Finance & Services Committee - Regular Meeting

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

And today is Monday. I don't even know what today is.

Today is Monday, August 24th.

I'm Diana Romero-Campbell. I represent Southeast Denver District 4. You are at Budget and Policy. And we have some sessions. But before we get started, let's go ahead and do introductions. And I will start on the east side here with Councilman...

The distinguished gentleman to your left.

The distinguished gentleman to my left.

Good afternoon. Paul Cashman, South Denver District 6. Good afternoon. Daryl Watson, fine. District 9.

Hey, everyone. Serena Gonzalez-Gujeres, council member at large. Flora Alvidrez, West Lucky District 7.

Jamie Torres, West Denver District 3. Amanda Sandoval, Northwest Denver District 1. Amanda Sawyer, District 5.

Chantel Lewis, District 8. Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver District 2. Chris Hines, Denver's perfect 10.

Great. We're going to go ahead and get started with the proposal to changes to the sales tax initiative with Council Members Torres and Council Member Sandoval. And I turn it over to you. Great.

Thank you so much. We've got a slide deck. We will start with Council Member Sandoval kicking us off. But I want to thank all of the Council Members that we've already been able to give briefings to and the variety of conversations that we've had around this. So I will let you start.

Thanks. So I think we've almost talked to a majority of you, and if not, we have it scheduled. But what Councilwoman Torres and I and the mayor's office started this back, I think over a year ago, was we wanted to look at all of the ordinances where it's a special sales tax entity. not including healthy food for Denver because we administer that fund. So we're talking about only the entities that it's a pass through that has their own organization. So we have the Denver approved, Denver Preschool Program, the Prosperity Fund, Caring for Denver and they all operate under different transparency, city administration and over fight and expenditure rules. So what we wanted to do is we wanted to align the Colorado Open Records Act amongst all three of them. Currently right now, Caring for Denver is the only one that provides a city staff for us in their fund. So they have someone in DDPHE. And then Denver Preschool Program and Prosperity don't have any dedicated sources of funding for that. The ordinance lacks clear and consistent restrictions on the use of administrative funds. So we looked at our fair election fund as the model for what we could use these sales tax dollars for. CDF Caring for Denver doesn't expressively use, say the funds can't be used for mental health and wellness services for employees. So we just mean employees, the grants. So we want the grants to go out to community. I don't believe that these grants should be for the employees. of the people who are receiving the grants for their wellness and their fringe benefits, for lack of a better word, so health insurance and such. The CFD, the Caring for Denver ordinance does not have a specifically regarding strategic plan, and this update came from Denver DDPHE. They asked us to add a little bit more specificity, and they asked, Denver, DDPHE, I'm trying not to use acronyms, Denver Public Health and Environment, asked us to put in alternative response models for STAR. We're all fans of STAR. So we just want to make sure that that's clear under the ordinance that we could provide funding for those type of alternative response models. So here's our proposed solution. We're gonna align the public records requirements amongst all of the three entities. We talked with the mayor's administration. We'd like to establish a dedicated fee for the administration and oversight separate from an addition to the nonprofit's administrative expenses. So we modeled this after Denver Health. so a 1% fee, and that would be a 1% fee on the projected revenue taken off the top to help us administer the fund. We would have to, meaning the city would have to, the agency would have to propose a budget, where is that money going towards, and at the end of the year, if it's not spent, it goes back to the organization. We want to do standardized expenditure controls that marry the fair election, clarify allowable uses, and then strengthen the Caring for Denver governance. So the Denver Preschool Program Amendment would be establish the 1%, prohibit the use of administrative funds for food, beverages, alcohol, marijuana. And then the third one, it's a little bit conflicting because we're still saying that you could still provide food. So for instance, in October, when we come around the table and we do the budget amendment workshop, we always provide food. When we do our big budget workshop in May, we always provide food. So if it aligns with the mission of the organization, yes, they can provide food. So if they are having something at their organization, say Denver Preschool Program is hosting something for their employees, yes. Is it to use a P-card to take your employees out to lunch every day? No, I don't do that in my office. If I host something for my staff, I pay for it out of my Amanda Sandoval bank account, not the city's bank account. So that's what we're allowing under the third bullet point of administrative funds. So prosperity fund, it's the same thing. Establish the 1% fee. Currently they have a 5% admin fee. Prohibit the use of funds for food and beverage. Allow qualifying events to be able to use that money for what we already talked about, for food, for related services. And then one interesting thing we found for Prosperity Denver is in the Denver Revised Municipal Code, it's still called the College Affordability Act, all throughout the whole entire Denver Revised Municipal Code. So John Griffin asked that if we're going to update this ordinance that we actually update it with the fund org and it's called Prosperity Denver and clean up the whole entire ordinance. So now it's the fund org will be called Prosperity Denver and under ordinance, it would be called Prosperity Denver. So just good governance and cleaning everything up. So for the Caring for Denver Amendment, same thing. We do ask for the 1% admin fee. Expand the CORA so that it aligns with Denver Preschool Program and Prosperity Fund. Same, prohibit the administrative fund for food, alcohol, marijuana, tobacco. they permit certain uses for caring for Denver so they could still do their job, not saying that they can't ever buy food. And then The next one is prohibit caring for Denver funds for employee and mental health wellness services. So in the auditor's report, they found that a couple grants went out to a couple grantees and they used those funds to pay for their employees' mental health and services. And so I just don't feel like that's what the fund is supposed to align with. But we're not saying... We don't want to not say that caring for Denver in their admin fee can't use that admin fee to pay for their employees fringe benefits. They have to. They totally have to be able to have that 5% admin fee be able to pay for their employees, be able to pay for the executive director and so forth. And then these last two ones came from DDPHE. We added the word detailed. So detailed strategic plan. We're still working with DDPHE and Caring for Denver to figure out what does that mean, detailed? So the devils are in the details, right? So we're still working on that one word, detailed. What does that exactly look like? Because it would have to become and match the contract. and then clarify that the program funding that we receive in the city and county of Denver can include alternative response programs. We historically have served that because it has funded STAR. What Councilman Torres and I want is if this goes back in front of the auditor, the auditor is like, well, it doesn't specifically say that in the ordinance that you can fund programs like STAR. So what we're wanting to do is protect all of the work that we've done, especially on this body with STAR, to make sure to say include alternative response programs. So that would be those three words that we would be including in the ordinance. So if we ever get audited again, this fund gets audited again, it's not called out. And I'll pass on to Council Member Torres.

