Public Works Committee - Regular Meeting

Hey Denver, it's time for this bi-weekly meeting of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of Denver City Council. Join us for the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee starting now.

Welcome to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Today is July 15th and I am Chantal Lewis. I chair this committee. It's actually the last day that I am chairing this committee and festivities. And with that, I'm going to take a moment of personal privilege for those of you watching at home. There is a council election next week and after that committee assignments will move around. As such, this is actually the last meeting of the Transportation Infrastructure Committee that I am chairing. It has been an absolute pleasure and honor to chair this committee and to serve in this role. I want to thank Alyssa for the work that she's done as well as Melissa for the work that you all have done to support in staffing this committee. The agency staff who meet regularly with me in my office, notably Rita and Kevin before he left, as well as Elena and Maggie of Dottie. Thank you for the work and partnership that you have done. And I also wanted to thank Council President Sandoval who made the move to make me the chair of this committee in what was the business committee all the way back in the late summer of 2024. Like I said, it has been an absolute honor and a privilege and I look forward to the person who chairs this committee the next go around. With that, we can do a round of introductions and I'll start with you, Councilman Hines.

Chris Hines, Denver's perfect Kevin Flynn, Southwest, Denver's district 2 district 7.

Thank you. And then we can go online.

Good afternoon Diana, Romero, Campbell, Southeast, Denver district 4 and I just also want to echo what a tremendous job you have done as a chair of this committee and lovely as always with your celebration on.

I wouldn't be me if I didn't do it. I love it. Thank you so much. We have one briefing with Dottie presenting on the Safe Routes to School and Denver Moves Everyone. Before we get to that, I'd like to turn the floor over to Councilwoman Alvidrez.

Thank you so much, Committee Chair. I just wanted to take a moment to talk about how we got to this place. Today we were supposed to be presenting on next steps, have ballot language ready for a seat tax to provide permanent funding for Safe Routes to School and Denver Moves Everyone. And we really, you know, in respect to my colleagues who I just have seen even, for example, with the municipal sentencing, the amount of work that you need to go to and outreach and stakeholdering and coalition building. needs to be done wasn't quite there and there was some tangible things that were also missing which was we needed to have projections specifically for ballot language and ballot language ready pretty much by today in order to make the ballot and so what I want to say is that's not off the table we're still eager to look for funding sources but I thought this was a great opportunity and asked Dottie to help us illustrate the need and I think that was one of the biggest things to me is that there is a dollar amount, right, that we need to actually make these programs work and talk about what the dollars are that we have today, what our goals are and what all of that looks like and how we can work in partnership and my goal at the end of this is that we can find ways to work together and bring coalition together with all these other groups um that care about this issue including people that are upset right now about the 16th street mall right or 16th street i don't know what it's called anymore but the actual bus won't be running there anymore so i look forward to working together to find solutions but i think highlighting what the need is and what we're trying to fund is great so thank you to director for your entire team for putting together this uh slideshow in a short amount of time to help get us to that point, I think there'll be many follow-up conversations to this. So I just wanted to be able to say that. But with that, I'll, with your permission, I'll just... Yeah, you're welcome.

Thank you. Actually, just let me welcome Councilman Cashman, of course, to the meeting, and then you can do your introductions and get into your presentation.

Thank you. I'm Amy Ford. I'm the Executive Director of Denver's Department of Transportation Infrastructure, joined by Jen and Riley. I'll let them introduce myself.

Yes, good afternoon. Jen Hillhouse. I'm the Director of Transportation Mobility Planning for DOTI.

Good afternoon. I'm Riley Lemieux. I'm a Principal City Planner with DOTI.

And to Councilwoman Alvedrez, thank you for the opportunity to sit and talk today. I think this is the start to the conversation rather than the end, and I think there's a lot more definition and thoughtful execution about how we talk about money and funding, transportation goals and priorities. So today, Riley and Jen are going to walk you through Denver Moves Everyone, which, as you know, is sort of our North Star substantive process that was completed, engaged with the public back in 2022 to set the vision and the goals for transportation and what we want to accomplish in the kind of city that we want to live in for mobility, sustainability, for mode shift, for safety. And part of that came with not just a definition of a variety of different programs and others, but also with a definition and estimate of what does it cost to achieve our goals of zero fatalities on Denver streets, or to achieve our goals of mode shift, or to achieve our goals of how we think about a sustainable transportation system. And so we're going to talk about that at the high level today. We're also going to then give you a look ahead at where we have gotten our dollars in the past, how much historically we have gotten from different sources. And I think that's an important piece. Transportation is not just funded by local dollars. It is funded by federal dollars and grants. It is also equally funded by different fees and enterprises. So we're going to talk through that basically. And I'll probably take those slides if you guys don't mind. And then we'll turn around and talk to you about the individual programs that we have, especially those that you have questions about, like Safe Routes to Schools, as well as Vision New York, which are less plans per se, but then as much initiatives that are funded and resourced and programmed through our existing DME different initiatives with signals and transit and pedestrian crossings and others. So we look forward to the start of this conversation. I'll turn it over to the team so they can get going and then we'll please interrupt us as usual. Some of this might be repetitive, you know it. And so feel free to tell us to hustle up if you already know some of these things and we can get to the meat of the conversation.

