Finance & Services Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome back to this biweekly meeting of the Budget and Policy Committee of Denver City Council. Join us for the discussion as the Budget and Policy Committee starts now.

I think we're ready to get started. Hello everyone. Welcome to Budget and Policy. Today is July 27th and we're ready for the budget policy meeting. My name is Diana Romero Campbell and I am going to start introductions here to my right.

Good afternoon. Chris Hines, Denver's Perfect Ten.

Good afternoon everyone. Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver's District 2.

Jamie Torres, West Denver, District 3. Amanda Sandoval, Northwest Denver, District 1. Chantel Lewis, District 8.

Flora Alvarez, Lucky District 7.

Paul Cashman, South Denver, District 6.

Serena Gonzalez-Cucheras, one of your council members at large.

Darrell Watson, 5, District 9.

Great. And do we have any council members online? Okay. Thank you. We have one item today, Transportation Mobility Special Revenue Funds. I'm going to turn it over to the council members to... Present. Take it away when you're ready.

Thank you so much. So thank you for the opportunity for us to present on the Transportation and Mobility Special Revenue Fund reforms with Councilwoman Parity and Councilwoman Alvidrez. So quick background. on the TNM SRF formation and purpose. So the Transportation and Mobility Special Revenue Fund was created in 2021 by Denver City Council through a doubling of parking meter rates to invest the incremental revenue into pedestrian, bicycle transit, and Vision Zero safety improvements. The rate doubling generated about $15 million each year for a $1 increase in meter rates. Why, you might ask? because council during that time wanted to take action in service of safety, community, and our climate values. We were failing Vision Zero goals then and we are failing them now. These are investments continuously demanded by many community members and organizations and to meet our city's climate goals. We need more safe infrastructure so people feel safe moving around the city in these alternative modes. This SRF is the primary guaranteed funding source for those functions. And with that, I would turn it over to you, Councilwoman.

Thank you so much, Councilwoman Luz. I would just echo my colleagues' concerns. I think that we continuously are looking for funding sources with the city, and this was a source that was specifically supposed to be for these purposes. We think that has been stretched, and we're looking to make sure that we have the little money we have to invest in these programs, that we actually continue to have it. So I'll start with a quick background on the TNM SRF. formation purpose. The Transportation Mobility Special Revenue Fund was created in 2021 by...

It's the slide breakdown.

Sorry about that. The slide breakdown where the funds money comes in and where it currently goes. On the revenue slide, the fund pulled in 16.5 million in 2026. That's made up of 7.2 million from parking meter revenue, which is the original source that created the fund back in 2021. 5.5 million from enforcement fine revenue and 3.8 million roll forward from 2025, which includes speed camera revenue. On the uses slide, at the same 16.5 million is supposed to be split across four programmatic areas. mode shift and transportation mobility programs, things like multimodal investment, micro transit and bike share, safe routes to schools, covering education, cross guards and community engagement, vision zero safety, covering the speed program, safety software and education, and enforcement parking operations. Here's the problem. This graphic makes visible. Enforcement and parking operations alone now consume 8.4 million, way more than half the entire fund, only leaving 8.1 million to be split across the three safety and mobility programs the fund was actually created to pay for.

So the problem we're here today to solve is the drifting uses of this fund by the administration in recent years that cuts against the core goals which inform the SRF's creation. Some examples. So in 2024, 200K was spent out of the fund to remove, not add, Safe bike infrastructure downtown. In 2025, 100K was meant to replace a vetted safety design on Alameda Avenue after wealthy residents complained. And finally, in the 2026 budget, a collateral consequence of the budget crisis, 8.4 million of the fund was allocated to parking-related contracts, which is more than half the fund in the SRF. When we look at this pattern in conjunction with the overall cuts of DOTI's workforce and budget, we see public spending on the outlined priorities decreasing even as community demands have grown in the ensuing time. This indicates the need for Council to intervene and restore the fund to its intended usage.

Yes, and so what does the fix look like? This reform does four things. First, it aligns investments with our adopted plans. This is requiring that the dollars from this fund actually go towards implementing Vision Zero Action Plan, the Safe Routes to School Action Plan, and Denver Moves Bikes, Pedestrians, and Trails and Transit. Green infrastructure elements tied to those projects would also be allowed. Second, this is the core structural fix. We protect the fund right now. There's nothing stopping money from being swept out or redirected. This reform prohibits transfers to the general fund, requires the balance to roll over year to year instead of disappearing, and locks in a 50-50 split between capital and operational expenses. That balance matters. It means the fund can't be quietly hollowed out on one side. say all the capital and no operations or vice versa. The way we've seen happen with the current uncapped enforcement and parking spending. Third, we add community accountability. DOTI would be required to present their proposed use for the fund to the DOTI Advisory Board for review and approval every year. So there's a public check before the dollars get out the door. And fourth, we define clear allowable and non-allowable uses, which the next two slides will walk us through.

So on this slide, we've outlined a broad range of allowable uses of the SRF, and we've gotten specific to make it clear as possible to DOTI and the administration what council's intended uses are. We've divided up the eligible uses by capital side and operations expenses. Capital side includes protected bike lanes, bus, or accessibility lanes, forms of vertical traffic calming, self-enforcing interventions like bulb outs and below the curb bike scooter courthouse, bus stop infrastructure, transit speed improvements, and road diets. On the special provision, one special provision I want to speak to speaks to traffic signals because I know this is going to come up like the RRFB and the HAWC signals. The provision allows the use of these tools only when it is in conjunction with self-enforcing traffic calming infrastructure. The reason for this is twofold. First, the cost of these signals is very high and can run over $1 million per hour. $1 million each, and the high expense risk consuming the SRF funds by itself. And secondly, the safety effectiveness of these signals is reduced when not paired with other traffic calming measures. Still, these signals are frequently requested by communities, so we landed on this conditional allowance to balance these concerns, and we can talk about that more in turn.

Great. This slide is the flip side of the allowable uses. It clearly spells out what the fund can no longer pay for. That includes purchasing, installing, reconstruction or re-timing traffic control signals or similar equipment like pedestrian activated flashing beacons and hawk signals. It excludes routine street maintenance that isn't tied to mobility improvements, marketing or educational campaigns, and studies, designs, or engineering that aren't tied to an allowable capital project. It also excludes signage unrelated to allowable capital projects, police-based enforcement, and traffic modeling. Given what we just saw in the problem side, it explicitly prohibits using the fund to remove Vision Zero pedestrian bicycle or transit related infrastructure. That directly closes the loophole that let $200,000 be spent in 2024 to rip out safe bike infrastructure downtown and the $100,000 in 2025 to reverse a vetted safety design on Alameda.