So this is a glimpse at what we've seen from Office of Children's Affairs. The next one will be from DDPHE of what they would present in use of that 1% for internal admin costs. So this is an estimate of 1% projected of 2027 Denver Preschool Program revenue, 1% of projected 2027 Prosperity Denver Fund revenue. So they manage both of those contracts as a city agency and have not generally gotten any support from those funds to staff the folks that manage those contracts and help support the alignment and give the oversight as well. Estimated personnel support, those are not all FTEs. I think the first couple probably are program administrator, contract administrator. But accounting services, it would be the portion that is dedicated to these particular contracts. city attorney's office, a portion that might be dedicated to these contracts. So it is a bit of time for some of the bigger offices, but for children's affairs personnel, it likely would be an actual new person that's there to be the point of contact, to be the contract administrator, fiscal administrator, program administrator, whatever they're identifying that they need in order to make sure that they've got eyes on these two contracts. Something like this would be presented every year for us to see in order for them to be able to utilize that 1%. This is the same thing that we see with Denver Health as we're preparing to see how do they propose to spend their annual budget. This is a glimpse at the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment's administrative fee rationale. Very similar. Not every personnel support is an FTE. Some of it might be part of that individual's time that's dedicated to this. And as Councilwoman Sandoval mentioned before, They can use up to 1%. Whatever they do not utilize goes straight back to the nonprofit. We do not keep it. It is not a year over year we're keeping 1%. It's just for what we need to manage the grants, I'm sorry, the contracts. Any remainder goes back to the nonprofit. We are here for budget and policy. We anticipate coming to Governance and Intergovernmental Affairs Relations Committee on September 15th. We've got some pieces that we are making sure is the right language that we're including for all three of these ordinances and would like to be at council on September 28th. Final reading comes with a public hearing for each of the ordinances that we're updating. So it's three public hearings and each of them will require supermajority vote to approve the proposals that we're bringing forward and that's scheduled for October 5th.

