KOA Headlines
10 25 24 Denver Mayor Mike Johnston talks about the Ball Arena Redevelopment project
But there's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally, like growing up with a bank you can count on, like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure, and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado, there's only one. Member FDIC. At Sprout's Farmers Market, we're all about fresh, healthy, and delicious. That's why you'll find the season's best organic produce handpicked and waiting for you in the center of our store. We bring in local farm fresh fruits and veggies bursting with flavor. Come on in to discover everyday favorites, like juicy berries and crisp greens, but also unique peak season varieties, like moon drop or cotton candy grapes. Is it your neighborhood Sprout's Farmers Market today, where fresh produce is always in season? Earlier this week, Mayor Mike Johnston announced that Denver has reached its goal of sheltering 2,000 people experiencing homelessness as a continuation of the mayor's all-in-mile high program. Joining me now on the KW comment spirit health hotline to talk more about it is Denver Mayor Mike Johnston. Mr. Mayor, thank you so much for your time this morning. Good morning. You're going to be with you. Walk us through a little bit of how this milestone was accomplished and what work still needs to be done in the city to address homelessness in Denver? Yeah, we're really excited about the progress. We've got 2,000 people off the streets and into housing. That means we've closed every large encampment in the city. If you remember a year, a year and a half ago, there were 15, 20 giant encampments on the city. Those are all closed now. We've got all of the central part of downtown that doesn't have any tents or encampments left. Which means now we know we still have challenges with almost this similar work to do, but it's more of the one or two individuals might be under a bridge or, you know, by a riverside or, you know, folks that we know still need support and addiction or mental health, it might be walking the streets. So we have more work to do to get those folks into services, but this is a really tremendous benchmark. We've now housed more people faster than any city, but most importantly, we've gotten those folks off the streets and in the transitional housing, they can get their lives back together and get to work. Affordable housing, a big issue in all of this as well. And yesterday you joined a number of other local mayors and council members building houses for Habitat for Humanity. Tell us a little bit more about that and the push for more affordable housing in our in our city. Yeah, we know this is the most important issue is getting affordable housing and that effort like this ballot measure we have to our is really focused on workforce housing. It's focused on working people. It doesn't address almost this is really about working people that are, you know, servers, retail workers, teachers, nurses, firefighters that can't afford to live in the city. So folks to make up to $100,000 a year or eligible and it just helps make sure you don't overpay on your rent. So it makes your people and don't pay more than 30% of what they make to rent. So if you're making $60,000 a year, you shouldn't pay more than $1,500 a month for rent, but a lot of folks are paying $2,500, 3000. So this ballot measure two hours really focused on making sure we get all those working folks in Denver who are struggling, break on their rent and so love to have people supported. You mentioned the ballot measure as the elections coming up on November 5th, Mr. Mayor, are you openly endorsing any certain measures and what do you have for voters ahead of getting their ballots in? Because it actually sounds like statewide. We're a little behind on returning ballots as we were when we saw in 2020. We are. We're actually, I think a lot of people, you know, the ballot is long and Denver. So we get that. There's a lot of questions to look at a lot to consider, but we are behind on ballots. So it really encourages people to take some time and work through them. This weekend, a lot of important items there. Obviously, we think the affordable housing measure to our is probably going to have the most immediate impact for us on the city and making sure it stays affordable. Important measure there to support Denver health and keeping them viable, which is important. I think there are some measures that aren't helpful, like ones that, you know, the one that bans slaughterhouse in Denver, which is a key business. We don't want to run out of the city and there's one that bans for operations in the city, which we don't think is a helpful ban for city businesses. But we think there are some really great proactive positive ones to solve hard problems. And I think this one on housing on to our will be the most important for Denver. So really encourage folks to take a look at it and make sure we support the people who make this city go to be able to still be able to live here. Also in the news this week, the Denver City Council approved a project to redevelop the area around ball arena. How do you feel about the current plan? And have you heard some of the concerns that people have when it comes to parking issues or blocking of the