City Council - Regular Meeting

Hey, Denver. It's time for the weekly general session of your Denver city council. Tonight's coverage of Denver city council starts now.

Thank you for taking the time to join us for Denver City Council's meeting. Tonight's meeting is being interpreted into Spanish. Sam or Jasmine, would you please introduce yourself and let our viewers know how to enable translation on their devices? Okay. Thank you. They're coming. Thank you, producer.

Hello. Yes. Sorry. I apologize. My audio was not working.

Hello, everyone. My name is Sam Guzman with the CLC joining you virtually through Zoom and along with my colleague, Jasmine, who will be interpreting today's meeting into Spanish. Please allow me a quick minute while I give instructions in Spanish on how to access interpretation. And thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Sam. Welcome to the Denver City Council meeting of Tuesday, 03/31/2026. Council members, please join council member Cashman in the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag The United States Of America to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Councilmembers, please join councilmember Cashman as they lead us in the Denver City Council land acknowledgment.

Alright, madam chair. Here we go. The Denver City Council honors and acknowledges that the land on which we reside is the traditional territory of the Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho peoples. We also recognize the 48 contemporary tribal nations that are historically tied to the lands that make up the state of Colorado. We honor elders past, present, and future, and those who have stewarded this land throughout generations.

We also recognize that government, academic, and cultural institutions were founded upon and continue to enact exclusions and erasures of indigenous peoples. May this acknowledge and demonstrate demonstrate a commitment to working to dismantle ongoing legacies of oppression and inequities and recognize the current and future contributions of indigenous communities in Denver.

Thank you. Madam secretary, roll call.

Council members Lewis.

Rick Welch.

Romero Campbell.

Romero Campbell?

Here.

Alvin Reyes?

Here.

Flynn? Here. Gilmore? Here. Gonzales Gutierrez? Here. Heinz? Here. Cashman? Here. Parody? Here. Sawyer? Here. Torres? Here. Watson? Here.

Lieutenant President Sandoval? Here. 13 members present. There are 13 members present. Council has a quorum. Approval of the minutes. Are there corrections to the minutes of March 23? Seeing none, the minutes stand approved. Council announcements. Are there any announcements from members of council this afternoon? Councilmember Flynn.

Thank you, madam president. I want to thank the organization Denver Urban Gardens for their efforts in Southwest Denver in establishing a very large new community garden in near the DPS Glenbrook greenhouse off of Bellevue And Field. They have volunteered the reason I'm making this announcement is they have volunteer opportunities. My wife and I were over there on Friday. Every Friday, I think through April, they're offering opportunities for you all all to come down and help establish this garden.

They've made a lot of headway already. You can go to the website at volunteer.dug.org and fill out the form. They have two shifts available each Friday, nine to noon and one to four. And it's madam president and colleagues, it's it's such a fantastic site that they're doing that they're creating there on a site of a 12 acre former DPS elementary school site that never got built in my neighborhood because of all the annexations that failed back in the seventies. But on this site now, DPS has a six bay greenhouse where I mentioned before they grow produce for Denver Public Schools cafeterias, and they've set aside area for a food forest that was planted about two or three years ago.

It's now blooming. And now with the community garden, there's opportunities of all with all sizes available for people to come and participate in growing food. And finally, DPS is going to till the remaining acreage, probably about more than two thirds of it well, well more than two thirds of an acre on the South Side and cultivate that for they've hired a farmer in the area to come in and and grow crops on that land. So the entire site is gonna be dedicated to production of food. So if you're of a mind to help out, please go to volunteer.dug.org and and fill out the form. Thank you, madam president.

Thank you. Next up, we have council member Cashman.

Yeah. Thank you, madam president. And since it's happening tomorrow night, this is the last time I have the opportunity to announce District 6 is hosting our Meet the City Academy and the Community from six to 8PM at Cook Park Recreation Center, 7100 Cherry Creek Drive South, just East of Monaco on Cherry Creek Drive. We're gonna have about 30 Denver City agencies and external partners there setting up tables with information and people to answer your questions live and in person. You can find out what's going on with the, unlocking housing choices, discussion that's taking place around the city.

You can talk to Xcel Energy about whatever compliments you wanna send their way. You can tell Denver Water you're gonna do your best to observe the drought restrictions and preserve that limited resource. There'll be Denver parks. There'll be community planning and development, public health and environment, dozens of city agencies live and in person. Again, tomorrow night, April 1, six to 8PM at Cook Park Rec Center.

But the big news, the mighty new University of Denver pioneers hockey team is headed for Las Vegas, April for the Frozen Four hockey championship. The Payos beat Cornell five o in the first game of the regionals up in Loveland Friday night. On Sunday, they beat Western Michigan six to two. And, the first game of the fry frozen four, they'll be playing Michigan University. And as I, said this morning, my colleagues heard it, it produces a Cashman family, trauma, and that I am a steady Pios fan.

My grandson is a freshman at the University of Michigan. There will be some serious trash talking

in the

Cashman household. Thank you, madam Perez.

Thank you. Councilmember Watson?

Thank you, council president. I wanted to share the city park bandstand stood for ninety seven years. We were devastated to see the destruction of this beloved structure. Our families enjoyed weddings, picnics, lazy days in the shade, and, of course, the kickoff of the summer at City Park Jazz for generations. I wanna thank Denver Fire Department for your quick response.

Also, Denver Police Department for your ongoing investigation. We will, along with community, rebuild the city park bandstand. Denver Parks and Recreation, in collaboration with Denver Park Trust, will help to raise additional funds to rebuild the bandstand. You can go to denverparktrust.networkforthegood.com for more information on their fundraising steps to donate. And then also, Sea Park Friends and Neighbors as well as City Park Alliance, they are also throwing in their hats to raise funds to help rebuild the bandstand.

You can please go to their websites for more information. And as always, you can always reach out to my office at district nine at denver gov dot org for more information of how to engage, how to be present, and how to donate to ensure that we rebuild City Park Bandstand. And a point of personal privilege, I was at Vegas in Vegas this last week, council member Cashman, with my honey. I have a crazy husband that loves to run long distances, and he ran a marathon in Vegas. So most folks go to Vegas to gamble.

He he went to run and be healthy, and he survived a 26.2 mile run that began at maybe I think it was 30 degrees. It started up at a ski resort and ended at 80 degrees down on close to to Vegas, and he survived it through. So I wanna say to my amazing husband, Mike Wenk, if you're watching, congratulations. Love you, and I'm so proud of you. Thank you, madam president. You.

Councilman Avedres?

That is

so sweet.

Congratulations. I

just wanna share congratulations to Denver Summit FC who broke a record on Saturday. They had 63,004 fans, which is the highest attended single game of national women's soccer ever. And so I think Denver should be really proud of the way they've showed up to support women in this way, and it was a great time for that. I also wanted to shout out the Colorado Rockies because they're having their opening day. They matter to you.

Opening day is always a fun fun game, win or lose. Lastly, I wanted to share that our district seven book club kicks off this Wednesday from five to 7PM at Habitat for Humanity at 430 South Navajo. If you're interested, we're still taking people to sign up. You can email district7@Denvergov.org. We will be giving out copies of the constitution and reading the constitution and community. So that's really exciting. That's about it. Thank you.

Thank you, council president. Thank you. Councilwoman Torres? Thank you

so much, madam president. I wanted to acknowledge somebody who I've gotten to know really well over the last several years. Frances Torres just recently passed away. She was the youngest daughter of Philip and Petra Torres, lived at 1033 9th Street. And if you're not familiar with where 1033 9th Street, it is one of the historic homes on Auraria Campus that was preserved, when the campus was, declared an urban renewal area, became a campus in all

the residents who were involved.

Her family were among the 7,000 babies delivered by Doctor. Justina Ford here in Denver. She was displaced from Auraria when she was 19 years old, a social worker by profession. And just want to share, there'll come a time when we share a bit more, I think more formally, about Frances Torres. But so much of what she has worked for for years has begun to come to fruition on Auraria campus, and that's the rug won the recognition of the historic ninth Street Corridor Advisory Committee, the governance committee.

And I'm a member of that and really proud to be able to work with other displaced herrarians in the universities on how we make good on the promises that were made to families who were forced to leave that neighborhood. We also have the hundred year anniversary of the completion of Saint Cajetan's Church coming up, so some really amazing milestones. Frances was a force, just really admirable in her ability to identify opportunities to stand up for the community that she loved so much. And so just wanna share my adoration to her family who I know is reeling in that loss, and I look forward to being able to really celebrate all that Frances and the displaced Aurarian community have done ongoing as we continue to path out another, I think, era of trying to make sure that we're making good on our promises to those families. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Council pro temer Mary O'Campbell. Council Council pro temer Romero Campbell. Alright. We'll come back to her. Kevin Gonzales Gutierrez?

Thank you, madam president. Councilman Cashman, you didn't mention that you get a two for one at your

Oh my god.

Six six academy in the community.

Such good food.

Because I will also be there.

This is

my, I think, my second year of meeting you. Yes, ma'am. I'm excited to be at that. So if you want me to talk to one of your at large council members and you live in District 6, I'm I'll be there. The other thing I wanna just you know, the long awaited and anticipated another collabo with councilman Cashman is the RNO, the registered neighborhood organization, community?

No. Community feedback sessions begin next week starting with our first one on April 9 at the Montbello Rec Center from 6PM to 8PM. So if you live in the area or you wanna travel from afar, we are going to have four of these, and they are going to be in different parts of the city. But everyone's welcome, to come and and provide your feedback on the report from the work that we've been doing on registered neighborhood organizations and the many survey, and information that we've gathered from community. We'll be taking additional feedback as we continue to move forward with, that ordinance. Thank you, madam president.

Thank you. Councilman Lewis?

Well, hi. Thank you. I just wanted to make one quick announcement, and I just wanted to thank those that attended our first district eight community panel last Wednesday. So we'll be hosting our next one on Saturday in the Area P Taylor Building from twelve to 2PM. And this is gonna be an opportunity for us to discuss our budget priorities for the 2027 budget with community, and so I hope that folks are able to attend. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Councilwoman council pro tem Romero Campbell.

Thank you. Hopefully, you can hear me now. I just wanted Oh, I'm in space. Okay. Terrible connection.

I just wanted to remind people that if they wanted to register for the Wellshire one hundred, the Wellshire Golf Course is gonna turn a 100 years, and we are doing a community celebration and golf tournament, and registration opens tomorrow. So if you're interested, please go to cityofdenvergolf.com/wellshire1hundred, and you can register, bright and early tomorrow morning. And and, we have limited space, so, please come join us if you are able. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilwoman Gomer. Thank you.

I wanted to recognize that today is the Trans Day of Visibility. It's a day that celebrates the trans community, and there was a memorial and remembrance at the Senate chambers across the street this morning. And Jack Scratten, who is a dear friend, her mother was there. And if folks recognize her name, she went missing in Denver last April and was unfortunately found deceased in Lakewood. And so we're who are the so relatives are here, LGBTQ folks are here and deserve the same human rights and respect and protection that everyone deserves.

Thank you. Thank you.

Just a friendly reminder to all Denver residents that tomorrow is April 1. It's April Fool's Day, and street sweeping starts. So go back go back out to your sidewalk and look at

your

sign and send friendly reminders to all of your neighbors because everyone hates those $50 tickets. And it's not we don't have parking magistrate right now. See, it's really hard to dispute anything because we don't have a parking magistrate. So a friendly reminder, everyone go out, look at your parking signs, text everyone on your block, street sweeping's the second, whatever, third, whatever, because that starts officially tomorrow. So some street sweepers will be outside tomorrow and on Thursday and on Friday.

So that's your friendly reminder not to have everyone get a picnic. Thank you all. Seeing no other announcements. There are no presentations. There are no communications. There are two proclamations being read afternoon. Council member Alvidrez, would you please read proclamation zero four three three?