I just want to say it's been a collaborative process. We've all been working together with the mayor's office and all of the agencies that have touch points on these. And just want to say to the three executive directors, they've been great. And what this is is we feel like it's just a good governance package. So when we start opening up these ordinances, they were implemented during different administrations. They were implemented during different fiscal times that we were experiencing in the city and county of Denver. And we really believe that this is just a good governance practice to have them all aligned. I really noticed something when I was working on the ballot measure for affordable housing. That's when I first started realizing how different these all were structured because oftentimes when I'm working on a piece of ordinance, I'll go to our city attorney and say, hey, what pull language from these different existing sales tax and tell me what do they have for a quarter? What do they require? What do they? And then I was like, oh, this is interesting. experiment or interesting initiative to do and having them all on an Excel spreadsheet and seeing how they all structure different. So there's still a little bit of work to do. We have to figure out the implementation day because Denver preschool programs year is different than ours. Prosperity Denver year is different than ours. Caring for Denver, we've talked about them. Their budget year matches our budget year. So we've gone to them already and said, could you propose this 1% in your next budget year? For Denver Preschool Program, school started. So they've already given a lot of these funds away for the four-year-olds and the three-year-olds. They can't just magically come up with 1%. So we're working with them. So in the ordinance, you'll see the implementation periods. spread across all three of them because we wanna be respectful to them and what their budgets are. And just wanna say thank you to all of you who worked on this, because we literally had to pull tons of resources from the administration to be able to get this work done. And especially to our two aides. Ian and Melissa have been amazing at coordinating all of this, and it's just been a real collaborative process.

Great. And we're open for any questions. Wonderful. Thank you. And thank you for bringing it forward, Council Members. We have two people in the queue. Let's go ahead and get started with Council Member Sawyer and then Council Member Watson.

Thanks, Madam President. Thanks, you guys. This is fantastic. Great work. I feel like this is something that we have talked about for a really long time. So to see it finally coming through is fantastic. I did just have one question about the, so not the administrative fee within the city, the 1% that helps us pay for contract administrator and those kinds of things that have to happen internally, but Within the actual organizations, there is language in each of these ordinances that sets aside a certain amount of dollars that the organizations can use to pay for staff and benefits and those kinds of things, which any organization needs. And so there has to be administrative costs set aside at a certain percentage, but those percentages don't match between the three. right um and i would really like to see them match because i think that that's also fair um and i think you know if you look at kind of administrative fees in the in the anything up to 12% is totally reasonable. So I think it would need to be less than that because these are city tax dollars, taxpayer money that people are using. But I think the highest one in any of those is 7%. And I'm wondering if you've had any conversation around matching kind of that 7% admin fee up to 7%, not that they can just use all of it if they don't need it. I do feel like those, like if we're matching everything, we should match that too.

Yeah. You raised that and it was not something that we had already kind of taken on in this process. It does, I think, bring up a couple different things. Even Prosperity Denver is not just 5%. They also get a 5%, separate 5% for the database that they maintain capacity building. I think it is a question for us of whether or not that's something that we want to fully include in this package, which means we would need to look at, do they all go up to 10%? Because that's basically what Prosperity Denver is able to manage between the two fives. Do we get rid of the two fives and make it a single number? So it was just not... math and kind of vetting that we had gone through for this. It's not lost on me though that they probably would appreciate having more room in their allowable admin expenses, particularly those that caring for Denver that has 5%. They also have the largest bucket. They have the largest sales tax period, but that also means that they have to manage more grants and things like that as well. So not lost on me, just not something that we fully reviewed during this process.

We hope to have a decision. We still just have to have more conversation. And so we're hoping to have all of that shored up by the September 15th. And that's why we have a little bit longer runway and we're not just taking this to committee after is those are conversations that we need to have with our partners and understand how it impacts them. And to your point, These are sales tax dollars, so you can match what happens in the private sector, but you don't want to 100% match what's in the private sector, right? So we are having those conversations with our partners for sure.