So on the stakeholder side of this, this is a matter that transportation advocates have been sounding the alarm for for several years. And this bill reflects those community demands we've heard time and time again. Our staff and advocates have met with DOTI numerous times and those conversations have been productive. DOTI has been very open to requests for data and have been engaging in good faith about what the impacts of their agency would be if this proposed ordinance were enacted. The biggest flag we've heard in those conversations is the cost of the parking contracts. Council is broadly aware of this problem and included it in its 2026 budget letter to the administration, a recommendation to properly fund the city's parking programs. This ordinance does not dictate what mechanisms the administration chooses to cover those costs, but it does indicate clearly that the T&M SRF is an inappropriate source to utilize for that function. Having just secured draft language last week, we hope to meet with BMO and DOTI and get particular feedback on the language and work towards a productive landing spot to address these issues. A final open question for this conversation and for council is the feasibility of implementing this ordinance in the 2027 budget, which kicks off in September, as you all know. There's a strong preference to make this change immediately, but we want to hear from the administration and their perspectives on the timeline. And so with that, we are open for questions.

Great. Thank you. And I just want to clarify, we do have another presentation after this about low-level traffic stops with Councilman Cashman.

The queue is open.

Let's go ahead and start with Councilwoman Torres.

Thank you. Thanks ladies. Where would I find information about what the SRF currently, what's the language? Is it in code or is it in the budget book? Code. Code. What's the code number? Do you have that? Okay, one second. While they're getting that, I'd love to see... It looks like your edits in the language are just modifying one section of that. So you're not eliminating something. You're just adding language to it. To make it more specific.

I mean, we had had some discussions about... having allowable uses and non-allowable uses, but there's no precedence for that. And so we wanted to get more specific on the allowable uses so that there wasn't any discretion, if you will, about what one might interpret the uses to be. Okay.

The four areas feel like broad, right? Like are there, it doesn't seem like, can they create some justification for why their current uses fit within those four areas today? Or are you finding that they're super outside of those four areas? The current spending, the current spend. The four areas feel like they're very broad. As it's written now? Yeah. Well, I don't know how it's written now. I'm just looking at what... As presented today. As presented today, yeah. That they can create a justification for what their spend has been. Or were you finding that the spend was very much outside of those four areas?

I mean, the way that we interpreted it is that it was outside of the areas and that it was being interpreted differently than it was intended when it was enacted by council in 2021.

Okay. And I think when it comes to the parking enforcement piece specifically is what we're getting away from and actually productive uses of that fund that improve traffic safety.

Got it. And to answer your question, we just found it. It's council bill number CB21-1291.

I'm asking which section of the code are you changing?

I don't have that in front of me, so let me find it for you. Okay.

And you can follow up later with that because I want to read what's there now and be able to get the rest of the context, right? The only other question that I have is that in charter, and it's repeated later, and our charter is permissive. Like, it gives you the permissions that you have. If it doesn't mention it, you don't have that permission. And the DOTI Advisory Board is only allowed to advise, review, and comment. Yeah. So that's why I'm wondering where your backing is on allowing them to approve a budget.

Yeah. To be honest with you, I am not quite clear on it. We've had some discussions on Friday if it was possible for us to do that. And I think that's more of a conversation in terms of exploration than like, this is what we are proposing and it's set in stone. Okay.

Okay. That's, I think those are the questions that I have. So do you have a timeline yet or you're waiting to talk to the administration about it? We have to talk to BMO and the administration.

Perfect. Okay, thank you. I'll look for that code information later. I'll get that to you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Sandoval.

Thank you. Thank you all for this work. I had similar questions. So in the bill, it gives the Transportation Infrastructure Board the ability to vote up and down. And I don't know any advisory board that has the ability to do that. They usually refer it to City Council. So I don't understand why it wouldn't just do what the host advisory committee does. They make a recommendation and then city council ultimately approves it. So I would feel more comfortable if it came to city council for approval and rather an advisory group. The only advisory group that I know who actually gets to vote yes or no, down or up, is the board of adjustment.

um because they can vote it up like things up and down right like if you need a variance or anything but other than that um i don't think that i i don't feel comfortable with that language i would rather have it come to city council yeah and we talked about again to to councilman um to our discussion we talked about the same thing with like modeling the um planning board but again it's a conversation of exploration more than like this is absolutely what it is that we're going to be doing and more of a discussion for um

And planning board, it only makes an advisory recommendation to us either. They can't stop it. They advise whether they make a recommendation to us. So I would just do what we all have, keep that in.

We'll take that under advisement. Thank you for that suggestion. I think if they recommend approval.

Yeah, and then it comes to city council because then we hear things. And then another thing I have, when I met with the advocates on Friday, I think that, I understand that you all want to support implementation of Vision Zero Action Plan, the Safe Routes to School Action Plan in Denver Moose. The hard part about that is none of our plans have enabling language. So none of those plans have enabling language that make us have to do them. So oftentimes when you refer to plans, once we get a new, say Vision Zero Action Plan goes away, say Safe Routes to School Action Plan and Denver Moves, Bikes, Pedestrian and Trails Transit Plan, I think it should also say and any other plans that follow in them because if you list these and they're not here in 20 years, what do we do? And then that leaves it open to an attorney for interpretation. so i don't ever really list all of our comp plans right i always just say an applicable plan such as and any other plans that follow because my question is is if we had a city attorney look at this Which one comes first? Do we implement Vision Zero first? Do we implement Safe Routes to School first? Or do we implement Denver Moves Bikes Everyone? Which one do we implement first? What's the hierarchy of the plans? So we all know that. Which one of those plans is the newest?

Well, I think I know that Safe Routes to Schools is expiring right now and they have to redo that one, but the newest one, well, they've been updated as well. So I guess if you mean like the latest, which one has been updated and hasn't, I think that's a really good point. I think what we want is for those plans not to go away or if they, because that's a fear, right? Because really the administration could decide next year to get rid of any plan and then, we want to make sure that if they're funded they're more likely to keep these plans at least until they're implemented and then it would come to a council action to figure out do we want to add this other plan because if we put any applicable plans that also is extremely broad because what's an applicable plan but i think that feedback is really good for us to take to the city attorney as you recommended to see what their thoughts are on that we definitely don't want it to be any more broad than it is and we want these plans to still exist because we do think they're at risk of just never getting funding and never being implemented.

I want them to get funding too, but I also want us to be able to have the flexibility in 20 years from now to have a new plan. Because when I started, we didn't have Denver Moves bikes, pedestrian, trails, and transit plan, and we have to be able to have some type of flexibility to change plans, right? Like, we didn't used to have neighborhood planning initiatives, and now we have those. But the hard part, again, is none of our plans have enabling language in them. None.

So what I was thinking is that the DOTI director has discretion, but all the plans are equally eligible, and so maybe Director Ford could maybe come talk about that and how you all are thinking about it in terms of priority.

