by Mark Smiley | Dec 17, 2018 | Editorials
It is said that politicians are attracted to money like
flies to a dung heap. In Denver no one loves the smell of money more than City
Council President Albus Brooks, a close ally of ethically challenged Mayor
Michael Hancock. He is expected to succeed Hancock in four years assuming
Hancock prevails in his quest for a third term this spring.
Brooks has the full confidence and support of the
high-density developers that own and control Mayor Hancock. Brooks’
subservience to developers has gotten him in trouble at times with some of his
constituents in District 9. Developers have begun to gentrify his district with
high-density developments driving some African American families out of Denver
where they have lived for generations. His tone deafness over the Ink! Coffee
shop controversy highlighted how out of touch he was with the many issues
important to the residents of his District. Brooks has only exasperated his
problems by his remarks on Colorado Public Radio where he appeared not to grasp
the concept that “involuntary displacement” was very much of a concern to
homeowners in Five Points, Elyria-Swansea and other neighborhoods in his
District.
Brooks infamously declared on the radio: “Displacement is
not in the home ownership category. It’s in the rental category and someone
cannot afford what their landowner is jacking up the price with, right? And so,
that is something that we are working very hard on.”
These comments helped Candi CdeBaca decide to run against
him this spring in the city election. She has stated: “He didn’t understand the
nuances of involuntary displacement. That is directly connected to his power
and his purview. He should know all of the ins and outs of it.”
What Brooks does understand is money or more specifically
how as a politician he gets his hands on as much of it as possible. While high
density developers strongly support him as he does their bidding, he is not
particularly liked by them on a personal basis. His cryptic nickname among some
developers and lobbyists is “The Buddha.” It is not that he has any interest in
that Eastern religion but rather the fact that many statues of the Buddha have
him sitting with his left palm pointing upward. According to his critics Brooks
shakes your hand with his right hand while his left palm points upward to be
greased.
This leads to his latest money-making scheme — heroin
injection sites. There is big money to be had by politicians in drugs these
days. On the Republican side Colorado Senator Cory Gardner and former Speaker
of the U.S. House John Boehner have become ardent advocates for the
legalization of marijuana across the country notwithstanding spending most of
their political careers adamantly opposed the same. What changed? Once pot was
legalized in states like Colorado and California there arrived a river of money
for politicians and lobbyists who would help overcome federal constraints on
the drug.
Brooks’ nose for money has led him to an even more lucrative
drug field — heroin. Mexican drug cartels are facing a crisis. With
legalization of marijuana in various states no one needs the cartels to grow
marijuana in Mexico and ship it across the border. Moreover, cocaine is no
longer the drug of the young and the hip and usage is dramatically down. What
is up is opioid addiction and in particular heroin addiction. What is holding
back this growth market is the terrible stigma attached to heroin use.
That is where politicians like Brooks can help. He has
gotten the Denver City Council to approve so called “safe injection sites.”
Heroin users are provided free needles, syringes, septic pads and a private
place to shoot up. Medical attendants will be there to administer Naloxone in
case of an overdose. Of course, once you have one site you will need many more
as addicts driving to and from a single injection site to get their multiple
daily fixes is generally not to be encouraged.
If you want more of something you subsidize it, but that is
not the key service Brooks is providing to the cartels. What the cartels need
to grow their heroin businesses is for the stigma of heroin use to disappear.
What better way than state and municipal sanctioned and supported “safe”
injection sites to say to today’s youth that the hellish existence of a heroin
addict is just one of many different but acceptable lifestyle choices. In
places like Vancouver, Canada where there are safe injection sites, the use of
heroin has skyrocketed and while there are no reported deaths at the sites
there plenty nearby.
The Buddha, of course, is just trying to be “compassionate”
to heroin users and the cartels who support and nurture them. Brooks will get
rich in the process. If there is any justice in this world, kids and their
families who become addicted to heroin because of the actions of Councilman
Albus Brooks will someday go visit him in what grand mansion he will be
ensconced in to personally thank him for the destruction and damage he has wrought to them.