Okay, I really appreciate that and I look forward to hearing where you guys land on that. I can see both sides, right? I think the affordable housing sales tax measure was a really good kind of measure of this because it was such a big number that a 10% sales tax fee would have been you know 10 million dollars and that's like out of control and totally unreasonable and unnecessary for something like this um so maybe the answer is that they each need their own unique individual administrative percentages um because that's what makes sense given the dollars that are going into it or maybe it's that it needs to just they all just sort of need to align at something that's reasonable um i don't know that's for you guys to decide you tell me what you end up doing. But I do think it's important to have the conversation now as we're making those changes.

That's it. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Watson.

Thank you, Council President. I want to say the same to both of you. Such a smart piece of review legislation. These nonprofits do so much work and they're under such clear review from community, from everyone else. And I think the steps that you two have taken have provided some breathing room and some space and some clear governance that they may not individually have been able to come up with on their own. So I really appreciate it. When I got my briefing and y'all walked me through it twice, I thought, how smart, how wonderful. My question, this is not a hard ask, it's just something I wanted to elevate. We knew when we were looking at the dedicated funding for parks, completely separate animal, we're very clear that the funding that we receive, and this is the total amount that we receive, that the administration could not reduce the budget to, let's say, if Denver Parks and Rec received $30 million because of the sales tax. the administration couldn't reduce what they were actually going to budget in the budgetary process for parks and recs. So to subordinate our budget process because they're not receiving additional sales tax. I was curious from you all's perspective, have you Do you think there's a space or place or necessary to be clear in this with the 1% take back to OCA and 1% to DDPHE that the administration can't supplant that amount? So for example, if $400,000 goes back to OCA, they need the money and their budget's already been cut. Is there something that needs to be explicit that the administration, because the budgets are tight, can't then reduce the budget to OCA by any amount because they're getting 1% back for administration? Don't know what our power is. Don't know if that's something you all want to take on. I just was curious as I read it, am I... Spidey Census was like, I want to make sure OCA doesn't start planning for that 1% and then their budgets cut. And then so they can't assume the additional supports they need. Very long explanation, but I just want to say thanks. But that was my question.

Yeah, I would say yes. I think we're looking at... How can we make sure that that's clear in the language so that we don't have to come back in another year and still face the same issue that either one of these departments don't have enough to actually put enough people on these contracts that was intended. So $425,000 is the up to 1% for children's affairs. They need that. They need contract administration help. We know that. We want to make sure that they're still able to get it and didn't have to shave it off because we knew that they'd be getting this additional money. They need that today, right? And so, yeah, we'll make sure that we put in the right language on the administration side that they can't rebalance the books, right, in anticipation of these dollars.

And the 1% goes to Office of Children's Affairs, but it also goes to the city attorney, right? It also goes because the city attorney, so when I was on the Denver preschool program, I would also often have to call Elsa and I'd be like, who has your contract? in Jagger when they're renegotiating it. And we would have to, I would have to like call everybody and be like, hey, where's the contract in Jagger? How is it going? And I wasn't trying to negotiate the contract. I was just trying to get the responses back from the city, back to ELSA. And so I just wanna make clear that the 1% doesn't just go to Office of Children's Affairs. It also needs to make sure that if we're gonna take a 1%, we need to know who in the city attorney's office has the contract in JAGR, are they responding to all these three entities because then they have to have their attorneys would be going back and forth in the contract negotiations that we ultimately vote on. And part of the hard part is finding out who in the city attorneys who are responsible for their contract. So I, and then part of it also, and I just have experience cause I was on the Denver preschool program. Sometimes the executive director of the office of children's affairs would have to show up. They showed up often when we were taking out the sunset language, when we ran the sunset language, we couldn't just negotiate with the program administrator, we often sometimes had to go actually to the executive director who is appointed by the mayor to make sure that everybody was focusing on the same task to get rid of that sunset language. So it is spread. That's why the example is the program, the fiscal administrator, the contract administrator. So I think it should be clear that it's just not going back to one agency. That's not the point. It's the city gets 1% and all the people who have touch points on the contract also need to make sure that kind of like they're billing towards the 1%, for lack of a better word. We haven't figured out exactly how that happens, but we are working with the mayor's office to make sure that that language reflects that intent. Does that answer the question? That's helpful. It's helpful.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Lewis.

Well, thank you. I thought the queue would be a little bit longer than that. I just had a quick question about the 1% in the return to the agency. Can you tell me what that looks like in practice?

