A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 3397 South Geneva Street in Hampden. Approves a map amendment to rezone property from S-SU-F to S-SU-F1 (allows for an accessory dwelling unit), located at 3397 South Geneva Street in Council District 4. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 12-8-20.
Those are things that an ordinance can't teach you. And the art that you brought to this job is part of why you were as impactful as it was the skills and the hard stuff. So I just wanted to give you the homage of those skills and those gifts that we have appreciated so much and to thank you and your family. You have two young kids. It was a lot to do this job in this era of your life. And I greatly appreciate you and your family for the sacrifices that made it possible. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Next up, we have Councilwoman CdeBaca. Thank you, Madam President. And I don't want to be too redundant because we can shower your praise. Shower you with praise all night long. Geer one of the few people that so many of us on both sides of many issues can come together and agree is an amazing human being and someone we all hate to lose. You made miracles within a very flawed structure, and I truly wish we could have changed the structure before you left. Because I can only imagine where you would have taken us to if we had changed that structure while you were in the seat. And so I wish you well, and I'm excited to see the changes you make in your new role and always in behind you. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Councilman Ortega. Thank you, Madam President. Nick, I wanted to also add my gratitude for your leadership, your steady and your steady and ethical and thorough as our independent monitor. I also wanted to extend my appreciation to your family as well for sharing you with the rest of our community. As Councilwoman McKinney said, it's not always easy to do this when you have little ones. But clearly your wife played a big role in allowing you to be able to spend the kind of time that you did in in this position. I just want to wish you the absolute best of luck in your new role in Los Angeles and just God bless. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Ortega and Councilman Hines. I thought. I thought your hand up. Did you want to chime in there? Thank you, Madam President. I was going to say shame. On you, but. I realized that the proclamation was about our former monitor and not about the city of Los Angeles. Shame on you, L.A., for taking such an amazing monitor from us. Then I realized it was. I got the proclamation mixed up, so apologize. Right on. Thank you, Councilman. And thenwe their hands raised. I'll just go ahead and and convey a few words here, Nick. We didn't get to work closely together, but over your time, just hearing the the words that people use to describe you and really the legacy that you have left behind for the Office of Independent Monitor in Denver. And we are very sad and disappointed that we are losing you to L.A. but we know that you're still going to be a member of the Denver community and so know that we'll always be able to count that. I'm sure you want to stay out of our issues for sure and do your own work with L.A. But when I appreciate you for all of your work and sacrifices over the years in this position. Madam Secretary, roll call, please. ASHMAN Absolutely, yes. Can I. Ortega Hi, Sandoval. I. Sawyer. I. Torres, I. Black. I see tobacco. I. Clark. I. Flynn, I. Herndon. I. Hines, I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary closed the voting and announced results. 13 Ice 13 ICE Proclamation 20 1-0050 has been adopted. We've got 5 minutes for a proclamation acceptance. And Councilman Castro, do you want to go ahead and introduce Nick or we'll just go ahead and get inside then? I would just say, you know, it's always one thing to read the proclamation and the prepared comments. It's a great personal loss. As Councilwoman Torres said, Mr. Mitchell's been a true leader and mentor and will personally be missed. But it is so. It is a bittersweet honor to introduce our second independent monitor, a still a resident of and certainly a friend of Denver and Nick Mitchell. Nick, please. You so much. Councilman Jackson. And let me say, Nick, I think we might have an echo. That if you have the heads down. We might need you to mute one device. No one going. So I. Let's. Let's muscle through it. Neck high. Maybe you're mute. Mute, mute your device. So it's not playing out loud. You can still speak to it, but turn it down. Can you give me a thumbs down if it's any better? No. Better? Maybe a little. Okay. Thank you all. Thank you so much. I'm kind of speechless anyway. So deeply grateful. To all of you. And if I'm echoing, I won't belabor the point. I'm just I'm. So grateful to all of you and the partnership that we've. Had. Together. And thank you so much for this honor. I'm incredibly honored. Well, thank you very much, Nick. And and we are certainly going to miss you and want to give you some applause for all of the amazing work that you have done. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. All right. We're going to go ahead and move on here, folks. Madam Secretary, please read the bills for introduction. From Finance and governance. 2121 A bill for an ordinance extending the sunset date for temporary maximum fees that can be charged for third party food delivery services in the city to June 14th, 2021. From Land use, transportation and infrastructure. 