Albus Brooks
by Mark Smiley | Nov 19, 2018 | Editorials
Jamie Giellis
The 2018 statewide elections in Colorado are over. While a blue wave may not have occurred nationwide it certainly did happen in the Centennial State. Republicans not only didn’t win the governorship it lost all statewide offices it held including Attorney General, Secretary of State and Treasurer by wide margins. In Denver all the sales tax hikes were approved as prognosticated in our August 2018 editorial. Statewide the voters shot down new taxes for education and roads although Denver voters likely would have approved both.
We Denverites love our taxes, perhaps reflecting the fact that Denver is home to a very significant number of federal, state and local employees. But we also demand value for our money which many feel we are not getting from our governing city government. Neighborhoods are being destroyed with inappropriate and endless high-density projects, parking downtown has become an arduous chore at times and our roads are increasingly jammed with no relief in sight.
It would appear that many citizens of Denver have had it with Michael Hancock who is viewed as a clueless puppet of high-density developers. The publicity of the mayor’s sexual harassment of police officer Leslie Branch Wise, and his use sub silencio of taxpayer money to pay her off, has been the last straw for many in the city.
Four years ago, not a single person qualified for the ballot to oppose Hancock’s re-election. The situation has dramatically changed today with at least three highly qualified candidates willing to take on his Honor. Last month we identified two of those individuals — Penfield Tate and Lisa Calderon. Since then another highly qualified candidate has entered the ring — Jamie Giellis.
Giellis, age 41, is the president of the River North Art District. She has b
Large scale apartment project on Speer Boulevard.
een identified by The Denver Post as an important force in the development of RiNo, South Pearl Street and the Golden Triangle in her role as founder of Centro which specializes in urban planning.
Urban planning is exactly what has been sadly lacking for the last eight years as can be seen by the virtual destruction of what was one of Denver’s most scenic roadways — Speer Boulevard. Massive condo and apartment buildings crowd the roadway with no setback and totally devoid of any open areas and trees.
As Giellis correctly noted: “A broad vision for Denver is missing and the current mayor has been responding to, and not necessarily planning for, all the issues that come along with quickly growing urban areas.”
As far as we are concerned the more qualified candidates for mayor the better. Under Denver’s Charter if no person reaches the 50% level in the first round of voting there is a runoff between the top two candidates.
It is not that Hancock will be easy to defeat. Those that control the mayor have been raising large sums of money for his re-election, from the high-density developers and other lowlifes that have been raping Denver for fun and profit for years. But the voters of Denver may, at long last, have become disenchanted with Harasser-in-Chief and all the money in the world will hopefully not save him.
by Mark Smiley | Oct 24, 2018 | Editorials
Penfield Tate
In spring of 2011, the citizens of Denver in their infinite wisdom decided to elect the unintelligent but gregarious Michael Hancock who as The Denver Post stated, had a “feel good story” rising from poverty to become the plaything of Green Valley Ranch developer Pat Hamill who owns Hancock lock, stock, and barrel along with his fellow crony capitalists at Colorado Concern. Of course The Denver Post never revealed who was actually running Hancock as it had become, as the only major paper in the city, as corrupt as the city government itself.
Hancock barely made the 2011 runoff beating out James Mejia by only 1,491 votes for the last spot behind first round leader Chris Roemer. Just think only 1,491 votes and the race would have been between two highly qualified and experienced candidates either of whom would have run Denver a multitude of times better than Hancock. For the last eight years high density developers and the Brownstein law firm have run and raped the city for fun and profit while Hancock has spent his time working out in gyms and chasing skirts.
Four years ago everyone realized what an awful mayor Hancock was but no credible candidate arose to run against him due in large part to the massive fundraising advantage Hancock had over anyone who would run against him. For a while it looked like 2015 would repeat itself with Hancock running essentially unopposed.
But over the last 30 days two highly credible candidates, Penfield Tate and Lisa Calderon, have thrown their hats into the ring for office of mayor of the City and County of Denver which will give Denver real choices.
Penfield Tate III is 62-years-old and an attorney with the national law
Lisa Calderon
firm of Kutak Rock. He was a state representative from 1997 to 2001 and state senator from 2002 to 2003. He represented northeast Denver which is the base of power for Mayor Hancock. He knows what he is up against having run for mayor in 2002, getting beaten out by John Hickenlooper.