So Director Ford, if you had this ordinance and it says the intent is to fund, how do you figure out which one is the winner?

I'm Amy Ford, Executive Director of Dottie. Thank you for asking that question. I would probably share your concern about the plain language of way it's written right now, just in general. Obviously, we have continually updated strategic plans and that also are broken down into individual action plans for a variety of different services, like we talked about at our last presentation at 10. from pedestrians to bike and ped to transit and to others. And those are constantly evolving and growing. To have them explicitly named, I think, could be a challenge in this. And right now, as you noted, it doesn't designate a prioritization. That is a process, obviously, that we do through a careful calibration with you all, with our community, with others about the prioritization of funding across those plans. As we made clear a few weeks ago, there's always more need than there is our available funds. And so... So, but we would work collectively on the prioritization of that, lay that out in a six-year plan of finance, and of which the SRF would be a portion of the funding that would go to those plans and implementation.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Council. So, and then, is anyone here from the Department of Finance? Can we have a special revenue fund that doesn't roll over to the general fund? Is that allowed? My understanding is the answer is yes.

That's what they do.

Do they do? Okay. Is someone, anyone here?

Every time I do the SRF or our... Sponsorships for the Hiawatha-Davis, those roll over every year.

Okay. I just want to make sure, because we at City Council, when we used to have special revenue funds, they got rid of them. They didn't like it.

And I think that's part of what we're trying to do here is make sure that that money stays in the fund and doesn't ever end up in the general fund. Because again, as was mentioned, we see that we have a $600 million need and this is a drop in the bucket for the funding that we need for these programs.

If someone is here, I'm happy to have them online or if they're online. Okay.

Okay. And then I would also love when you share the, I'm trying to look in the Muni code under the, I can't find it. So if you find that section from the Muni code, I'd love that. Okay.

Thank you. Next we're going to go to Councilman Flynn and then Councilman Hines.

Thank you, Madam President. Excuse me. Councilmembers Torres and Sandoval asked pretty much what was on my mind. I was interested in the advocacy for this because I suppose several of us or all of us got a flood of stock emails from advocatemail.com. And like of 20 of them that I got, all of them lived outside of Denver. So I was curious about how that got going. I don't know if you're aware of that. Maybe Streets Partnership or someone else did that. But I got one way up in Longmont or somewhere else. Anyway, a couple questions to follow up on what Councilman Sandoval just asked. Would this prohibit using the SRF operationally for things like mid-block crossings? I have one on Dartmouth Avenue. It's been there for years. And I'd like to see more of them at some of my other schools for safe crossing for students to get to Sabin Elementary right around Utica. And would it prohibit that or would it allow that? And would it allow for crossing guards?

It would allow both.

It would allow for crossing guards? And under the removal prohibition, because I know there was a lot of concern about what happened in lower downtown when some of the infrastructure was changed. Would it prohibit a change in infrastructure under the capital uses? When it's evaluated that some things need to change here, we want to substitute the bollards for whatever else. Would it prohibit that or would it allow that?

I think we have to follow up exactly on that. I think removal is specifically prohibited and ultimately we think that those kinds of costs, maintenance and updating should be out of the regular funding source. This is really to expand the pedestrian safety and meet all of these goals in a new way, not just make upgrades to old infrastructure.

Okay. And especially with relation to, I think, in lower downtown, would it allow use of the SRF to make changes to the infrastructure once it's in? Or would that have to remain as is?

We could add language about replacements where if the standard is equal to or greater than existing safe infrastructure to be able to address that for you, Councilman Flynn.

All right. Thank you. And I join with Councilman Torres and Sandoval in their requests, particularly about the advisory board issue.

To be a recommendation instead of, yeah. Certainly. That makes sense. Thank you.

That's all.

Thank you. Councilman Hines.

Thank you, Madam President. And thank you sponsors for this. Certainly I'm on board with the sentiment of the proposal. I want us all to have the freedom to get from A to B safely no matter how we choose to get there. And District 10 has the densest neighborhoods in the city. We also have the neighborhoods with the highest percentage of households without cars at all. As in, Capp Hill uptown, more than a third of households don't own cars at all. And City Park West, 37% of households don't own cars at all. And so we want to make sure that we have transportation and mobility for those who choose not to get around with a car. And so maybe my comments are a bit of a deletion, maybe an addition too. So I want to make sure that we're in conformance with the charter. We had Dottie in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee just a couple weeks ago, and we had a presentation about Vision Zero and Safe Routes to School, and a whole bunch of slides, a whole bunch of numbers, and no numbers associated with these two important programs. And so I just want to kind of extend that conversation a little bit, and I wonder if you know, in conformance with the value statement that you're making, I wonder if, you know, I don't want to be out of conformance with the charter, but I wonder if there's a way for us to require there be actual dollars associated with these projects that we're lifting up as very important. So, see if that's the school. if we're gonna do a values-based budget, we should actually have dollars associated with, you know, how we plan to move CFRAS to school forward so that we can actually discuss it because how Dottie has a fair amount of leeway of things that we can't make Dottie do, but we do have budget oversight. And so if we start associating a budget then we can then say this is the right amount, this is not the right amount for Vision Zero. We're up to 34 deaths, by the way, so that's one higher than the last time I mentioned the Vision Zero statistic. And so maybe the value statement is we want additional oversight. Budget is a moral document. I wonder if... and what your thoughts are. You don't have to answer now if you don't have an answer now, but part of this is Transportation Mobility Fund, which are dollars, but also Vision Zero and Seafront High School and other critical transportation initiatives, they should have dollars associated with them too.

Sorry, make sure I understand your question. You're saying that we would allocate of the projections that we are thinking would come into this SRF, that you would bucket out the amount of money for each of the plans that we've mentioned? Is that what you're proposing?

That's a suggestion, yeah. And then in that way, if some $100,000 or $200,000 leaks out somewhere else, we could say, wait, wait, wait, no, that shouldn't go away. That should remain in the Transportation Mobility Special Revenue Fund.

And I'll let Councilman Alvidrez opine as well, but we haven't talked about it in that way. When it comes to the percentages, it really was just around like the operations and capital, but happy to take that under advisement as well.

Yeah, I think that is a great thought. I'm curious. If Dottie can share maybe some thoughts on that. I think when we were here a couple weeks ago, one of the things that I took away is that we're not breaking out the work that we're doing to meet these different plans. So I don't know, would you like to speak to that, Director Ford?