Yeah, because we do it right now with Denver Health. So if there's a certain amount that's anticipated for projected revenue from the sales tax, 1% of that is identified as being retained at the city level before we pass along the other 99% to Denver Health. And it's done to them in monthly installments. but we would anticipate being able to budget out for DDPHE, Office of Children's Affairs, up to that amount for them being able to bring on new personnel to fill these particular roles.

So last week, if I could add on, last week in health and safety, Denver Health gave us an update on their contract. We gave back, the city and county of Denver gave back $500,000 to Denver Health because we didn't spend down that 1%. So literally we ended up, when they closed out the books, they got $500,000 back. So we're practicing that right now with Denver Public Health. literally that's in practice right now and it's working really well so they're budgeting it out and they're like we don't have to actually our program administrator fee say their salary is not that much that would go back to them so it's in practice with denver health right now okay so maybe i misunderstood um how you all presented it and obviously i wasn't here last week um in health and safety um but i just wanted to know like what that looks like for

These folks who may not be engaging in that practice right now, I understand Denver Health is, but what does it look like for them to be able to anticipate? To start doing it?

If we can have maybe Megan or Karen, if you want to speak in terms of how you would ramp that up for Department of Public Health and Environment, the 1% from Caring for Denver.

Hi, Megan Parizo, DDPHE. And I think I understand the question, but let me know if I'm answering the wrong question. We create projections, well, finance creates projections, and we send those to Caring for Denver or Denver Health at the beginning of the year and have the associated budget and spreadsheet that says this is the 99% that you get Denver Health. You will submit monthly invoices to us so that we can pay you on a monthly basis for those 12 months of funds. This is the 1% that we will retain within the city within a special revenue fund that is dedicated only to the language in the ordinance and only to the work of administering the Caring for Denver work. And then we track that budget regularly. We come to safety committee per the ordinance, we come in the contract, we come to safety committee once in May and once later in the year to report out on our administrative budget proposal and then where we land at the end of the year. And so Caring for Denver or Denver Health would know at the beginning of the year, this is the amount you're getting, this is the amount the city is retaining. And then when we close the books at the end of the year and Department of Finance provides us with the final revenue that was collected and the final 1% that was allowable for the city to retain and spend, we true that 1% up with what we spent and then Denver Health or Caring for Denver would submit an invoice back to the city for the reconciled amount. If we owe Caring for Denver money for under projecting our revenues, we would add the city's unspent admin funds to that and they would provide one true up invoice for both of those things. If revenue projections were lower and Caring for Denver owes the city funds because we've distributed too much, we would subtract the unspent admin funds

from what caring for denver owes back to the city did that help okay great thank you are there any other council members no okay all right we have no other questions um thank you very much for bringing this forward absolutely thank you thank you take a moment for transition

We almost did. Hi.

All right. Well, we have another presentation up with Councilmember Alvarez and Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez to talk about Immigrant Employee Support and Workforce Equity Initiative Proposal. I turn it over to you when you're ready.

I'm going to just kick off a little bit because you'll start us with the presentation, but just want to let folks know, so we don't have anything written right now. This is clearly just some things that we've been working on that we wanted to present to the body and get some feedback from you all on some ways and paths that we can take. as it relates to this issue but we wanted to first like make you aware of it and then again get feedback so that we can go back to the folks we've been working with and you know see where we go from there as far as what paths we can take. So with that I'm going to turn it over to Councilwoman Alvarez.

Great yeah we just I will say for myself was contacted by city workers that are very uncertain right now. And so we can go to the first slide. One of the things that's happening right now is people are dreamers. For example, their temporary status does expire. They can't file too far ahead of time per the law. And so they're only able to file within so many days by the time it expires. And it's not being processed. in time for them to keep their employment. And so as you can imagine the uncertainty that that creates for young people that we've already invested so much in and their education, it's creating a lot of uncertainty for them. And not only that, but they have many appointments. They have to pay attorneys and filing fees. They have to navigate this process in an uncertain environment. without a formal support system within the city. And these burdens can magnify workplace inequities, disrupting their employment, they may need more time off, benefits continuity, they could lose their health insurance and undermine overall workforce stability. And so I'm sure you all can imagine what that would be like not knowing if you're gonna have a job to no fault of your own, but because of your work status. So how we got here, with the DACA renewals being delayed, this is something we have been thinking a lot about. A city employee initiated this conversation initially with me and then also reached out to Councilwoman Gonzalez Gutierrez's office. And this led to us doing some work together and research on what have other cities done and what can we do to provide a sense of stability for these city workers.