He correctly points out how the rapid growth of Denver has been grossly mismanaged by the Hancock administration. The last eight years with all the wealth pouring into the city should have been Denver’s Golden Age, instead it’s been an unmitigated disaster for everyone but developers.
Tate has declared: “Development is out of sync with neighborhoods, disrupting the quality of neighborhoods. It’s imperiling open space and having an impact on parks. It’s driving gentrification. It’s impacting small businesses that are . . . getting driven out of neighborhoods. It is impacting affordable housing.” We could not have articulated some of the major problems of the Hancock administration better.
Lisa Calderon is a longtime community activist from north Denver and presently the co-chair of the Colorado Latino Forum — Denver chapter. Her parents were an African-American and a Latino. She has a law degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as a doctorate in education from CU Denver.
She has been a advocate against the treatment of prisoners at the Denver jail. She has held rallies against Michael Hancock’s harassment of and lying about his relationship with Denver Police Detective Leslie Branch Wise. She recently sued the City and County of Denver for canceling a contract to run a re-entry program for former inmates based on, she alleges, her criticism of the mayor and his harassment of Leslie Branch Wise.
She believes that the city is at a critical juncture: “So, I kept waiting for the candidate to emerge that I would support, who represented my values and my concerns about affordable housing and women’s issues, and concerns about the cultural preservation in our city. And I realized, I was waiting for me.”
Her platform centers around affordable housing, “resident-led” development, decentralizing the mayor’s office, and women and workers.
When asked how affordable housing and “resident-led” development mesh she stated:”We need to look at what does each community need in their neighborhood,” she said. “I can tell you right now I don’t need a big behemoth building shadowing over all of the other units, but there is a way to build for density that still takes into account community.”
She went on to note: “There are ways to do density that really centers a community in it, rather than a developer’s idea about cramming so many people in there.”
Eighteenth century diplomat and philosopher Joseph de Maitre declared that “in a democracy people get the leaders they deserve.” It is hard to fathom that anybody deserves a sexual predator and corrupt mayor like Michael Hancock, but we will find out next spring. Hancock has raised $700,000 from the worst of the worst in Denver, but no amount of money can scrub clean the permanent stains he has made across the city. We will have a choice next year in Denver and it can only be hoped that we choose wisely.
by Mark Smiley | Oct 2, 2018 | Editorials
The inaugural Grandoozy music festival had a reported attendance of 55,000 over the extended weekend.
The inaugural Grandoozy Music Festival was held over the extended weekend of September 14-16, 2018, at the Overland Golf Course off of Santa Fe Drive in southwest Denver. Why at Overland Park Golf Course? At first it would seem a strange choice. With virtually no on-site parking the golf course site is stuck between the extremely busy Santa Fe Drive on one side and a raft of homes on the other. The lack of on-site parking necessitated free shuttles from far away parking lots with the vain hope people would hike in from the nearest, not so convenient light rail station.
As part of the June 2017 presentation for City Council approval of the event on public land a bullet point was the that the organizer, Superfly Productions, negotiate with RTD to include public transportation as part of the $270 event ticket. But Superfly Productions apparently was uninterested in paying anyone for anything. RTD offered additional cars for the extended weekend and requested from Superfly $72,000 to cover the additional service, security and personal costs and when Superfly said no RTD dropped it down to $33,000. But the production company was still uninterested, and no additional service was added for the event for public convenience.
Stevie Wonder performed during the final night of the 2018 Grandoozy music festival.
The RTD kerfuffle was emblematic of why Superfly was at Overland Park Golf Course in the first place and not at the many different existing concert venues in the area such as Fiddler’s Green, Mile High Stadium or Red Rocks. Superfly had come to Denver to take every last penny it could beg, borrow or steal from the community. The existing venues cost real money while Overland Park Golf Course is on public land and could be obtained for a fraction of the cost. The City and County of Denver under Michael Hancock is trying to get rid of, or alternatively monetize, every possible inch of open space under its control.
Superfly could get everything it wanted for a relative song from the mayor’s office and the always compliant Denver City Council. In turn, the production company brought in a hodgepodge lineup which was far skimpier than almost any other marque event it holds. Headliners being Stevie Wonder, Kendrick Lamar and Florence + the Machine, all of which have performed in Denver before. The gaps were filled with numerous local acts Superfly could get to perform at the Festival on the cheap.
