AS AMENDED a bill for an ordinance amending Chapter 27 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code concerning housing, establishing permanent funds to support city affordable housing programs, adopting an affordable housing linkage fee applicable to new construction to be effective October 1, 2017, and dedicating a portion of the city’s existing property tax revenue capacity to the funding of affordable housing programs beginning with 2017 property taxes to be collected in 2018. Approves creating a permanent fund for affordable housing programs, adopting an affordable housing linkage fee, and dedicating a portion of the city’s existing property tax revenue capacity to funding affordable housing programs. This bill was approved for filing by Councilmember Herndon. Amended 9-12-16 to change the composition of the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee. The change would remove one of the mayor’s appointments to the advisory committee from an “at large” appointment to a requirement that the appointment be a non-profit affordable housing developer; thus, resulting in two slots on the committee
Thank you. That is duly noted. And we will have a courtesy public hearing on that. Thank you. All right. We we're going to go to Council Bill seven. I'm sorry. 626 Bill for introduction. And I'm going to call on Councilman Herndon to kick off, make a comment on this bill. Thank you, Mr. President. First, I would like to say that was not in the script. Should 626 go on to second reading? I would like to request a one hour courtesy public hearing on that. And then, Mr. President, I'd like to offer a comment and then overview. And Councilman Ortega has an amendment to offer as well. Go read it. I just read you and I. Do you want to have it ordered, published, and then comments? Which would you prefer, Mr. President? You know, no one has. You know, let's it let's put it this order. It published, but no one has asked to vote for this yet. But yes, I. Did I. And we had a request for a vote on the other one as well. Okay. So Councilwoman Gilmore. Yes, Mr. Parker, will you please put 626 in order? Publish? Yes, I move that council bill 626 be ordered published. All right. It has been. Oh, wait. 1/2. Yeah. It's been moved in second to comments. Something happened. Oh. I'm sorry. Okay. Because she made the motion. It's moving only. There you go. There you go. Okay. Sort of publishing this on the floor. Councilman, do you want to make your comment? Yes, Mr. President, I am. I'm excited. I'm making progress. I got a second this time is you've got to add some levity to this, because what we're both doing, both bills are moving forward to creating funds for affordable housing. Typically, when there's disagreement among council, one bill goes one way and another one goes and it goes the opposite. So I think it's important to recognize whichever Bill gets the majority of council on second reading is going to create funds for affordable housing, and that is a good thing. We all recognize the dire straits we have for those trying to find all different types of housing stock. And I appreciate all the work that my other colleagues, Councilwoman Kennedy, Councilman Brooks and all the stakeholders have been a part of this for so long. They're doing because I wouldn't have the bill if it wasn't for the work that you all done. And so that's why I always try to start off conversations by saying this. But as I would start this conversation, I would hear I would hear comments like it does. It's a great start, but it's not enough. We should do more. Can we do more? I believe that we can. I believe that we should do it immediately. And that is the genesis for this alternative bill. And I think not getting the second was actually a blessing in disguise because I had the opportunity to continue to have conversations with my other colleagues. And I appreciate Councilman Espinosa, Councilwoman Ortega having conversations with me about how we could create a bill that I believe does even more to allow that. My original bill that didn't get a second, just ask for a contribution from the general fund and then have a conversation later on 90 to 120 days when I was asking the bill before you, what it actually does is creates the linkage fee, creates the mil, but it's delayed. It is delayed a year and that's intentional. It's intentional because I believe that as a body we can come together and say, how can we create more funds sooner than the 150 approximately million over ten years who most people will say that doesn't do enough. So I would like to take the time as a committee of the whole to evaluate and fully vet all of the other funding possibilities to do more money faster. And so people will ask me, Well then where do you expect to do January one, 2017? Because neither one of these bills appropriates funds. We can't. David Roswell did a great job explaining that and committee. The mayor released his budget today, putting 5 million towards the Affordable Fund and a proposal you're going to hear about later on . Additional revenue will come in, the amount of 50 million total for year one in the form of a mil and in a linkage fee. What I am proposing is that as a council, as we go through the budget process, we go back to the administration and say we would like to see 20 million come from our general fund coffers in year one. So I would love to start year one with a significant amount, $20 million. And then as a body, we take this time to fully vet other options that we can have more money, quicker for affordable housing. And should everything option we vet, nothing come to fruition, which I don't believe that will happen. But should that happen, then we have the mill and the linkage fee that will kick in the following year. But as my time on council, I know what a creative financing city this is and how we have found ways and found money for the priorities that we care about. And I do believe as well, that is funding affordable housing is an absolute priority. Everybody says that. It does give me pause that we were only allocating 5 million out of our general funds for 2017. I believe 20 million would be a great statement. I believe we have the fiscal ability to do it as well. And that, Mr. President, is an overview. This is on first reading. I would love for this bill. I would love for both bills to go so we can hear from the public. So there are options to speak on. I suppose we could certainly do the committee work right now and kill one bill versus the other. But I do believe we have two viable alternatives to ensure that we move forward with funds for affordable housing starting on day one. And I would certainly ask that my colleagues would support and moving this to second reading and for one hour our public hearing. I can certainly say more, but I am sure there will be other comments. And so thank you, Mr. President, for that overview. And Councilwoman Ortega is going to make a amendment as well for our advisory committee that we call. And I appreciate some of the committee members who caught that. So it's coming from you. And I look forward to that, to the dialog. Thank you, Mr. President. All right. Thank you, Councilman Herndon. So point of order. We have several folks in the queue to make comments. I think it's appropriate that we do the amendment first. And if the amendment passes, we order published as amended, and then we can make comments over the overall bill. Okay, everyone. Mr. Mayor. Okay, great. Councilman Ortega, you're a member. Mr. President, I move that council bill 1666 be amended in the following particulars on page 17, strike the line for and substitute the following language. Four in five nonprofit affordable housing developer. It has been moved. And the second. All right. Comes by members of council. Councilman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. This amendment would change the composition of the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee. The change would remove one of the mayor's appointments to the advisory committee from an at large appointment to a requirement that the appointment be a nonprofit, affordable housing developer, thus resulting in two slots on the Committee for Nonprofit Developers in order to equal the number of for profit housing developers on the committee. All right. Any other members of council want to make a comment on this council? Thank you, Mr. President. This amendment takes the body of 11 that is dramatically changed from the original bill. And I do want to thank Councilman Herndon for his kind and professional introduction, as well as for the committee work. But this is an area of the bill that is 626 is dramatically different than the stakeholder requests we had throughout the process. Our original proposal to the community stakeholders was a 15 member body and we spent the better part of two different meetings a couple of months apart, hearing lots of feedback from those stakeholders about the membership of this body. And repeatedly, both industry representatives, as well as kind of nonprofit advocates, said they cared more about representation than they did the small size of the body. And so, for example, some of the seats that got struck from this body include the Housing Authority, the Urban Renewal Authority, and there is no expert on homelessness on the body in this bill that we are discussing right now. Bill 626, sponsored by Councilman Herndon, Ortega and Espinoza. I'm going to keep referring to the bills because I'm afraid it will get confusing if we don't. So I am going to support this amendment because it adds affordable housing expertize back in. But I want to make clear that it in no way is sufficient to meet the expectations we heard from the stakeholders. This body still lacks homeless expertize. It lacks expertize from the Housing Authority and the Urban Renewal Authority who have significant responsibilities in this area. And it is not enough to cure the insufficiencies in the governing body. So although I'll be supporting the amendment, I just want to make clear that it in no way endorses the governing body that's in this bill. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman. I'm looking across to see if there are any other comments on this particular amendment, not the bill as published. Okay. Yeah. Elvis. Yes, I would like to respond to that, actually. Go ahead. So, yeah, you know. Yeah. What we've done is we've created a smaller, more nimble and responsible group to actually hammer out some very hard questions that supposedly had been raised over the course of the last year, just with stakeholder groups, not with actual council members, aside from those who voluntarily showed up at those meetings. And so the thing is, is that there's a large body of work with a huge amount of input, including homeless advocates and other sources that have been specifically written out in this amendment. But what I do want to say is Denver's road home is not going away with these bills. And the advocates that that exist out there, the resources that the city has already has still maintain. And I firmly believe that the appointments that council will subsequently approve on the body, Wolf, will add to adequately represent and address the breadth, the entire breadth that this fund is meant to address. So it's just it's sort of shameless to sort of sort of, you know, pander to certain groups and say that we didn't include what we need is actual a Denver solution. We need real, real results driven body. And what we can't have is an all inclusive body. We need adequate representation, just like you elected 13 of us to represent 600,000 of you. We have 11 to represent a body. I mean, a group of special specialists that need to address this issue citywide. And so trying to capture it all and have a good working group and with adequate mean, you know, with adequate attendance, a body of 23 just gets unmanageable. The intent to sort of capture everybody, I mean, this is what while we not getting rid of Denver's road home, what we are getting rid of with the subsequent bill as amended in in both cases is the air show which attempted to sort of be this catchall and address everybody's needs. And we didn't do it right the first time. And we do need the actual working group that is something that is manageable and that we can we can actually get the work product that is necessary. So I think we have good representation from both the funders, the banking industry and the nonprofits and the developers, both for profit and nonprofit. And that's the ideal sort of mix. If there's if there's amendments that you want to put forward to address that, I'm happy to entertain it. Thanks. President. All right. I don't know how to weigh in on this, are you Brooks? But. You can weigh in right now, Ortega. All right. So I think it's important to note that the mayor will still make this appointment so it doesn't take his authority away. It just changes it to being one of the nonprofits. And, you know, my expectation is we would have one nonprofit that probably works with the homeless community and one that works with the broader community . The other thing is DACA, the Denver Housing Authority, and the Denver Urban Renewal Authority already have automatic input into the city because they're part of ongoing conversations. I mean, Dora doesn't bring anything before this body that isn't already run through the administration. So they're already sort of embedded in in decision making processes and giving input. So I think this request to lower the numbers so that it is an effective body that can get the work done, that needs to happen in that time frame is really important. The other thing that I want to mention about this bill is it also calls for a comprehensive plan to be created that looks at all of the funding sources. So, for example, we have $600,000 that's going to be in the 2017 budget for the Office of Hope. It's still not clear to me exactly what the Office of Hope is going to be doing. That's different from the Office of Economic Development that will be doing housing. And the Office of Hope is housing opportunities. So housing is an inherent piece of what that office is going to be doing. So the comprehensive plan is asking that the city present to city council a plan that looks at how all of the various funding sources that go into housing are going to be allocated. And I think that's very critical so that it ensures that the decisions that are being made on which projects get funded is based on criteria and not simply political decisions. So that's why I am supporting this bill tonight in the amendment. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Seeing no other comments. Madam Secretary, a roll call on the amendment. Ortega. Ortega Sussman I Black Eye Clark. Espinosa. Flinn Gilmore. Herndon. Cashman. Carnage. I knew. Mr. President. I. Please count the voting us or close the voting unless the results. 11 eyes. Zero nays. 11 eyes. Zero nays. But on the amendment passes the statute. 12. Okay. Ms.. Mr. President, I just got some of the vote that was 11 was 12. And so I can I can hold that vote for later on if I can. You didn't you didn't vote. Council President. I have it on here as voting. You do? Yeah. I'm going to add it. Okay. You want to add me as voting? Okay, great. Councilwoman Gilmore, would you please put Council Bill 626 as amended on the floor for publication? Yes, Mr. President. I move that council bill 626 as amended, be ordered published. All right. It has been moved in second to comments by members of council. Councilwoman Kinney. Thank you, Mr. President. If I may, I would like to start with a couple of questions. First of all, for David Broadwell. Councilman Espinosa just mentioned that both bills, regardless of whether which one passes, would eliminate the I. Can you please clarify if the bill in front of us 626 indeed eliminates the H0. The first david broadwell, assistant city attorney, the original bill 625 which we'll be discussing in a moment, does switch off the the iho make it no longer applicable after January one. This one, 625 does not touch the inclusionary housing ordinance at this time. It eliminates that language in this version of the bill such that you have the delayed implementation of the of the linkage fee until next year, the delayed implementation of the bill until next year. But in the meantime, the inclusionary housing ordinance remains in place. Now, there may be an effort to come back next year and do something with that ordinance in conjunction with with further discussions of the entire matter from this year to next year. But the bill in front of you right now doesn't touch the inclusionary housing ordinance 626 and leaves it in place for the time being. Thank you. My next question was for the Department of Finance. If the CFO may come forward, please. And while you're asking that question, I want to to direct all of city council members to the comparison of the alternative housing fund bills, this document that was created by David Broadwell, so that folks can go back and forth and not get confused by council bill 626 and 625. Thank you. Please introduce yourself. Good evening. Brendan Hanlon, the city's chief financial officer. Thank you, Brendan. Can you please explain a little bit? One of the things that the sponsor mentioned is that both of these bills create funds. And so I have two questions for you. First of all, does the bill create any funds that will be generated in 2017 as written? I don't believe so. Over and above the 5 million, it has already been identified in the proposed 2017 budget. So the bill itself doesn't create any new funds in 2017. Not in 2017. Okay. My second question, so and I just want to clarify, it does turn the linkage fee on in October of 2017, but that doesn't result in funds right away. Is that right? It wouldn't be immediate. We're expecting