Western Mountain views or even when it comes to affordable housing, like you mentioned as well? Yeah. I think the most exciting part of that announcement for us, which some people missed is, you know, we just signed the nuggets to a 25 year extension and the abs to a 25 year extension. So for sports fans, they will both be here through the year 2050, which is incredible for us. And so did that announcement with the Conkeys? They've been very supportive. And, you know, we're really excited about their mutual commitment to help us reinvigorate downtown. And the plan is that that site will build more than a thousand units of affordable housing. So they've gone way above and beyond the requirement for affordable housing. They get almost 150% more than what's required. And it's going to be great. It'll have housing for seniors. It'll have affordable housing for young people. It'll have great walkable neighborhoods. So I think this is the vision for the new sports complex in Denver and the country is not an arena with 80 acres of parking lots around it, but a walk in neighborhood that has restaurants, has bars, has public spaces, has parks, has apartments, has offices. And yes, I was parking underneath it so folks can still get access to parking. If you think about how that was parking lots feel now, you can still get that same amount of parking on the ground floor and then cover all the rest of those ground floors with apartments and offices above them. And so I think it just will lead to a much more activated downtown and more affordable housing, which we're really excited about. City budget talks also still in the work. You came back to the city council with some adjustments to the proposed 2025 budget. Now, not everything that they were asking for, but some compromises. When you walk us through what has been agreed on, obviously nothing finalized, but what you think you can compromise on and what was rejected because it looks like funding for the Denver basic income project is still also not in the proposed budget. Yeah, I think we've made really great progress and credit to the city council and President Sandoval. We've been great partners along the way, but I think a lot of the most important priorities for them and for us, we agreed on, we've expanded the amount of rental assistance we provide in the city to make sure folks who are paying their rent in an apartment but are risking evicted. Don't get evicted. We've expanded the funding for youth programming for after school and summer programming for young people, which we know is so important to help them find access to opportunity and find positive peer groups. And so those are, I think, key steps forward. And so we've expanded some investments in safe streets and safe routes to school for young people. And so I think there are a lot of really important priorities that the council knows. We know we're kind of tight in the belt given the financial reality for the city and the state right now and make sure we're being cautious about our spending. And so that means we got to make hard decisions, but the council has been, I think, a very thoughtful and engaged about how to do that. Mr. Mayor, I'm wrapping up with you. You jumped on Reddit again yesterday for your second Ask Me Anything session. And what were some of the questions that you answered? It seemed like a lot of the top comments in the thread were a lot about traffic law and enforcement related things in the city. Yeah, I always enjoyed being on Reddit. You get great questions from thoughtful residents who are paying attention. And I think, yeah, there was definitely a lot about affordable housing that always still comes up as one of the biggest issues. So we had a lot of questions about people being worried about that and wanting to take action on the ballot measure on 2R. But we did get a lot about traffic. We talked about speed enforcement. We're adding more speed cameras around the city, particularly on what we call high-injury networks, which are the streets where most folks are speeding and people are getting injured. So we are focused on that. We're also focused on enforcement of cars that have no plates, so we have some questions about that. We are stopping and inciting anyone that's driving a car without a plate. And if you have expired plates, we have this system where we give you kind of four or six weeks to encourage you to make sure and get that plate updated. And then we give people another. And we do real rounds of enforcement, where for two or three weeks we then really deliberately stop cars and do tickets and that haven't. So we're trying to let people get it done on their own to not pay extra fines, but we do, if they don't, and then come around and hold folks accountable, and that's been very successful. We've increased by about 30 percent, but number of folks that are getting tags registered on time. So I get that those quality of life issues are important to people, and we're taking aggressive action on those too. Denver Mayor Mike Johnson, Mr. Mayor, thank you so much for your time as always. Yeah, thanks for having me. There's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally, like growing up with a bank you can count on, like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado, there's only one member FDIC.