The Denver golf community and the Overland Park neighborhood vociferously opposed the event which has partially destroyed the oldest golf course west of the Mississippi. But as one insider noted: “Those groups are composed of old white people who the city is hoping to drive out as fast as possible. No one is going to pay any attention to them.” She was right. The City Council blew right past them with hardly an acknowledgment at the June 17 meeting.
So how was the three-day festival? Depends on who you ask. For the neighbors and the golfers it was a disaster, but that was expected from them. For many festival concertgoers the event was okay, but lacked the big names they had expected. They are hoping in future years Superfly will spend the money it takes to bring them better lineups. Don’t count on it.
But for Superfly Productions, Stevie Wonder’s greatest hit “Isn’t She Lovely,” best summed up the event. They made a killing. Good crowds at top dollar prices and very low overhead. Nineteenth century con man Soapy Smith found that Denver was a perfect place to pull off his many scams with a rube seeming to be waiting on every street corner. In Michael Hancock’s Denver not much has changed. If you are unscrupulous enough and have access to the powers that be in Denver government, there are fortunes to be made in the Queen City on the Plains.
by Mark Smiley | Aug 24, 2018 | Editorials
In 2002 Denver went to great lengths and time to compile Blueprint Denver to guide future growth in Denver. It envisioned “areas of change” and “areas of stability.” In areas of change rezoning for more density and height would be envisioned while in areas of stability, like many of the city’s highly prized neighborhoods, rezoning would not be permitted for other than single family homes. It also envisioned high-density around the many new light rail stations where, because of that public transportation, residents would not need a car, at least in theory.
The problem was Denver’s crooked high-density developers had not yet bought their very own mayor in 2002. Developers do not want to put high-density upscale apartments and condominiums in lousy neighborhoods that were considered areas of change. Nor did they want the expensive units they were building by the light rail stations which were not the fav of people who could afford to buy the upscale units … The developers could make a great deal more money by exploiting and raping the traditional highly prized areas including Country Club, Crestmoor, Virginia Vale, Cherry Creek North, etc.
In 2011 the high-density developers like Pat Hamill found the extraordinarily horny and intellectually vapid Michael Hancock and installed him in City Hall as the 45th Mayor of the City and County of Denver.
But when developers got rezoning they wanted in violation of Blueprint Denver through the Orwellian named Denver Community Planning and Development headed by the clinically obese rancher Brad Buchanan as Executive Director and the obsequious City Council they were subject to lawsuits. And sued they were over Crestmoor Park, Cherry Creek North, Hentzell Park, Denver Highlands, etc. etc. None of the lawsuits were successful because you can’t as a practical matter sue City Hall on development matters even if you have a valid claim for some unwritten rule of Denver municipal politics.
The problem was the well-grounded suits took time and money out of the developers’ pockets and who knows, one of these days the citizens might find an honest District Court judge in the City and County who would rule in their favor.
What to do? Well, change Blueprint Denver to squash any legal basis stopping high-density developers from doing whatever they want to do in wide-open Denver.
Well, of course, you can’t tell the sucker citizens that is what you are doing so you pretend you went out and sought public input from thousands of citizens or as Sarah Showalter, Citywide Planning Supervisor noted, numerous think tank meetings, 
21 task force meetings, 25 street team events, eight community workshops, and over 8,500 contacted.
What did all these people indicate they wanted? Well, of course, their neighborhoods destroyed with high-density development while making driving in Denver the equivalent to transporting down the rings of Hell in Dante’s Inferno.
When politicians and city bureaucrats in Denver say they consulted thousands and thousands of people, they mean they are going to do whatever developers like Pat Hamill and his cronies at Colorado Concern tell them to do.
On August 28 at City Park Pavilion at 5:30 p.m. your betters will share with you the details of what they are going to do to you, your family and your city. The slogan for Denveright is “Your Voice. Our Future.” Rest assured your voice is irrelevant to the politicians and planners in Denver.
We could tell you all the awful things they are planning to do to you under the wonderful sounding rubrics like “affordable housing” and “pedestrian friendly transportation,” but why bother? You won’t be able to do anything about it anyway.