All right. Thanks so much, Amy, for that great introduction. And thanks so much, Council, for having me today. I'm excited to give you an overview of Denver Moves Everyone, which is our long-range strategic transportation plan that was developed in 2023. And as Amy touched on, today we're going to want to spend some time with you sharing a little bit of an overview about how that long-range transportation plan defines for us what our goals are. So what does good look like for our transportation system in Denver? those goals that have been defined and workshopped with the community. And where are we at today versus where do we want to go between now and 2050? What does the transportation funding look like that we have currently? And how do we use DME to help define for us the level of investment that we need in order to make meaningful impacts to our transportation system in the city? And then finally, we'll talk about how we use DME to inform those programs, as Amy touched on. Once again, Denver Moves Everyone, you'll hear me abbreviate this a lot as DME. It's a shorter acronym for what we refer to as our Long Range Strategic Transportation Plan. And this is something that cities and agencies that are the size of Denver or Dottie do in order to help help define for us what are our goals when it comes to improving, maintaining, and operating our transportation system. How much is that going to cost? What are the long-term resources? What does the community ultimately want for its transportation system? How do we get there? Um, the last time that we updated a strategic transportation plan was in 2008 and so we started making those, those updates to it in 2021. So, I think, as everyone knows Denver has changed a lot since 2008. So, um, making that update was long overdue. So, um, we. We know that transportation impacts all of us every day in our daily lives. Not only is transportation the second highest household cost, but we know that it's also one of the second highest source of greenhouse gas emissions in our city. And it impacts us because it defines how long does it take to get to the places that we wanna go? How long is it gonna take? What kind of options do we have for getting to different places? And so it's really important that we collectively think about our transportation system and how we can work to improve it. We often refer to DME as the people's plan. When we worked on and when we were developing this, it was a two-year planning process because we wanted to ensure that we were really hearing from as many people as possible. And we were happy to say that we engaged with all 70 of Denver's neighborhoods and heard from hundreds of thousands of different voices through different mechanisms of outreach to help us define and understand what is it that Denver residents want as the future of their transportation system. And in that, we heard five goals, and I'm just going to touch a little bit on those five goal areas. I like to kind of think of these as focus areas. So those are the areas of mobility, safety, sustainability, community equality, and then equity is woven into each of those goals. But I wanna touch a little bit on what that actually means. So when we were hearing from Denver residents what they want for how they'd like to see us improve our transportation system in the future, we heard that Denver residents want a system that is convenient so that it's affordable, it's reliable, that there are multiple travel options for how you get to where you wanna go. We wanted a system that is safe so that not only is it that it's safe to get from point A to point B, but also that our system is comfortable. So regardless of what mode you're choosing, that our system also feels comfortable. And then also ensuring that in the face of climate change, that we're having a transportation system that's sustainable, reduces air pollution, and is also helping us achieve some of our environmental goals. And we know that on the community side of things, we know that some neighborhoods in Denver are very well connected so that it's easy for people to meet their daily needs by walking or biking or taking transit. But in some neighborhoods, that's more challenging than others. And so ideally, we want to make sure that all 78 of Denver's neighborhoods are easily connected and well connected and that we reduce barriers that people might have for connecting to the places that they want to go. And then finally, we also heard that people want a transportation system that's well maintained. So that means that, again, it's a smooth ride regardless of whether you're biking, taking transit, driving, or walking. And again, that system continues to be well maintained. One of the other things that DME helped us define is where are we at today versus where do we want to be at in the future? And in that, there is a lot of different strategies that were developed, and we have a lot of different data behind us that helps us to define that. But there's a couple of key ones that I want to touch on. One, for example, under mobility is that today taking transit in Denver takes almost a little over two and a half times longer than it does to drive. So in an ideal state, we want to change that so that transit is no longer than 1.5 longer than driving. And then under the safety goal, fortunately in 2025, there were 94 traffic-related fatalities and 298 serious bodily injuries. And we know that through our Vision Zero goal that the only acceptable goal is to bring those down to zero. So zero fatalities and zero serious injuries on Denver roadways. And then again, as I touched on a second ago, transportation is the second largest largest source of CO2 emissions. So in an ideal world, we would be reducing that down to zero and also ensuring that our transportation system is sustainable again and resilient in the face of climate change. The last few that I'll mention again is just making sure that, ensuring that regardless of what neighborhood that you live in, that it's easy for you to connect to and convenient for you to be able to connect to the places that you want to go and that our transportation system is well maintained. One thing I wanted to touch on on the quality piece or under the quality goal. Is today 40% of our traffic signal or only 40% of our traffic signals are rated in a good condition or above again, an ideal state. We want all of our traffic signals being in a meeting our city standard. And then we also have goals that are related to that that are related to condition of bridges condition of payment condition. So what I touched on was a little bit of where we're at today versus where we want to go. But I do want to highlight the fact that since 2023, since DME was first developed, we have been making significant progress on our goals and we continue to do so every day. And a couple of things I just want to highlight is that we have been able to expand Through recent investment with our bikeway program, we've been able to expand the amount of the percentage of households that are within a quarter mile of a high comfort bike facility up to 79%. The goal is 100%, but we are well within that goal. We've also continued to administer 1 of the nation's largest bike and scooter programs. We've continued to also reconstruct major roadways to improve safety and provide more travel options. So highlighting Colfax and 16th street. We've also continued to, we are working in the process of creating a city wide traffic calming program. I know that all of you get complaints about wanting to slow down traffic in at the neighborhood level. And so these, we are working. on a program to be able to proactively address some of those complaints that we hear. And then we've been able to leverage technology to slow down excessive speeding on our arterial roadways through signal timing. And then have continued to incorporate green infrastructure into a variety of mobility projects so that, again, as we have hot days like the days that we're experiencing this week in the summer, that we're able to ensure that our streets stay cool and resilient again in the face of climate change. So as we looked to DME and as we kind of looked at all of the different assets, all the different ways that we improve our transportation system, one of the innovative things that we developed as a part of DME was we were able to calculate approximately how much from all the different transportation sources of funding that we would typically get in an aspirational state if we had all the money in the world, how much would it cost To to build out to our full transportation system. And so that's everything from building on our full bike network to ensuring that our, our streets are well maintained that that's all of our sorry our streets are are paved up to our standard. That's also building out all of the. expanding out the transit network. And then one of the things that you'll notice on the bottom is that that number for traffic signals is high. This looks at essentially doubling our signal inventory in order to ensure that more people have more safer places to cross. So, when we start to look at all of those numbers together, it is a, it is a very big number. It's about 600Million that would be needed annually in order to not only maintain our transportation system in a state of good repair, but to also complete all of the expansion and improvement projects that have been recommended in order to achieve our DME goals. So typically in an annual year, we get between 200 and about 300 million annually, and that's from a variety of different sources. And I also want to touch on the fact that this is not just Denver's portion of the share. This also, we rely on our partnerships with CDOT from RTD and as well as some of our other federal government partners in order to be able to contribute funding to these and meet those needs.

So you had asked very specifically, like, where do we get our money from? And so this is a combination slide that tries to align that and then also talk about typical sources of funding for transportation. So we have three primary sources, from federal to state to local dollars. And within this, there's a bit of information that I want to literally say, and the funding source is a gas tax or a fee or a such and such. So we receive discretionary grants. We receive something called the Transportation Improvement Program from the federal government. Often you hear these words, TIP and STIP. TIP is that, as well as pass-through funds that come through. Where are those typically funded? When you pay at the pump, you pay both a federal gas tax and you pay a state gas tax. Neither of those have been changed since the 90s, I might add. But nonetheless, those are the gas taxes that go feed the feds, and then they come back to us at a state. And in Colorado, we're actually a state that puts more in than we get back, just as an FYI. But that is typically the funding that we get from the federal side. We also receive those discretionary grants where we compete against other states, other cities, municipalities, and such to win projects. And for instance, one that we've recently run is the Safe Streets for All project. We brought in approximately $7 million to think about safe streets in our downtown environment. In fact, that will come in front of you all here soon, that grant agreement. We also receive state funds, and state is a little bit of a misnomer because some of those are passed through, again, federal dollars that are coming through the Denver Regional Council of Governments, and they're fed through us, again, with those regional TIP funds that we're mentioning. You also have discretionary grants that CDOT administers for programs that are funded federally, but that are distributed locally and chose to be competitive. So, for instance, programs like the Highway Safety Improvement Program. And much of our funding from safety perspectives for, let's say, improvements on Tower Road or otherwise are coming from the recent one that we're doing in Councilwoman Sawyer's district around Dayton came from that H-CIP fund. And then also state enterprise fees. So there are a variety of different fees that the state, that the public pays. For instance, you pay fees for transportation, the weight of your vehicles, something called a faster fee. They're paying fees through our Uber collections. through our trucking industry pay fees and others. That is another way and those go into enterprise funds and they are distributed back to sometimes municipalities such as the Clean Transit Enterprise Fund puts money back into operations for transit. And then lastly, our local dollars. These are the ones that you guys are most familiar with, and when we talk about that, we pay a property tax, you pay a mill on your property tax, and that funds for the most part our capital improvement programs and our maintenance programs. Again, that state gas tax gets funded back down at the municipal level, so it filters through and comes back to the city, and we distribute that into our funding. We have things like our parking meter fees and a small portion of that was dedicated a little while back to that transportation and mobility fund that we currently have. Equally so, as you know, the public a few years ago decided that sidewalks were incredibly important to them so they assessed themselves a fee so that we could maintain and grow and build out that sidewalk program. In fact, many of the $600 million that you saw sitting there on the annual basis oriented around sidewalks, and that portion is being, I'm going to say, met, if you will, by that sidewalk fund, which puts around $40 million a year into that investment in sidewalks and pedestrian. And then obviously, bond programs also, and they too are paid again through the property taxes through the special bond program. Over to the right, again, you just see the types of different funding that exist. We've had lots of conversations about the different ways that you could look at different fees and or taxes and how you look at bond proceeds, et cetera, different revenue strategies. And we won't get into the detail of all that now, but to know that those are many general sources. But then if you flip to the next slide. We wanted to tell you what we've been getting. So when we said that $200 to $300 million, like what did that mean? Where is the money actually going? So these are breakdowns. We didn't want to just focus on capital because the staff piece is important to it. We are the ones who do the work and sit and do the jobs, et cetera. So this is the annual funding that we get through our general fund, which again is funded again through sales tax typically, that funds our team and our staff. And sometimes there are little dollars here or there through grants or otherwise that fund that staff. But on average, you see, you know, anywhere from $30 to $40 million paying for staff who are doing the transportation program. If you flip to the next slide, and that is both, I might add, the red and the blue, just to clarify. The team who does the planning and builds the shiny new projects and the team who maintains everything that you see, from our streets teams to our paving teams to our street sweepers and others, that's the group. And then the second piece is our capital funding. And so this is a roll up, but it tries to do it on those three groupings. How much money we get locally, how much money we get from the feds, that's that grants number. And then how much money comes through bond, because that is often a special source of funding that really infuses transportation programming. And so what you can see, the reason that bond is every other year there is that is based on when we go to the market with the bonds and the infusion of dollars come in in that fiscal year. So that includes, again, the Capital Improvement Program, those maintenance, as well as discretionary, the little dollars, the small amount of dollars that we have coming through the Special Revenue Fund, the Transportation Mobility Fund, as well as SEF, again, is Sidewalk Enterprise Fund. And so as you can see here towards the end of 25 and 26, certainly the Sidewalk Enterprise Fund goosed our numbers a bit, if you will. So that is why you're seeing those numbers going up here towards the end. And you can see the approximate breakdown of that. So I'm going to turn it back over to Riley then as we get going because we're going to talk about, so just one clarification and you go back to that $600 million. When we get into our programs, a couple of things again because you asked this question so I just want to address it correctly. For safety and for safe routes to schools, they are not specifically funded programs. What they are, are they are initiatives with goals, priorities, action plans. And the activities that we do, I'm going to install a pet signal here, I am going to add a crosswalk there, I am going to rebuild a road here, or I'm going to build a transit system there, are funded through, if we could go back up to the $600 million, each one of these programs here. So it's a little convoluted and we apologize that there's not a dedicated line that just says safe routes to schools. But we pull money for safe routes to schools out of pavement markings, out of pedestrian crossings, out of paving, out of bike and mobility, etc. So we're going to talk through that just briefly and then we're going to give you a sense of the goals and the priorities for each of those plans as we move forward into the next six years. And then please feel free to stop us with questions or otherwise. So, Riley.