Yes. Proclamation zero four three three, honoring Denver arts and venues during Colorado arts education month. Whereas the Colorado general assembly adopted s r twenty six zero zero three designating the month of March as arts education month statewide, affirming that dance, media, arts, music, theater, and visual arts are essential elements elements of complete education for Colorado students, and that better data access and support are needed to ensure equitable arts learning across the state. And whereas Colorado's inaugural arts education month was championed by the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts and Think three sixty Arts for Learning with bipartisan sponsorship in the senate and statewide toolkit inviting schools and communities to activate arts and learning through March. And whereas Denver Arts and Venues is the city and county of Denver's agency responsible for operating some of the region's most renowned facilities, including Red Rocks Amphitheater, Denver Performing Arts Complex, Colorado Convention Center, Denver Coliseum, McNichols Civic Center Building, and the Theater At Loretto Heights, in addition to supporting local artists and arts organizations.

And whereas Denver's renewed cultural road map stewarded by Denver Arts and Venues called Denver Creates, a collective commitment to the arts underscores the city's commitment to broaden youth access to art learning, cultivate the cultural community, and strengthen the economic vitality of the creative sector through coordinated data informed action. And whereas since spring twenty twenty three, Denver Arts and Venues has supported equity in arts learning for Colorado youth grant, contributing over $400,000 in funding to increase access to arts education for historically marginalized youth in Denver. And whereas Denver Arts and Venues also supports out of school time arts programming at rec centers in historically under resourced communities for youth 12 years and older through a partnership with Denver Parks and Rec. And whereas Denver Arts and Venues 1% for public art program has created a collection of more than 500 artworks across the city forming an accessible open art classroom for all, offering daily opportunities for learning, reflection, and creative exploration. And whereas, Denver Public Arts Collection and Free Public Art Tours enriches arts education by turning the civic fixed space into

with working with

community. Denver City Council do hereby proclaim March the as art education month in Denver and call upon schools, educators, artists, cultural organizations, families, and community leaders to champion arts learning, participate in, and support community arts initiatives, and take public art tour and explore public art in your neighborhood. And section two, that the clerk and recorder of the City and county of Denver shall affix the seal of the city and county of Denver to this proclamation and a copy be transmitted to Gretchen Hollera, executive director Tariana Naves Neves, Brooke Dilling, and Janine Bragg Bragg.

Councilwoman Ramirez, your motion to adopt?

I move that proclamation 26 dash zero four three three be

adopted. It

has been moved and seconded. Comments by members of council. Councilmember Avidres.

Thank you, council president. This is very meaningful to me. I was an arts kid, and having access to arts in my schools was really important to me, and it's been harder and harder to have that programming be accessible to our youth. And I'm really proud to learn about all the amazing work that Denver Arts and Venues is doing as well as supporting the local organizations that are doing really great work in this way. So I ask my colleagues to support this proclamation and and support the work that the state is doing to really highlight the need to have arts available to our children.

Councilmember Watson.

Thank you, council president.

Thank you

so much, councilmember Alvederus, for bringing this board. I can tell you being the the representative representing District 9 and just the importance of art in our culture even beyond our schools. The real collaborative process that Denver Arts and venues have had within Five Points, really ensuring that we are not only enriching those who are coming into our communities with the historic cultural art that represents who we are, but we're also investing in our communities to make sure that folks who are artists, whether they're singers or they're drawings or painters and stuff like that, that they are elevated and that they are supported, and it is through Denver Arts and Venues and your unique process that you do with providing funding throughout all of our communities. So I wanna thank you so much, and thank you as always councilor Manuel Beatriz for always lifting up the arts. It is so essential to our communities.

Thank you, madam president.

Thank you. Madam secretary, roll call.

Members Lewis. Romero Gamble.

Aye. Albedrez?

Aye. Glenn?

Aye. Gilmore? Aye. Gonzalez Gutierrez? Aye. Heinz? Aye. Cashion? Aye. Parity? Aye. Sawyer? Aye. Torres? Aye. Watson? Aye.

Madam president Sandoval? Aye. Madam secretary, close the voting and announce the results. 12 ayes. 12 ayes. Proclamation zero four three three has been adopted. We now have time for the proclamation acceptance. Councilmember Abidras, who would you be fighting up?

I'd like to invite up director Halra and her team. They'd like to share some words.

Thank you, council president. Thank you so much for sponsoring this proclamation, Councilwoman Alvidrez and members of city council. I'm joined here with two members of our senior leadership team, Tariana Navas Nevis, our deputy executive director, and Janine Bragg, who is our director of our public art program. I'm Gretchen Holler, the executive director of arts and venues. We wanna express our deep gratitude for this proclamation.

We see this recognition as more than a formal gesture. It's a reflection of our city's core values. Arts education is not peripheral or merely ornamental. It is integral to shaping the well rounded, empathetic, and civic minded leaders our future deserves. The proclamation that was just read highlights Denver Creates, is the city's new cultural plan, and our agency's, citywide commitments in Denver.

Through our grants, our public art tours, and incredible partnerships, Denver Arts and Venues is committed to ensuring that every child in Denver has the opportunity to create and to be inspired. As we close out this month, we also want to thank and highlight our partners at the Arts Complex. Denver Arts and Venues operates the 12 acre campus that's in the heart of downtown, and our four resident company partners bring thousands of young people and their families to the Arts Complex year round. The Denver Center for the Performing Arts connects with more than a 150,000 students each year through acting classes, backstage tours, playwriting, free and low cost tickets, statewide high school musical theater awards, and the annual DPS Shakespeare Festival. Opera Colorado introduces the art of opera through opera on tour and student dress rehearsals, including a pay what you wish family day, multiple family days at the Elle Cawkins Opera House.

Colorado Ballet brings the joy of dance to thousands of students annually through classes, student matinees, and deeply discounted student tickets to final dress rehearsals. And the Colorado Symphony engages young people through youth interactive performances, sending musicians directly into schools for coaching and workshops. And we wanted to make sure anyone that is listening knows and has access to all of those free tickets, discounted tickets, and performances. So to these partners and to our Denver City Council members, thank you for standing with us to champion the next generation of Denver's creative spirit. Thank you.

Council member Watson, would you please read proclamation zero four two one?

Yes, madam president. Proclamation number two six zero four two one, recognizing public health weak. Whereas public health work strengthens Denver's health, safety, environment, and economy by uniting all who play a role in stopping health threats before they start. And building on decades of experience relies on science and data to respond to issues that threaten the well-being of our communities and whereas the Denver Department of Public Health Environment takes a holistic approach to ensuring Denver's people, pets, and environment are healthy by implementing equitable strategies that directly improve lives while serving as a leader and convener among partners across the region. And And whereas Denver utilizes an innovative one health model that recognizes the deep connection between the health of people, animals, and the environment, caring for nearly 10,000 non animals every year through the Denver animal shelter.

And whereas DDPHE is actively combating key public health challenges, including the overdose and mental health crises by saving lives through harm reduction strategies, community outreach, and evidence based interventions. And whereas epidemiologists, disease investigators, and public health nurses work tirelessly to protect Denverites, particularly the most vulnerable, from the spread of highly contagious illnesses such as measles through contact tracing, members and the health care care care and and and resources through the family advocate support team. And whereas, DEPHE investigators ensure the places where Deborah has lived, worked, learned, and play are safe by monitoring the environmental hazards, enforcing health regulations, and addressing risk before they escalate. And whereas the 2026 theme of National Public Health Week, Ready, Set, Action, recognizes how public health has improved daily life and strengthened our communities and honors the public health workers who show up each day to advocate for policies and practices that promote good health for all Denverites. Now therefore be it proclaimed by the Denver City Council section one that the Denver City Council recognizes April 6 through 04/12/2026 as public health week section two that the clerk and recorder of the city and county of Denver shall affix the seal of the city and county of Denver to this proclamation and that a copy be transmitted to Karen McGaughan, executive director the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment.

Thank you. Council member Watson, your motion to adopt.

I move that proclamation two six zero four two one be adopted.

It has been moved and seconded. Comments by members of council. Council member Watson?

Thank you, council president. It has been one of my greatest honor to work in collaboration with DDPHE. Actually, just simply to watch from afar all of the things that you do, not just in my district, but across the city. When you consider public health, it's not just simply the things that you can see, the health conditions that DDPHE leans in on in collaboration with Denver Health, but it's also some of the things you can't see and you can't feel. The things that from from smell, from taste, and touch, making sure that all of our communities are healthy, ensuring that we have a department that collaborates regionally and not just simply within Denver puts us on the forefront of making sure that all Denver rights are safe and healthy.

And I wanna thank you and your amazing team for always being there answering questions for members of council, cosponsoring necessary legislation to ensure that we continue to keep our eye on the ball and making sure that all of our residents are healthy. Thank you, madam president.

Thank you. Madam secretary, roll call.

Councilmembers Lewis Lewis.

Aye.

Romero Campbell.

Aye. Albidarez. Aye. Flynn.

Aye.

Gilmore. Aye.

Gonzales Gutierrez? Aye. Hines? Aye. Cashman? Aye. Parody? Aye. Sawyer? Aye. Torres? Aye. Watson? Aye.

Madam secretary, close voting announce results. 13 ayes. 13 ayes. Proclamation zero four two one has been adopted. We now have time for the proclamation acceptance. Who would you like to call up council member Watson?

Madam president, I'd like to ask executive director McGowan and her team, whoever chooses to join, to come forward and make a few comments.

You're just gonna leave me. I didn't try. Thank you, councilman Watson and Denver City Council members. My name is Karen McGowan. I'm the director of the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment.

It's an honor to be in front of you and accepting this proclamation, and we really appreciate you recognizing all the important work of public health. We're actually one of the rare public health agencies that combines things that happened before your birth and how you live and trying to keep you healthy and then how you might die and making sure that how you die is honored and we figure out why and the cause and then linking all that data together to provide a better, healthy living circumstance here in Denver. Councilman Watson already recognized public health week next week whose theme is Ready, Set, Action. So I think that quantifies really well what we're trying to do in the prevention space, the thing that doesn't happen that you never think about because we're doing all the background work, but then we're also ready if the bad thing happens and figuring out how we can give you the right service at the right time and the right location and the right response. This proclamation really belongs to our staff and I know that many of you are very familiar with all the great work that we do whether or not it's prevention and immunizations or public health investigations or working in residential housing, working in animal protection, working in overdose prevention.

Our folks are working really hard every day to make sure that Denverites live their best lives, and that is our goal and we can't do it without your support. And these past couple of years since I've started have been really hard for health and for budget and for all the things that we do and we feel very supported by you all and the work that we do, and we're just really appreciative that you value the work of public health and the things that we do in this space. So I want to thank the council again for this proclamation and for supporting the work that we do. Thanks.

Madam secretary, please read the bills for introduction.

From the

community planning and housing committee, 26 dash zero two three zero, a bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 4211 North Hooker Street in Berkeley. From the Governance and Intergovernmental Relations Committee, 26 dash zero three two seven, a bill for an ordinance amending chapter 13 article two of the DRMC to require that contracts, grants, and intergovernmental agreements be filed at the same time as a bill or resolution approving the agreement is filed. From the South Platte River Committee, 26 Dash0300, a bill for an ordinance relinquishing a portion of the utility easement reserved in ordinance number eight fifty series of 1991 recorded with the Denver clerk and recorder at reception number (920) 009-5495 located at 805 West 38th Avenue. And 260316, a bill for an ordinance approving a proposed fourth amendatory agreement between the city and county of Denver and urban drainage and flood control district for construction of the drainage and flood control improvements for South Platte River. No change to the contract terms citywide.

Thank you. Council members, this is your last opportunity to call out an item. Councilmember Cashman, will you make the vote make the motions for us this evening?

Yes, council president Sanderbok.