Excuse me. So through some of the conversations that we've been having, we have identified some gaps. So some of those examples are here. I'm not going to read through all of them, but some of those identified are the limited support and expertise when it comes to immigration processes. that our employees may not have access to. Employees using their earned time off or leave in order to attend the many various appointments that they need to go to when they're having to process, you know, go through that process. The lack of standardized rehiring processes for employees that were let go for reasons beyond their control, like a delayed approval or other work authorization. And no path to minimize the impact that this can have on employees, like the loss of their benefits. So we were able to sit down with the Office of Human Resources and they were incredibly helpful in kind of giving us some of the data that they had. So we know that there are over 14,000 city employees and just under 1% are employees undergoing an immigration process. When an employee is let go or resigns, the average cost of turnover is $40,000. And this can, of course, vary depending on the type of level of the positions that go vacant. One other thing just to flag is that according to OHR, it is up to the agency's discretion to determine what to do with the position once it's vacant. Whether they want to hold on to a posting or give the employee some time until they get their authorization or they can choose to post it immediately, which then again, if somebody had to resign or was let go because of their work authorization expiring, they're now without a job and without a path of return, not always a path of return.

Great. And OHR has been tracking the terminations and resignations that are related to work authorization. Since the beginning of 2026 through August 6th, they reported nine terminations that expired because of work authorizations. These are dedicated city workers that have city knowledge, that have the education and expertise necessary to fulfill those jobs that we no longer have solely due to their work authorization. We have taken several steps and we've done quite a bit of research to make sure that we're thinking outside the box and considering any potential support that we can give from an equity lens. As we mentioned, a city employee approached us with some research and potential solutions or specific requests. and we asked central staff to support with some research and they provided things done by different educational institutions. We submitted a follow-up ask for them to connect with peer cities and see if there's additional information they can find. The Office of Council Pro Tem Gonzalez Gutierrez hosted the Urban Leader Fellows this summer for them to conduct some additional research. The fellows created a survey to collect anonymous data from city employees, anonymous feedback, from city employees and we have also connected with the Human Rights and Community Partnerships Office and OHR and have others in the pipeline of people that we're outreaching to have these discussions with.

So I think this was my sixth year hosting the Urban Leader Fellows. I did this often at the Capitol and they've continued to come back even on council. As you may know with Councilman Cashman with RNOs, we had a similar process. But these are folks who engage in a fellowship. They are to do research. They meet with stakeholders. They provide kind of recommendations and feedback. And so some of the highlights from the report that the fellows created are both the financial and administrative burden these processes can have on employees, which could translate into workforce interruptions, employee turnover, but primarily the loss of institutional knowledge. And additionally, some of the other things, as I noted earlier, is that it is costing approximately $40,000 in the turnover cost. And it does not include the value of the institutional knowledge that is lost, but there are some efforts that lead to an increased retention that can save the city a lot of money. So if you think $40,000, we've had nine terminations so far this year. If you do that math, I'm not going to do math. What do you say? Math on the fly? I'm not going to do that right now. But it adds up, right? And if this continues, it will continue to add up as cost to the city and to our employees.