Thanks so much, Amy. So as we look into the next six years, I'm gonna have to cover a couple of things, two initiatives. One is Vision Zero and Safe Routes to School. And then we'll talk about those individual programs that are actually delivering the infrastructure that contributes to those initiatives. I'm going to start by talking about Vision Zero. So I know everyone has heard of Vision Zero, but just to redefine it, it's the philosophy that zero is the only number of acceptable traffic-related fatalities or serious injuries on our roadways. And Vision Zero is a cross-cutting initiative because it is not just infrastructure, and we realize that infrastructure alone cannot meet our transportation goals. It is also being able to leverage partnerships, being able to leverage technology, education, outreach, enforcement. It's all of those things working together. So Vision Zero cuts across all of those and coordinates all those things together to help us ensure that we can make a meaningful impact on that safety goal. Safe Routes to School is another initiative that is really focused on promoting safe and convenient travel options for to be able to get to school but also promoting crossing safety and ensuring that children of all ages and abilities have a safe way to get to school regardless of the mode that they're taking. And I want to touch a little bit on what are safe routes to school. So at the time in 2022, sorry, 2021, we last did an assessment of our, all of the schools that are in Denver. And this is not just district management or sorry, district managed schools. This is also, uh, private, public, but at the time there was about 300 schools, and we did an evaluation to determine of the infrastructure things such as sidewalks, bikeways, signalized intersection, where is intersection good, where is intersection just okay, and where does it need to be improved to really ensure that we can really address safety around schools. And this is one of the, this map here shows the analysis of that work and where we identify some kind of the locations that really rose to the top that where we need to be prioritizing our infrastructure through our programs in order to make improvements there. And I just want to also highlight that even if a school, so you're seeing some schools that where those improvements really rose to the top. That's not to say that improvements aren't going to be made at those other locations or that improvements aren't important, but really just saying, as we did that analysis, where infrastructure is needed the most. And then, based on that, we were able to prioritize the school locations into a more defined or into more defined locations. And so, again, this is just indicating where we want to focus on doing what we call travel plans. And that's taking a look at those at the schools that needed that. better infrastructure in order to facilitate safe crossings, provide safer ways to get to school. And then through that, those individual travel plans help make recommendations that include things like traffic calming, bike connections, safer crossings. and as well as other education and operational types of improvements. And those all get identified through those individual travel plans. So on the screen, we touch on some of the different, our investment categories or asset classes that are delivering those Safe Routes to School improvements. I'm gonna talk about that a little bit more in just a few minutes. But some of the other things, again, that our Safe Routes to School Initiative is also focused on is we will be completing an action plan refresh. So again, the data that we have is from 2021, so we want to do a refresh since that data is five years old. be able to do 36 travel plan studies across those priority school locations across Denver and then continue to do some of the other things that are more on the education and enforcement side. So we also have been supporting DPS through a crossing guard program and continue to also support education and encouragement in schools that's about safe travel.

I can just stop right there. As Councilman, you had asked, just for clarity for council members also to understand, like, when we say safe routes to schools, what does that mean in your district? And so that's why we wanted to show that map specifically with the prioritization piece of it, if you could even flip back to it. It does govern, sort of, you saw how we rate the schools in their infrastructure needs, and then now taking those ratings, how we prioritize doing those 36 plans that Riley was talking about. So we... To use an inartful word, we chunk through each of those. We steadily work through those based on our funding and our availability, and then we move forward. And so to the point that you've made, you know, should there be more funding, then we could do more. But recognize that there's a deliberative process behind it and sort of how we think about it and how we characterize it. And then we want to update it right now, too. So we feel it's due for a refresh, if you will.