Thank you. I'll do a recap. Under bills under resolutions, council resolution zero three two two has been called out for questions by council member Lewis, and council resolution zero two four six has been called out by comments and a vote by council member Perry and Lewis. Under bills for introductions, no items have been called out. Under bills for final consideration, no items have been called out.

Under pending, no items have been called out. Madam secretary, please put the first item on our screens, council resolution zero three two two, a resolution approving a proposed and mandatory agreement between the city and county of Denver and d c g West one LLC to extend the construction timeline of Building 3 in Council District 11. Council member Lewis, please go ahead with your questions on council resolution zero three two two.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Have a of questions, and some of them were answered beforehand. And so we'll just get into them. But I wanted to know how this the change impacts revenue return if someone answered that item.

Do you know what she was saying? Yes. Okay.

I do. I have to Hi, everyone. Chris Lowell. Yes. And Councilman Lewis.

I got you. I'm sorry. I can't change anything about that. I do apologize. I missed it in advance.

Chris Lowell, Department of Economic Development Opportunity. Councilman, I believe you asked how this change would or would not impact the revenue return agreement that's currently established. So the short answer is if this resolution were to pass, this is a single milestone within the contract would be changed to allow for an additional twelve months for this particular outbuilding to finish construction. It is under construction already and then open. And otherwise, the rest of the agreement would be unchanged.

The only question I had.

Thank you. Madam secretary, please put the next item on our screens. Council resolution zero two four six, a resolution approving a proposed agreement between the city and county of Denver and Axon Enterprise Inc to provide an automatic license plate recognition ALPR system that includes 50 cameras and the necessary hardware. Council member Cashman, would you please put council resolution zero two four six on the floor for adoption?

Yes, council president. I move that council resolution 26 dash zero two four six be adopted.

It has been moved and seconded. We left off last Monday from questions. So if any other council members have questions, please feel free to get in the queue. I'll start with the two who called it out. Council member Parity first.

I have comments. I don't know that I have further questions at this time. If I do, I'll hop back in, but thank you.

Any other colleagues who have questions on resolution zero two four six? Councilmember Flynn.

Thank you, madam president. Since I called out for a delay, I wanted to get to some other questions. Tim Hoffman here. I think I saw him come in. When photographs are taken under this system, do do they go into the evidence.com database that we have with Axon for body worn camera and other digital evidence?

Thanks for the question, councilman. Tim Hoffman with the mayor's office. Yes. They go from the camera, then they're uploaded into the evidence.com database.

They go in there, they're encrypted somehow. This is gonna go over my head. I don't know if you can explain it so that lay people can understand, but what what's the level of encryption of these images? And what I'm trying to get at is if someone if there were to be a breachofevidence.com, which my understanding is Axon, I believe, has about 2,200 license plate reader systems in operation around the country, and there's never been a breach, basically because they stand alone. There's no network connecting them. But if there were to be a breach, would someone be able to look at that image if it were encrypted? So

the and I'll likely at some point phone a friend because this is also in my head to some degree. Know Commander Barnes is in the room, but the encryption level that is used both on the license plate reader cameras themselves is something called AES 128 and then with evidence.com it's something called AES two fifty six. Those are the highest level encryption services that exist currently. They're essentially military grade level encryption. The examples of what it would take to do a brute force hacking of that type of system is you would need a supercomputer operating billions of machines using millions of processors, and even doing that it would take billions or trillions of years to break into the system that way.

So the level of encryption is incredibly high.

Access to the operating system at evidence.com to be able to see them. And the Denver Police Department will have that. Will anybody else have that?

No. It will be

closed off

to everyone but Denver safety personnel.

To any outside sources that can access this somehow, come in and and view it or try to extract data from it? I see this in the movies all the time. It seems so easy. New And

based on a lot of the concerns that we heard from council members, from other community groups, and other privacy experts, we have explicit contract provisions in addition to making sure that it's clear that Denver owns its data and that were it to be subpoenaed or otherwise attempted to be obtained, that we immediately become party to that. We've included explicit provisions in the contract that say that Denver's data cannot be included in any sort of shared or pooled database.

And to be clear, we are not connected to any other Axon system or any other network that would permit such a thing to happen. Is that correct?

The license plate reader system that Axon employs is walled off from its other products.

Okay. Thank you. I think that's all I have, madam president.

Thank you. Do we have any other questions from members of the council? I do. So can you hear me the best?

Thank you. Tim, it's question for you. What would happen if this was voted down today? Would the administration work with us on an ordinance? I saw an article saying the mayor said he would just not do the cameras.

So the the flock cameras have been taken down as of today. Correct. Were it to be voted down, we wouldn't have a license plate reader system moving forward. I think there's been plenty of discussions around trying to figure out what the next steps would be getting an ordinance done via the Surveillance Technology Task Force or with other groups. But in the short term we would not have the benefits of a license plate of your system.

Okay. And is that ordinance something the administration is committed to whether or not this does pass today?

I certainly think that in the Surveillance Technology Task Force, we've had for a couple of months now a lot of discussions around the buckets of what an ordinance might look like and the different things. So I think that we've already been engaging in those discussions and would continue to.

I'm curious from the task force members if you all can speak a little bit to an ordinance hasn't come forward yet.

I can start there, and then the three of us that are on that are council member Flynn, council member Laskochares, and myself. So from my point of view, the task force has never has never been given that charge, and so the task force has never been asked. We haven't gotten to that point yet. We did circulate or the mayor's office circulated, and then my office added some models of ordinances to kind of start down that path, but that was very recently. So it's just sort of not there yet.

And then outside of that, as you would expect, my office, council member Gonzalez Gutierrez's office, have been hard at work researching different models. And part of that is there's an interplay between trying to understand the ALPR technology, which has been the focal point of the task force because of this contract and the FLOC contract, and then trying to understand get our arms around what other forms of surveillance we are using and we would need to address in an ordinance. And then in the meantime, a lot of the third party expertise that sits on the task force has been very engaged with bills of the state legislature. And so I will sort of just transparently as myself say that, like, I am still working very hard on drafting an ordinance, but then it has to go through. It has to

go through the it has to

be reviewed by the task force. It has to be reviewed by our community coalition, and it it's just not possible to rush it because so much of it is based on understanding what technologies we're even using. And so the task force has been really productive in in that regard, but it's just taking time.

And that if you could say estimate, like, what is the timeline for having an ordinance before council?

I feel a little strange doing that because I would like to propose and would plan to cosponsor such an ordinance, but I would never be doing that without the buy in of our coalition. And I assume that council member is interested in cosponsoring others maybe as well. So it feels I sort of am not the sole answer of that, but our city council drafting attorneys are working on something to start conversation. And then it'll take, as you know, you know, individual briefings with everybody, committee, all of that. But there we've we've, at this point, done a good job of getting our arms around what models are out there and kind of what and we've had some very basic conversation among the task force about what the components of an ordinance could be, especially if it's meant to address technologies beyond ALPRs, which I think it has to.

Thank you

for asking that. Thank you, madam president. Thank you. The question, councilman. I'll just say I agree with what councilwoman Parody

speak up so that we can Oh, it's hard to share over here. Sorry. Voice goes backwards. Yeah. Thank you. Thank

you. Use my mom's voice. No. Thank you for the question, and I'll just say that I agree with most of what councilman Parady had to say. I will just add that I was under the belief that we would be crafting an ordinance out of this task force.

I I was just under that impression as it was created last year when we were asked to vote down the contract, right, was that we would have this and we would be addressing surveillance technology across the board, where and I'll just speak for myself where I've found a little bit of complication is that we're constantly being bogged down with this contract and another contract coming forward and not able to everybody's reacting to 's happening and continuing to happen, and that's why I keep asking, can we just stop and get this figured out instead of continuing to have contracts come before us and us approve them and building, of course, the plane as it's in motion? Because I'm very interested in we have been hard at work and are getting very close to, I think, having some kind of language to be able to put in front of people, but it's been it's just been a slow haul. And I will agree to the fact that it's taken us some time to actually get down to what needs to be an ordinance. And I began asking that question months ago and asking our stakeholders, asking folks from the mayor's office, can we start identifying those things?

And it just took us some time to get there. And a lot of that is because everybody was providing information, which has been helpful. Right? It has been helpful, and it provided guidance for what needed to be in contract, but that's still not ordinance. Right?

And so and it's also, you know, evident in, I think, some of the things we've seen happen with the DPD's operating operating manual and or I'm probably saying that wrong, operating policy operation policy manual. And there's still, I think, things that need to be happening there as well. I know that the office of independent monitors still needs to review those things in order for that policy then to be enacted by DPD. So there's just a lot of complicating factors, and I feel like we just need the moment to work through that. And I don't know that we've been able to do that because we've been just reacting constantly.

Thank you, madam president. I agree with councilor McAzales. But here's I believe that we were aiming toward development of an an ordinance based on what policy should be adopted. I will point out that the mayor's office sent out in mid January a spreadsheet asking us, delineating the issues that were identified in the task force. I think we started in in August, so about eight months, and asking us should these live in policy, in police manual, or in ordinance.

And no member of the task force, including me, filled it out. So I would compare it you say a slog. I would compare it to running in molasses because the information is so dense, especially when at committee, you might remember Tara Segura from our technical services department when she would be presenting on the vendor risk assessment process and and everything. It's very easy for laypeople to just start to get, you know, stars circling your head when you hear them talk. And so we, you know, we've relied a lot on input from technical services that's beyond our lay understanding, at least most of us well, at least me.

I I mean, I don't wanna include everyone else on the on the task force. I will say, though, that I don't believe that waiting for an ordinance to do this contract is is necessary or even advisable because, frankly, we've looked at sample ordinances that were presented to the task force. We're developing an ordinance. But very frankly, the contract is gonna be much stronger in guarding against abuses and misuse because it contains actual remedies at law that that can be exercised by the city or by by by people who are who are misidentified or misused or or somehow abused by the system. And having that live in the contract actually gives us recourse that an ordinance would not have.

So I I believe that the contract is actually a stronger document than the than an ordinance would be.

Thank you. Councilor McFadden, do

you have any I just wanna say two things about that. First of all, the spreadsheet that you're talking about that was circulated. The spreadsheet that you're I just have a quick response to that. The spreadsheet that you're talking about that was circulated, I think, was asking task force members to state risks of the technology. So it was quite broad.

I don't know whether folks filled it out in advance of the meeting because I don't think we had that far in advance, but we filled it out collectively during the meeting. And my office and probably others also then added things to it. So we very much did complete that, and it was an it was a lengthy list of possible risks. And that's, I think, the only sort of, like, work product that's been solicited from the task force, which given who's on it, I mean, I I would have hoped that we would be used more in that kind of way, but I did complete that. And then the other the other piece to this is that my concern is that if we continue to authorize these technologies without a contract in place, this contract makes the executive branch and the police department the decision maker and their new revised policy that the independent monitor has not yet had a chance to go through her process with makes them the decision maker about any expansions.

And so this is under $500,000. We approve this, then we are again out of the decision making loop about new algorithmic capabilities, new interconnections with other jurisdictions, new connections with other integrations, which is really Axon's thing, more cameras, camera locations, all of that. And I have to say, having been at this for well over a year now, I do not think that we will continue to get information sharing that we need to craft an ordinance the minute we vote this contact through. And I wish that that weren't the case, but it has been hard. And the problem is that now if we if we need legislation addressing all of the different surveillance technologies that we're using, which there are a lot of and that we don't know a lot about many of them yet and how exactly they work, I'm worried that that door will close.

So that's having been on this task force, I don't that would be my concern. I also have a question for Tim, but I don't know if you're done, council member Alvin Dresden. It was your your turn.

So I appreciate that, and I appreciate all your input. It's very helpful, and I would like it seems like Tim has a response to that.

Yeah. I just wanted to make just one clarifying point. So as councilwoman Parady talked about, we as the task force came up with a a list of risks that we identified as a task force that were possible risks when you're talking about this type of technology. We then went through and talked about the current mitigation that the city is engaging in. There was then a second column added where we looked for additional mitigation that could further try to mitigate these risks.