Following the discussion that we had at 10 the other day, we've asked our team to start doing the math, if you will, to break out the percentage spends, if you will, that come from those different asset classes that we were talking to you about, ped, bike. signals, traffic calming, et cetera, to try to put together an approximation of the percentages spent for what you would call vision zero safety and what we would call safe routes to schools. And as you know, that also includes dollars that sometimes come from the SRF as well. So we're in the process of working on doing that so that we can have some clarity for you all on how that would look. And so to that end, I think, you know, right now, part of those assets are derived from Denver Moves Everyone, and it's derived from a really clear budgeting process on how you just put dollars into buckets. And so you're right, it's obscure. in regards to how it then rolls up to what you might call a program kind of dollar amount. So we're working on trying to put that together, and we can share that with you all as we come through so that we can have that continued conversation about the applicability of it, let's say, in something like this.

we would like to see is just what is the dollar amount to get to complete our Vision Zero? What is the dollar amount to complete the Safe Routes to School Plan? And how is that going to shift now with the new Safe Routes to School Plan so that we can start to see that shift in spending?

And there's a question of what we budget, and then there's a question of what it takes to complete those. As we know, those are two very different numbers too sometimes. see if there's progress or not. And so we can work on that and we'd be happy to come back in and have that conversation too. So, like I said, since Shane is here, the team is busily trying to work to put some of that together so we can at least percentage-wise give you guys some construct within our total budgets and stuff too.

Wonderful. Just kind of close that, you know, the strong mayor system, mayor has a lot of authority. We have legislation, land use, because we're a county as well, and the budget oversight. And if there are no dollars, then how can we oversight if we don't know what the dollars are? So I'm trying to help council have a bit more or any oversight over these important programs. Thank you.

thank you council member watson uh thank you so much council president uh council members i think this is a a great um what you've elevated is an opportunity that's necessary i think the srf is clear where those funds should be spent and i appreciate both of your thoughtfulness um all of my very specific view what you're proposing has been asked i have one question for dottie uh though so for director ford if you can provide um and once again i know we're going to have an iterative process you'll have many important times to come and speak, but I'm curious right now on the strategic spend process for SRF. Can you speak to how you all are prioritizing spend from SRF and where are you seeing the opportunity with what's being proposed for any gaps? I called your name out, but I apologize to anyone from the audience.

I'm sorry, I might have Shane and Cindy join me as we talk. Thank you for the question, Councilman Watson. For the SRF, we absolutely prioritize the spending, if you will, in the buckets that were outlined in regards to the original ordinance. And those dollars are spent between capital dollars and operations dollars. And as you know, and I wouldn't ask you to flip back to the slide, Councilman Lowe's, but they are spent across the board. We have some information, some data that shows that historically, much of those dollars have gone to our capital projects. And so they go to capital funding projects in regards to pedestrian safety. They support Safe Routes to Schools implementation. They support pedestrian crossings. They support crossing beacons, for instance. They support some improvements in transit and otherwise. And so that has been the historical spend. A portion of that has also gone to operations spend. And operations spends fit very much in those buckets as well. And so right now, funding that goes in the operation spend side, which when you look right now, it's sort of the language that's sitting in the ordinance might be tricky to spend those dollars on. So it spends money on the micro connector transit program. So it's several hundred thousand dollars that pay for our connector services in the west side, in GES area, as well as in the Montbello area. Right now, the plain language of that would sort of keep that from being spent. It also supports our transit mobility associations, our TMAs, the contracts that we have with TMAs all around the city, which work on mode shift, mobility, mobility improvements in their communities and otherwise. And so that's an element that we spend money on. Another element that we spend money on is staff. And so one of the elements of staff that is part of this program, as we talked with you all about last year in the budgeting process, was going to the parking citation review program to stand that back up. The staff to do that program, which are literally being hired as we speak, and they will come on board here on August 24th with the hopes that we will train them quick and get that program up and running soon. We'll be briefing you on that. They are in that right now. And so right now, if you keep capital dollars the way it's written in the ordinance, those staff would not be funded through that program. There are a number of other staff that are funded through the program, specifically transit signal staff and maintenance staff who keep our safety elements up and running. And so there are a lot of operations dollars. One of the other operations dollars that is in this is speed cameras. So again, fitting to our speed camera program, approximately $2 million allocated for that. So that would be a shift and a change in this as well. So those are where we currently spend the dollars. And then as very well was called out, absolutely, the dollars that generate the revenue, i.e., the dollars that pay for the parking software programs and others, they were shifted into this program, as we know, last year as part of the broader FGEWS budgeting process and the like. And so that currently sits in this SRF right now, too, and that also would be changed. We absorb those back into the general fund, and this is to the plain language that you guys acknowledged in the presentation, which we certainly appreciate. That is a difficult absorption back into the general fund right now for a variety of reasons. Those are where the dollars go. We could sort of show you all sort of the spends and the pro, but historically, it was last few years in the first creation, primarily capital with portion operating. For the last few years, because of programs like the transit programs and others, it's increased in the operating dramatically, and then obviously last year put it over the edge, so it was all operating. Thank you. Council.

I have 1 follow up question for the speed camera revenue. Does that go to the general fund or where do those funds?

Camera revenue is not designated to go to the, to the, this at this point in time. And then, as you all are aware, our colleagues and Department of safety, and we will be coming to you with the language in the ordinances that would create that program here moving forward. But those revenues, as are your mobile speed vans and others. So that program does not exist. Goes to the general fund. Correct. It does not exist. We budgeted to create the program inside the SRF. And so those dollars have been sitting there getting ready for us to launch the speed cameras.

And then when you come, we will talk about where that revenue will go. But right now, they're allocated to go to the general fund. Is that correct? That's correct.

Thank you. You mentioned the parking ticket appeal system, and I was just curious. I think you said $8 million. What—oh, go ahead. You were saying now, before I even finish. So, go ahead.

So, right now, the parking appeal staff—so, for that online citation program, they are funded through the SRF. And that was when we responded to that request to start the program again after the judicial system eliminated it in the budget cuts. We said that that money would come from the SRF to pay for that stuff.

What's the price tag on that? Pardon? What's the price tag on that?

Well, right now we've got, and help me, Shane, with it, we've got one supervisor and four technicians that we've hired or are in the process of hiring, so it's approximately $300,000, $500,000, $350,000 to $400,000. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Councilmember Gonzales Gutierrez.