some amount of delay for implementation at this point in time. So my guess is that those funds would not be delivered until you might get some in in December of 2017. But probability suggests that maybe it's January or February. Awesome. Okay. Thank you for explaining that. Can you also talk a little bit about the property tax? So on the surface, it may look like both bills turn the property tax on in the exact same way. But can you please clarify whether that's the case and in particular what the impact to other city services is in this bill? Sure, I'll I'll explain. Bill 625 first, the original proposal for affordable housing. So that proposed activating leveraging a half mil starting on January 1st, 2017. That would generate about $6.64 million in 2017, which would be dedicated towards affordable housing. The new proposal, 626 proposes activating a mil half mil in 2018. This this is based on the premise, though, that we would have sufficient capacity within our revenue growth constraints to program those funds. Otherwise you would be essentially using funds from either the general fund or human services in programing that programing those for affordable housing. The reason I'm bringing up the the revenue cap is because to the extent that we see reassessment value of about 6%, which is the maximum amount that we can retain underneath that underneath that revenue provision, you would have those available funds. But I should note that in reassessment years, we have used those funds to program services for the General Fund for Human Services and for other purposes that are already identified in the formulas that currently exist. So can I say that back to you and council? Sure. Yeah, that was a lot of mechanics. That was very thorough. I just want to make sure I'm understanding so. The original proposal. We know that we have capacity to use new mills. The original proposal uses new mills. It does not compete with any existing service. Correct. If property values continue to rise in Denver and are reassessed at that increased value, then it's unlikely that we will have new mills in 2018, in which case this proposal would be using existing mills that are currently funding other programs. That's that's a good way of saying it would use the value of existing mills to to carve out this dedication in 2018. And can you just say very in plain English what that means? So so so that would mean we would have a choice or this this bill would preemptively make that choice for us to say we're not going to use the funds from those mills for other city services. It shall be used for affordable housing. So it could result in cuts to base service levels or to other, you know, programs increases due to inflation. We wouldn't be able to leverage those funds for other city services. Okay. Thank you. And then I have one other question for another department. Is the Office of Economic Development able to come forward, please? I want to ask you about the language in this document that relates to the plan. So I have a lot of admiration for Councilwoman Ortega's raising of this housing plan topic because it's one that's near and dear to my heart. Councilman Brooks and I spent a lot of time talking with the administration, and so I wanted to ask whether or not you all have had some discussion about going about doing housing planning differently in the future in general. And then what I want to ask you is whether or not you feel comfortable with the exact language we have before us today. So if you want to just address whether or not you've heard some of Councilwoman Ortega's concerns and whether you've had some conversation about that. No, absolutely. My name is Rick Padilla. I'm the director of housing for the OED. Yes, we have had we have heard Councilwoman Ortega's concerns, and we have done a lot of preliminary planning in terms of how we would look at implementing, whether it's whatever the amount may be in 2017, including preparing for whether it's an 11 or 23 member body, preparing a business plan, preparing a product term sheet. So we have really looked at how do we address those issues. And I mean, maybe I'll ask Andrea to come forward. So there is some existing plans that this bill and that the Office of Economic Development have committed to for the 2017. And for that for these funds, the request from Councilman Ortega has been for a broader approach. And so can you just share what the mayor's position is on that conversation as of tonight? Evan Dreier, Mayor Hancock's deputy chief of staff, to want to make sure I understand the question, broader approach toward a comprehensive housing plan. The mayor is committed to taking a serious look at a comprehensive housing plan, not just a serious look, but how would we do that together? I think we're going to ask you all, though, if we could delay action on an amendment or a proposal that speaks to a compassionate, comprehensive housing plan tonight so that we have a little bit of time between now and second reading to develop that thinking. A little bit more. Thank you very much. I'll withhold my comments for now, but thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman Black. Thank you, Mr. President. The bad news is that we have a serious housing crisis and we have imperfect solutions. The good news is that everyone up here is in support of a fund. And as Councilman Herndon said, one way or another, we're going to come out with something. Again, I also want to thank Councilwoman Kenney. Councilman Brooks Dreier, the mayor's office and all the stakeholders for all their hard work. I do support a fund, and I think we all also agree that we would like to have more money in the fund. I'm going to support both bills tonight moving forward to Second Reading next week and I look forward to the public comment next week. But I am in favor of more time for the Council to delve more deeply. I would personally like to hear from objective experts. We've heard from housing advocates and we've heard from developers, and our job on the council is sort of to weigh them all. And I would like to hear from some objective experts, like some economists, because I'm concerned about some unintended consequences of adding costs to market rate housing. And if we cause market rate housing to become more expensive around the city, we're actually exacerbating the problem. I'm also concerned about deterring development in parts of our city that actually need more development. We know that Montebello needs a grocery store and for developers to develop in certain parts of the cities, it's less attractive financially for them to do so, and I want to make sure that we're not deterring that. And I also am very interested in exploring more carrots and less stick. I'd like to look at some incentives. And lastly, I know we talk about marijuana. Money is certainly not unlimited, but. Hearing from my own constituents, they aren't satisfied that marijuana money goes into the general fund. They would like to know that it's going to some common good. And I'd really like to have a bigger conversation about where marijuana money is going in 2015. The city collected $29 million in marijuana revenue. 9 million of it went to enforcement, regulation and education, and 20 million went into the general fund. I think it would be a great common good for that marijuana money to go find affordable housing. And I think that's something that we could really sell to our taxpayers. I know we'd have to make up the general fund. We'd have to make that money up elsewhere. But that's the conversation I'd like to have. I just think be a really great thing to tell our constituents that we're using that money for something for our community. So thank you to everyone. Look forward to hearing more next week. And I know one way or another we're going to come out with a new affordable housing fund. Thank you, Councilwoman Black. Councilman Herndon, you were on there. I wasn't surprised, but I'm happy to wait. If other people had questions in the queue. Okay, great. Either way. Yep. Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you very much, Mr. President. One of the things that was new to me just today was this this question about whether we would be able to attach the mill levy next year as we are today. And I'd like to. Brenda, could you come back up so I could make sure I understand this? We have a cap on how much of a mill levy we can do. Correct. There is a revenue limitation on our property taxes as it was contained in ballot measure two way 6%. So to the extent that we exceed that, we have to credit mills to stay underneath that cap, much like how Tabor worked in the past. There is a limit. Yes. Okay. So right now we know that we would be able to attach this mill and not surpass the limit. Right. In 2017. 