And then in an email, I believe I sent it out on January 16, there was another column that was explicitly called out that said, do you believe that this mitigation should exist in rules and regulations or in ordinance? And so that was something that was expressly kind of signaled and called out. So I just wanted to just clarify that point and then, sorry about that. It was a good save by my knee. And then to to the second point around Councilwoman Parity's concern around being out of the decision loop after this.

And I know that this was something that was discussed and raised last week about how do we know that a month from now there's not going to be some attempts to increase or expand. We, as the administration, are willing to say that for the existence, for the year that this contract is in existence, we are willing to say that we will not make any sort of attempt to expand the contract or to add additional cameras while we work on trying to get an ordinance in place. So I just wanted to make that statement as well.

For this dollar amount, could you even add cameras on our locations, do you think?

I don't believe so, no.

Okay. Can you speak a little bit to the relationship between Axon and Homeland Security?

Yeah, so Axon has a relationship with the Department of Homeland Security and ICE. They provide body worn camera and tasers to those entities. They don't have any sort of contracts for license plate reader technology with those federal entities.

Can you speak to the ability for federal agencies again or other cities to access this data?

Yeah. So there are numerous points in the contract where it's made explicit that this is a system that is only Denver safety personnel who have access to it. We also, and I believe it was a discussion point last week at some point, there was a specific contract provision where Axon guarantees that there are no contracts in existence right now that they would have with ICE or DHS or other federal entities that would give them any sort of access. So we spelled out at several points that it is only Denver safety personnel who have access

to this system.

Can you also speak to Axon's contract or agreement with the Ring camera system?

So I might need to phone a friend on that one. I think Ben Rubke from Axon is online. So I will stop talking for a second.

Director, can we promote Ben? You just have to repeat it, counsel. Yes. Okay. Thank you. As soon as

he's on, I'll repeat the question.

Yes. I heard the question. It's a question about the partnership between Axon and

Ring. Correct.

Yep. I'm Roopki here. Key, a contractor for Axon. The partnership allows the police department to, based on a incident at a in a certain area, request video from folks who have reading cameras in the area of the incident. Then the community can potentially get that request from the PD, and they just say, hey.

There was an incident in your area. If you're willing to share any video that might be relevant to our investigation, click here, and then that piece of video will send directly to the investigating officer at evidence dot com account. So it's a request to the community. Community can respond. They can also choose not to even receive those requests from the police department.

And if they do opt to receive those requests, then they have a choice whether or not they wanna share or not share video. And then they can only share the video that is associated with the incident. And then that information goes from the Ring cloud directly to evidence.com. Same way if you had, like, information on your cell phone or on any camera in your house or business, you'd be able to share that either through an email or through other meetings. This just goes directly from Ring into evidence.com to make the sharing experience a little more seamless.

But Axon does not access to my Ring camera if I have one without my permission is what you're saying, to be clear?

That that's correct. The PD just to be even clear, like, nobody has the even the PD doesn't have access to Ring cameras. They are asking for someone to share information, which then the user has to opt to say, yes. I will share this piece of information. And then they have to click share and move it over to the individual. There's no, hey. Let's see what these cameras, you know, saw over the last twenty four hours and get Mark Launch access to that video stream. The user and the owner of that video have to say, yes. I will share this piece of information, and then they have to share it through evident through ringnameevidence.com. But the short answer to your question is yes. We do not have access to Ring cameras.

Great. Thank you. That's all I have for right now. Thank you, council president. Thank you.

Councilwoman Parady?

Yes. Sorry. I'm trying to sort questions here. Okay. Take your time.

Yeah. I just the question is for Tim, I think. Thank you, Tim. I what I would like to know from you is whether the mayor has communicated to you that if this contract is voted down tonight, he will then veto any surveillance ordinance that we pass. Because I have heard that from conversations that I was not in, but with groups that are members of our coalition opposing surveillance. And so that's where when I say that I'm worried that we're not gonna be able to have a cooperative, you know, informational relationship to get legislation done, that's where that's coming from.

No. That is not a discussion I've had with the mayor. I think part of part of the, I think, problem is that, you know, we we don't have any sort of draft language to respond to. Right? And so and that's no one's fault. Right? It's taken a long time, but, you know, we would continue to work with the task force and other folks on it.

It shouldn't be a quid pro quo. I think you can agree to that. I mean, I our votes on this contract are our votes, and the need for a surveillance ordinance will remain regardless of how we as a group vote tonight. I will continue working on that regardless. I also haven't really heard a commitment to keep the surveillance task force meeting.

It's been the mayor's office that has convened it. It certainly could be convened another way, but the the focal point has been this contract. I think it's pretty clear from the administration's point of view that that's been the function of the task force is to to take feedback at least sort of opt to sleep on our discussions and incorporate them into this contract, which has been done. This contract addresses a lot of the concerns with FLAC. I don't think this contract addresses a lot of the concerns with Axon, but I'm worried about whether there's a real intention to continue working towards an ordinance after tonight, and I just haven't asked that question.

No. And I'm happy to make that commitment. I think that we have been meeting biweekly, so we would have been meeting this week, which for a lot of people is spring break. So but, no, like, I'm I'm happy to make that commitment right now that we will continue meeting as a task force.

I don't think I have other questions. Thank you, madam president. Thank you.

I have a few questions. So there was a Denver Post article today from three former mayors saying it's the strongest privacy protections. Can you explain what they mean when they say, like, in that article, how this contract has some of the strongest privacy con protections? Because that was shared with me by several of my constituents, that article. I read it, but it doesn't give specificity.

Yeah. I'm happy to, and for anyone who didn't read that article, that was an opinion piece from mayors Pena, mayor Webb, and mayor Hancock. So the privacy protections that have been included in the contract are, again, based on a lot of the conversations the task force has had that we've heard from community members, that we've heard from other council members, so I can walk you through a couple of them. So one of the strongest privacy protections that exist is that throughout the contract there are sections that make it explicit that Denver owns and controls all of its own data. Period.

Full stop. So any sort of suggestion, and there were concerns with previous contracts and other circumstances, that our data, Denver's data, could be used to either train AI models or could be sold or purchased by some third party entities. Not only do we say that Denver owns and controls its own data, but we have explicit provisions in there that say Denver's data cannot, under any circumstances, be used for AI training or for any sale or transfer to any third party. There are explicit contract provisions. This is something that's come up in previous discussions with this body around material changes to the Axon system.

Denver gets a thirty day advanced notice of any material update or change to the license plate reader system, we then affirmatively tell Axon whether or not we opt in or opt out of whatever that material changes, so that if they were in the future to roll out some new feature technology that we disagreed with, that would be something that we would be explicitly carved out from. We have in the policies and procedures that have been provided to the city council made explicit the twenty one day retention policy. I sent to this body a list of, I think it's about 50 cities across the country that have retention policies. The vast majority of those cities have thirty day retention policies or longer. There's a couple that have shorter than twenty one days, but we have a twenty one day retention policy.

We've also included in the operations manual language that makes it clear that any sort of change to that retention policy, and I can tell you there isn't any any thought or desire to change that twenty one day retention policy, but city council would be informed of any such change in advance. There are explicit provisions around what this data can and cannot be used for. There are full sections that make it clear that there are local and state laws that ban this type of information from being shared with any sort of federal entity for civil immigration purposes. There's an entire section that talks about that this data and information can't be used for any sort of reproductive health care investigations. And so making it explicit that Denver owns and controls its own data, reducing the retention policy, and then explicitly calling out what this data can and cannot be used for are some of those really robust safeguards that we put in place.

So one of the other questions I have is and I don't know if you'll be able to answer it. When have you ever bought forward a contract for a $150,000 for this body to vote on?

I'm unaware of, certainly in our administration, us doing this. I think that it's an obviously unique circumstance, it's based on discussion and a lot of the concern that we heard in the fall and the winter with the flock contract at that point. At that juncture, the mayor made it clear that whatever happens next with either FLAC as a vendor or whatever happens next with license plate readers generally, that we would involve city council in the process, that we would bring this through that process. And so this is our attempt to keep true to the mayor's promise of transparency and collaboration.

The task force members, was it made clear that we would be getting a contract and that we would be voting on it? Like, were you were you involved in the process? Because we don't vote on things that are we don't vote on contracts that are four nine nine nine nine nine nine and below. Has to be 500,000. So I've been trying to do research and figure out when we've ever voted on one since I've been here since 2012, and I can't find one. So for the task force members, was it were you incorporated in this idea that we would bring forward a contract to city council?

No. That was an initiative entirely from the mayor's office in order to give us the option. I don't think that that was the scope of the task force to consider whether the council should vote on something less than 500,000. And to answer your question, I've been here since that or that that charter amendment came in in '82, and this is the first time that this has ever happened in my experience. Certainly, mayor McNichols never would have would have done it, nor would mayor Webb, and I can't imagine any of the others would have done. So it's very unique. And I hope it's not a pattern because we'll be here, you know, for three weeks for every set of contracts if we did that. Okay.

And then can you talk to me about the the RFP? I don't think it was a formal RFP that went out because we do a oh, wait. Go ahead. Counsel. Yeah.

One on this. I know that that I had made a request during one of the committees, and councilman Flynn, I think, also made the request, not necessarily for us to vote on it, but that we wanted to at least be aware of any contract regardless of the amount. And then that's where I think this may have come from. But I know that we had asked for that, so I just wanted to be clear on that front.

Thank you. Can you talk to us about the RFP? Because we have a competitive bid process in the city, and it's often told I'm often told, we have to use this vendor because we went through this competitive bid process. And where I think lots of council members are told we have to go use this vendor because of the competitive bid process. So can you talk to me about the competitive bid process this went through?

Yeah. So we used what's called an informal RFP process, which caps whatever the contract is at a $150,000. That then allows you to not have I think that because there was some time sensitivity here trying to shorten the gap in coverage here, having the informal RFP process was something that we wanted to prioritize. And there are also, in this space as it relates to license plate reader technology, just not that many vendors that can provide the technology at the scale that a city like Denver needs to provide. So even in the informal RFP process, we ended up getting five bids from Axon, from Motorola, from FLoC, which was the current vendor.

The Denver Police Department technology services were able to go through their kind of scoring process, making sure that it was compliant with our vendor risk assessment. They were able to look at kind of essentially do a tabletop exercise to test out each each of the products, look at the different safeguards, and things like that. And ultimately, it was Al Gardner, the executive director of our Department of Safety, who made the selection of Axon based on some of those factors, including the safeguards and kind of the the level of data security and the fact that we had worked with them for over a decade in other spaces.

Okay. So I have one more So question for you just said that there's a commitment not to extend cameras or extend the contract within the next the year of the contract if it were to get passed. What happens three months from like, if this were to pass? What happens are you gonna go out for our official RFP? Like, I don't quite understand the the next process because I feel like city council voted down the contract last May. It got extended, and now we didn't go out for, like, a regular RFP. We did a mini one, and now here we are. So what happens next?

It's a little tough to answer what we're gonna be looking at six months from now. Right? I think what I like, the the guarantee that I can give is that for this contract for the next year, there won't be an add on or an extension that would add our capacity to add cameras. I know that last week you raised some frustration that this feels kind of last minute and that we're trying to push it through in a very quick manner, so I think certainly I hear that critique, and were we to talk about an amendment to the contract or things like that, we would make sure that there is plenty of time built in in consultation with city council so that it doesn't feel rushed. But the the guarantee that I can give is that for the next year that this contract would be in existence, we wouldn't three months from now, for example, do an amendment to add capacity and to add add cameras.

It would be at that 50 camera level for the pendency of this contract.

Thank you. I don't have any further questions. Do we have any other questions from council members? Alright. Do we have comments from council members before we vote? Do you wanna be added to the queue? Council member Himes, do you wanna start us off? And then other council members, as you see fit, please join the queue.