Thank you, Council President. Thank you both for bringing this forward. I had an opportunity to sit down with some of the folks that are supporting this and they are people who live in Denver. So I really appreciated getting that opportunity to like hear from folks in community around what the ask is and what they're trying to do here. I will say that I also appreciate trying to put some guardrails around how funds are being utilized. I think we see that a lot, right? When we're going through our budget process and trying to wrap our arms around the various different pots of money. And sometimes there's broad ways in which those funds can be utilized. And so really honing in on what I appreciate about this is trying to hone in on some specific guidance and parameters, but then also accountability. And so that is something that, I mean, I most definitely would support. I think it's just sounds like there's some mechanisms or language that may need to be tweaked or maybe some other pieces that need to be incorporated to make sure that we get there. And I'm happy to always, of course, support in that fact. As far as like where it lives in ordinance, I was trying to research that, it doesn't. So it's under the, like this kind of broad, again, another broad umbrella, which, you know, that even more to me screams the fact that we need to have something then in ordinance. to provide these guardrails and so um i am like in full support of that it just sounds like there's some like minor things that need to happen or pieces that need to be moved around um so i really uh appreciate all of that and i think that was i was going to ask i was like well dottie should know where where this lives in ordinance um dof should knows where this where this lives in ordinance so um i guess my hope is is that you said my question to you all is you said that dof I'm sorry, not DOF, Department of Finance, but DOTI has been working with you all and that has been happening.

Yes, we've been in conversation and they've been a good partner to try and figure this out together.

Okay, that's great. I mean, that's all that I can ask for is that our agencies are forthcoming and providing you the information that you need. And that's what I would ask for the agencies is to be able to do that and work in partnership with you all on this. And so I'm happy to lend any kind of support you all need in trying to navigate this going forward.

Yeah, and I would say that thank you all. You should all also thank your DOTI Advisory Board members because they've been a great partner in this effort as well. And one interesting thing that you brought up was that a lot of the people in Denver are pushing for this. And I think it's interesting that people outside of Denver would be pushing for this because I think we want people to come to Denver and visit Denver. And maybe they're thinking Denver would be a lot better and I'd visit more often if I could feel like I could walk around and not have to drive from one place to another all the time. So that's an interesting thought. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Um, I did have 1 question. Um, and again, thank you for bringing this forward. Um, the enforcement fine revenue. What is an example of that might be director? What would be examples that would be coming from that enforcement?

As it currently stands, for instance, is the mobile speed ban. the red light camera program. Those are types of examples of enforcement fines. Those currently, you know, go to the general fund. The enforcement fine revenue that funds this is parking revenue, but it's just parking revenue. It's not enforcement, so it's not tickets or anything like that. It is the tickets, too. Yeah, why did you come up? Thank you for clarifying that. I thought it was just the revenue part, not the ticketing part.

We may be talking about the same thing, but I'll just clarify. Hi, Cindy Patton, I'm the Chief Operating Officer at DOTI. And I've been on this ride since the very beginning when this fund was created. So what we did was for parking meter revenue, we took the second dollar when we increased meter rates back in 2021. We also increased some parking citation fees. We went from $25 to $35 for most like overtime stay, or common violations. We also introduced new violations for parking in a bike lane that went from $25 to $65, if I remember correctly. So all of that increment now goes into the SRF, but it's kind of locked. So if I were to introduce a new revenue product for parking, it is not spelled out directly in the language. So I would not be able to take in revenue from that. It's very narrow.

Thanks for clarifying. I forgot. I couldn't remember. So that's what I want to make sure. Thank you.

Thank you. That's great. I appreciate it. 1 more quick jump in the queue and then we're going to go to presentation.

Just a clarification for you. You were saying that we raised the fees. Wasn't it? The chief magistrate when she was on her way, like, departing question.

Yes, it is the presiding judge. That's the citation rates. But we set the meter rates in DOTI. We have that responsibility.

And it's my understanding that the judicial branch would love to give it to the executive branch, the setting of parking lines. Anyway, thank you. That's all. I just wanted to make sure that I understood correctly.

Yeah, it's confusing.

Thank you. Great.

Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation. We are going to go to our second presentation with Councilman Cashman. I will let you introduce. We just need a minute. Musical chairs.

I didn't hear any music.

I know, no music. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. I don't know why it was service music. You want to switch? Go. Councilman Cashman, when you are ready. Thank you very much.

There we go. Talking about low-level stops, putting Chief Thomas' existing policy into ordinance. We'll give you some background data research. We'll take a look at the current policy, an overview of the draft legislation that we hope to move forward, and then hopefully leave some time for questions and discussions. Why address low-level stops? Sometimes referred to as pretextual stops, non-safety stops. These are minor violations that do not pose a threat to public safety. The examples commonly given, improperly displayed registration, something hanging from your rear view mirror, heavily tinted windows, a cracked Two big reasons to address low level stops. First, historically nationwide and in the appendix there's lots of research to look at. Lower level infractions have been used to justify stopping people of color in excessive numbers for how they look rather than how they're behaving. The other extremely important reason to address low-level stops is, again, data has shown that low-level stops do not make the best use of our officers' times. I think most of us would say that the big issue on our constituents' minds is public safety. and public safety has been shown to increase when our officers pay attention to serious moving violations rather than stopping people for lower level infractions. Again, what research has found, low level stops create equity issues, people of color stop questions searched at higher rates. These stops do not deter, prevent crime, or improve road safety. And the low-level stops result in the seizure of contraband in far lower numbers than stops than more serious violations. Low-level stops waste resources. They can involve DPD time, city attorney, public defender's time, and the courts all spend time prosecuting and defending these cases, which again have been shown to not affect public safety. They squander police time as Chief Thomas's policy indicates as his belief that he wants his officers paying attention to moving violations that threaten public safety and other crimes that threaten our community. Contact with law enforcement also for the person being cited can lead to complications at home, work, or school. What have other jurisdictions been doing? Nine cities have some form of low-level stop policy and ordinance. This map is a little bit tricky to read. All the blue outline states have some sort of policy in place to address low-level stops. You'll see white outlines in the northeast, the southeast, and the mid-northwest that have not yet come into this area to address low-level stops policy. A few examples indicating crime is reduced when focus shifts to focusing on the more serious offenses. In Fayetteville, North Carolina, the police department deprioritized stops for minor equipment and administrative infractions. which resulted in large decreases in traffic crashes and decreases in racially disparate outcomes of traffic enforcement with no rise in crime. In metropolitan Nashville, less than 1 tenth of 1% of their traffic stops for non-safety related infractions resulted in weapon possession charges. The reduction of low level stops had no impact on serious crimes. And in 2021, four police departments in Ramsey County, Minnesota, adopted policies shifting their focus to moving violations. And as a result, Ramsey County saw marked reductions in racial disparities and stops and searches with no associated increase in crime. how we got to this point today back in 2023 this was all brought to my attention when i participated in a cohort with the veer institute of justice in new york city and learned what other excuse me, what other jurisdictions are doing and the concerns around low-level traffic enforcement. Shortly after I got back, I made an appointment to speak with Chief Thomas and was all prepared with a litany of reasons to counter the arguments that I expected to come from him. And the first words out of his mouth were, you know, I've been thinking about the exact same thing. And so he put together a low-level stops policy that basically says officers are discouraged from focusing on low-level stops unless they're able to articulate clearly a reason that gave them further suspicion that more serious violations were happening. In other words, if you're just driving around and see someone with a cracked taillight that's just driving down the road, you shouldn't pull them over. But if you happen to be sitting in a neighborhood, patrolling a neighborhood that's had a marked increase in crime and you see a vehicle with a broken taillight and they circle the block a couple of times and maybe they slow down and look in a particular building, you should feel free to pull them over. and then that suspicion would be what would be articulated in their report. Then in April of this year, the Chief and I went to a convening at NYU School of Law right-sizing traffic enforcement. We're on the same panel along with council members from LA and Philadelphia, and the Chief speaks very eloquently on the importance of his officers maximizing the use of their time in promoting public safety. So this next slide shows you what the existing policy says in the operations manual. Besides the things that I've mentioned, I think one of the most important things from the chief's perspective is letter E that planned operations to address any low-level traffic offense may be authorized by the chief of police and or their designee at their direction. What this means is if the chief thinks that public well-being, public safety is better served, he can order directed enforcement of a particular offense. The only one since this policy was put into place that he has so directed. was aimed at what I agree is a tsunami we're seeing of expired plates, expired registrations, missing license plates. He's done five targeted enforcements since the middle of 24. but that's the only low level stop that he has directed. You'll see the details here on the next slide. So he did a week in September of 24, but the rest have been month-long enforcements. And he actually has the freedom if he wants to do a six-month directed enforcement on something. He has that flexibility. Next. Please, Elise, you want to talk about data, please?