Thanks, really. Thanks, Amy. So when Safe Routes to School and Vision Zero and DME, when these recommend infrastructure improvements, whether that's a crossing improvement or a new bikeway or a new signal, that those are delivered through what we call our DME programs. And so I want to highlight each of those programs and just describe what they do. And then, as Amy mentioned before, what our six year look ahead is. And so that means where we intend to focus on between now and 2032. So the first one that I want to start with is our transit program. And this program does a couple of different things. It upgrades existing PD bus stops and shelters. There's some bus stops and shelters, for example, that don't have concrete waiting areas. And so this is helping to improve those. We also coordinate a lot with RTD on the planning, design, and construction of our high and medium capacity bus corridor. So the Colfax BRT project is a result of that, but so are the busways that you see downtown. So really what we're focused on over in the six year period with our transit program is investing in hubs and really continuing to make improvements on our high frequency, or sorry, our high frequent transit corridors. Being able to connect those, we know that our climate goals and our mode shift goals are really tied directly to our investment in the transit program and we continue to also partner with RTD and CDOT to make improvements at where we have existing infrastructure in order to be able to meet our goals. So, again, on our, you know, our 2050 vision that was defined in DME is the full build out of a high frequency transit network that complements the existing service that the RTD provides. So really, in that six year period, we will really be focused on enhancing service along the existing heat routes, and then also working on other initiatives such as TDM and transit incentives such as Eco Pass to reduce fares to be able to to be able to encourage more transit ridership. So those are a couple of things that were that were how we're focusing in on our transit program. Again, that is really key to delivering our our mode shift goals and being able to provide more travel options. Then our bicycle program, this is what builds our new high comfort bikeways. We also work with our repaving program to be able to build new bikeways so that way as paving is happening and we know that there's a planned bikeway, we're able to essentially achieve that through and there's some cost savings there for us by being able to coordinate those projects. We also make, through our bike program, upgrades and safety improvements to existing bikeways. So that means taking the ones that are built with low-cost materials, upgrading those to more permanent materials, or if there's safety improvements that are needed, being able to achieve those as well. So really what we're trying to achieve through our bicycle program, though, is ensuring that we have an easy, regardless of where you're at in the city, that you have an easy to navigate multi-modal network. I mentioned that Denver has one of the highest scooter and mobility programs in the world, or sorry, in the country. I think it's the world too, but ensuring that on a scooter or on a bike that you do have a safe place to be able to ride. And that really is the bike program that's delivering those places to ride. So as we then look to the next six years, we want to where we can better connect existing neighborhoods. So focus in on those neighborhoods that we have not yet placed bike infrastructure. Also working with our division of green infrastructure to incorporate greenery into the bike program where possible, and then trying to focus on creating more north-south connections. I know our bike network tends to have a lot of, we've spent a lot of investment completing east-west connections, but then going into those north-south connections as well. Our pedestrian program, this does two things. We build new crosswalks, so areas where there is not a marked crosswalk, the pedestrian program will add new marked crosswalks and where it's needed. We'll focus a lot on schools as well as libraries connecting parks to those marked crosswalks as well. We also construct something that's called an enhanced crosswalk, so that means that it has the flashing lights that you use to be able to cross the street. So that's one component of the pedestrian program, but then we are also completing our, building out our sidewalk network, thanks to the sidewalk enterprise funds. So just wanted to highlight both of those. Over the six year period, we'll be really heavily focused on completing our over $200 million worth of capital expenditures to both repair existing sidewalks for new construction as well as for widening. And then our goal is to complete over 60 crossing improvements during that six year period as well. So that's the enhanced crossings that I was just mentioning. And then signals is doing a couple different things. That's building new signals, but this is also replacing existing signals with the latest technology. So we know in some locations in Denver, there's the span wire signals that don't have the pedestrian countdown timers. So this is upgrading those signals. And then we also make periodic upgrades that improve safety. So such as like adding a left turn arrow to an existing signal to better facilitate traffic movements. So those things are being achieved through the signals program. We've been really focused over as we look to the near term, really focused on making improvements that help us achieve our vision zero goals. So focusing investments on the high injury network. And then at the neighborhood level, being able to focus on some of those smaller collector streets that are also so critical for improving safety. I also wanted to touch on the fact that we, through HSIP and through some of, and that's the name of the state grant that we partner with CDOT and Dr. Koch to be able to make improvements on our state-owned arterial streets and that is continues to be a priority for us over that six-year period through that we will also be prioritizing the addition of between 18 and 30s flashing school zone beacons that will be implemented through the the signal program as well And then I mentioned before that we are in the process of creating a new traffic calming program. And this is really to help us go into more at the neighborhood or residential street level and be more proactive about slowing down excessive speeding and implementing traffic calming improvements that you've seen on some of our neighborhood bikeway projects. And that includes things like speed cushions. The types of treatments are still being defined through that program. But the goal would be that that program can be expanded citywide into all of our Denver neighborhoods. Again, to really focus on our neighborhood streets. And then finally, you've heard me kind of talk about signals and bikes, but what about larger projects such as Colfax, 16th Street? So one of the final things that we do is also focus on what we call our major multimodal or main street corridors. big projects where we're going in and reconstructing the street and potentially fully redesigning it in order to make the street safer, provide more travel options. These tend to be our larger multimillion dollar projects that we partner with RTD and CDOT to implement. And these are also projects that are funded through our bond programs, such as the Santa Fe, the West 38th project, where again, we're doing major overhauls to the project in order to, or to the street in order to achieve our safety goals. So I think that was my last slide. And so I think we want to now open the floor to questions.

Thank you so much. I want to welcome Council President Sandoval to the meeting. She's online. We have every single member in the queue and so have Councilwoman Alvidrez kick us off because this is her presentation.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I do want to start with asking the Department of Finance to come up and speak to if the fee study, when we expect that, also the fiscal health of the city discussion. If you can speak to how you're looking into that.

Laura Swartz, Department of Finance Communications. For the fee study, thank you very much. This is something that we've all kind of talked about a little bit in the past around just taking a more holistic look at our fees across the city, what we are charging, if they are at appropriate levels. The Department of Finance does intend to take on that work. with something that we are getting in the works now and we're beginning to kick that off. And so we will have more to share with you around that in the coming weeks and months as we go out to procure some support on that. The other piece was the fiscal health and I might have to defer that to the mayor's office. That was an initiative that they are working towards that we are more than happy to participate in and be a partner too. But I might kick that to Tim and Dominic if they're available.

Thanks a lot, Laura. Tim Hoffman in the Mayor's office. I know that Councilwoman Alvidrez, you've been having discussions with myself, Don, and Nick Moreno. I don't have any specific dates or anything like that, but we are committed to working with you and the rest of Council on those proposals and making sure that we have that holistic picture.

I appreciate that. Thank you. I'll just share what my conversations with Dominic Moreno have been around looking at the long-term fiscal health and where we have shortfalls and looking at what that looks like long-term. I think we've been in a very unpredictable up and down fiscal situation since I've been in office and thinking about is this something that we're just looking into the future to have this amount of instability or how can we look at having a more stable budget. So thank you for that. But I did want to also ask Dottie specifically, what kind of funding sources are you looking at? Clearly there's a huge need and we're not funding the projects as we need to. I know some of the things that, you know, we have thought about and we have had discussions about as well as TNC fees. parking districts, traffic demand management plans not being enforced on new developments, also the meters downtown. I know the mayor has the $5 downtown initiative, but I don't know how much our meters charge. I know it's not $5, and so have you considered that as an option? And one question with all those, is that where does all the money go from these ads at the bus stops? You reminded me of that when you spoke to the bus stops. So if you could speak to that a little bit, that would be great. Absolutely.

If you could flip back to our 600 slide, excuse me, our funding source slide, that can help me sort of talk about that. I may ask Cindy to also join in as we sit and we talk on that one right there. So we'd actually like to do that in coordination with mayor's office and frankly with you. We all, I think, could come up with a lot of different ideas about where, for instance, we might generate more revenue or more funding that could be applied to transportation, transportation goals. And certainly there are a lot, there's many ideas as there are people here in this room about those sources of funding. And so just to just to talk just briefly about that, you know, certainly, I know that you all sat and started to explore concepts and this happens statewide to have the citywide. How do you look at different types of taxing options, which we would want to be working with the public about and to look at their acquiescence or interest in voting for something that would find transit or safety or otherwise. How do you think about different kinds of fee structures? Obviously, we within the city have capacity to look at different fees attached to programming and the use of our right-of-way, the access of that. Fees that help us achieve mobility goals and mobility priorities that we have on reduced congestion, mode shift, safety or otherwise. And those could be applied in any number of different things to vehicles, individuals to services and others. When we talk about different things like revenue strategy, obviously that speaks straight to things that were in our span of control, such as parking and parking revenue to others. And the application of those fees are another piece to this. You asked a question about what does it mean when we have a program like the TAP program, and that is the Transit Amenities Program. And what that is, is a program where you see bus shelters that have been erected around the city, and those bus shelters have advertising. The city generates no revenue from that program. Unfortunately, there's a personal note on my eye. What it is, instead, we have achieved a program where we are receiving a benefit from that program, specifically bus shelters, which we think is a really important element. You saw Riley mention it in her transit program of how we add bus shelters to create an increased comfort for our transit riders and others to allow us to continue to shift into that, thinking about how people ride transit and mode. So that particular program, very narrowly defined, very narrowly constrained, essentially creates a public-private partnership where someone agrees to build a bus shelter for us and in return they get to put up advertising and keep the revenue from that advertising. So that's that program.

As well as maintenance, I would add, so the trash and graffiti removal, they're also maintained.

Exactly. But those types of revenue strategies, active use of right-of-way and revenue strategies or otherwise advertising, those are all a range of kinds of things and possibilities. And so I can't say that we have identified anyone, and I would love to have that continued conversation with you. And obviously, as Laura indicated, at a city-wide level, The Department of Finance is looking at this more broadly. And because of the impact that we want to think, it's easy to say, oh, we should do this fee. And the trickle effect that that might have on a developer or our residents, or maybe several of us all decide that we want to do fees at the same time. And then we've started impacting the affordability for our residents as a whole. And so those are careful evaluations and discussions I think that we wanna have and why the citywide process that is being started by DOF is really important so we can look at things collectively too.