Thank you, madam president. I wanna I wasn't here last week, so I I do wanna take a moment to explain my vote and the values behind my decision. So I will be voting in favor of the contract. It's not a decision I take lightly. I've heard clearly from residents, some who strongly support the technology, and some who are deeply concerned about privacy and surveillance. So I wanna start there because privacy is a value I personally hold. It's not theoretical for me. I use GrapheneOS on my mobile phone. I use I run PiHole at home. If you're not familiar with those technologies, those are both very privacy based technologies.

I don't use iOS. I don't use Android. This is a special operating system that prevents that information from being shared wholesale to to Android. I take real steps to limit how much data about me is collected and shared. And so when people raise questions about surveillance, I understand them and I share those concerns. But we also have to ground ourselves in another reality. We live in a world where data share is sharing is already being collected constantly, often by private companies with far less accountability than we are. So the question in front of us is not whether data exists. The question is what are our values as a city and how do we govern technology in a way that reflects those values? We were burned by flying.

There's no question about that. Both the vendor and, in my opinion, decisions within the executive branch contributed to a loss of trust, and that matters because trust is also a core value. But I don't believe our value is fear, and I don't believe our value is to say we should never work with any vendor ever again. Our value should be accountability. Our value should be learning from past mistakes and doing better with clearer contracts, stronger guardrails, and better compartmentalization of data and real oversight.

Oversight. Another value that we have to talk about is safety. Crime is down citywide, and that's good. But if you look at where crime is happening, there's still a huge concentration all over District 10. When I started on council in 2019, the police chief said we were the sixth, excuse me, fifth safest major city in the country, and the people of District 10 wanted a reduction in in the amount of police.

Now with this sustained concentration of crime in District 10, the people of District 10 are calling for more safety. And I hear from constituents who are frustrated, who feel like more needs to be done. And they're not wrong. If they expect they're not wrong to expect that if their car is stolen, we do everything we can to get it back. They're not wrong to expect that if someone harms them or their loved ones, that person is held accountable. Safety is a value. So what do we do when values are in conflict? We don't ignore one value in favor of the other. We find balance. So that's why I'm supporting this limited one year contract.

It's not a citywide deployment. 50 cameras are fewer than 20 intersections. In District 10, we're talking about roughly two intersections. Single camera blocks looks up in only one direction, so it takes at least four cameras to cover fully cover an intersection. That's a measured step, not a blank check. But I wanna be clear. Contracts are not enough. So I'm great I I have solace to hear the council member of Parity and council member Gonzales Gutierrez are already talking about legislation. And Denver, the executive branch set sets rules and regulations. Our role is to set policy through ordinance.

So we need to do the work to create an ordinance just as we use the lessons we learned from FLAC in this contract. We will learn lessons from this Axon contract that will make a better word. That means defining our values in law. We need scope. Ensuring data is compartmentalized, making sure information is only retained as long as it serves a clear public purpose that serves Denver's values and no longer.

And our retention policy is set to the no entity with so that no entity with conflicting values can come to Denver and demand we share that information. Speaking of values, I'm working with council member Elvigres on best value contracting because I believe every contract we enter should reflect Denver's values. I believe this is another conversation that should go further into values. Over the next year, we should work together with our colleagues, the mayor, the surveillance task force, and the public to build a policy framework that ensures these technologies are used in a way that reflects who we are as a city. We're all voting in favor of the contract, but that is not just about the contract.

It's about committing to do the work to ensure that public safety, privacy, accountability, transparency are not competing ideas, but shared values that guide how Denver moves forward. Thank you, madam president. Thank you.

Councilwoman Parody?

Yeah. Thank you, madam president. So I really think that we made a mistake when we allowed flock to expand in the city without our oversight. And I think the people in the city agree with that, and we really need to not make that mistake twice. The problem here is that Axon's technologies are significantly different from FLoC's.

And we are doing our best to understand how this vendor, which has this focus on vertical integration as opposed to a horizontal nationwide network, which is what FLOC was, how that vendor needs to be regulated. The contract in front of us, like I said, addresses the mistakes we made with FLOC. It talks about interdisciplinary sharing. It talks about data privacy, but it leaves unaddressed the very new and different issues with Axon, which is the vendor that it's that this contract is with. And this is going to keep happening if we keep considering surveillance technology contract by contract without a regulatory framework.

I agree with council member Hines. We're the legislative branch. We need to do that, and I will work on that regardless. But if we keep an authorizing the technologies before that process is done, we are creating the continued risk of of problems. And more specifically so to councilmember Flynn's question, it is true that Axon, as I understand it, right, and this is all getting information and understanding information about these topics is challenging.

Like, it takes us time. But my understanding is that it's true that Axon keeps its data segregated for the LPRs versus other things. But but what I don't understand very well is how are they their FUSIS center brings together the different streams of surveillance data that we have from throughout the city, which there are a number of, and layers them to what it says on the website is Axon FUSIS. FUSIS brings live video and plate reads from Axon Outpost ALPR cameras, which is what we're contracting for if we vote this through, together with other sensors and data, not sure what those are, to provide unified real time insights enabling agencies to solve crimes involving vehicles faster. We don't know what that is.

And, specifically, we we do know that these cameras have live streaming live streaming cape capability. We have been told that we're not we don't need to be concerned about that because they're limited sort of by their battery power, but FLoC replaced their cameras with better models constantly. We wouldn't even know when they were doing that. They would come in you know, once they're permitted, they have the ability to do that. I know that Axon is working to make their cameras have longer power over time and and will do that.

In 2022, nine out of 12 members of Axon's AI ethics board resigned because they had raised concerns with the company about developing surveillance technology that had those real time streaming capabilities. And in their statement from four years ago, they said, for years, the board has warned Axon against the use of real time persistent surveillance in its products, but Axon has proposed a degree of surveillance that is sweeping. This type of surveillance undoubtedly will harm communities of color, others who are overpoliced. At this point, that's all of us and likely well beyond that. So that's not something that the flock cameras could do.

And in addition to that, it was news to me to understand that DPD also can access traffic cameras for live streaming. I've been telling people that traffic cameras couldn't be used in that way. I had no idea. We also have, I think, under 300, but hundreds of Halo cameras that have video feed capability. I still don't have a great understanding of how if we are buying into Axon's algorithm that has the ability to read plates, recognize vehicles, they have worked on facial recognition and tested it in other jurisdictions.

In Colorado, that's regulated, although not banned at the state level. We don't have a city level ban on facial recognition. And then it's not just you can recognize a person not just by their face. You can recognize a person by clothing, by their look, and other things like that. These algorithms are learning to do all of that. And if we are purchasing access to this algorithm, we're also purchasing this FUSE software that is supposed to bring together all these feeds of data. I just don't think we have our arms around the implications of that. In addition to that, the changes to the contractual provisions that say that no new features will be added about the city's consent, that does not include us. That doesn't include the public. That addresses the city attorney's office, DPD, the mayor's office.

And so I I'm just not able to take on trust that the mayor's office and DPD and everyone else will meaningfully collaborate with counsel and the public because we have had those flock cameras on on the state network that included thousands and thousands of users and with three federal agents with logins who report to Kash Patel all the way until last October after we had raised these concerns. And so I I cannot proceed on trust here. I wish that I could. And so they are the decision maker makers under the contract. And even the revised DPD policy, which has not gone through full independent monitor review that's required by our ordinances, it says the city council will be notified of any material changes, not you know, notified is different than what we would be looking at in an ordinance.

Other cities have ordinances that require a really large level of transparency about this kind of technology at the front end that if applied to a contract like this would help us understand all of these outstanding outstanding questions about how the data is being stacked. Axon has been very open and assertive in the marketplace about that vertical integration is its thing and that what it is trying to do is stack different forms of surveillance together to be able to track people, videos, predict patterns, do predictive policing, all of that stuff. And for us to add more of their technologies to the city without a regulatory framework, I just think is an abdication of our responsibilities. You know, there's examples. FUSES did a training for the Atlanta Police Department demonstrating how police could set up an alert to look across the city for someone wearing a specific color of clothing or holding a bag.

Those are things that flock flock's algorithm could do. I don't I don't have any understanding of whether the search terms within Axon's ALPR system are strictly limited to flights and vehicles or whether they include other kinds of objects and things as FLoCKS did. And then I also want to kind of point out that some of the other the integrations that Axon has available, even if we're not buying them, yes, the Ring integration, the Aura integration, the Citizen integration, which is Aura is, like, retail cameras. All of those are things where, right now, the idea is that the people and entities that buy those products can choose to upload their data. But what that enables is for for people to police their neighbors.

A lot of the private cameras in the city are pointed at people's homes. They're not heavily regulated. And so the product having that integration is a problem. If you are someone who thinks that your neighbors might be interested in policing you or might be suspicious of you for reasons that have nothing to do with who you are or what you're actually doing, you should be very concerned about these integrations. They also have a an integration with sound thinking, which is audio detection similar to ShotSpotter.

Audio detection is another area of concern. Are we going to work on recognizing voices? So even though we're not purchasing those integrations right now, d b d and the executive branch under this contract are the decision maker in the future. Counsel and the public do not formally have a role. I appreciate the statements from mister Hoffman, but it's a lot riding on that sort of promise. I just think that we need to legislate. And then finally, in terms of data sharing, the main thing I wanna point out is that everybody agrees that this company will comply with subpoenas, and it it has to. It doesn't have a choice about that. If we create data, we are at real risk of creating data that does get subpoenaed, say, by a jurisdiction in Texas. Because in Texas, it is illegal for women to access reproductive health care.

It is illegal for them to travel across state lines to do that. And so it is only a matter of time until Texas has been sending subpoenas to Axon, preferably legal subpoenas, asking for any footage of of certain plates that they know have come to Colorado for health care. Huge numbers of women are coming from Texas and other jurisdictions for health care. And in those states, that is legal. So we are creating that risk by creating the data.

Another example of that is that the police administration complied with several federal subpoenas that that were really fishing for information to break apart families of unaccompanied minors. So kids who had come across the border alone and been reunified with family or friends in The United States. They were framed as subpoenas that were about, like, safety and welfare checks. Data was sent to the federal administration, and then a whistleblower within the police administration figured out what they were actually going for and that it had been a violation of state law to comply, but not before that data went out. So, again, we're creating data.

We have to recognize that the legal system is being used to get access to all of these things, in some cases perfectly legally because federal law and the law of many other states is not aligned with Denver law or Colorado law. There was a West westward op ed from representative Javier Mabry that I thought got at this really beautifully today, and I hope that you all saw that. And then finally, we've gotten slightly different answers about data sharing with other jurisdictions. The revised operations manual language would allow that, and we've heard repeatedly from Axon representatives that as of today, they don't have the ability to just sort of push a button and say, okay. Denver is now sharing all of its plate data with Castle Rock or whatever it might be, but that they are working on developing that.

And even from the mayor's original statement about this contract, I believe that the intention of the police department and the administration is to go back to that kind of automated data sharing with other jurisdictions, which then again just weakens our control over the data. And even if we're being more thoughtful about who we share that with, that's again a decision that council is letting out of its hands if we vote through this contract tonight without legislating first. You know, another recommendation from Axon's own AI ethics board said Axon should work with partner agencies to determine the shortest possible retention period for ALPR data that will serve law enforcement needs sufficiently and set that as its default on its ALPRs. Axon didn't take that that retention period. The twenty one day policy that we're adopting, although it's less than thirty days, is highly anecdotal, and it's not based on this this kind of analysis that this ethics board recommended to the company.

So I think our fundamental mistake here is in continuing to add more surveillance technology to the city before we regulate it. And to councilmember Alvidrez's question, I think we're we know how long legislative processes take around here, but we are on the cusp of being able to actually undergo that kind of process and talk about a real policy. And I think we should do that, and I think we should essentially not let through any further surveillance technology until we have done that. Thank you, madam president. We have

one minute till public comment, so we'll have to stop the queue and go to public comment and then start. Council secretary, do you have the queue as it is so that we can go to council McGilmer, Cashman, Flynn, and then Lewis, and every anyone after Lewis can be added? I do. Okay. Perfect.