So as we mentioned, the fellows created a survey that was shared out to city employees through the weekly HR bulletin. Even though the fellowship is over, the survey is still open. So if there is any city employee out there that shares these concerns, they can still access that survey. As of right now, we have 17 responses. And out of those 17, 10 people have expressed that immigration-related employment requirements have caused them the highest level of stress. I think another thing to mention there is that maybe those other seven aren't expiring soon so they have a temporary relief of that stress but indefinitely everybody that has temporary status will be at risk. So just to highlight some of the results of the survey, 35% have spent more than $5,000 on immigrant-related filing fees in the past five years, and 41.2% have spent between 2,500 and 5,000. Additionally, these employees have had to rearrange their work schedules, use vacation time, pay attorney's fees, among other things related to appointments and document renewals. Some support could go a really long way to make the difference in their lives of these employees who work to serve our city every single day. 8 out of 17 people said immigration processing delays have impacted their employment at some point. Some of the supports the city employees have expressed would be most helpful are access to immigration legal services, job security during those processing delays, reimbursement for filing fees, employer-sponsored when they're filing their paperwork, and then paid administrative leave for immigration-related appointments. Those are just a few of the things that were requested. Highlights from employee feedback. Here are some words from the employees. I'll only read two right now, but I would like to encourage you to take time to read these highlights. While colleagues get to talk about what they have going on, I can't share the absolute earth-shaking reality that my entire life can be uprooted at any given moment due to my immigration status. It's isolating, it's hard, yet we continue to show up because we care for the city and the country that we call our own. And second, a more informed, compassionate, and supportive process would make it meaningful, a meaningful difference for immigrant employees that would better reflect the city's commitment to welcoming and supporting immigrant communities. I just wanna take a moment to honor those employees and those that have chosen to speak out and ask for help in this moment and that took the time to fill out this survey.

Okay as I mentioned we met with OHR and it was a really helpful meeting and from that we can share that they are doing some additional research and drafting some potential career service rule changes to soften the break-in service impact for employees separated due to expiring work authorization. So they have already identified this as well as an issue and are trying to take some measures on their own. But we know that this may not just be a CSA rule change. There may need to be some additional changes done even legislatively. And so they're also looking at possible changes around the rehiring process, probation, and paid time off accruals to meet those needs. All right so as I said recommendations to be considered and this is where we really want to get your feedback today before we proceed with anything. So as of now we're looking into the feasibility of some of these recommendations and what could be a rule change versus what could be legislation and those are things we're discussing with OHR that we're discussing with the with the city attorneys. And so some of those main options being explored alongside many other partners is having city staff that can offer support and guidance which is getting at one of the main things that we heard, pieces of feedback we heard back from some of the impacted employees. Creating a standardized rehiring process as opposed to an agency by agency determination so that way you know, everybody knows what to expect no matter which agency you're working for. Provide dedicated administrative leave to attend their required processes as an equity initiative. Protections during processing delays and exploring the possibility of having an opt-in benefit specific to immigration legal services. Okay, so where we're at for our next steps, we value that all come from different backgrounds and have different expertise. So we, again, wanted to come to all of you, get your thoughts on this before we move any further along in this process. After the budget and policy presentation today, our plan is to have some additional conversations with partners in this work. like Department of Safety, Department of Finance, Department of Safety because they actually have a process in place for rapid rehiring. And so we want to understand what that process is. And so we have those meetings getting scheduled, but as well as the mayor's office. So also the city employee that has done a lot of work towards this will be going to peak to develop a pilot model on what the rehiring process could look like. And they're doing that within the agency that they work for. Then in collaboration with OHR, we can determine what is being done through a rule change and what things may require legislation to cover the aspects that the rule change just simply cannot. And that's it. So we're up for any questions and also again your feedback on the recommendations that we have proposed today.

Thank you very much for the presentation and responding to the employees that have been coming forward. Again, this is a discussion. As I wait for members in the queue right now, I also have... Okay, there we go. I do have a question.

Council President, one other thing is that, you know, we wanted to bring this here to start the conversation and then our plan would be to have some one-on-one briefings once we have some draft legislation. I also want to thank Laura and Emmy for their work and, you know, taking on a lot of meetings and also kind of bringing all this information together. So, thank you.

Thank you. Let's go ahead and get started then with Council Member Watson.

Thank you, Council President. I'm just going to ask very high level on first, thank you all for looking at this. I mean, when you hear the voice of the employees and just the concern they have, I appreciate you all looking into this. I'm curious with your review with our city attorneys, an extremely high level, if there are differentiated different ways in which we provide support for employees, no matter of status. Curious, I don't need you to answer that, but I think looking at really are how much variance and especially as we're going into bargaining units, how much variance can we have as far as employees based on status, how we can treat those employees differently? That would be a great maybe one-on-one briefing if y'all can provide that. Shaitsa had another question.

They are looking into all of that as well. There's some things that the city attorneys are currently exploring and what is possible.

I just lost my question. Sorry. I'll go back in. Council President, I had another one. I apologize.

Thank you. Next in queue is Council Member Torres. Thank you.