Yeah. So when we first started looking at the implementation of the internal policy and trying to look at the effectiveness of it, our first question was, well, let's try to gather some data. So what you're seeing here is presenting that. We asked Department of Safety to provide us with the number of and reason for low-level stops conducted by the police department, and we're given the number of stops performed and citation data, including stops that resulted in no citation. The Department of Safety data team is currently exploring if there is a way to drill down further to this data, but it was a very time-intensive process to gather the data they were able to get us, as we see here, and so that might take some time. The date range we received was from January 2022 through March 2026. The internal policy was implemented in May 2024. On a side note, we have requested the data to be updated to get us the months post March 2026, but that is going to take some time. So this is what we have so far. Here we highlighted the years 2023 in green and 2025 in orange in order to provide a comparison of a full year of data pre-internal policy and post-internal policy. Since the timeframe pre- and post-internal policy are not equal, as you can see highlighted in the red and yellow boxes. Overall, 75,599 stops occurred between 2022 and March 2026 that resulted in no citation. You can see that broken down here in those same red and yellow boxes, pre-policy and post-policy. Traffic stops resulting in no citation did increase overall, or did decrease overall, excuse me, but we still do not know the reason for these stops. And that's the result in, that also resulted in no citation or no arrest. So in the meetings that we've had with the Police Department and Department of Safety, we have been told that there are spaces to document the reason for a stop, but these are difficult to access and present in a data set because it may be documented in a note section on an internal police form or other form field that does not have predetermined choices in a drop-down menu related to traffic stops. meaning traffic stop data cannot be isolated or pulled easily. This is one piece that still warrants further discussion with Department of Safety and the Police Department and why the implementation date for the reporting requirements is left blank on the draft legislation.

Yeah, I mean, I briefed a few of you so far individually and there's always this request for data on how things are going in Denver and we'd love to give it to you but we can't get it. As Elise said, it may exist somewhere, but it's not set up for convenient retrieval. The example I use, if I go online and I want to buy a sport coat, I check I want to buy a black sport coat and go down, fill everything out, and press I want to buy it, and they say, you didn't tell us what size. I go back. hit the drop down for size, fill that out, go back, hit the button again, they say, I got it, you forgot your zip code. The whole point being, I've got to believe, it sounds to me like the officers are already being asked to gather this data. It sounds like it just needs to be in a usable format. We've spoken, in addition to the Chief, we've spoken with District Three Commander Bell, we've spoken with Andrew Dameron, And from those discussions, it sounds like something that can be figured out, but I think it's important that we get this data so that A, we can evaluate this particular policy, hopefully ordinance in the near future, but as well, so the chief has better access to data to what were his officers doing on those other 75,000 traffic stops. Next, please. This just goes into what Elise was just talking about, that we just don't have the data that we need. I'm not gonna read all the way through it, but it may, like I said, the data may be out there on a form somewhere, but if it's not retrievable, it doesn't do anybody any good. Next, please. This is just an outreach that we've done so far. Chief Thomas, Director Damron, the DOS Safety Team, Office of the Municipal Public Defender, we have a representative here this afternoon. If you'd like to speak to them, City Attorney's Office, the OIM, Councilmember Thomas from Philadelphia, they have a much more, I would say, strict uh policy and ordinance where it's like i think believe eight offenses that can't stop anybody for the eight offenses and the beer institute of justice uh another cross-discussion group uh architectural stops and commander bell And the draft legislation would place the existing mandate into ordinance and update the process for better data collection, prohibits officers from conducting low-level stops unless they're acting upon articulable information of greater suspicion. Exemptions from this, in other words, moving violations that could result in crash or injury are not low level stops. Speeding at any level is not a low level stop. Reporting requirements, again, we'll work with Department of Safety to see what they need in the way of resources, time, to get this together and the Department of Safety shall notify Council and more importantly clearly notify the public when target enforcement is directed. Questions?

We've got a lot of council members in the queue, so we will go ahead and get started with Council Member Flynn and then go to Council Member Hines.

Thank you, Madam President. Thank you for the presentation. Councilman, as you know, I don't support this. I don't think we should be micromanaging these operations in the code. I think it should remain in the ops manual. But I think you provided the argument that supports me in the presentation, which is we don't have the data. And without the data, we shouldn't be putting this into the code until we have data. But earlier in your presentation, you actually did have data that shows we don't need to do it. And that was Fayetteville and Nashville had outstanding results. And theirs is just policy, as is ours. I believe that's where it should remain. The most frequent complaints my office gets, and I imagine it's no different in other districts, including your own, is where's the traffic enforcement? People are crying out for more traffic enforcement, not less. My specific, and you really ruined my weekend when the draft came out. I'm so glad. I knew you would be sympathetic to that. When the draft came out, because I literally went through all of DRMC 54-4, these are the prohibited traffic stops, Class A and Class B traffic infractions. It's broadly much more expansive than the policy. It goes way beyond expired tax. It includes speeding. running stop signs, running red lights, those are in your paragraph B that we shall not conduct vehicle stops for those infractions unless it meets an immediate threat to public safety, an immediate and substantial risk. So if an officer is doing traffic enforcement and a car goes to a stop sign but there's no one around, would you pull that person over? If the answer is yes, which I suspect it probably is, then why is it in the code? Why are we prohibiting it and then allowing it? I just think it's very poorly drafted in that it includes every class A and class B traffic infraction in 54-4. There were a huge number of violations there and I clicked and read every single one.

work with the chief's policy if you find that he's written it wrong, but I believe he specifically talks about non-safety related stops. Speeding would clearly be a safety related stop, other forms of reckless driving, et cetera. As far as not having the data, we have enough data from around the country that it convinced the chief and there's nothing that's happened over the past almost two years that have him thinking that there's a problem with the policy. I'm not asking that. No, no, no. I understand. But the reason I want to get it into ordinance is so that it's not just a statement that our police chief feels this way, but it's that our city... feels this way, that not only should our officers be paying attention to serious crime, but we value equity in our law enforcement. So we can agree to disagree, Councilman.