2017. But in 2018, as if values go up on on our on what we take in, we may not be able to attach the mill levy. So to find the money, we would have to dip into our general fund that had already been is being spent on other needs, right. It depends on that reassessment value in 2018 that really drives the conversation. And we don't have numbers as to what that looks like at this point in time. So that's the big uncertainty at this point is to the extent it from my calculations, if we were to grow by that 6% revenue limit, we would have sufficient capacity to fund that half mill. But that value has typically been programed to other city services in those reassessment years. But to your point, if we are under that 6% amount, then you would be carving from the base budget, that base property tax revenue in order to program it. Right. So right now we know that we could assess this mill levy in 2017, but next year, we're not sure we'd be able to. We'd have to sort of rob Peter to pay Paul to ensure the the money that the mill levy could bring this year. Right. It could happen. It just depends on those reassess. It's not a sure thing next year as it is this year. Correct. Thank you very much. Right. Councilwoman Kennedy, I'm going to go pop on to Gilmore. Councilwoman Gilmore. Thank you, President Brooks. You know, I have had a lot of careful consideration, and I've heard passionately from stakeholders, development, community and families and service providers for District 11. And I, unfortunately, will be voting against 626 tonight. And the reason is because we have an overwhelming need in our communities in specifically Montebello and Green Valley Ranch. We have to act now. Families are struggling in our city, and when families are struggling, our children are at a far greater risk for many adverse circumstances. That, especially for African-American young men, can change the trajectory of their entire lives. And housing is a foundation for our families. And this past months, my council office, we've been helping families who are on survival mode. They can't find places to live. They're Section eight vouchers. There's no place for them to go. And we're just trying to keep them where they're at. And there's one woman who really put it home for me. She has five children. She was in a housing situation with her husband and her five children that they were going to be evicted. And she came into my office and she has her little kids with her. And she's telling me this story and she's sobbing and for, you know, a child to see their mom in that sort of situation, that's an environmental stress that that child will never forget that experience with their mom. And we have to do something now. We cannot wait another year. Montebello, where I live, is one of the most diverse communities in Denver, combined with Green Valley Ranch. The community that I'm part of, I'm very, very proud to say, is over 76% people of color, 76% people of color, African-American and Latino. And the statistics show that people of color have been disproportionately affected by housing and how it affects their families. And the median income in Montebello is a little bit more than $44,000. In my opinion, we need to give the Office of Economic Development the opportunity to set up right, to do this right, and to start out slow and be strategic and make sure that we're setting up a great foundation for us to build this fund even bigger. But at the end of the day, I have to be able to go back to my constituents and say that we are hearing them, we're hearing their cries, we're hearing their pleas, and we're making sure that we're doing this for our families in our community. And that reason I will be voting against 626 because we need to do something now. Thank you, President Brooks. Thank you, Councilwoman Gilmore. I'm going to skip down from her neck in each and go to Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. This evening I'll be supporting the original Bill 625 to expand the inventory and the opportunities for affordable housing in Denver. I want the pot of money to be larger, and we'll continue to work for that outcome. We'll hear about the length of time that locks in the development impact fee in Bill 625. And I want that to be shorter. And we'll continue to work for that outcome, no matter how large a piece of the pie we carve out this evening. We're not going to solve this problem on the short term. But by starting this program now, we can begin to bring a new funding stream into reality and begin the process of a more aggressive approach to affordable housing now. I recognize that the development community is not happy with the new impact fee and feels already overburdened by the Gallagher amendment, which slants the majority of property tax toward the commercial sector. I take no issue with that concern and I think it's valid. I also recognize that homeowners are not pleased to take an additional hit on their property taxes because they already feel overburdened by continued cost of living increases that are outpacing increases to their income. We are simply in a situation where our needs as a city are exceeding our current level of funding capacity, and we're asking everybody to take a bigger bite. It's an important issue and we're asking everybody to take a bigger bite. While I appreciate the mayor's willingness to carve $5 million out of our general fund revenues to give this program a quicker leg up, I would ask my colleagues to temper their enthusiasm to dig into our city's budget reserves. I understand we're currently comparatively flush in excess of our statutory requirement for budget reserves. But I also remember that during our recent downturn, we were forced to reduce funding for critical services and when some five years without hiring a police officer. I don't want that to happen to us again. It put us in a bad position that I'd like to protect against. I'd also urge my colleagues to be patient in their call to use, quote, that marijuana money. While 20 million did go into our general fund and I share the desire of many of my colleagues to see that that money are used in a more transparent manner. My preference would be if we're going to single that particular stream of money out and to pinpoint it, I'd like to see it earmarked for critically needed mental health and drug treatment services. Finally, I want to sincerely thank Councilman Herndon and Espinosa and Councilwoman Ortega for their hard work on this issue, because I think the fact of their I've seen it happening, that the fact that they're proposing this alternative ordinance and raising a number of very important issues is is going to make the original bill far stronger. And I look forward to the discussion in the next couple of weeks to making it even stronger yet. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Cashman, I. I see all sponsors on here except for the bottom. Councilman knew someone to go to him, and then we'll take it from Councilman Neal. Okay. Thank you, Mr. President. Like all the major issues this year, I've always enjoyed serving my constituents to find out how they feel about issues. And I did that with this bill. And I've had over 500 responses so far. The survey is still going on, and it's very interesting results. There's no question all the residents who are responding agree with us that there is a crying need, a significant need to have for affordable housing, not only in terms of funding, but also in the number of units that we need to produce. You know, much more than probably what the mayor's proposing. Also there, there's a real confusion about the sources of revenue. There's a there's so much confusion. And what troubles me the most about my survey is that 20% of the residents say we need more information. We need to know more about what this program's all about. And I looked and I as I listened to that and thought about it and. Last Friday morning, we had a very good little discussion with Jonathan Rose, who is a real developer of affordable housing, is very smart, intelligent man. And everyone was discussing there how much we need to educate the public, understand how to communicate to the public using social media videos or whatever. And I'm not sure we've done that. I went back and looked at our website and looked at the OED website. I could barely find affordable housing on the website I found I saw a permanent fund. There it was. And we're still talking about the same number of units, 600 units a year and not anything more than what's being projected. So I really I'm going to support I really want to support both bills tonight because we really need another more discussion and especially about what we're going to be doing and the amount of money we need to to make a real difference in affordable housing. I'm not sure the food we've been talking about $15 million for a whole year. I don't see how we've done anything better than they're still talking about 600 units rather than more than that. So I think we really need to have a much more in-depth discussion over this next week, two and two from both bills. So I'll be supporting both bills tonight. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilman Noon. Councilman Herndon. Thank you, Mr. President. Brendan, because you want to ask a couple of follow up questions. I want to make sure a person may ask this question. So when it seems as if people will say, well, 628 I'm sorry, 626 will cut services in a future budget cycle which you said it depends and that and but but you were making that conversation off of some assumptions. So I was hoping if you could talk about some of those assumptions so I can make sure I understand it. So so what I was representing before is that if we maximize that, that, that revenue cap so that 6%, if we have 6% or more reassessment growth in 2018, there would be sufficient revenue available to dedicate a half mil as part of that conversation. That said, before I even go to an alternative from that, we have typically used that reassessment value to be programed for other city services in the general fund in our Human Services funds. So I just wanted to make sure that that was clear, like, like we did last year. We use those funds for city services. So that would be a tradeoff if we were to use the that that capacity in 2018 for affordable housing. What I was representing is my second part though is let's say that it came in something underneath 6%. Well, then that revenue cap wouldn't be maximized and there would be you would have to convert some mills that were based on reevaluation, but some that were based off of just the existing mills that we've already have on our books at this point in time. So it really depends on what that reassessment level is. I was not trying to suggest that we would be cutting services due to that tradeoff, but it is a is a competitive environment in the 2018 budget to either program, those revenues for city for city services that are not affordable housing or for dedicating it to affordable housing solely. Correct. Well, whether you allocate a mill next year or you allocate a mill this year, you're taking away money that could go to something else that will now go towards affordable housing. So the plan from 625 is a half mil this year. There is we have not proposed in the 2017 budget process that you see in the book an alternative that we'd say, well, it's either a half mil for affordable housing or you could have done this. You're right, there is not an option or an alternative there that is not contained in the budget process. That is more likely a situation in the 2018 budget in terms of the funding for affordable housing in and of itself. You're right that the value of a mill in 17 and what we would probably see in 18 is around the same value. There could be a few hundred thousand dollars worth of difference. So in terms of the value created that would be dedicated to affordable housing for a value of half of mil, it would be about the same. Correct. So and this is what I would make sure that I'm understanding whether you allocate a mill, a half a mill this year or next year. That's a half a mill that you no longer have to go toward something else. Correct. It is. Okay. And there are a total of essentially, I understand that question, how much money did we get? And this past year from marijuana revenue, the 3.5%. The 2016 number from this past year? Oh, I believe that was the that was the number that Councilman Black stated in 2015. I don't remember it off the top of my head, but I'll I'll say that she's done her research. And I believe she had stated it was a total of 22 million. I'm sorry, 29. I don't I didn't have that with me. Sorry. And so that was just from the 3.5%. That is not just from the 3.5% annual rate. That's from the special rates. What I'm getting at the 3.5. The 3.5% special rate, I believe, was about seven, $8 million. Seven, $8 million. And so we have a latitude as a council to increase that all the way up to 15. Not that I'm suggesting that we do that, but with that is the flexibility that the Council has. I believe when the special rate was passed, it allowed a ceiling of 15%. Okay. Quick questions about our general reserves. So the mayor's proposed budget, I believe he brings down the general fund revenue to 15.2%. The general fund, the proposal would be proposed to stand at 15.2% effect. If this bill moves forward and has the conversation about taking an additional money out of the reserves, assuming the administration doesn't want to take from anywhere else the additional 15 million, what would that take our reserves to? So I believe that the the proposal that's in front of us funds $20 million total. If you assume that the 5 million that is already contained in the 2017 budget counts, against that, you would be looking to fund $15 million. We would move from 15.2% to 14.1% and. Reserves 15.2 to 14.1. And I do want to correct one of my counsel. There's not statutory requirements for budgets, a policy in 10% in recessionary times, 15% in good times. It is not statutory. It's financial policy. And it's something that the bond ratings look at when we review our credit rating. Absolutely. So to go 15, an additional 15 million would take us to 14.1. We program the budget every year to bring us down to 15%. Correct. That is typically our target. It's hovered around 15.1. 15.2, I think last year was 15.3. So last year, 2016, our budget revenues, our reserves ended up even though we programed it to 15%, we ended at what percent. We ended last year, I believe it is at 24.2%. 24.2. So and this year was 19%. Right now, our year end forecast for our reserves for 2016 is 19.3%. Okay? So we're consistently doing better than we have. And not to imply that that is would ever remotely continue on to that type of level. But we have we're you know, we're making a couple of assumptions of doom. So I like to make some assumptions of, hey, we're doing really well. And I guess my last part. Thank you, Brian. And Mr. President, comment, you know, the the the mill linkage fee a year from now is if as this body cannot come up with more money quicker and I certainly can't guarantee that that is something that we will do. But we had this conversation about marijuana that we weren't comfortable with the legislation and we took 120 days and this body came up with Maryland marijuana legislation. So I believe I am I am confident and comfortable that this will not even be an issue. But it's certainly a realization and a possibility. That's why I just wanted to point out, where do you allocate a mill next year or a half mill next year or half mill this year? There is less money in the pot and that's a policy choice that we make because affordable housing is important. But I'm willing to make that to know that we can do more sooner. Figures present. All right, Councilman Espinosa. Brendan, the how many available mills do we have this year? If we wanted to capture. For the the general fund and human services. His funds, I believe it's 11.400. They're available this year. I'm sorry. I was talking about the total. Yeah. Johnson. Yeah, 1.3 million. That would be underneath that that 6% cap. And about how much money would that generate? That's approximately 17.3 million. So we could put a bill for infrastructure, for arterial paving, additional police. Actually, we have those both in there. Do you know what those numbers are? And I apologize. I just got back at 3:00 to. Sure. I believe the arterial paving. So that's the 37 position. Street crew and capital funds is about $7.78 million in total. The police officers that we've added in terms of authorized strength, I think are about four and a half, $5 million. But that's without. Equipment. Yeah. So we could add we could pay for those with an additional 1.3 and now we liberated $17 million into that. We've added $17 million into our general fund. That's the prerogative of counsel to to respond to the mayor's proposed budget. And that would be more we wouldn't get into that. So how much while you answered this, said the 8 million. I mean, last year we we allocated $8 million out of our budget where we're allocating $5 million this year. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. Question for Evan. So at the last council presentation on this, you stated that the mayor was going to allocate $9 million to this and now it's five in the budget. What happened? I don't recall the $9 million figure. Oh, was I? What was the $9 million? How is that? My wrong. No. All right. I stand corrected then. No problem. The. The question for I regarding the Nexus study, when was that finalized? Sure. So this is I'm Laura Fortensky with the Office of Economic Development. We have the final Nexis study uploaded as part of your documents for tonight. It was submitted to the city on September 8th last week in conjunction with the bill. Yeah. So I just that's that's going to be crucial information in my final comments. But yeah, literally last Thursday is when we finalized the next US study, even though the bill was submitted. Well well, essentially the same time. But will note that there were almost no changes between the final draft and the public review draft that was submitted to council as part of a committee meeting in July. So there were some final touches put together in the final draft that was submitted to council for your review. But it did not have substantive changes since the last public review draft that was submitted earlier this summer. But so, I mean, that's what the part is. The narrative that I'll go into subsequently later and thank you for whoever produced this fine timeline is is that really literally if we hadn't delayed, we are spending eight weeks hammering out this affordable housing bill as a body with the draft version of the Nexus study. When we actually delayed it, when we were actually going to fast track it even faster. One of the things the key points in in the bill that we're doing, that Councilman Herndon and Councilwoman Ortega and I are sponsoring, is to buy the time for council to be involved in that discussion, not just as reported by John Murray in the in the Denver Post Council President Mina Council President Brooks, Robin Kennedy and the mayor. I mean, that is we're the body of council. We're the ones that are going to be passing this legislation. And I believe that there are better tools that we can actually come up with at this time, because the need is very clearly stated in the declaration portion of this ordinance. Yet even you can actually. Here's a question I can't ask you. Did you not state at that last meeting that this was a modest and balanced approach and that's what you attempted to do, even though the declaration makes it very clear that there's a pressing need for affordability that we have lagged behind on? That is correct. Yeah. And so we have the political will on this body and that actually I'm going to stay off the comments until the questions have been answered. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Guess when. Espinosa Councilwoman Ortega, thank you. I have a couple of questions for Brandon. So the first one is just asking for clarification on whether or not we have. Utilized. Or I should say, expended the obligation to the. So under Denver Road Home, we built new units we and the mill levee, the DHS mill levee was utilized to I don't remember if it was for the service side or it was actually for the Hart cost side. But we obligated those dollars for 20 years. So has that been exhausted? Have we read? What have we done? Anything different with the those particular meals that were obligated for that housing that was done by Denver at home? I don't have that information with me tonight, but I can follow up with my staff on that. Okay. That would that would be good to know because it lets us know kind of where we're at and what's still available. So you indicated that we're 1.3 meals under the 6% cap. And initially these housing conversations started at the possibility of utilizing a full meal. Right. I'm not sure why we didn't stick with that full meal and ended up just being a half meal. But my question to you is whether or not the administration intends to utilize the remainder of that 1.3 mil if we're using half of it for housing. So that 8/10 of a mil is not programed in the 2017 budget. Okay. All right. Let me go on to my next question. How? How far? So every year the administration draws down on the reserve fund. What is the expectation of how far that's going to be taken down to by the end of 2016? I mean, I heard the conversation earlier, but. Our current. Is asking directly would we anticipate to draw that down to. Our current year end forecast for the reserve balance for 2016 is 19.3%. Okay. Okay. You've answered all my questions. Thank you. Sure. Thank you. Can someone can reach us? I see that you're up. Yup. Thank you. Brendan, one more question. So I want to do some different math. Councilman Herndon asked the question about if you took the entire 15 million and you know, what would the reserves go down to? And your answer was 14.1%. If members of this body wanted to honor our adopted policy to maintain reserves of 15%. Can you walk me through the math of what would have to happen for this body to fund $20 million of affordable housing in 2017? Sure. I want to really keep emphasizing this bill does not fund $1 in 2017. It will require a different action and that different action will occur in the context of a budget that has already been proposed. So I want to just clarify how or whether we could stay at 15% reserves and what that would look like. So I would assume that the Council would then propose to draw down and move from 15.2% reserves to 15 even that would draw it make $2.6 million available. So we've got five plus 2.6, right. Okay. So that would mean another $12.4 million would have to be identified out of the existing proposed budget. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. I see we have others chiming in. And so I'm just going to go ahead and just make a few of my comments now, which is that I also appreciate that there is a desire to continue the conversation for more sources, and there is no reason why those conversations can't continue with the two sources that we have in front of us. Dedicated. This city has a five year housing plan. We did not adopt it as a council, but it is a city plan. It has been guiding the department. We got briefed on it. We all had one on ones. And that plan number one goal is a dedicated revenue stream, not a one time, not a scraped from the reserves, not a, you know, out of the couch cushions in a good year. It's a dedicated fund. The mayor held a housing task force. Every letter we've received talks about permanent revenue. Permanent revenue. This bill puts that at risk. It puts it at risk by putting it in competition. So we don't we will have certain certain competition for 2017. We will either be competing with our reserves or we will be competing with other services, period. That's what we have. We have $7.6 million. We do not have 15. We don't have 20. So you'll either be competing with our own reserve policy and our bond ratings or you'll be competing with other services. So be very clear. 2017, not more money, not free money. Not easy money. Competing money 2018 and beyond. We risk not certain, but we risk competing with other services. We also will lose money on the linkage fee side. Even if you adopt the same linkage fees in 2018, there will probably be less development occurring because of natural rhythms of cycles. So you will capture less of that of that development due to the natural downturn that comes right. We all hope it's not deep. We all hope it's not long lasting. But I think we've all been around long enough to know that it comes. You also will lose one year of CPI index on the linkage fee rate. So every year the the the the original bill 625 has the has the index on the linkage fee index to CPI, which means that if you start the base a year later, you lose the CPI for an entire year. Those are real dollars. So in reality in reality, this bill competes with 2017 with other uses in policy. And in 2018 it will be less money, it will be less money because it will miss an entire year of CPI. So those are the realities. We can continue to debate all the other potential sources. There is a timeline in front of folks and maybe we can wait and talk more about that on the other bill. Happy, too, to defend the public process and acknowledge that no process is perfect. But this council, this council has been briefed on this concept since early last year. Since July of last year. So this council was not the last one to hear about these two sources. They were not the last ones to give input. They have been briefed for over a year. And I realize that these things are hard and we need to keep debating them. And I'm happy to keep doing that. We'll keep doing it probably for a couple more hours. But I would ask that we make a prudent decision tonight and vote down this bill in favor of the later bill so that we can both responsibly fund 2017 and so that we can put in a permanent ground game, not just a first quarter Hail Mary, but a permanent, slow growing, permanent ground game for decades to come . Mr. Leader. Bill, thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman. Appreciate the football analogies. Councilman Clark. Thank you, Mr. President. Brendan, can you come back up? First of all, I just want to commend you. I was sitting here watching you answer all of these budget questions, pulling numbers out of thin air. My favorite moment is when you got the question about 1.3 mills and you're like, Oh, that would be approximately $17.3 million in my brain. Approximate would have rounded to a round million. So it's just very impressive. And taking all the questions and I apologize because you answering my questions must feel a little bit like talking to a kindergartner about this. So I apologize in advance. Walk