Thanks to you both and all the folks that were looking into this. I know in 2017 this came up for city employees who didn't feel threatened before and suddenly there was a new level of just personal vulnerability even if they had legal permanent residency, anything short of citizenship. But I think there's such a new trajectory under the second Trump administration where they are, I think, deliberately trying to push people off of legal status and into something more vulnerable. I didn't see and I would like you to add in, you know, who you talk to next. You need to talk to immigration legal attorneys who specialize in employment. Our city attorney's office is not going to have that expertise. And even sometimes your general immigration attorney might not either. So it is somebody who works in employment because sponsoring, the kinds of sponsorships that employers are able to qualify for are really narrow and specific and there's like multiple really narrow paths. And so I think it's really important for us to know what we're telling folks we would be promising to try to deliver in like the craziness that is immigration law. And so just to flag that for you all, but I think what we're going to see in the upcoming budget are additional cuts to the Immigrant Legal Services Fund. I think what we're going to see if it doesn't get cut even more is the last cut being the new base, which was like $575,000 when we have been putting $750,000 into it. We need millions into that frankly for the kinds of legal support that city employees could avail themselves of as well if we were able to better fund it. So just my thanks and I look forward to seeing kind of what additional information you're able to I think the OHR side of this is really important. There's also civil service now that we're allowed to hire police and fire and that's an entirely different system from OHR. So just to flag that.

Thank you for sharing your expertise. Thank you. Council Member Hyatt.

Thank you, Madam President. I noticed that this particular class is about 100 current city employees, which is a little at about two-thirds of a percent of the current city employees, at least on this slide, which is both a benefit and a risk. Benefit in that the, if we were to set aside funds for this group, there aren't that many people there, so the cost wouldn't be as much. It also, I'm curious from maybe the risk standpoint, is creating a program for a small number of employees. I don't know if that's, This is a question out of ignorance, not a leading question. I wonder if there are other groups of individuals that OHR is aware of in city employees that are also small and have an additional set of employment benefits. So the idea, every employee that works here in the city is valuable. So I'm not trying to say that there's not a value. Just thinking of it from a financial perspective and then from a Making sure that the city operates perspective, we slice and dice every 100 employees. It would be very difficult for us to manage with our, our given our current staffing. So really, it's not meant to be a. Certainly it doesn't, what I'm saying, it doesn't sound compassionate at all. And it's not really meant to be compassion or not. It's more meant to be just kind of factual. What's the analysis so that we have it available? And if there are other groups, that would be interesting.

I think the difference there is that there is a lot of employment laws that protect a lot of people. And this is a unique group that doesn't qualify for the vast majority of those protections. And so I don't anticipate there will be, but we can ask the question.

It's worth the question and maybe the answer is this is a unique small group of people and that's worth knowing too. Thank you.

Thank you. I just had a few questions as well. I think in one of the slides it had that the city doesn't I don't remember how it was phrased. Is sponsor a work authorization? Is that a Denver thing or is that across cities that they don't do that like a government? Ed to Dink. I'm just curious and maybe that's just something to find out more information.

Yeah, I think that overall it's because of the type of positions that we have and the types of sponsorships like what Councilwoman Torres was saying, but we can dive a little bit deeper into that. I do remember them saying specifically there was some role against us doing that, which is unique to, I believe, the city government. That isn't a widespread policy, but it also is a challenging thing to do and it's very... You know, there's industry-specific sponsorships. Landscaping, for example, has a higher level of ability to sponsor.

And then a second thought, and I think this kind of goes down into the weeds a little bit, so I look forward to having a briefing and discussing this more, but that when you have an administration that's requiring people to have their physical work hard, on hand to continue working even if they're waiting for that card to arrive. I think that, you know, if you can think about what those specific situations might also look like for folks, that would be really helpful as well.

Thank you. I think the federal government has some rules and we definitely want to comply with what that looks like as far as when we can stop employing someone. But definitely trying to explore where we can draw that line.

And that probably falls under Councilmember Torres' suggestion for an immigrant attorney that is looking at workforce. And so I think that that would be really helpful. I didn't have any other questions. Are there other council member questions for the queue? No. Okay. Well, look forward to hearing more and having a briefing so that we can discuss this further. Thank you for bringing it forward. And with that, we are adjourned.