Thank you. If there are no objections from members of council, we will be starting from you again, and thank you all for attending. Council will now reconvene from our earlier session. We will continue with consideration of council resolution zero two four six, approving a proposed agreement between the city and county Denver and Axon Enterprise Inc to provide an automatic license plate license plate recognition system that includes 50 cameras and the necessary hardware. Next in the queue for council member comment is council member Gilmer, followed by Cashman, Flynn, Lewis, and then Torres.

Council member Gilmer? Thank you. Your governance means

good faith working relationships. That hasn't happened. The facts are that mayor Johnston did what he wanted, and he skipped over counsel with flock. That misstep did not go away. So now he's throwing counsel a crumb with this a $150,000 Axon contract.

Like, we're inept in creating laws to protect people's constitutional rights. I hope that this council can believe you, Tim, but the mayor can just skip over council again and then say, see, council won't act. And now the mayor, being paternalistic, is forced to act to protect everybody. This is not going to go away. Council has created not one law, not one protection beyond this contract to create guardrails and not allow the Department of Safety, the Denver Police Department, or state state or federal law enforcement to have unfettered access.

There's not one protection for the vulnerable people that live in our city and depend on us to craft laws to protect them. Intersection by a park that's part of a place network investigation in our city, immigrants, and refugees. On Saturday, I spent a couple of hours at the My City Academy in the Green Valley Ranch Library. It was full of immigrants and refugees who wanna learn how our city operates. I asked them informally, how many of you are worried about mass surveillance cameras cameras in our city?

A gun will raise like this because they did not even feel safe enough to raise their hand all the way up. Trans people, people seeking medical care. Mayor Johnston was so ready to praise the technology for helping solve a dear friend's murder, Jack Scratten, that he didn't even understand how it works. Then by all means, this council must create the laws necessary for transparency and safety. We should not just believe and trust the Denver Police Department.

I cannot believe them because power concedes nothing without pressure, and we, this body, are the lawmakers. And we need the time to craft the appropriate laws to protect our community members. I'm a no on this tonight. I'm ready to help craft law where we need it, but there were a couple of things that were said tonight on the record that are so out there that I just have to call us back in. I know you're sneaking off of your prepared notes, but, Tim, when you said that there is billions of years of encryption, I just have to say, come on. Come on. How

do you

even quantify that? That's some Axon in their little office throwing that out there. You said militarized. Militarized. None of these people in this room need to have militarized equipment to craft how we behave. Mhmm. Ring camera footage. A lot of people, myself scrubbed the line line to to find that footage. No. They didn't.

She didn't even have a contract with Ring, but they still had that data. After nine months of her not having an active contract, they still were able to find that data by scrubbing. What they did was they went to a data server. They went and got the information. We don't know how much information.

They have in files for all of us. There is no way we can trust this mayor, the police department, or this council if we don't craft a law that enforces people's constitutional rights? I will be a no tonight, and I ask my colleagues to do the same and then work together to craft legislation so we can protect these grown people's lives so that when they're going for a job, their employer has some background reference software that all of a sudden Axon has figured out how to quantify that data once again, and they're questioned about actions that they might have taken years ago. We don't even know, but it could be billions of years of encryption.

Or can we

actually vote no on this tonight and do our job and craft laws? Thank you.

Thank you, madam president. Truth is I've been a supporter of Denver Police Department, consistent supporter for my eleven years. On city council, I've supported every budget request that's come before me. I've, directed additional money from the annual district six budget for a variety of projects, assisting, DPD district three, which covers my council district. I've sponsored proclamations put forth by Denver Police Museum to honor lost officers.

I've partnered collegially with chief Thomas on safety relief related policy. I recognize that maintaining public safety is perhaps the primary responsibility of any elected official. Capturing criminals, the number one stated goal of automatic automated license plate readers, only goes so far in reducing crime. As long as there's a virtually endless stream of individuals who see their only choice of getting their ends met by breaking is by breaking established laws. Putting one person in jail has a minimal effect on reducing crime.

I believe the most important and effective way to make our communities more safe is to finally address the root causes of crime, to belatedly begin directing appropriate amounts of funding to public health modalities that when ignored, direct that continuing stream of individuals into the community unprepared to lawfully get their needs met and their dreams realized. We are dangerously underfunding after school programs. Child care is nowhere near what could be called affordable for a majority of Denver families, mental health care, drug treatment beds, affordable attainable housing just for a start. And chronic poverty is a whole other problem that must be addressed. What do you think think America's founders would have said if they were told, yep, you're free from the king and queen, but we're building this system where we're gonna know where all you folks are and where you've been at all times?

The possible misuse problem of this system cannot be ignored. Flock, ring, axon may be separated, by technicalities at present time. But if they are, they're only a few clicks away from being one giant surveillance system that if it doesn't terrify us, I wonder why. We have citizens right now. I have friends who are American citizens, not waiting for their citizenship to be adjudicated, but American citizens who are afraid to travel right now because of the abuses being perpetrated traded by the administration in in in right

now.

And and finally, to put this contract forth before the surveillance task force charged with considering the topic, has had time to craft an ordinance makes absolutely no sense. I we just spoke in committee today, my good friend, councilman Watson, and I about a moratorium to hold off on building data centers and the critical formation of the task force that's going to look at the policy to address that issue. I will be woefully, disappointed if any kind of outcome such as this, happens to take place. Finally, fifty fifty cameras is is the beginning. It is not the end goal.

If this contract is approved, I don't know how many the total will be. It was a 111 with flock. I would see no reason if this council does approve this ordinance that it wouldn't just be a continuing series of add ons until they reach the full network they feel necessary. Now I believe that these cameras provide a tool to aid law enforcement in their work. I just think the potential dangers of the surveillance system that we're inches away from on a nationwide basis that could be easily misused outweighs the current request.

So I will be a no tonight.

Alright. Second, council member Flynn.

Thank you, madam president. Around October or November, there

was

a story here regarding the flock system that made not just local or national, but international news. And that was when a woman driving through the town of Bomar was approached by a police sergeant and falsely accused, not while she was driving through, but at her home. But they had identified her truck as going through Bomar at the time that a porch pirate stole some packages from the porch, and she was falsely accused of being that person. And it made international news because she eventually had fortunately, she had a vehicle that had a video in it and she could prove where she was and what she did and that she did not stop at this house, but she had to prove herself innocent. And that woman is a constituent of mine.

And in fact, I spoke with her before I made the papers, and I spoke with her since then several times. I spoke with her again last week, and she supports this contract. She supports this contract because she believes that it is a legitimate law enforcement tool, as we heard last week from some of the folks testifying, when the officers are properly trained and when there are guard guardrails around it. And so with that, I want to basically state my view that we have the guardrails around this. So much of the opposition that I've received from in the last couple of weeks in email, a couple of phone calls are based on concerns about what the flock system the abuses and misuse under the flock system that was allowed.

We took those experiences, and I don't believe that the folks who've been emailing us are aware of the contents of this contract and how it has no national network. Axon has 2,200 plus clients using ALPRs nationwide. Not a single one is connected to any of the others. Let me address some of the points that came up in questioning and in comments so far. People who have Ring cameras at their house cannot share them with DPD on their own.

The only way a Ring video is shared with DPD is if a crime occurs nearby and Denver police identify there's a house across the street that has a ring camera. We're gonna knock on their door and see if they're willing to share that video with them. And if they are, the investigator on that case sends that homeowner an email with a link for them to use to upload that video. I know that's how it happened because I did that. I don't have a ring camera, but I have a camera on my front porch.

And my across the street neighbor's work truck was broken into and his tools were stolen one night. And a a police detective knocked on my door and asked me if I picked up any of that video, and if I did, would I be willing to share it with her? And so I looked, and, yes, there was video footage of it. And I got a link from her, and I sent her the the clip of that video. I cannot, on my own, unsolicited, send a Ring camera video to DPD and report on my neighbors that I don't like.

That's not a crime. So let let's let's dispense with that. As far as security of the data, we own the data. Axon doesn't own the data. We own it, and it is within evidence.com.

We control everything in evidence.com. There is so much other material that's in there, never been hacked, never been leaked, and none of those other 2,200 systems has ever been hacked. But with that level of encryption, I don't know if it's a billion years or a trillion years, but that's all beyond me anyway, but I do know that you can't read the data without the platform to read it. It would it wouldn't look like a car. The the contract prohibits pooled and shared data sets.

The control lies entirely with Denver. We don't have facial recognition. As a policy, the city does not use it. We have neither the hardware nor the software to use facial recognition. And beyond that, the Axon ALPR system doesn't take pictures of faces. It takes pictures of cars. It doesn't take pictures of people walking down the street. I believe the testimony we had in in committee was that it's activated by by heat signatures. And a person walking down the street, 98.6, it just simply isn't enough. Pictures of cars.

We don't do facial recognition. The twenty one day data retention, which is less than the current the old contract of thirty days, makes it very unlikely that any subpoena would be successful for our data, especially at the federal level, because it takes longer than that to put a case together and to issue us a subpoena for anything. So I'm I'm not as concerned about that. The folks in this room, members of the council, the folks sitting here, folks may be watching on channel eight, if you drive by if this contract passes and we put up these 50 cameras at, I think, 17 locations and you drive by and a picture of your car is in it, you will not be looked at. No one's looking at it.

The only reason it's accessed is if your vehicle you call in and say, hey, my car was stolen. Here's the license plate. Can you look up to see if you found it on the system? Then they look at it. But they're not sitting up there just looking at people going back and forth.

Like, are you under surveillance if no one's looking at you? What we have is a passive repository of images that can be accessed when there is a criminal incident. So if I have one, and I hope I do if it passes, at Federal And Evans or Federal And Jewell right up the street, both of them high accident locations where a number of pedestrians have been killed and hit and run crashes, and the driver takes off. So if I have a camera there and somebody gets hit or a car gets hit and the one vehicle drives off and a witness tells DPD it was a red Nissan. Okay.

I might drive by there later in my my Chevy. Someone else might drive by in a white Hyundai or a blue Ford f one fifty. No one's looking at those. The investigating officer goes into the goes into the dataset. He says, show me red Nissans at Federal And Evans or Federal And Jewel. And if one went by, they said, oh, okay. There it is. That might be it. What happens without the camera is I tell the officer, a red Nissan hit that young person who was just killed. And what the investigating officer then has to do is go to the Colorado DMV database and start trolling through it for all the red Nissans registered in the state.

So it makes investigating crimes and incidents like this significantly harder. I believe that we have the guardrails in place to support the privacy of the folks. Like I said, every any of you leave here and you drive by a camera, no one's looking at you unless your car gets stolen or it's reported in some kind of a criminal incident. 2,000,000 photos, maybe 10,000 are looked at in the course of of an investigation. So are you under surveillance if no one's looking at you and there's no reason to look at you?

I have very little concern about breaches. From my understanding of all of our presentations and all the testimony, to hack into the evidence.com database when it's not connected and it's not part of a network would be like like trying to hack into an AARP flip to phone, right, that has no that doesn't have Internet access at all. And so I believe it's essential that we keep a system like this in operation. And I, again, repeat what I said during the questioning period that there will be an ordinance coming forward at some point. But I think it's appropriate to do the contract ahead because, again, I believe the contract has stronger safeguards and recourse than an ordinance will have with high level policy.

The contract has the most controls. And with those controls that are written in this contract, I'm very comfortable with it. So thank you, madam madam president. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Next up, we have councilwoman Lewis.

Alright. Thank you so much, and I hope my connection is a little bit better now.

It is. Thank you.