I appreciate that and I think I look forward to working with stakeholders, with community on how we move something forward, whether it's a stadium tax, whether it's something similar, maybe it has to do with taxing the behaviors we don't want, which is the parking and the huge parking lots that are taking up so much of our city. But I'll just end with one more. Question kind of request. Um, I think what's challenging for me, especially looking at the safe routes to school specifically is that you show the need, but we don't know where we're at. It doesn't look like to me that we're measuring where we've come. How many of those red dots have turned orange or green? Um, and as you mentioned, that plan was meant for us to be completed this year. because it was through 2026 and so you mentioned needing to start a new plan and so hopefully that will be something that will be budgeted into the next year's budget but I'm very concerned about how we you know if you look at hosts dashboard for housing and their five-year plan and their goals it says we added this many units we did and and they have missed a lot of their goals as well but at least we can see it. And I think what's frustrating for me with these is we don't have that kind of online dashboard that says we have 100 more schools. We did 100 schools this year, and that would be amazing. So I think we need to be more transparent with, we invested so much money, so much time into these plans, and just within the last month, we had a child die on their way to school while getting hit on one of those scooters that they're not meant to be. So we can say, we have this amazing scooter program, But to that family, it's the worst thing that's probably ever happened to their lives is those scooters. And so I want us to have an open dashboard. I know we're gonna have to come up with a new Safe Routes to Schools program and what does that look like specifically?

I think that's an excellent idea and we could actually do that and show that demonstration with it. John, there he is sitting in the back who works with our Safe Routes to Schools program and we would be happy to do that. Take us back a few years and sort of the look back. We also do sort of a dashboard as it relates to vision 0 as a whole on an annual basis. And we actually also rather puts together an annual report on our Denver moves. Everyone initiatives, like, how well are we getting close to those goals? And so we do some analysis in that and show where our progress was, but how we get to you, how we elevate that. So you can sort of see the progress.

And one more add on the Safe Routes to School Action Plan update. We do have that funded. That is moving through procurement right now. This was really important to us because it's how we get grants. So if we don't have you know, our planning has expired. We're not eligible to go seek grant funding. So that is moving through the process and look forward to working with you all throughout the year on what the update looks like and how we kind of reimagine the delivery of that initiative.

I'll proactively ask for A presentation on that as you find that agreement. Thank you. We'll come back to you on our progress. Thank you. Councilman Hines.

Thank you, committee chair. Thank you for your services, chair of the committee. Yeah, sure. So I believe our budget is a moral document. That's one of the things that we've talked about in the past as council members, particularly during budget season. And so when we balance our budget, what actually is funded in a balanced budget is really our true budget priorities. And so when we talk about values like Vision Zero and Safe Routes to School, I saw specific numbers about what's the dollar amount of our salaries of our employees? What's the total capital budget? It's confusing to me to say that we care about Safe Routes to School and Vision Zero when we have no dollars assigned to them. And so if we choose to put a specific number If we choose not to put a specific number to the solution, we're still having specific numbers on the risk of not prioritizing Safe Routes to School and Vision Zero. We're now up to 33 deaths, and we don't even have an easy way to quantify serious bodily injury, but 33 deaths year-to-date, and the summer months are when we get accelerated deaths from Vision Zero just because more people are out and about. So, as someone who used to set and manage the budget, I'm a little concerned that we've got a whole bunch of numbers, but then when it comes to what our supposed priorities are, and we've got call out slides on these priorities, they're budgetless. And so, you know, had we had Council Member Alvidrez's topic today, we would have been talking about a revenue source. Well, we would have no way with this presentation, or frankly the presentations that we've got in the past, to know is $30 million a year enough? Is it a meaningful debt? What can we do with Vision Zero? And you have items, goods to buy, like streetlights, but we don't have those. those items you put into a big, you know, cost, but that, we could be putting into, putting in a street light in an intersection that is not Vision Zero or Safe Routes to School related, and so it's just really hard for me to really understand, like, what's the, what's the full cost of the need and are we solving that need and so as you as you consider um you know redoing the budget process perhaps we budget based on where our values are as opposed to these are just the things that we have and we've got to spend money on it so um yeah and then uh one other just kind of um the point about the bike lanes i think that was Darn it, I've lost the slide number. There weren't numbers on the slide, but I found it in the PDF. But the bikes presentation, you mentioned that we're the number one, number two city in the nation for micromobility. It would be great for us to include, I know MUTCD is having a little bit of trouble keeping up with us, but we've come up with, you know, the Sharrows were not, were a Denver thing before the MUTCD thing. We've already had 1.7 million rides on VO just in the last, what, two and a half months. So if we can get them signage so that they know that The bike lane is also for micro mobility too. I think that would help us without a huge investment, because it's signage, without a huge investment, that would really help us say, no, no, no, this really is where you're supposed to be. And I think that would help with Vision Zero as well. We have fewer scooter unfortunate fatalities from kids. This kid wanted a safe route to school too, and unfortunately he's now a Vision Zero statistic. Some of the thoughts that I have for you, I don't really expect you to have an answer today unless you want to commit to doing a values-based budget as opposed to A bucket?

An asset space.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's, yeah, you know, that 600, as you saw, was sort of allocated across the different assets, if you will, from pedestrian to signals to transit and to otherwise. And sort of how do you compile that? And I think what we can do is we can work a little bit to talk about how those pull through and communicate then to safety, how they communicate to programming like Safe Routes to Schools. And so we can work on it.

1 thing we're looking at is tagging our projects to your point as we're pedestrian program delivers on safe routes to school. But there may be areas that it's not, we couldn't tag that as a safe routes to school project. So, tagging to say X, percent of the pet program is is working to deliver safe routes to school. I think giving an example, so major multimodal that Riley covered, think about Colfax BRT, one of our major investments in the city. It was driven through transit, but it is a huge safety project, right? We have not seen a death in that corridor. We believe that we can take this off the high injury network. This is how we meet our goals. And so I hear you. It's really important to like, you know, your money is what your values are. And we could do a better job of telling that story. Just the delivery mechanism is through the programmatic asset. That's what you think. Yes, to save us to school is signage striping. So a lot in Cindy shop on the operation side, it's looking at our fees and pedestrian crossing, minimizing the crossing distance. So those are the things that we deliver in order to meet the initiative and the goal. But I think you bring up a good point of how can we communicate and tell that story a little bit better? You could see this is what we're investing in Vision Zero and Safe Routes this morning. Let us work.

I'll just make that commitment that we'll work to try to do that. And as we come through our budgeting process, try to define some of that so that you all can have that a little more transparently and sort of see where that plays itself out.

Yeah, just one other comment specifically about Safe Routes to School. I mean, we've got a lot of arterials in District 10. I mean, you know, people were living here before there were highways. hitch in their horse near their home before there were cars and they were living in these homes. So we have a lot of arterials all around, say, Teller Elementary. And I know before you got here my first term, I wanted there to be some additional safety improvements around Teller. And so then I funded out of my own budget a traffic study around Teller, and it's my understanding that even now none of that has been implemented. And then Maury, there's the RRFB that could be placed there. It's easier for me to explain to David Mincer that we have we're going to prioritize safe routes to school, that his child can safely get to school and focus on having an education rather than worry about whether his child is gonna be hit and killed to and from school. And so if we, if we put a dollar amount to say Vision Zero or a dollar amount to Safe Routes to School, I can tell the people who live around Maury, this is where we are in the priority list. I could tell the people around Teller, I did my part. They're still mad at me because nothing's been done about it. But I've done the extent that I can using my own office to make sure that, again, the parents of those kids, allow their kids to become the future leaders of Denver and far beyond. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Councilman Flynn, you're up next.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Riley, I was happy to hear you mention looking at adding left turn arrows and things like that because I just submitted a constituent request to consider a left turn arrow at a new signal at federal and Bates. And because they've had difficulty actually going straight through, because everybody turning left from Bates to go north or south on Federal, their potential for T-bones, etc. And I knew what the answer would be, it doesn't meet the warrant. Is it possible for DOTI, for Denver to, you know, like California has its own MUTCD. They made their own. Can we rewrite our warrant book? Because one of the reasons it doesn't meet the warrant is no one's been killed there yet. And I think the idea should be before crashes occur, maybe to analyze the probability of of crashes so that we don't have to tell people, well, let's wait till there's three or four accidents before we consider a left turn arrow. Is that something that's within our authority to do?