20 1560 A bill for an ordinance designating 6400 Montague Boulevard as a structure for preservation 20 1561 A Bill for an ordinance changing the Zoning Classification for 925 South Pennsylvania Street in Washington Park. Washington Park West. 21 0006. A Bill for an ordinance changing the Zoning Classification for 2112 South Emerson Street in Roselle and from Safety, Housing, Education and Homelessness. 20 1527 A bill for an ordinance approving a proposed agreement between the city and county of Denver and School District Number one to provide funding to create a hydroponic farm at Bruce Randolph School with accompanying curriculum to help ensure students recognize food, justice and security, understand health and nutrition, and to provide fresh produce to students in their community through urban farming, food preparation and food preservation in Council District nine. Thank you. Council members, this is your last opportunity to call out an item. Councilmember Torres, would you please make the motions for us this evening? I am actually trying to call out an item. Oh. Go ahead, Councilwoman. You know, we'll go ahead and we'll get through. Well, I want to hear from Councilwoman Torres. Are you willing to make the motions for us this evening? Oops. Yes. Council president. All right. Very good. Thank you. We're going to do a recap here. But Councilman CdeBaca, you had something additional to call out. Yes, I'd like to call off the Securitas contract 2020 1-0005. For a vote. For a vote. Okay. All right. Thank you. We will go ahead and do a recap here under resolutions. Councilmember Torres has called out Resolution 20, Dash 1530 for a comment. And Councilmember Hines and Councilmember Flynn have called out Resolution 20 1-0008 for comments and a vote. And then we have Councilwoman CdeBaca has called out 20 1-0005 for a vote under bills for introduction. No items have been called out under bills for final consideration. No items have been called out and under pending. No items have been called out. The first item up is Council Resolution 20, Dash 1530. Councilmember Torres, please go ahead with your comments. Thank you, Madam President. Just a quick comment on this bill. So I know that it was pulled two weeks ago to allow more time to address some questions and concerns that had been raised that not enough local businesses were included. And I just wanted to thank Dan and the team and community for making sure that this got appropriate attention. I wanted to comment on something to ensure that's not lost in this conversation and in the future, as Dan considers either this contract for renewal or others. But that's the experience and the opinion of the workers who work at Dan and the janitorial teams have done and their experience. So I heard a number of things from them. Firstly, their excitement to work with Flagship, but we also discussed the experience with a bundled and unbundled contract at airports generally. But this one in regards to unbundling can work really well, get new small businesses in the door and elevate that playing field. But we also have to acknowledge that unbundling at the airport is a different animal terminal work in concourse work. Concourse to concourse then is an organism, not silos. And I hope that in the future with then we can have a deliberate discussion about when unbundling works and when it doesn't, because it's not just about the businesses, it's also about the workers and workers who live paycheck to paycheck, who are bipoc and immigrants. The standards, accountability, wages, safety, any number of things that were hard fought wins for labor at the airport. Just wanted to make sure that we have that as part of the conversation because it felt left out before. I did ask Andy Jacobs from SEIU to join us in the audience in case there were any questions from that perspective. But I really did appreciate the opportunity to hear from some of the employees there, just really to talk about the relationship between concourses and the terminal and how important it is to have some flexibility and fluidity there. Thank you so much. Madam Chair, those those are my only comments. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman Torres. We have Councilwoman Ortega. You're up next. Thank you, Madam President. I'll be very brief. I also want to express my appreciation to Ben, to the people from flagship to the community who were engaged in this process that found a creative solution to addressing greater mwb participation in this contract. It's one of the larger ones that comes through the airport. And so it was important. To. Take this pause. I also wanted to highlight that it's important not only with airport contracts, but with contracts coming from. All of our city agencies and especially on big ones where they are looking to have mwape partners that the outreach to our DSP office in identifying who the small businesses are from our community, the local mwb is that fall within the. Next. Code categories for the work that will be done on that project, so that it's not just simply, you know, checking the box that we reached out to them and we, you know, just say. That we did that, but to actually have some. Connection with those businesses and to engage them in the process. And I believe that is a correction that will be made moving forward with the airport. I think it's critical that we do that with our other agencies as well that bring these contracts forward. So happy to support this as it moves through our process. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you, Councilman Ortega. And not seeing any other hands raised for comments. We will go ahead and move on to our next item. The next item up is Council Resolution 21, dash 0008. Councilmember Suarez, will you please put Council Resolution 2021? Excuse me. Dash 0008 on the floor for adoption. I moved that council resolution 20 1-0008 be adopted again. Thank you, Councilman Herndon. Questions or comments by members of council. Councilman Hines. Thank you, Madam President. I would like to thank all the workers at Dan who helped me and all people with disabilities get to the airport to their ultimate destinations. For many with disabilities, even getting out of the house is stressful, and airports are often stressful for just about anyone. So prospective employees help make that experience a little easier for each of us. To help us access the world, I also want to thank those workers, many of whom are immigrants, for your dedication to serving us the disability community. You are part of America's diversity, and I salute all of you who have come to our country to seek opportunity. I'm proud of you. And I'm also glad that that I can be I can do my part. And that then does its part to to be a vehicle that helps you give it give you that opportunity. So I had originally called out the colleagues, as you know, I had originally called this out to give a compliment to the workers at Prospect. I have heard comments from some of my colleagues and and learned a bit more about the contract. And so I will defer any additional comments until I've given colleagues their opportunity to to share their concerns with with the body. Thank you, Madam President. Wonderful. Thank you, Councilman Haines. And we've got Councilman Flynn up next, because he was one of the folks who called it out and then Councilman Kenny. So go ahead, Councilman Flynn. Thank you. Madam President, I called this out for a vote because at the request of the airport staff, they are requesting that we vote no on this and kill the lease amendment tonight and let them move forward with some other issues. Those issues which I'm sure Councilwoman Kenney will be speaking to. But Diaz asked me to to convey to counsel on to the public their reason for doing this. If I may read their statement, it was recently brought to our attention meeting the airport. That prospect is no longer offering RTD Eagle passes to their employees. Eagle Pass is the Transit Pass. The Den team requests that City Council Vote No tonight to give us time to work with prospect leadership to find creative solutions to try to bring back the eagle passes to employees, then sees this as an important benefit to offer any employee who works at Dan. We appreciate this being brought to our attention. So with that, Madam President, I'm requesting that my colleagues all vote no on this. This is what this is is it's a reduction in our leasehold area for the remainder of the year. The lease actually expires at the end of this year. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Next up, we have Councilwoman Keech. Thank you. Council President So as Councilman Flynn describes this bill as an amendment to a lease agreement with prospect there, a passenger service provider at the airport, as Councilman Hines described. So they subcontract to the airlines to help get individuals who need help to their flight safely protected if something goes wrong during the during the wait for their flight. So it's a very important job. And I, too, want to make sure that any prospect workers who are listening understand how important and valuable their work is. But they subcontract to the airlines for the service, but they contract directly with us as an airport for their space that they need to run their business. And I think it's really important that there are some questions I've asked about the lease that are not yet answered. So just about the nature of the space reduction and the swap of space. So I do look forward to those questions being answered during this pause that will occur by us voting no tonight. But I want to expand a little bit on the the situation with passes over the course of several years, some former members of this council, prior council and workers advocated for were employers to begin providing eagle passes. This was not a practice at the time and there was a discussion should we have a policy or should we have a conversation with employers directly? And employers were responsive in part because it was in their best interests. It's difficult to attract workers to get to the airport with the expense of the transportation, with the barriers to getting to the airport. There's a lot of lost time for workers commuting and going through security before they get paid. So the eco pass was a win win not just for workers but for employers. And that practice continued. And all of the competitors, they just want to make this really clear. There are several passenger service providers at the airport. The competitors to this particular lessee are still providing this benefit, as are all of the other service contractors, large service contractors out at the airport. So but over the course of the past several months, they first reduced and then eliminated the eco pass benefit for more than 90 employees . These are folks who cannot afford to necessarily absorb this cost. And so what that means is for us as an airport, this is a concern both in terms of workers and their ability to make their ends meet, which is always a concern for our city. But it's also a concern because if it increases turnover, which workers are already saying, why should I work for you? If I can work for your competitor and get this benefit paid for for the same wage, then we will have an increase in turnover. We