me through total revenue. Let's not talk about Mills and let's assume that we can capture the mill in either year. So making some general assumptions that may or may not be true, total revenue coming into the city if we capture the mill in 17 versus capturing it in 18 at that point in 18, are we capturing the same amount of money? Total revenue. So it depends. I'm sorry to start with that explanation. I don't like doing it, but I have to. It depends on the reassessment values in 2018. So let's just let's just imagine a situation, though, where there are there's no reassessment growth at all. It's just flat. There's no growth. If you just held the mills constant, the $6.5 million that we're estimating that the mills are worth in 2017 would be the same value that would be collected in 2018. But but if assuming we still have the ability to capture that half mill rate, there is some lost revenue by capturing it in 18 versus 17, even if the mills total mill rate is the same at that point. It would be it would be small in terms of the overall value of a half mill at that point in time. And. Okay. I'm a man. Am I answering your question? I hope so. Yeah, I'm still trying to wrap my brain around it. And then my other question is in terms of, you know, lost capacity. Right. So if we capture if we were to capture the full 1.3 this year, is that then 6% growth based on that new floor or is that still an 18 still based I mean, do we permanently move that up when we capture them at the point at which we. Get it is a new base that that 6% is calculated off of. So that the total potential revenue to the city if you capture in 17 is 6% above what's captured versus not capturing at all. We go to 18 and our even even if we were to still have the opportunity to take 1.3. You're working from a lower floor. Hmm. I'm doing the math, and I'm trying to. To to make sure I'm following. Maybe one more. Say one more time for me. I'm just in search of the 6%, which is the anti spiking provision rate. So that 6% is set every year based on what we actually capture. So if we capture it. From the half year or. Whatever we capture this year, that moves the floor and 6% goes up from there. Correct. In terms of the other mills that were already authorized by voters and whether we capture them or not. Right. Moving to 18 and we haven't captured those, that's 6%. So our ceiling is based on lower floors. Based on a lower base. Absent the mills different, total revenue is slightly lower at some level because. If you want to take into consideration the difference in the base, it would be incrementally different. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. President. All right, Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you, Mr. President. First of all. When we're not in public hearing, we don't have question period and then comment period, do it. We can do both of those at the same time. Right. We don't separate them out. Yeah, I just want to make that clear. Also, I wanted to say that one of the things that it's pleasurable for me up here is that we all want the same thing. We want to find as much affordable housing as we can in the best way we at West Best Way We Can and in the work that Councilman Cornelius done and Councilman Brooks has happened over several years, and it wasn't done just by Councilman Brooks and Councilwoman CORNISH and the mayor. It was done by lots of people, and there were lots of opportunities for council to engage in those meetings and talk about it. It's very difficult tonight to have a very complex bill come at this time. It would be nice to have more time to consider a bill. And again, you know, I find us doing a lot of committee work on the on the dais, and that's uncomfortable. I really appreciate what Brendan has done and trying to explain to us about what the differences are. I need to put it all in a pencil and a pencil myself. It's unfortunate that I probably have only one week to do that to see what the differences between 626 and 625 and wish that the the ideas had come a little sooner in the in the process. But I will be putting this forward for next week to give myself a little bit of time, although I am still very much in favor of the original 625 Bill. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman. Assessment. Councilwoman. Councilman. New. Question, say, on the property tax assessment. You know what? We've I guess we estimate, what, about $360 million in property tax this year for the city? Right. I believe that's a across all sources. Across all sources. And so for an assessment, what what percent would it have to be to get the, say, ten or $15 million in additional tax? Just raw from the assessment in and of itself, you needed to. Say we're going to say we're going to that we're going to generate additional tax because of the assessments are going to. Go up. I'm not texting on my phone. I'm like calculator really quickly because I do not want to state the wrong number. I'm guessing three or 4%. So. Well, that's a cross that's all across all funding sources. So probably which wouldn't all be available in order to fund this proposal. If we don't run into 6%, then we would have. All right. Well, let's just let's just say that we use the value of our general fund at this point in time. So that's $180 million that is currently being proposed in the 2017 budget. At this point in time. Again, remember, the half mil is not in that general fund estimate. You would need 12.7% growth. In order to collect $15 million more in the next year. So that would be well in excess of the the anti spiking provision. That was the easiest math for me to do right now. All right. So it's not a proportion of the increase in property tax only. So the assessments go up 4%. We're not going to generate 4% more in property tax. We would because that is under the anti or the revenue limit and to to pay only for the affected funds. And I'm sorry, I'm getting into like a big time property tax inside baseball here because. If we don't run into the cap, then we could we have that money available to, you know, 4%. It's like 12 to $15 million. With if you had growth rate of 4%, that would be within the cap. Okay. Thank you very much. All right, Councilman Flynn. Brandon. I think I'm just going to stay up here. As much as you want to rest on those hard pews out there. Couple of questions now. The mayor's budget came out today and I know this isn't a budget hearing, but just just to clarify segments, the next question, you would probably know that the first two pages I would look at would be the police academy class. Thank you very much. 100 new officers, the way I read it and in academy next year. Thank you. And but the second one thing I would look at would be schedule 100. Right. And in last year's budget, we thought that we would end this year with an unassigned fund balance of $191 million, give or take. And I see that we actually are now projecting about $60 million more than that. Is that am I reading. That correctly for the revised 2016 budget? Yes. So I think that was the 196 that you mentioned. 191 191. You could compare that against to 51. So that's. Exactly right. That's right. Okay. So in 2012, I just want to make sure I understood that correctly. In 2012, the voters passed to a which allows us to increase up to our maximum lawful mill levy, which is what it's 20, 22 point something. Right. And where are we now? We are at I believe it is 80, 17, 18. Mm hmm. Okay. And just a devil's advocate question. You said that we have under the the growth that 6% in the growth and the cap for the cap on growth, we could go up 1.3 mills. Correct. But this budget only recommends point five. Because the voters. Contained the point five yet. But yes, it would if the 625 was correct. Okay. Because the voters told us in 2012 that we we may go up to our lawful maximum. Why are we not taking advantage of that from year to year? So I think we've tried have been be been sensitive to the fact that we've seen such large valuation increases in previous years. Last year the average was 26%. Having gone to community meetings, I've I've met folks who have had 50 to 100% valuation increases and that's just on residential property. So we've been trying to be sensitive to that. Okay. Very good. So that will preserve our cap, our capacity for down into the future years where we can use and those inactive mills for other purposes down the line as opposed to once we hit our maximum, then we're done with to a correct. Correct. We have that ability to manage those. Okay. I appreciate that you said that because 26% was exactly how much my own property tax was. Thank you. Sure. Councilman Espinosa. Okay. I think I have a question. I don't know who it's for, but again. I thought I saw a commitment to 9 million and maybe it's maybe my my years are wrong or what have you. But it was reported in the Denver Post that the this is a quote the plan did called for devoting about $10 