Yes, it is.

To rewrite, well, I think that We have jurisdiction in our roadways to be able to make improvements at the discretion of our team and our traffic engineers and others to make improvements that we think are warranted on the roads. So I'll use that word more again in a slightly different way, right? And so, and for us, it's a prioritization of those projects that really need it and then those that we see could be coming and sort of the potential of it and otherwise. And I think, you know, if our traffic engineer, our city traffic engineer, we're sitting here and I could even turn tickets as we say this, but, but, you know, as we go into this, I think there are areas where and especially as you saw called out where how we do quick turn. Pun intended, you know, changes and improvements that we think could make a cumulative impact on things like high injury networks or others from safety perspective. So, things like left hand turn arrows, you know, counseling times to the point, you know, with years, for instance, on the areas that we were talking about, you know, we're installing those are of these flashing beacons, for instance, at 13th and 14th and Emerson, as, you know, and so we're. You know, excited about that. So, Mr. Mr. can, you know, see, see the improvements that are made as kids go to Maury. But but so short answer is, I think we always take it into consideration and then how we look at it. As you guys know, we receive a lot of those requests, you know, 3000 plus a year. give or take. And so each one of them, we do that analysis. And one question that you often ask is, hey, my folks are submitting these 311 questions. Are you getting to them? And the real fact is, yes, an engineer takes a look at every single one of those and moves through it, tries to use that judgment and that expectation and how we funnel it. But that's a little long-winded to say. I think we absolutely can consider all of those. And that's what we do do.

I don't know how you would do it.

Probably, we're not going to get to that level, but the description is like, so, for instance, our pedestrian crossing guidelines, we just updated those to include land use. And so before we weren't looking at activity centers and options, we were just kind of looking at how many people across here is enough to or to your point, or is there a crash picture when we have new development, like Loretto Heights and other things and we're generating. new activity centers and looking at that product of there will be additional crossings. So I think absolutely something that we can guide and influence. Now, of course, always being under the MUTCD, that is something that's really important. But looking at those opportunities to make sure we're being progressive and not just reactive, to your point.

Exactly. I don't know. I mean, we don't have a crystal ball. Right. And we can put left turn arrows at probably 300 locations right now if you had the money. So I just want to throw that out.

I knew what the answer was. That 2050.

I'm not critical, by the way.

That 2050, 4,000 signals.

I'm not critical of the instant response I got because I knew what it would be. But I have to get back to my constituent and say, well, let's wait until there's some more crashes before we do it. This is not a really good answer to give to the person. On slide 19. on the safe house of school and the equity index areas, and we have four levels of priority, and the one that I consider my highest priority for a safe ped crossing is other schools. It's the one at Denison Elementary Yates and Jewel in Colorado. And it's just outside the yellow blob that is the northwest corner of Harvey Park. Naturally it is, right? Yes. But, and that's my number one priority for a safe route to school crossing. And your staff knows this. It's a weird intersection. It's offset because Marley and Harvey Park subdivisions did not, Yates Street goes like this. It's like some of the intersections on Colfax. And so people are clamoring for a decision and some construction here because, and one of the concerns is it's right near the Sheridan signal. So to have RFB there or some kind of other infrastructure, I don't know why that would... would argue against it, but apparently that's an argument against it. But I'd like to understand, I don't need to hear an answer right now because I know everybody's in the queue. So could you get back to us and say, here's how these schools became first, second, third, fourth priority, and then there's others that appear not to be a priority. And then the other thing I'd remark about that map is there are 31 schools with dots in my part of town, 11 of them aren't in Denver. So 20 are in Denver. 11 are, it's like Colorado Academy or Blue Heron, Jeffco School, or one in Englewood. We're not building safe route to school infrastructure to schools outside of Denver, are we? No, we are not.

I will let John shake his hand, but we are not.

So why are we on the map?

Do we want to explain why those were included in that? And then just as he walks up to the mic, part of the refresh is also that transparency in that process so we can explain this is how we're prioritizing, this is why, this is how we're selecting that. But John. Thank you.

John Johnson, Principal City Planner with Dottie Transportation Planning. Thank you for the question, Councilman. Schools on the periphery, families come in, right? Colorado is a very choice, advantageous state for where you send your child to school. And so we want to be thoughtful, right? If families are coming across jurisdictional boundaries, we want to make sure that we're thinking about our partnerships with Wheat Ridge, Edgewater, Arvada, so on, to make sure that those families can get to Denver stably.

So are we working with, in my case, Lakewood or Jefferson County Schools, are we coordinating with them on this, like Blue Heron, right across Grant Ranch Boulevard, for example?

We've certainly had conversations from constituents who have reached out. We have pointed them to resources as those resources are available. If we need to have conversations with those other teams, absolutely. Very similar to what we do for our Vision Zero initiative and our work there with rapid response, for example.

The last question on slide nine, what will it take to meet our goals at $600 million annually? You don't actually have that, do you? No, sir. Just checking.

We have, on average, about $200 million to $300 million a year, give or take. And if you had it in your pockets, we'll certainly take the $600 million. I left it on my graph.

That's great. But I'm curious, because most of the Complaints I get about the state of the system are potholes, poor paving, street hasn't been repaved in a while, vehicles jump around, lack of markings, things like that. And those seem to be the least funded. One that draws my attention particularly because we had a crucial meeting of this committee on it this year and that's bridge condition. And I see that at 31.3 million total need.

Yeah, and let me explain that number and feel free to jump in, Jim.

The reason I bring it up is have we weight restricted the bridges that we were told were going to be weight restricted, like the one at Speer and 6th near Denver Health? Are we now in that situation?

We are in the process of moving forward with some of those rate restrictions. Right now, the load-restricted bridges that we have are on Quebec. I don't believe that we have done Spear at 6th yet, and I don't know if we will. I'll double-check with our bridge team on that as we go through. That's a process with CDOT and the ratings and how we do that. To those total numbers, and so on average, much of our maintenance, our capital maintenance, comes through those local dollar spreads. Sometimes we gather federal dollars to be able to do that. On average, we have around 80 million-ish dollars or so. You've seen that in previous budgets that go to capital maintenance dollars. And you see those distributed through those lists. Cindy can speak to this as well. You know, our teams have a very distinct scale on how we do the risk assessment and the analysis of each of those assets, from our pavement, to our markings, to our signals, and to others about how we continue to repair and keep them in as best good repair we can. We recognize that the funding available adjusts that level of investment that we can do in those. For the bridges and what you see there in the $35 million number, and then if you go all the way down to that bottom, that multimodal number also includes bridge replacements. So as you've heard, as we've presented, so the $35 million is attached to effectively sort of the scale is repairs, to rehab, to full-on replace. And of course, your goal is to put the money into the repairs and the rehab so that you avoid having to replace a bridge, which is a much more costly- So the $31 million, sorry to interrupt, but- Is for repair and rehab.

The $31 million for bridge maintenance does not include actually having to replace- That's correct. That would be in that longer line. That big, much bigger, longer line.

Which actually sometimes we can get federal dollars for support, grants, or otherwise to help us, let's say, replace Sixth Avenue Bridge, which is eventually going to be on that list, right?