But it's literally, what you said, it's literally in the way it's drafted right now, speeding. The officer would have to present an articulable reason.

That is not the intention. Whatever we have to do to clarify that will be done.

The other reason I don't believe it belongs in the code is I will not vote to make it illegal for a police officer to enforce the law. It's not illegal. It would be. It would be subject to a general penalty the way it's written right now.

Well, our officers are subject to penalty any time they violate a chief's directive.

Right, and that's how it should remain, is what I'm saying. It should not be in the code. It should remain in policy, is my position. I can't go to my constituents and say, we just made it illegal for the police to enforce traffic laws. No, we didn't make it. Unless they could.

We didn't make it illegal.

That's what this does.

It's not illegal. They simply need... What we're saying is you're wasting... the constituents money and not contributing to public safety if you're focusing on these stops for no other reason than we'll just take a shot in the dark that this person is committing a crime. We'd rather have you focusing on the raft of other crimes that obviously contribute to public lack of safety.

Completely understood. I just think it's the wrong message to send when people are calling for more traffic enforcement. And that's what we want.

I've never gotten a call, councilman, pull people over for a cracked taillight. I get people for wanting speed enforcement all the time. And that's what we want our officers doing. That's what this is aimed to do. So if there's some wording, and I appreciate you bringing it up, if we need to rewrite some things, we will do that, because I don't want any confusion with council members or the public. Moving violations are not to be tolerated at all.

That's currently in the draft. Thank you. I do get calls from people saying, why aren't we pulling folks over when their tags are expired for a few years?

And that's why the chief is taking advantage of that provision to direct that enforcement. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you. Council Member Hines and then Council Member Torres.

Thank you, Madam President. Just as a value statement, I think, Council Member, when we chatted about this, I mentioned it. I recognize that the US Supreme Court has been clear that it is the prerogative of the executive branch to determine how to enforce laws, but when the chief came made the the statement that we would uh that the police department wouldn't enforce low-level traffic offenses i got a bunch of emails as uh as council member flynn had already mentioned um you know saying what i this this is not exactly what um you know what they were looking for and um and so from a legislative perspective i believe that we should enforce every law in the books and if we don't like it we should fix it so in some ways that we should what If we believe that we shouldn't enforce certain laws, we should fix it by just taking those laws away. Sorry, that's a fair clarification because that was cloudy. So in some ways, that's what you're suggesting doing is Chief Thomas has the… Well, it's what the Chief has said.

I'm just taking the Chief's policy. the way he's written it, adding data collection suggestions and putting it into ordinance so that when Chief Thomas is gone, if that happens, if someday Mayor Johnston is not our mayor, it's one step more difficult for the next chief to undo what I think is an important safety-related policy.

Commander, since you're here, I'm guessing you're available for questions? Yes, sir. All right. Speaking of the data, I am a bit surprised that more than four and five traffic stops end up with no citation. Usually the other bucket is not the largest bucket. And so I'm imagining there's additional context around that part of Councilmember's presentation, or I guess the Chief's data. Are you aware of there being no citation issued in 82% of the traffic stops in Denver?

Jake Caprera, Commander in the Chief's Office. I have no reason to think that we're missing any context. The level of citations written or the ratio largely is dependent on how many officers we have in traffic operations. With the more officers we place in traffic, the higher the proportion of moving violations. But the normal traffic stop, I know when I was a patrol officer, most patrol officers wouldn't write citations unless it's an egregious moving violation.

So perhaps that's the extra context that helps me understand. So is it that most patrol officers in a traffic stop would start with education and four out of five times would end also with education as opposed to issuing a citation? Is that like, I'm gonna give you a warning. This is what you shouldn't be doing in the future. Am I getting that right?

Yes, and we also have the ability to write what's called a written warning, and I don't know in what bucket those fall. I mean, it's a piece of paper that goes to the driver, but there's no real penalty attached to it.

It's not associated with that individual's driving record that they've gotten a written warning? That's correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you. Council Member Torres, followed by Council Member Watson.

Thank you. I didn't have the benefit of my weekend being ruined because I didn't look up all the CRS, the Colorado Revised Statutes, and DRMC. Denver Revised Municipal Code. Because the police... Policy language, like Seth, here are examples of things. You went back to source, which I think is appropriate for the ordinance. I think for our purposes, I'd really like to know what's in those statutes.

Can you share that again?

I'd really like to know what's in those statutes. So what's the language under each of those sections that you've called out in the ordinance? What kinds of violations do those include? I don't want to have to go through and search for them.

That's really my only question.

I just want to better understand so I can talk to my community about what is and what is not reflected in this, be able to bring you any questions about things that they might be concerned about. We all take those same complaints about people who don't stop at the stop sign. Is that something that they'll still be able to pull over for? trying to remember, I mean, we just had, I think the news covered a suit that's coming where stop sign violation was used as a reason for pulling someone over, but there were no stop signs. So I do, like, there is a problem, right? And we do want to make sure that we're trying to rectify the experiences that folks in my community experience in their lifetime of having been pulled over for something that feels really minor and it escalates and escalates. But I also want to be able to answer that DPD is still empowered when they see under particular circumstances what's happening. And this came up from them to counsel as opposed to us demanding that they change behavior. And that way, I just want to know what that means.

Yeah, I appreciate that. And I appreciate Councilman Flynn's earlier alert. If the chief's policy, the way he wrote it, is in conflict and needs to be clarified, then we all win no matter what happens with that. So we'll double check that for sure. Okay, thank you.

Okay, council member Watson and then council member sandball and then council member Gonzalez containers.