As the early Greek historian Thucydides stated: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
The high-density developers and the politicians they own are the “strong” in the City and County of Denver while the citizens of the city like you are the “weak.” We have watched the suffering of our neighborhoods ever since Hancock became mayor and the suffering will continue for the foreseeable future and get much, much worse under Denveright.
As you can’t do anything about it, just sit back and accept it. Be as happy as you can and pretend “your voice” in fact matters at all in determining “our future.” As it turns out ignorance is in fact bliss in today’s City and County of Denver.
Pat Hamill
Mayor Michael Hancock
by Mark Smiley | Jul 20, 2018 | Editorials
Jolon Clark
Never in the 160-year history of the City of Denver has its governmental coffers been so bountifully filled as they are today. The extraordinary rise in property values have brought in untold millions of dollars in real property taxes even if it is breaking the back of small business in the city. [See Chronicle p. 1, July 2018.] Sales tax revenue is also skyrocketing and the myriad taxes on marijuana is a bonanza for the city. As for copious amounts of funds for capital projects the city’s voters approved an almost $10 billion in bonds. The original goal for bond proceeds was much smaller but grew and grew as optimism skyrocketed about the state of the city’s economy.
The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce is gathering signatures for a statewide ballot to increase the state’s sales tax by 2.9 percent or 29 cents per $10 purchase for roads and transportation projects. Since Denver will be the largest contributor to the funding it can be expected to garner the lion’s share of the proceeds for projects it is interested in.
What is a little surprising is that, notwithstanding this mountain of cash, Denver appears to be ignoring various standard expenditures. One would perhaps not be shocked to find out, according to City Councilman Jolon Clark, that Denver Parks and Recreation has a $127 million deferred maintenance backlog. Mayor Hancock and the developers who own him see open space and parks as future apartment house and affordability sites. Why bother to maintain them when in the natural course of business in Denver they will be cemented over, turned into drainage ponds and/or monetized as concert venues and the like.
Nonetheless, Councilman Clark has proposed, and the City Council approved by a 12 to 1 margin, a dedicated parks sales tax of 0.25 percent or 2.5 cents per $10 purchase for park maintenance and acquisition of new or replacement parks. That would produce approximately $46 million next year. Given how fast the City Council is destroying parks and open space in the city, the $46 million would appear modest. The only person voting no was Albus Brooks who instead wants to turn all of the city’s sidewalks into runways for some reason known only to the mayor’s developer friends who want to make him the next mayor of Denver after Hancock retires in 2022.
Clark has noted that the remaining green space in the city “has become too crowded.” A good point since Denver has gone from one of the leading American cities in parks and open space per capita to one of the worst in only a couple of decades.
Kendra Black
This caused Councilwoman Kendra Black, affectionately known as “the dumbest person in America with a master’s degree,” to declare, “There’s definitely a need for this.”
It was left to Councilman Kevin Flynn to point out that what will happen is that the city will simply cut back park maintenance to almost nothing and let the dedicated park fund pay for it all. In effect the dedicated parks tax will become just another feeder to the general fund. Others have noted the Mayor, and his cronies, will use the fund to purchase virtually worthless land that no one wants, even the scummiest developers, from the highly connected. That inescapable logic caused Councilman Flynn to propose a successful amendment that the Council hold public hearings and take votes on five-year plans for the spending of the money. This way the crooks who run the city will have to grease not only the mayor but also individual councilmembers.
Others are gathering signatures for dedicated sales taxes for a myriad other good causes including, but not limited to, mental health and substance abuse treatment; college scholarships; and healthy food programs.
We say yes to all the sales tax initiative that make the ballot in Denver. All the money will eventually end up in the back pockets of CRL Associates, Norm of Arabia, the mayor’s favorite developers and other politically connected individuals. But the public does not appear to appreciate the fact that the mayor spends all his time working out and chasing skirts while the City Council does virtually nothing. Shouldn’t the people who run the city and do all the work be handsomely rewarded for their endeavors? We say yes and thus the voters must approve sales tax hikes for one and all. We are confident, based on past performance, that the Denver voters will do the right thing and vote yes on any and all tax hikes that make the ballot, no matter the purported purpose.
— Editorial Board