My last pitch is one that I make every year, and it's a really, really small item. We have long call contractors for pavement markings, but all of us probably get complaints about people don't stop at stop signs. I had one guy told me that stop sign at the corner doesn't work, you know? It was the... But I've seen every time I go out to visit grandkids in Orange County, they appear to have a policy that at every stop intersection, they have the stop bar. And not only do they have a stop bar as a visual cue to drivers who may be texting at the time, But they also have the big word, S-T-O-P, on the sign. And we have on-call contracts for payment markings. I would love to see us, before I'm out of here next year, to adopt as a policy that at every stop intersection, we are going to do that. And put in the words, stop. Yes, it might stop 50, 60% of the people who just run right through a stop sign unknowingly. We have intersections, all-way stops, four-way stops. where two of the legs will have the markings and the other one doesn't. It looks like it's supposed to be a through stream. So I'd love to see that adopted as a policy.

Let's take that under consideration and see if there's some we might be able to incorporate.

Maybe I'll refuse to leave until you do.

Ah, there you go. Your colleagues would love that, I'm sure. It's like torture for you more than it is for them. I've heard it.

That's been attempted.

And just a note, I just wanted to add back to the MUTCD question. So obviously, we've adopted MUTCD. And I'm just going to carry this on. Mrs. Tykus just shot me in a quick note. So that we do have areas with flexibility. And we obviously continue to look at how we put in some of that decision making. And so I just wanted to address that. We have to be careful about MUTCs. We stray too far. And then federal feds get a little pokey about it with things like funding and some stuff like that. Especially this time. Yeah, exactly. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much. Councilman Cashman.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So, did you say that the Safe Routes to School is not a line item program? That's correct.

It is not a line item program. It draws from all of the other asset programs, with the exception that you will see in the Transportation and Mobility SRF, You will see us note sometimes Safe Routes to Schools in a very small allocation of a particular dollar amount coming from the Safe Routes, that TNM SRM. We will allocate a little bit of it. It is not designed to represent the whole.

And maybe just a quick clarification. So in the budget book, you would see Safe Routes to School Vision Zero. Where Amy is going is that how we then, so that money comes and a lot of times you guys increase some of that. And it comes back into us and we assign to the program. And so it's a little bit different, right? It's like, that's the delivery mechanism. Um, and so it's how we manage the funding. Um, but in the past, you're, you're right. You have seen those safeguards. It's just, it's a smaller dollar amount than what actually is being delivered for that initiative. If we added everything up within the program, we know that. Well, we know what we deliver, but we can definitely be more transparent about it 2024 at a 1,000,001,525,382,000 in 2026.

0, so. How do we know what's being spent? We need to know that. I want to thank Councilwoman Alvidrez for elevating this discussion again. I've just gotten tired of begging for pennies every year. When we get these ridiculous numbers, we ask for a couple of million dollars and we occasionally get some. I think you said there's seven million for safe streets downtown?

We want a grant. So we want a discretionary grant called Safe Routes for All, SS4A. And we put in for a grant to make safety improvements in the downtown area, which contains about 20% of our fatalities and others. And we want a nearly $7 million grant.

Yeah, I would think there are grants out there for safe routes to schools. I think Dottie needs to listen more to council and our constituents. People are really concerned about what's going on. And what I would say about the scooter program, VEO seems to have a really popular fleet with the seated vehicles and so on. And in my district, VEO should be ashamed and I'll take a look at what the exact reading of the ordinance Their failure to control their fleet is really breathtakingly bad. I get nonstop, this is past that, and it's more whether it's DOTI or parks or DPD, nonstop complaints about e-bikes and scooters going through our parks, on our trails. And apparently, well, I know that because it mattered to me in the discussion that you have to be 18 years old to rent a scooter. But you don't. You don't. There's no control on it. and i mean talk about needing to ask every question i just assumed when it was said in committee that you have to be 18 years old that there's some sort of an enforcement mechanism we got so many young kids riding around on these scooters and again i continue to see him in the left-hand lane on colorado boulevard just kind of yawn about it but I think that's irresponsible and what was Dottie's evaluation of the job VO is doing yeah we'd be happy to come back and have a good conversation about that and help you come back and sit and chat about that there's there is actually some validation process and some work that's happening as it relates to I was told there's not by someone on your staff That there's no validation of age.

No, that's not accurate. What is required? So when you go in, and I'm going to double check it because my team has actually been talking about this quite a bit. And so hold on. Let me pull it up, and I'm going to try to make sure I grab some updates. So when you go in to register an account, you are required to validate your age and otherwise. What does that mean, validate? So you have to say, put in birthdays, you have to have in credit cards, you have to do that. There are a number of people who potentially can use accounts. Perhaps a parent logs in and a child uses an account or otherwise. There are a number of different ways to do that. VO is doing also some separate validation pieces on top of this. And if they're seeing misuse of it, they can cancel or cancel out the accounts. And so they're looking at how they're doing that. I'm not probably speaking in full details, I need to do some double checks on that, but there's very much a process on how we're looking at that. It's something that has been, we're definitely aware of it, and we're definitely aware of youth riding these vehicles, accessing them in a number of different ways through the account. But there is a validation process. You do have to validate on age. You have to validate with payments. And then there's a double-check system that VO is starting to do where they can start removing accounts, penalizing.

You know, this is the same story that we've been getting from Lyme and Lyft and now VO, all these promises on what they're going to do. about geofencing and all this, we're going to keep people off sidewalks and all this stuff, and they're not. And they're not controlling the age of people who are using the scooters. You know, I understand multimodal. I understand that these scooters, I think, can play a great role in getting people around. But, you know, when I continue to talk to people at Denver Health about the number of accidents on scooters and the age of riders, I'm just not satisfied with either Dottie's explanation or VO's explanation. And I think we need to do better. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Councilman Cashman. I have Council President Sandoval and then Council Pro Tem Romero-Campbell up next. We have about 15 minutes.

Thank you. So the presentation slide. 18 and 19, there's super not. I don't even know how to make out what these dots are. Are they near schools or they buy schools? So I would love it because we only have 15 minutes left. So, can you please reach out to my office? We can have a separate presentation because I'm not picking up what's being thrown down in this slide.

I just really quickly that they are schools John. So each dot represents school councilwoman.

And what what poor moderate good what does that mean? Determine that and when was it determined?

It was determined during the action planning process that went in and assessed each school and it assessed the infrastructure around that school to access it. So, if we go back to the slide right before 2021.

So, how is that done in 2021 when we were schools that were shut down? No one was in schools in 2021. And how was the report done in the midst of coven when people were working virtually? So I'm super confused by all of this. I don't even understand how this was done. Because A, schools would have been shut down. B, most people were working virtually. C, I don't ever remember seeing this report and I was here. So I'm super confused by all of this. And the second slide on 19, what is this? An index, equity index areas. What are the, like usually when you talk about equity index, you talk about like what makes up that index. Like when's the last time these, Indexes like that, what makes up the equity we done.

And so we did kick off and 21 in the last safe routes to school action plan and we completed it in 2022. you're correct right? That we did some forecasting with schools being out.

But this is a lot of time and there's more people in the queue. That's why I asked to have a conversation offline. I don't have time. We have to. And I have too many questions to have 10 minutes left. So I don't understand slide 18. I don't understand side 19 and I've been looking at these slides since you started. Um, and then I don't really understand. Slide 20, like, you have objectives, you have different, you have the objective, the state routes to school action plan in 2022. You have an to go out to update it now. Um, refresh it start in 2026, which is right now. So, I'm not understanding how all of this works and I don't understand the 6 year targets. So, when we meet, I'm going to need more information on this. I don't understand 36 travel plan studies. I don't understand complete action plan. All of it's super confusing the way that you have this. You weren't part of this presentation, you couldn't pick up what you're throwing down in here. I don't even know where any of the sources are. I don't see sources on any of the slides, which is super important for me to see, like, where are you sourcing this information from? So, I'll stop on that and then on the D programs. I don't even know, like, there's not even a map on the DME programs of what council districts have DME programs. Like, I don't even know. Can you because new and say on the top of their head what council district 1, what our DME programs are.