Uh-huh. Of course. I wanted to start out with thanking everyone who came out last week to give testimony as well as those that came tonight to give testimony. I'm a no on this item, and I'm a no on this item for several reasons. The first reason is that I'm not comfortable with approving this kind of technology offered by this contractor in this current political moment.

Exxon has open ties to DHS and other federal agencies. They are a multi million dollar company that has a variety of commitments. It is made to various institutions that may be in conflict with one another. I asked when this item came to committee if they wanted to offer any thoughts on the current political moment and was flatly told that they would provide a statement. Last week, I asked for the response to be read at counsel, and it was.

And I will paraphrase, the response says that Axon takes no stance on things it is asked to do and simply does them. This contractor is stepping into a charged political environment and would become an actor in that environment if we approve this contract tonight. I think at minimum it requires some kind of acknowledgment that they are in fact a part of this moment and to receive a response that advocates responsibility for the consequences of winning this contract is unacceptable to me. The second major reason is that this kind of technology is invasive, disproportionate to the efficacy it provides. The mayor's office and the Denver Police Department have done an excellent job of reducing car thefts in the city over the past few years.

However, less than 4% of all of the stolen cars received in Denver are attributed to the ALPR systems according to DPD's own estimates. The invasiveness of this technology is made even worse when it comes to the accuracy of the information it collects. Plates capture rate is 89% and the accuracy rate, read rate of those plates is reported at 96%. That means that we are misidentifying hundreds of thousands of plates, which in turn raises the risk of innocent people being caught up in the system, and we've seen that. Misidentification aside, all of the data collected by the reader will sit in a database that Denver does not own.

This data will supposedly be deleted after twenty one days, but that will live in policy and is not a requirement under the contract. Having seen other examples that live in policy and not an ordinance, charter, or contract, I'm skeptical that this would receive noted that we will receive notice if the policy were to change subtly. I do not support something as as important as the record keeping requirements to live outside of the contract here. I'm not opposed to the use of red light cameras and other uses of technologies. In fact, in 2024, I co sponsored a budget proposal to increase red light camera systems in the city.

However, this kind of system where the city does not own the data bills database and the technology is automated without oversight, I can simply not support. Finally, I'm not comfortable with this contract because by choosing this contractor, we will be path committed to the technology platform that they will provide. There are a number of programs and platforms that the contractor is offering, and I fear that by entangling ourselves with this initial contract, the more we will feel it is appropriate to commit to a suite of other similarly invasive technologies all built from this starting point. I cannot sanction this, and I would prefer not to open the door here tonight. If my comments here tonight are unclear, I'm not a fan of this kind of technology.

However, if the city is absolutely dead set on pursuing this kind of policy, I would highly encourage the proponents of that system ensure that it is the city of Denver itself who owns, operates the cameras. Additionally, it should be the city itself that stores and keeps records for the ALPR system in centralized storage that the city owns. For that reason for those reasons above, I am a no. Thank you so much for the time.

Thank you. Councilman Claire or no. Councilman Claire? Sorry about that. You're good.

Thank you. Me? Yep. Okay. Thank you so much. I'll also be a no tonight. There's a there's a saying. Everyone's probably heard it. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. My district is heavily Latino, immigrant, and allies. It only takes one time for a vendor to lie to us, for us to lose trust. That has happened. So more follow-up to be done, and this isn't at that level yet. Of of we're used to seeing contracts come through after a full RFP.

That didn't happen either time. We're used to seeing or being able to point to what are the regulations about this then if questions aren't fully answered in a contract. What are penalties? One of the things that I think is weakest for me is it's a pretty light financial burden. A $150,000, is not a ton of money.

Having a vendor come back and say, your data was accessed. Tons of people are being information is being shared in a way that we didn't intend. That's irreconcilable for folks if that happens down the line. And that is a much bigger cost, I think, for us if we don't know what penalties additional to ending a contract could potentially be to a vendor who lies to us. And so I do feel like there are more things that my colleagues, members of this surveillance team, or task force have mentioned.

I was also hoping that that team was gonna be more of a sounding board for future policy that we clearly need than it has been so far. So I'm willing to wait for that. I'm not a forever no. I I realize I carry around a tracking device everywhere I go, that I have Ring cameras that we use heavily. There are a lot of ways that I interact with technology, but we're here to talk about putting them throughout our city in ways that most residents may not even realize that they're there.

So I do feel like our our burden of responsibility is higher. I'll also say that we successfully added a $3,000,000 obligation to a community led safety grant program. Now that's not using city general fund dollars. It's using funding that we got from the Bronco sale. But that's to do exactly what my community wants us to put more money into instead of policing or policing tools is working with community on how do you want to address community safety and how can we get there.

Coincidentally, we need a $100,000 to get a third party vendor on board. So if this does not pass, Tim, I may come knocking on your door for this money. But but all joking aside, these are all things. Like, all tools are needed. Right? The community of a place where they can request better lighting, event activation in their community, daylighting intersections so that people feel safer crossing the street. There are a variety of ways that we can make our neighborhoods, feel and be safer. This may be another one, and I'm willing to consider that at another time. But tonight, it just doesn't have my support. Thank you, madam president. Thank you.

Councilwoman Slayer.

Thank you, madam president. This is a really tough one, I think, because everyone here is right. Right? This is like, the reality of this situation is everyone here is right. Everyone is who has concerns about privacy, they're right.

Everyone who has concerns about community safety and wants to use this as a tool with safeguards for to fill the gap between the number of police officers we have and the number of police officers we would need should we not use this technology. That's that's right. Everything about this balance is it's fair. And that, I think, is what makes this such a hard conversation and such a hard decision. I am a yes tonight.

I am very supportive of this technology. I think that it is it is very well this is a very well written contract. I appreciate the work that all of the council members have done to push the mayor's office, to ask the questions, to reach out to DPD, to insist on all of the things that need to be buttoned up, And I I appreciate that. Thank you guys so much for, you know, for sticking with that. I also think that now the contract that we have sitting in front of us is buttoned up.

This is the best contract I have ever seen in seven years here in terms of balancing the need for privacy and the need for community safety, which is why I'll be supporting it. 2022, there was a biker that was killed in what was then District 5. I lost East Colfax in redistricting in 2023, but at the time, it was my district. It was incredibly sad, and it remains unsolved to this day. And truly, if we had had the ability to be able to read license plates and look at the description of the car, because we have the description of the car and potentially have seen where it went, it might be solved instead of having a situation where we have an entire family grieving with no closure because this continues to be a hit and run death of a biker in my district.

And so as I sit here and I listen to everyone who has really good points and truly agree with all of them. I think my goal and the goal that my residents have asked me as their elected official to come to is to say, we need a balance between privacy, between and between safety. And I think that with this contract, which is a year long, only one year, that it reaches that right balance and gives us the time to be able to write that ordinance that I have been asking for for a year. I'm really looking forward to it. And to have a more in-depth conversation so that the next time a contract comes, we have the safeguards in place in terms of the legislative piece as well.

Legislation takes time. I want it to be right now too. But, you know, I've been working on legislation for two and a half years, and it is what it is. Right? We are short staffed. That's really frustrating, but it is what it is. So no judgment on the fact that we don't have an ordinance yet. I really want one. But I get why we don't have one. So in the meantime, what we have in front of us here is a contract.

I can tell you you guys hear me say this all the time, council members. I can tell you with 95% confidence and a 2.4 margin of error exactly what the residents of District 5 think about community safety. It it is their number one priority, and it has been since 2020. And I know that because I go out and I ask them every year. And every year, it comes back with that same data for us.

So I will be a yes tonight because I know that while not all of the residents of District 5 want this, the majority do. And I believe that this is this contract in front of us and the guardrails that are written into this contract in front of us are safeguards that are appropriate, and they're going to meet the needs of our residents in terms of that balance I was talking about for the next year while we get this ordinance written. Thank you. Thank you.

Council member Watson? Councilwoman Gonzales Gutierrez. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. It was. It was fine. It was in three. Chance. Yeah. Go ahead.

Thank you, madam president. You know, I wanna start by being very clear. Surveillance has been weaponized against vulnerable and disenfranchised communities for generations. My ancestors, elders were subject were subjected to undue surveillance, and this is just a new iteration of their experience. I do not support mass surveillance, especially in these times with our current federal government government, not because I don't care about safety, but because I care deeply about the kind of city we're trying to build.

I've been a part of the surveillance task force because I realize and I know that this isn't gonna just go away. Just because I may not agree with mass surveillance doesn't mean that there should be there shouldn't be any guardrails implemented. And so I am committed to that, just as councilman Parady, mentioned as well. Councilman Sawyer, I appreciate, that you understand where we're coming from, as far as trying to get legislation through. And as you know, sometimes it is a it's a slow slow haul in these walls here.

What troubles me the most right now is not just the technology in front of us, but the pace and process that we have endured to decide on this contract tonight. As serving on the surveillance task force, I've said this a couple of times, I was led to believe that we were crafting policy, real policy that would guide how surveillance technology is used to ultimately be implemented into municipal code. Instead, as members of the task force, we found ourselves reacting, reacting to contracts, reacting to timelines, reacting to decisions that feel like they're already halfway made. And although the various concerns and feedback has been taken from those conversations, which I greatly appreciate, and information has been collected from task force members and applied to this contract and to the DPD operating manual policies, which still have to be reviewed by the independent monitor. And I know you have a a pretty big workload and and not a lot of support there, we still fallen short of incorporating the guardrails and ordinance.

To all of the surveillance task force members that have devoted hours upon hours of time and shared your expertise and your knowledge, I thank you, and I look forward to our continued collaboration on the task force. I also do wanna thank the mayor's office for following up on the questions that I've had specific to this contract.

Tonight, I will be voting

no on the ax Axon contract because we are not ready, and we do not yet have the ordinance in place that define how technology like this should be used or how we prevent misuse. The misuse of this kind of technology is not theoretical. It is a it is known that Axon contracts with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, just as we stated concerns with our previous vendor, Flock, having connections with border patrol and also the Department of Homeland Security. We say proudly that we are a city that welcomes immigrants. Right? We've been saying that since mayor Michael Hancock was here. Right? We proclaimed it.

It is

known that acts on con I'm sorry. I lost my place. That we stand we stand with our neighbors regardless of where they come from. But those values are tested in moments like this because we cannot, on one hand, declare ourselves a safe and welcoming place for immigrants, and on the other hand, partnerships with companies that actively use their technology to detain and deport immigrants. That contradiction matters. This is not just about a contract. It is about alignment. It is about whether our actions as a city reflect our values that we say that we have. So let's slow down. Let's do this right.

Let's build actual policy guardrails first and only then decide what tools, if any, belong here in Denver. I thank everyone that has been a part of these processes. And, I wanna just state that I respect I have heard what you have said and and and that the fact that we will continue collaboration, I will expect that. You will expect it from me as well. Thank you, madam president.

I wanna thank the members of the task force and the almost years work of engagement and work that they have done. I wanna thank the council members that are currently on the task force and their engagement with community as well as with the administration. Thank you to the administration for your due diligence in listening and ensuring that the outcomes from this contract included the voices of community. I'll be voting yes on this contract tonight for two reasons. Number one, when we set up a task force to identify really

what

are the options, what are the steps we need to ensure that we're looking at the safety of our community while protecting privacy, and the task force provides us with those clear directives, that clear information, I think is the opportunity for us as we're looking at a year long contract that we actually take their input, we apply it to the contract that's before us, and then we ensure that we execute based on that will. We've had lots of input from the task force. We've had lots of discussions here with the Denver City Council. The safeguards are in place from the feedback we received from the task force. We will own the data from this contract.

It's not owned by anyone else. There are protections to ensure that this cannot be shared beyond the city and county of Denver, and there are strong protections to make sure that if there's any changes when it comes to the technology increases, that we have steps to make sure we're informed. It's not a perfect contract. It's a $150,000 contract for one year. I believe the task force and the members of Denver City Council do need to do an ordinance, and I look forward to working and collaborating with folks on making sure there's an ordinance.

