 while a protester apparently fired two shots at the vehicle, hitting two other protesters.
D.A. George Brauchler
Brauchler publicly declined to charge the driver stating that: “If this guy wants to run into people he had plenty of opportunity to do that [but didn’t].”
Brauchler did, however, file charges against four persons who organized the protest for rioting, and the attempt to commit first degree kidnapping. Dave Young the Democrat D.A. for the 17th Judicial District which includes that part of Aurora in Adams County also charged those four and two additional individuals.
In response to Brauchler’s actions, Aurora protester Rebecca Wolf declared: “It doesn’t surprise me, but it’s all nonsense. I’m pretty sure if it was my son driving, who is young and brown, he’d be behind bars already.”
We are not sure skin pigmentation is necessarily how D.A.s in Colorado charge in most cases, but the politics of the D.A. sure does make a difference. In the recent September 23rd Breonna Taylor protest, there was a driver going through the crowd that was blocking downtown and he was detained. His chances of getting charged are significantly greater in the City and County of Denver than they would have been in Arapahoe County.
May 28th protest at the State Capitol.
These days you can get the justice you want by voting for a D.A. candidate that reflects your values. If you identify with the protesters there are justice warrior D.A.s like Kim Foxx of Chicago, Kim Gardner of St. Louis, and Larry Krasner of Philadelphia. If law and order is your mantra there are viable candidates that fit that slot, except, of course, in Denver. Beth McCann knew the danger to her re-election this fall would be from the left and she shored up her support on the left with her charging decisions. Her only opposition is Libertarian William F. Robinson III which means she is a shoo-in.
However, it is a different story outside Denver. In the 18th Judicial District (Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln) George Brauchler is term-limited and Amy Padden (D) and John Keller (R) face off, while in the 1st Judicial District (Jefferson and Gilpin counties) Democratic candidate Alex King is reputedly strongly supported by George Soros affiliated groups over Republican Matt Durkin.
July 25th protest in Aurora.
At one time Arapahoe and Jefferson counties were deemed Republican strongholds, but no longer. The two races should be close. Pick your D.A. and get the justice system you want. In Denver, you get Beth McCann and her politically oriented justice, for better or worse.
by Kim Schulz, VP of Youth Development, YMCA of Metro Denver
Virtual schooling has more kids and teens online now than ever before. While technology has led to ease of learning, resources and flexibility, it can also make more teens vulnerable to cyberbullying.
Remember, bullying doesn’t just happen at school. It can happen anywhere, including through texting, the internet, social media and gaming platforms. So, just what is cyberbullying? It is most often repetitive behavior aimed at badmouthing, humiliating, scaring or shaming those who are targeted. Examples include:
• Spreading lies about someone or posting embarrassing photos of them on social media.
• Sending hurtful messages or threats using online messaging platforms.
• Impersonating someone and sending mean messages to others on their behalf.
So what should you and your child do when it happens to you? Here are some helpful tips to not only recognize cyberbullying but to deal with it.
Prevention
The first step is to place appropriate permissions and restrictions on technology usage and access to electronics. Setting reasonable limits early on can prevent kids from becoming too attached to their computers and devices later.
It’s also a good idea to have open communication with your child. Encourage your son or daughter to come to you with questions and concerns and let them know that no subjects are out of bounds.
Spot It And Stop It
There are some red flags when it comes to bullying; behavior changes include isolation, withdrawal and avoidance of activities and events. Be on the lookout for changes in your child’s behavior and inquire about the root cause.
If you observe any behavioral or emotional changes in your child, be sure to address the subject in a calm, non-threatening, private manner at a time and place when both you and your child can communicate openly. It may even be helpful to rehearse what you’re going to say to your child in advance.
Another telltale sign of cyberbullying is your child’s preoccupation with his or her computer or device; fixation on a device in concert with behavioral changes can often signal something going on behind the scenes.
If you do need to check your child’s device, it’s recommended that you have a discussion with them first and involve them in the process. Unless it’s an extreme circumstance, it’s rarely advisable to betray your child’s trust by going through their private messages without their knowledge.
If your child cites a cyberbullying instance, it’s important to remain calm and let them know you’re glad they shared it with you. Then the two of you can have a discussion about the best next steps, whether it’s alerting the bullying child’s parents, closing an online account or another method; by working together, you can arrive at a solution that will not only help remedy the issue but also alleviate additional stress for your child.
Keep Communication Open
Keep the lines of communication with your child open; continue to have ongoing dialogue with your child after the incident. As parents, it’s up to us to inspire confidence in our children, both online and off.
And, if you and your child have done everything you can to resolve a situation and nothing has worked or something is in immediate danger, seek the appropriate authorities for help.
To learn more about youth education and leadership programs, as well as health and fitness programs at the YMCA of Metro Denver, visit www.denverymca .org.
