The city of Denver has trimmed 18 days off the time it takes for major contracts to be approved by city council by shifting to an approval process that involves resolutions rather than ordinances.

As of Aug. 15, contracts requiring city council review – those over $500,000 – are being considered as resolutions, not ordinances.

The council approved the policy change on an 8-5 vote on July 13.

Denver Clerk and Recorder Debra Johnson said the combination of the change in city council and changes in her office and the city attorney’s office have reduced the amount of time required for contract approval by 18 days, or 38 percent.

When contracts required ordinances for approval, the process involved two readings by city council and publication in a newspaper. In total that would take about 10 days – two weekly council meetings plus three days to allow for publication.

Resolutions, which are used to express policy or direct administrative actions as opposed to the laws or regulations created by ordinances, require only one city council meeting for approval and don’t have to be published in a newspaper.

The change should affect more than 400 contracts approved by the city each year, Johnson said, including those for construction work at Denver International Airport and roadwork across the city.

“We anticipate accelerating about $5 million in spending annually with this change,” she said. “This small, procedural change will lead to big savings of time, effort and manpower which benefits the people and businesses of Denver.”

But not everyone is hailing the change.

“I felt like city council needs to have enough time to look at all the things that come before us,” said Councilwoman Deborah Ortega, who voted against changing the way contracts are approved. “By removing one of those readings, it means they’re going to move through the process much faster and council will have less time to review them and ask questions.”

Johnson said the city attorney’s office has been working with the city council to make the change for 10 years. It’s taken a while to persuade members that the change won’t affect their oversight of the contract process, she added.

“We finally got them to understand this was only a small piece of the process,” Johnson said. “Most other cities in the United States use this process.”

The contracts will move through committees the same way they did prior to the change, Johnson said, so council members have the same chance to exercise oversight up to the public city council meeting.

Ortega pointed out that not all members of the council sit on each committee and sometimes questions don’t arise until a council member sees the contract listed on the weekly council agenda.

“Oftentimes any one of us will ask question about the contracts that are brought to us,” she said. “You can’t be expected to be familiar with every single detail of every contract. We need more time to review things, not less time.”

Ortega supports some changes to the policy that were made at the July 13 meeting, in particular keeping approval of intergovernmental agreements, which are considered contracts, as ordinances and giving council members with questions the ability to hold contracts over for a week.

Ortega also expressed concern about what she sees as lack of consistency in contracting practices among city agencies. The process can be confusing, she said, noting that she’s worked for an agency that handled contracts.

“There still is not consistency as far as what steps every agency needs to take to bring contracts forward,” she said. “That’s information that should be laid out and consistently applied agency to agency. We need to clean it up on the front end.”

– rachel@coloradostatesman.com