As my good friend, councilman Cashman, I stated, we are looking at a process with a working group task force, whatever we wanna call it, for another targeted technology on data centers. We are from day one making it clear that we are going to do an ordinance from that process. We believe that we need to move forward to make sure that the city isn't pausing the steps we have for existing data centers while we're looking at what we need to do to improve the health and protections of communities where these data centers are could be built if the work goes through. The work of the task force is respected. I respect that work.

I respect the feedback that was given to city council and to the mayor's office. I respect the contractual process that incorporated those steps. And for those reasons, I'll be a yes tonight.

Thank you, councilor.

Thank you, council president.

Councilwoman Navedroz.

Thank you, council president. This is a really tough decision for me and not one that I've taken lightly. I have spent the majority of my weekend, the majority of the last year talking to people from former mayors, to neighbors, to r and o presidents, to experts in the field. And this is one of those moments where we're balancing two very real responsibilities, public safety and civil liberties. And I wanna be clear.

I've just I've been reading and talking to so many people on both sides of this issue, and it's disappointing that we've had the last year to craft legislation and still not been able to do so and don't know when it will be done. I've heard concerns from community, concerns about surveillance, about data collection, about how systems like this can evolve over time. Those concerns are valid and deserve to be taken seriously, and I take them seriously. At the same time, I've also heard from residents who want us to have every tool available to solve crimes. I have heard from constituents who have where near where the one camera in District 7 would be.

I've talked to that r n o president, leaders in the Asian community around Alameda and federal that are very concerned about unresolved crimes and hate crimes that they have experienced, especially since an uptick since COVID with a high Asian population in my district. I talk to immigrants who also want to feel safe and want to have a sense of privacy as well. And we do have this continued risk of potential problems, and we also have the continued risk of having more crimes that are not solved. And once crimes stop being solved, they will increase. We also have a bunch of halo cameras that don't have the ability to be searched like these, but that are out there all over the city, surveilling community.

And we know that in Denver, this technology has played a role in solving some serious cases, everything from homicide, human trafficking, and sex assault, and that does matter. So I asked myself what is actually in front of us today. First, this proposal represents a significant scale back of where we've been over the last year, going from over a 100 cameras to fewer than half that number. Second, this is one year, and I appreciate that because one year or before that, if we find out that ICE is access accessing these cameras or we do start to see subpoenas that we haven't seen, we can address those things between now and then. And so I am going to be voting yes on this contract.

It does not prevent us from creating an ordinance. In fact, I'm committed to working on that ordinance. We have been existing with ALPRs for the last several years without an ordinance. And while these contracts can set expectations, we do need to create laws, and I stand by that and I'm committed to working on that. And we still need guardrails around how this data is used, how long it can be kept.

Although the contract does address these things, these shouldn't be things that we're negotiating per contract. And I also wanna address accountability because that's a major concern. We received a letter from the district attorney that is important here. It makes clear that any improper or illegal use of this data can and will result in criminal investigation and charges. That commitment was important to me.

Officers are required to document case number and a legitimate purpose before doing these searches, and any falsification or misuse can lead to serious consequences by Brady implications, loss of ability to testify, and even loss of post certification. In other words, misuse of the system isn't just a policy violation. It can be prosecuted, and that matters. I also wanna address concerns about data and federal access. The data system is encrypted and controlled by the city in of Denver.

And while oxen Axon does have a contract with home security homeland security, it's for body worn cameras and tasers. We want ICE to have body worn cameras and tasers. We don't want them to not have body worn cameras and have just guns. It's also important to clarify that the past concerns around ICE came through the flock system using other jurisdictions, directly shared from Denver, and that distinction also matters. I also want to be clear.

The system commitment is that this system will not expand without coming back to counsel, and that is something that I will continue to communicate with the administration about, and we will be revisiting in a year. If we start to like I said, if we start to see subpoenas or other concerns come up, then I'm happy to address those, but I'm not going to not use this technology because maybe that might happen. Finally, I want to speak to something that weighs on me. There are real cases like hate crimes where tools can help find the people responsible. That matters for justice, that matters for victims, and that matters for equity.

Ensuring that we're finding the right individual, this technology can also be used to prove someone's innocence. It can also be used to catch government overreach. It can also be used to make sure that we are not prosecuting the wrong person because they happen to drive that car, but actually identifying that exact car. So I do have trepidation. I'm not a, oh, yes.

This is the best thing. I'm super happy about this at all. But I do not believe and I do not believe the system is perfect, and I do not believe the work is done. But I do believe that a scaled back, time limited approach paired with clear accountability and commitment to stronger policy gives us a path forward, a path where we can support public safety while continuing to build the protections our residents deserve. And I take that responsibility seriously, and I remain committed to the work that it's gonna take to get this to the point where it's right because it is not right today. Thank you. Thank you.

Council pro tem Romero Campbell.

Okay. Can you hear me okay?

Yeah.

Okay. Great. Thank you. So I just wanted to say I appreciate my council member colleagues comments and I think that that's the challenge of the conversation is that as council member Sawyer said, you know, multiple things can be true. I do really think the surveillance task force and thinking about what this looks like moving forward.

The work that has been happening, and I know everything has been, you know, I believe it was said, you know, just very reactionary. But the conversation to be able to get a better contract moving forward, something that is workable, something that is short term, something that is, really leaning on accountability. And I think that there are some measures within this contract that really speak to that, in this next year. I also agree that we do need an ordinance, committed to supporting that and working to move that forward. I've heard from constituents again who deeply feel who are for this and who are also against it.

And I think that that's the complexity of what is happening not only in my district but across the city. But I also know that in this time, we need to be able to have multiple things be true at once. And I think that this contract is something that we could definitely have for accountability to be able to move forward, to be able to work in this next year for an ordinance. And again, address safety and also have components in place that we know we need in the future. So for that, I'm going to be a yes tonight, but I do think that we need to have the continued conversation.

I think that the recommendations from the task force from the surveillance task force are going to be key in really helping to craft what an ordinance looks like for the city. So I will end my comments there, but thank you everyone for the time and the effort that you've put into this and for the thinking and the thoughtfulness for how we keep, you know, our entire city moving forward. Thank you.

Thank you. So most like my colleagues, I've sat with this all weekend. I'll just say on the record, I don't like the fact that this came to us. I don't appreciate it. I really don't. I've never voted on a contract for a $150,000. I think it sets a bad precedent. I think it makes us in the court a public opinion. I think anytime in the future, if I need something, am I gonna say, hey, mayor Hank mayor May Johnston, bring that to us? I think I'm gonna be told no.

I really am. I don't know any other time that this is something has that has come to us, and so I just have to go on the record and say, I'm so disappointed in this because a $150,000 contract we've had budget amendments for a $150,000 that we've had to work really, really, really hard on. And so I don't like that. Normally, I go to a couple people in my community who I talk about, and I called one of them last night, and I thought I would know her vote. And she said, Hita, I don't know what to type.

And I said, what do you mean you don't know what to tell me? And she said, I read the article from the mayors the three mayors, and I was going to lobby you for to vote no, and now I don't know what to do. And she said, I bet you don't know what to do. And I said, I do not know what to do. So I just sat with it like I normally do. And today, I got another an an email. I've gotten a lot of emails just to to be clear. I don't think one person who's sitting around this you has not received a lot of emails. We have gotten a lot of email traction on this ordinance. A lot.

And today, someone who I had worked with since working with council member Espinosa in 2015 and who when I ran, I went to her. She made a statement to me that she read my the Denver Post article where I was quoted about not trusting the current federal administration, which let me be very clear. I do not trust the person who occupies the way White House. House. And I use that word occupy because it feels like it's being occupied.

So I'm just gonna say that there. But she says, I do not believe that our city should be making decisions out of fear. We need to do what is in the best interest of our residents and our kids, which is to utilize current technology to reduce crime. So, again, here I am with somebody who I've literally gone to for ten years asking for advice. So I know obviously, I don't know if you all know how to vote count, but I do.

So I have a vote count sheet right here. I know that I'm the deciding vote, which, again, does not feel great. Just does not. So I'm gonna vote the way I'm gonna vote when I get to the voting. I'm not gonna say it right now because, honest to be honest with you, I need, like, one more minute to think about this because this is a really big deal.

Because yesterday, when I was talking to someone who was calling me in support of it, I said, it's also my job to protect immigrants. It's also my job to protect the trans community that one of my family members is part of, and it's also my job to protect the people who get hit. I have an unsolved case on 38th in Sheridan where we cannot find the person who hit unbucked bicyclist, and it's still unsolved. And I keep thinking to myself, if I had that automatic license plate reader right there, would I probably have solved this? Maybe.

So I just want you all to know that these jobs are not easy, and I just wanna thank every single one of my colleagues because everything you said was true. I have never agreed with every single one of you more than I have tonight. This is seriously one of the hardest decisions. I mean, I've made lots of hard decisions, and I can't remember making a harder one. For let me repeat, a $150,000. Normally, contracts come to us. There's a charter that says things come to us at half $1,000,000 or more. And so I feel like this should have been an administration, and we could've worked on the ordinance. And to the colleagues who are working on the ordinance, I know I've been bugging you about it. Thank you.

Sorry. I've been bugging you about it. I'm happy to work on that with you. I think we can hack craft something really great. So I'm gonna need one more minute to figure out if I'm a yay or a nay as the votes come through. I've never done that in my entire time of being here since 2019, so this is a rare event for me. Madam secretary, let me see. Is there any known last speakers? Madam secretary, roll call.

Council members Lewis? Nay.

Romero Gamble? Aye.

Albitres? Aye. Flynn? Aye. Gilmore? Aye. Gonzales Gutierrez? Nay. Heinz? Aye. Cashman?

Nay.

Parity? Nay. Sawyer? Aye. Torres? Nay. Watson? Aye. Madam president Sandoval?

Transputing says nay.

Aye. Madam secretary, close the voting and announce the results.

Seven ayes.

Seven aye. Have been adopted, and the bills have been paid on time of consideration. They do pass. On Monday, April 27, council will hold a required public hearing. Yes, ma'am. We didn't

we said it was one about the Oh.

Okay. Sorry about that. So I'm gonna go to the script. All bills for introduction are ordered published. Council members, remember that this is a consent or black vote, and you will need to vote aye. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call out an item for a separate vote. Council member Cashman, will you please put the resolution for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on the floor?

I thank you, madam president. I move that the resolutions be adopted and bills on final consideration be placed upon final consideration and do pass in a block for the following items, 26 dash three twenty, twenty six three twenty one, 26 dash three zero four, twenty six three zero five, twenty six three zero six, twenty six three zero seven, twenty six three ten, twenty six three eleven, twenty six three seventeen, twenty six three twenty two, twenty six three twenty four, twenty six three zero eight, twenty six three eighteen, twenty six three twenty three, twenty six one eighty six, twenty six three nineteen. Sorry. There we go. 26293, 26294, 295, 296, 29829930925934, 26292, and that's it.

Thank you. It has been moved and seconded. Madam secretary, roll call.

Councilmember, Senator Lewis.

Aye. Romero Gamble.

Aye. Alpides?

Aye. Flynn? Aye.

Gilmore? Aye.

Gonzales Gutierrez? Aye. Hines? Aye. Cashman? Aye.

Parity? Aye.

Sawyer? Aye. Torres? Aye. Watson? Aye. Madam president Sandoval?

Aye. Madam secretary, close the voting and announce the results.

13 ayes.

13 ayes. The resolutions have been adopted, and the bills have been placed upon consideration to pass. On Monday, 04/27/2026, council will hold a required public hearing on council bill zero two three zero, changing the zoning classification for 4211 North Hooker Street in Berkeley. Any protest against council bill zero two three zero must be filed with the council offices no later than noon on 04/20/2026. There's been no further vision before this body. This meeting is adjourned.