will have a increase in the need to badge and screen new employees. We will have less experienced individuals providing passenger services. And make no mistake, turnover has already been a challenge for this company and for this field. So these are concerns for us as an airport owner, right, as a city, about how these types of services roll out. So I want to urge prospect during this pause, in this conversation with the airport and hopefully with the Union of Workers who are representing their needs, which is SEIU Local 105. I urge them to reverse their decision and to reinstate the eco pass as their peers are doing at the airport. I recognize that the cost of an eco pass has gone up. We can all commit to working together to try to reimagine transit, to try to reimagine past fare structure as we come out of this pandemic. There is no question that that conversation will be happening because this pandemic has upended our transit approach in our country, not just in Denver, but in our country. So we can work together on that. But to balance the books on the backs of workers is not okay, particularly when it results in turnover and risks to our airport . So please reverse this decision, work with the parties. And I'm grateful to the airport for taking this concern seriously. As we vote no tonight, I hope we'll be having a different conversation when this lease comes back next time and that all of the other questions I won't get into those details, but other questions about the least can be answered at that time. Thank you, Madam President and members of the Council for supporting this effort to vote no tonight. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Hines. Thank you, Madam. President, and thank you, council members of Flynn and for your for your comments a minute ago I would echo Councilmember Beach turnover is also difficult for the disability community. It takes training and education and knowledge and frankly wisdom to know how to treat different people with disabilities in the way that works best for them. I have a spinal cord injury bite, but my injury may be different than someone else who has a spinal cord injury. And knowing how to treat different people in the way that works best for them is. Is an acquired skill. So it's a that I think is one other comment that I'd make. And then the final comment I'd make about, about how this benefits workers and the city also benefits the planet. I know that the first day, my first day in office, July 15th, 2019, we were voting on the widening of PENNER and I talked about Councilmember Clark has mentioned this in the past when the first things that are said is climate change is real and and we need to break Denver and frankly our planet but but we're Denver city council we need to break Denver's dependance on cars and and I would encourage prospects to reconsider because we need to all do our part to to make sure that we preserve our habitability on this planet. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilman Hines. All right. Seeing other hands raised, I appreciate my colleagues working with Dan to make sure that we get this contract right. Councilmembers Just a reminder to vote no. Madam Secretary, roll call. Flynn No. Herndon now. HINES No. CASHMAN No. Kenny. Now, Ortega. So. Sandoval No. Sawyer? No. Torres. No. Black? No. See tobacco now. Clark? No. Madam President. No. Madam Secretary closed the voting and announced results. 13 days. 13 days. Council Resolution 20 1-0008 has been defeated. The next item is the Council Resolution 20 1-0005. Councilmember Torres, will you please put Council Resolution 21, dash 0005 on the floor for adoption. And move that council resolution 20 1-0005 to be adopted. Thank you. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded questions or comments by members of Council. Council Member State Ibaka. Thank you, Madam President. We got a notification later on in the afternoon today about some things that are going on at National Western and we haven't had the opportunity to meet with the person giving us this information. And so I am not clear on whether it was happening at the hands of security or the staff with the national Western. So I will I mean, calcium. So I will I want to go on record abstaining on this contract. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman CdeBaca. Madam Secretary, roll call. CdeBaca abstained. Clark. I. Flynn. I. Herndon. I. Hines, I. Cashman. I. Kimmich I. Ortega, I. Sandoval. I. So. I. Torres. I. Black. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, closed the voting and announced results. 12 eyes. One Abstention. 12 Eyes. Council Resolution 20 1-0005 has been adopted. That concludes our items to be called out. All bills for introduction are ordered published. Council members remember this is a consent or block vote and you will need to vote I. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call out an item for a separate vote. Councilmember Torres, would you please put the resolutions for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on the floor? I mean that resolutions be adopted and bills and final consideration be placed upon final consideration and do pass in a block for the following items. 20 Dash 14 1720 Dash. 15 3021 Dash. 000 720 1-000 921. Dash zero zero 1020. Dash 1560 220. Dash 1565 and 20. Dash 1566. Thank you. It has been moved. Here. And. Now there go. I think we got Councilwoman Sawyer was our second. Madam Secretary, roll call, please. Black. I see tobacco. I. Clark. I. Flynn. I. Herndon. I. Hines. Hi. Cashman. Second, I just wanted to get one in. Madam President.