Thank you so much. Council president. Thank you so much. Council member attachment for did a slide at the same time. Thanks for bringing this forward. I can tell you. About a lifetime ago, I think it was like 2000 to 2003, I had the honor of chairing the Vice Policing Task Force for the City and County of Denver. And part of the work we did were low-level stops. We reviewed the data, and actually we had students from the University of Denver that pulled the data. The Scantron form that Denver Police used at that time had a requirement where they listed demographic information. and so we had and the why they were being stopped and if or not contraband was found so we had three years of data from university of denver students working collaboration with the data team from denver police and so i'm not shocked with the the warning that's often given for low-level stops instead of the citation and the percent so i think that's most likely is going to be sticky once we go deeper into the data really would love to really see any of the impacts within current code as far as really how broad. This is a quick question. I know we're talking moving. I want to make sure I'm clear on, let's say, parked RVs, which have been a lot of questions we're having. They have similar concerns of no license, broken taillights, stuff like that. These are RVs with wheels parked in communities. Are these impacted by this change, or is it really still up to the discretion of the street team and everyone else?

are these situations involve DPD, right of way enforcement, a variety of agencies. And again, we'll double check on that because that is another concern that I think we all face around the city is being sure that when appropriate, we can make sure that. You got it, exactly right, sir.

Yeah, no further questions. I think just really to break down where the impacts are, making sure that we're not having levels of moving violations that are currently listed in code, that this does not remove those. Those would be the biggest concerns because those are the questions I'm getting from constituents. So I look forward to seeing those responses. I may have more questions as this moves through.

Well, I'm going to make sure it's in there that if you go a half mile over the speed limit on your bicycle, they can pull you over at any time, sir.

I run faster than a bike, so I don't know. Thanks so much, Sarah. Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you. Council Member Sandoval.

Thank you, Deborah. Thank you for the work on this, and thank you for coming to Budget and Policy. I really do appreciate that. I think a lot of my questions have been asked. I also just need the same type of information for my constituents. I think we probably get the same type of phone calls and I can already see the press going out saying that now we hindered the police even more from being able to do their jobs and I don't think that's the intent of this ordinance. I think the intent of this ordinance is to make sure that we're giving them the ability to by my major crime and other types of crime that are happening. And at the same time, are there any, in your experience of working on this, have you heard of any unintended consequences? We know what the intended are, but what could the unintended consequences be?

You know, honestly, I have not. I have not heard anything that I'd be able to relate to you right off. You know, the concerns that I've heard are, as have been expressed, well, does this, you're not letting our officers address moving violations. Yes, we are. If there's wording that needs to be changed, we'll do that. But as far as unintended, not that I've heard of.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I mean, what I will say, as I mentioned, you know, when I brought it to Chief Thomas, the first thing he told me was his own experience within his off time being pulled over for driving while black. And then he told me his own experience when he was a new officer. going out and pulling people over for low-level stops and not finding outstanding warrants and not finding guns and not finding drugs in the trunk. And as he grew and became more experienced as an officer and focused more, and these are his words, that as he started pulling over people for more safety-related infractions, That's when he found more serious violations of the law past just the speeding or reckless driving.

Thank you, Councilmember Pro Tem Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Thank you, Council President. Yes, thank you for bringing this forward. I think the data piece is going to be really, really helpful. And if that is going to be incorporated in asking DPD, and unfortunately they left because I was going to ask them questions and I'll have to follow up with them. But really wanting to get to a better understanding as to why they're not collecting data now. to help inform this. Like if the reason for not having the data and then also seeing the fact that the number of stops that are happening without a citation actually happening, that leads me to believe kind of some of the things that we're talking about is that folks are being stopped when maybe there isn't a stop sign in question or there may be some other reason that folks, you know, there may be profiling. We don't know because the information isn't there. And that's a little bit problematic. But I can follow up with DPD on that. I wanted to see if there was somebody still here from the Office of Municipal Public Defenders. Is there someone here? OK. Yeah, I just had a quick question as far as what you all are seeing in the courtrooms with clients that you're representing. What does that look like? Because I feel like that at least gives us some information.

Yeah, if you could state your name, please. My name is Lindsay Vitalis. I'm with the Office of the Municipal Public Defender. I represent all of the traffic clients. I have done that since the inception of the office, so about 11 and a half years. There has been no meaningful difference since Chief Thomas's policy went in, and I don't have the numbers, right? I don't have the data. I just have that I do this you know, day in and day out, and there's been no meaningful difference in the cases that I see. I still get the pretextual low-level stops. It's based on race, and then it's also, they're targeting indigent people. So it's not only getting racial minorities, it's indigency as well.

I mean, the last thing I'll say is, like, with the license plate tags, and I know, like, there's all this, there's a lot of consternation around that. I will say, hopefully, if our DMVs ever get back up to staffing, that is needed in order for people to go and get their tags. Because I think we've all had our experiences at the DMV trying to get in compliance with those things. You know, that's a whole other ball of wax. But I think another part of that is... You know, it's really expensive to get your license plates, right? When you get a new car, or you're leasing a car or whatever, you don't realize the cost that is associated sometimes with that. I don't think people know that. Not that it is an excuse, but I think it's just something I just wanted to bring up and that could be maybe something for the state to take on people are being charged. To be able to do that, because that could also, like, I'm looking at ways we can address the issue rather than having to have people pulled over for things like that. Right. If we can address, like, what the root cause is versus having to, like, stop people for for that, because I actually have been stopped for that. and I think I've talked about it here before. I was stopped because somebody took my tag, they peeled my tag off and I had just dropped my son off at school and I got stopped and I was not treated very kindly for it. And I said, look at my registration, I'm actually legal here. And it was just interesting the way that that whole thing went down. And so that was before all of this was put into place by having experience that is, You know, knowing what I think maybe many people in our city are experiencing. So I look forward to my 1 on 1 briefing. I know we're getting that scheduled where I may have more questions, but thank you.

You know, some jurisdictions have funds. that if an officer pulls over for someone for a cracked taillight and it's because they don't have the dough, they give them a certificate to have the repair made. So down the road, maybe that's something we could look at.

I also just want to address your first question, and I don't want to speak for the police department, but when we asked, you know, why don't we have this data, they said that they do require documentation of the reason for the stop. The problem is where is that being documented? We received a few different places where it can be. And the rabbit hole we went down with the CAD system, the computer-aided dispatch system, was there's a lot of context that needs to be built to start understanding. But the overall point is that CAD is not a data collection system. It's not a data reporting system. And so we can't expect to pull relevant data from systems that it's just not their purpose. So we are continuing to have conversations and trying to drill down to, okay, well, where is this? Where could it live? Where can we start documenting this? But yeah, right now, it's just not, if it is there, if every single stop that results in no citation, no arrest, if the reason has been documented, we don't know where.

And I also want to throw in a thanks to Councilman Paradis and Megan from her office who were invaluable early on in the creation of the Chief's policy.

Thank you. A lot of my questions have already been answered in the briefing. We did talk a little bit more about like the messaging. So interested is to, because again, my constituents, the low level, you know, expired tags and so forth and being able to message what that means is going to be really important back to my community. So I appreciate you all coming forward. We don't have anything else on the agenda for today and we are adjourned.