Riley, if you wanna give us two seconds and we'll put to you the chat. So we have a map, the DME six year plan map that we've shared with you a few times that is, and if you can even pull it up right now, we'll show it to you. It goes by over the six year planning process, what projects are in your council district, What projects are currently under construction, which projects are currently being planned, which projects are currently be designed because all the way from the Denver moves, everyone projects and programs all the way down to individual traffic signals. And so we'd be happy to sit and work with you all to be able to look at that. So you could understand the span and the scope of what's being talked about in your district.

Okay, so what happened? How so happened to I, in the. the smaller bond, I think it was the RISE bond, which was the smaller bond. I had rapid flashing beacons that were supposed to be put in, and I had one on 26th and Tennyson that was supposed to be put in. You all are reconstructing that now, and you told me you were gonna put it somewhere else. I don't know where that's going. I don't have an answer for I-70 in Lowell. I got a rapid flashing beacon for I-70 in Lowell, I don't have an answer for that. Um, so. I'll just say that overall, and I know Amy, I've talked to you about this. I, I have never in all the time I've been working in the city gotten so many complaints about daddy ever. I don't understand the relationship with my council office with Saudi. Every time I turn around, I'm being told more and more by dotting plays that they can't talk to us, which is just. I don't understand why city employees wouldn't be able to talk to their partners and get 1st hand knowledge of where they're coming from. I know that we've had. Accidents on 2 bikeways we had 1 on 41st, and which is a bikeway thoroughfare in Northwest Denver and I know I had 1 on 35th and federal. I know I had an accident. 38th and and you're supposed to go out and reassess what happens and then give the council office an update. I know I haven't had an update on 41st in low and the kiddo got hit by a car and I haven't gotten for update on 41st and federal when another person got hit with the car. Years and years ago on 35th and federal, I don't have any update on that and I still don't understand what's changed for 38th and. So, I don't like, I keep telling you all I have monthly meetings with Dottie. I've counseled them. Because it just doesn't work. I'm not meeting with an agency that cannot produce results. I'm not meeting with an agency when I go out in my community and all I do is get grilled. I don't work for Dottie. I approve your budget and just know that when it comes budget time, I'm going to be scouring the budget thoroughly because I'm not understanding how this is all working. I'm not understanding where the dollars are going. I have a community neighborhood action plan that has streets undone on Tijon. I have streets undone on Lowell. It hasn't been followed through. I don't know if that's been incorporated in the TME planning. Ever since you all redesigned that how dotty functions. All it is is me sending emails feeling super disappointed because I'm not getting answers anymore from pretty much anyone. So I. My mom always teaches me that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all, but that's not my role. My role is the city council member is to make sure that we are actually putting dollars that have the best outcome. And this. Presentation as much as I know, you all put a lot of work into it. I know how much it takes to put together a presentation. I just presented to budget and policy on Monday. So I totally get that. You. Put a lot of effort into this, I, this would need like, 4 hours for me to digest. So, I just, I'm going to say, I'm going to need another meeting and I don't want. Just low level people in that meeting. I want decision makers in the meeting when I have them so that we can make decisions together. So I can get answers to my constituents because count same as council member Flynn, same as councilman Alvarez, same as council member Cashman. I'm not picking up what you're throwing down here. And if I were in the minority, I would probably be quiet. I know I'm not in the minority with my council members. I know council member Heinz has had the same frustration. I is everyone. I every single council member I've talked to has the same frustration I am. So I don't know how to say this any clearer, but. This is just super frustrating. I thought this was gonna be a different type of presentation and I was actually really looking forward to it. And all I have is more questions. So I'll digest the presentation, go through and prepare. But I really look forward to your staff, Amy, reaching out to me so that we can have a conversation with your staff and my staff to go through this and understand better what the priorities are in Northwest Denver. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much. I am going to just tell you all questions and if you all can submit those answers to me in writing and to my colleagues if you all are interested as well. So you all talked about federal and state sources, but we don't necessarily have control over those sources and they're proven to be unreliable as well. And so if we're serious about meeting these goals, what if any new local revenue sources is this administration seriously looking at? And when are those plans going to be presented to council and the general public? So that's my first question. The second one is you all spoke about partnerships with RTD and CDOT and maximizing existing infrastructure to meet the Denver goals. RTD is currently looking at cutting services or proposals for service cuts. DOTI doesn't have any money either. And so what are the pots of money that you are considering for funding to be able to fund what you all spoke about? And does that include potentially redirecting funds from one area to another? And then finally, can you all talk to me how the Department of Finance is working with community on the revenue generation plan? More specifically, I would love to know about the dates, the points of contact, et cetera, et cetera. With that, I will allow Council Pro Tem to close this out.

Thank you. I also echo a lot of the sentiments of my Council colleagues. I appreciate the comments by Council President Sandoval. I too was looking through a lot of the slides and just had more questions specifically about some of our equity index and how we're looking at the schools. on, for example, slide 18. I think some of the things that aren't addressed and maybe for consideration as we're looking at where Dottie could really lean in in helping make routes safer for kids going to school. I think Thomas Jefferson High School is listed as a green. tier four priority and so forth, yet I get constant calls from constituents about the dangerous crossing for young people getting to school from Hampton, making a left-hand turn on Holly. There's only one turn. And I know that Hampton is also a state highway, but the coordination between DOTI and CDOT, we've got to be able to figure this out because I have an intersection that is treacherous. And I don't want to wait until we have something. As a serious, serious accident happened at that intersection, but there are constant near misses on a daily basis. That's 1. but 2 also, I have students from. from TJ that are waiting for the bus on the corner of Hampton and Monaco. And it's not just one, it's dozens and dozens and dozens of young people that are waiting for a bus and walking across Hampton over the highway, crossing over a busy street and really having no good way to get to school that's That is 1 efficient and also and also safe. And so I think that when we talk about ways that. Of where the schools are and what that looks like for for their ability to get to school. I feel like it's just so underrepresented in Southeast Denver. The same thing, you know, I have parents who don't want to send their kids to Hamilton because that means that their kids can't walk across. Hampton, and they don't want their kids to cross knowing that there are. It's just, it's just treacherous and dangerous. So, I think those are the kind of things that I think aren't being captured in some of the priorities. For the for safe routes to school. So I would just hope that we would be able to consider that. That's 1, but 2, and be able to follow up. But 2, and I think John Johnson, I think you're, I saw him speak earlier. I do appreciate the dot. He sat down with us, but there was a fatality on university. And this is right. This happens a lot in Southeast Denver, where we share a border with other municipalities and the coordination between the city and the other municipality just doesn't seem to happen on a frequent basis. And so it took our office in coordination with the mayor of Inglewood to be able to bring people together to say, how are we going to be able to address a fatality that happened on on university? And this border Aurora, we border other municipalities and it's so incredibly important that we figure out how we communicate with our neighboring counties to be able to address some of these high. I think high injury networks and locations that go across. Anyway, I'll leave it at that and we do have our monthly meetings and I think that the, you know, we get information, but often it's, you know, we can't do anything about it or it's, it's kind of being pushed forward for being able to do some of the traffic studies that are so needed or figuring out how we elevate what is happening in the district because I hear about it constantly from our constituents. I'll leave it there. I know we're running out of time and we will follow up offline. Thank you. Thank you. Madam chair.

Thank you so much. And we have planning board, so we wanted to be as timely as possible. Thank you all for taking the time to come and give this presentation. Thank you. Councilman. I'll be addressed as well for prompting this conversation. Really appreciate it. We have 5 items on consent and with that we are adjourned.