Faced with one of the fastest growth rates among major U.S. cities nationwide, Denver City Council has identified a range of priorities and goals to help guide budgeting decisions and to decide policy priority areas. Those include more than $1 billion in infrastructure needs and projects alone.

Each year, the Council holds a retreat to develop the priorities and goals that are submitted to Mayor Michael Hancock and city agencies to consider during the administration’s planning and budgeting for the following fiscal year.

“This is a meaningful time in our city, where we are experiencing growth and vibrancy on historic levels,” Council President Albus Brooks said. “This success has brought its challenges in terms of mobility and affordability for our constituents.”

The budget areas the Council would like to focus funds on in 2018 include mobility (infrastructure improvements, transit and transportation safety); housing and homelessness; solid waste (implementation of the master plan, recycling and composting); and workforce development. The Council also sent Hancock a list of 116 projects in each district they would like to see happen.

Naturally, the chosen budget areas and capital improvement projects come with a hefty price tag: more than $1.5 billion.

Brooks told The Colorado Statesman funding for these priorities and projects could involve half of the 2017 general obligation bond, as well as asking city voters to approve a sales tax, both of which could be put before city voters in November.

“We’ll have to take a look at everything once the mayor gives us his budget (this spring) and try to figure out what works best for all these issues,” he said.

Beautifying the city, making transit easier

Councilwoman Kendra Black told The Statesman that each Council member had their own priorities and each voted for three areas or projects to come up with the overall priorities. One area Black said she and Councilman Rafael Espinoza wanted to see attention given to, beyond the high-profile needs like mobility and affordable housing, is creating an ad-hoc working group on urban design and beautification.

“One of the more common comments we get from people is how ugly all the new buildings are,” Black said. “So we want to see if there are ways to address that and try to make the city more beautiful through the urban planning process.”

A new office of mobility would analyze present and future innovative transit solutions and “promote and/or provide convenient, inexpensive transit to under-served areas of Denver” by working with public and private transit providers.

“If we can find some innovative ways to get people around in the city while dealing with this explosive growth and more and more people on the road, we’ll come out ahead,” Black said.

Brooks told The Statesman many people don’t feel crowded “until they get in their cars, so we need to really work on mobility.”

The Council also wants to develop a specific annual revenue stream for transportation and transit that fits within the long-range financial plan for Denver.

More cops, helping low-income workers

Other identified needs for money are to increase the number of officers in the Denver Police Department, which Black said had still not recovered from staff cutbacks forced by the Great Recession of 2008, and helping low-income residents get some of the jobs created by large infrastructure projects built in the metro area.

“How do we use some of these larger projects – whether it be National Western, Panasonic, I-70 – to hire and target their hiring in these high-unemployment neighborhoods?” Brooks told Channel 7.

“There are a lot of people stuck in jobs they don’t like or their wages have not gone up to keep pace with our increased prices because of the growth,” Black added. “It might be a great thing if those people are given a chance to land one of these jobs, learn new skills and start to improve their standards of living. I hope we are really committed to help those on low incomes find work. “

Brooks also told Channel 7 one of the main projects the city hopes to fund is the redevelopment of Colfax Avenue.

“We’re excited about that,” Brooks said. “We’ve got all the bids together and there’s going to be a lot of funds put into that to re-imagine the street.”

Another project for additional sidewalks in areas that don’t currently have them could involve charging property owners, while another goal is to increase the size of the $150 million affordable housing fund the Council established last fall.

“It’s nowhere near where we need it to be,” Brooks said.

Fully implementing the city’s solid waste master plan, including removal of the residential composting fee citywide, rolling out residential composting barrels citywide with an opt-out option, and increasing recycling participation by offering options for multi-family and commercial buildings. Black called recycling a “gateway habit,” where people get in the habit of recycling and then become more inclined to take on other sustainability efforts such as composting.

The Council also decided to maintain four already formed working groups: Mobility and transportation, sidewalks, housing and homelessness and economic and workforce development.