Denver Mayor Mike Johnston celebrated his administration’s progress on some of the city’s biggest challenges during his first year in office on Monday, while making a pitch for the first big initiative of his second — a sales tax increase to tackle affordable housing. The mayor delivered his State of the City address a year … Read more
Denver city officials this week touted progress in reducing construction permit review times, including reaching a goal on residential projects set by Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration. That success comes with some caveats, and people in the city’s Department of Community Planning and Development acknowledge plenty of room for improvement. So far this year, the planning … Read more
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s popularity is holding steady after 11 months in office, according to a new poll released Wednesday, but its findings suggest a sales tax increase he’s pitching for the November ballot could face some skepticism from voters. Johnston remains confident in his tax proposal, unveiled Monday. It would generate an estimated $100 … Read more
The Denver City Council is on the verge of referring a question to the November ballot that would ask Denver voters if city workers should have the right to unionize and collectively bargain with city management. But on Monday the council focused on passing a handful of amendments to the ballot question that were designed … Read more
Denver City Council voted Monday unanimously to delay the voter-approved sidewalk repair program until 2025 to give city staff and stakeholders more time to figure out a fee structure and billing system. Approved by voters in 2022, Denver’s sidewalk program will collect fees from property owners to repair the city’s dilapidated sidewalk network, 40% of … Read more
Denver housing officials finally have zeroed in on how much they expect Mayor Mike Johnston’s All In Mile High homelessness initiative to cost the city on an ongoing basis: $57.5 million a year. It’s taken the Johnston administration almost a year to arrive at that budget estimate — which doesn’t include one-time start-up costs — … Read more
A Denver councilwoman is recovering after coming into contact with what she called “contaminated documents” at a public event recently. The Denver Police Department is now investigating. Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez, who represents District 7 in south central Denver, said in a Facebook post Monday that she was temporarily suspending in-person constituent hours after the incident, … Read more
Denver and federal officials say their data tracking shows that after a recent push to move people indoors, just 52 homeless veterans were still sleeping on city streets as of April. Mayor Mike Johnston and other leaders said Monday that they hoped to reduce that total to a level they termed as “functional zero” by … Read more
Denver will pay $4 million to purchase a property that the city is already using to shelter migrant families who have newly arrived from the U.S. southern border. The City Council on Monday signed off on a purchase agreement for the building at 375 S. Zuni St. and a neighboring vacant lot at 333 S. … Read more
With an estimated 220 proposed housing projects still in the planning department’s review queue after an unprecedented rush to beat new affordability regulations in 2022, the Denver City Council on Monday voted to extend approval deadlines for those projects into next year. The deadline for all project plans that still qualify for the city’s Expanding … Read more