million to the new program next year, but has been increased to $15 million by drawing on reserves, including 1.5 million in proceeds from the city's special 3.5 sales tax on recreational marijuana sales, which was mentioned in the committee. What but does anyone want to address that? I mean, tell me how that how that got reported to the public and what that means. Councilman. I think that originally we were not proposing the $5 million in the 2017 budget, but in response to, I think, input and feedback from City Council, we went ahead and proposed our proposing $5 million from a couple of different sources in the 2017 budget. It is our hope that City Council would pass 625, which would essentially provide another $10 million also in 2017 for a total of $15 million. Okay. So it's the the $10 million is the blend of the linkage fee and the 6.73 million and property tax. Correct. So 3.7. So about a third is from the developer fee and a in three quarters is from mean two thirds is from the property tax on property. For what would be year one of the program contemplated in. 625. Yes. And that's based on sort of record levels of development right now. Okay. So we do we expect that ratio to maintain at one or two thirds or actually decrease on the development side. Over time, over ten years, over the first ten years of this program. It's pretty close to even. Property tax. Three. Linkage fee. So on a. Jump in real quick council can each. Can can I help answer your question Councilman Espinosa the reason the figure is so low for year one is because projects that are already in the pipeline, that have already passed site review and building permit, even if they haven't broken ground yet, won't be required to pay the fee. So a whole bunch of the projects, even though the ordinance goes into effect January 1st. But if you think about it, the first six months of the year, the construction that you see around town, we'll have gotten site review and permits six months prior. So we are only applying the fee to folks who have not yet gone through that gate. And we do have CPD here if you have any questions about that. But this is this number is a one time delay due to the start up of when new projects are are brought into the system. But due future years it will be based on the total development cycle. But but this year's delay is this year's amount is lower not because of the development cycle. It's it's because of the start up delay that most of the construction you see got its permit earlier. Do we have to maintain these sort of astronomical records of developed square footage to maintain that 5050 ratio? Or what what what is the sort of amount of development relative to what we're producing today? To maintain that ratio. We may want to ask Justin to come up. The the answer is that the department did a 15 year look back and they chose not the most conservative estimate and not the most aggressive estimate. They chose what they called the average estimate of of development activity to to achieve the development revenue that we have projected. Justin Sykes The Budget Management Office. Yes, we worked with the assessor's office to pull data historically on how much new development has there been in Denver. And then we use that 15 year lookback period average. And so the linkage fees that are in the proposals are based on the average amount of new development over the past 15 years, which includes two economic up cycles as well as two economic down cycles. And so working with CPD, working with the assessor's office, that seemed to be a good balance on which to base the revenue estimates. And that's great because again, what I had heard overwhelmingly was that it wouldn't be that from the from the from the people, at least in my district. And I think similar numbers are represented in councilman news is that the expectation was is that the public meeting that the development community actually bear a greater burden in this in this fund? Not a they weren't looking at a balanced approach. I understand why, but it just seems like that has been. Well, actually, I'll just go into my comments because that's where I that's where I started in the development committee is not going to I hear this, but who do I credit for this public and council process ? Timeline developed for CB 625 that was presented here on our dais. I'm not taking any credit, so I know what shots I'm taking. Okay. No, this is this is wonderful. This is great because you did my work for me. But if you look at this, the thing that I started with, the very, very first item and it's dated July 2015 and it states one on one conversations with returning council members and newly elected members on the concept of exploring the property tax and linkage fee as a permanent funding source for affordable housing. That's where we were in July of 2015, actually, before I was sworn in and I in that meeting because I did have that one on one, I clearly stated why only 15 million knowing full well that we had greater need than 15 million. And I also asked for it to. I don't care whether that blend is as long as it's weighted towards the development community. That was not a public meeting, it was one on one, but it is documented here. And I thought it was important to to because one of the things that hasn't happened, the only thing that was decided since that moment in July of 2015 is what the blend was. We've always been talking about up to one mill and a linkage fee, but it was all remaining TBD. The Nexus study was in its formative stages. It hadn't been contracted yet at that point in time. But yet also in this document is the mayor's State of the City speech on 720 when we were all sworn in. Which states? Denver's Hancock says $15 million goal for new affordable housing fund. And so anybody who's been paying attention knows that that's all we've been talking about is $15 million and 600 units per year. 6000. Anybody else who knows this need knows that that is woefully deficient and doesn't come close to addressing the need that we have as a city. And so my issue is with how this proposal just maintains the status quo. And that is what 626 is intended to do, is actually have that discussion that I don't feel council has been proactively involved in, despite the constant briefings over the last year because we've been updated on the status of that thing. In general, generalizations are made about the comments from the stakeholders, but we don't have a robust solution. We just are going to generate money and we're going to spend money the way we always have. Another thing in this timeline is July 13th, as as Laura mentioned, which is when the draft nexus study came out, we were actually promised that in in late spring, July is is a healthy part of the summer. I was expecting it in May and this is a full two months later. And then on July 17th was this draft ordinance. And so, you know, a lot of us, you know, yeah, I'm a affordable housing former practicing architect in affordable housing. My the company I used to work for Northeast Denver housing is an advocate proponent of this, a 6 to 5 and probably not in favor of 6 to 6 because of the political process that has lined up all the usual suspects in generating support for this on the assumption that more money fixes more problems. But the problem is our solutions and how woefully they've been able to address the problem thus far. So more money doesn't in this case fix more problems. What we need is more creative solutions to actually get units into into a covenant, either short term, long term or permanent. But we we don't even talk about that because that's all deferred to some other board to have a discussion at some point in time. And why aren't we having that discussion about how do we actually do legislation and guide this process so that we're actually generating ample amounts of resources to actually creatively incentivize the industry to generate units or convert existing units into affordable. Those are all things that were discussed at the stakeholder meetings but aren't part of this ordinance. And so that's one of those aims of this 11 member panel is to finally vet those solutions and hopefully find something that would offset the need for a linkage fee. But if not, we'll go right back to this linkage fee. I mean, it's in the bill exactly the way it is right now. In 6 to 5, it's in six, two, six. And I happy with that. No, I'm sorry. Development community. I wish it were all higher across the board, especially in multifamily rental and yes, sorry of apartment lobby, but I would rather have that discussion and let the industry know that I stand firmly with the idea that we should put more money and more resources into this thing, but let the industry come out with systems and approaches and bring those to the city council modeled on the last five years of data. And I want that because the city generated that gentrification report. I represent Northwest Denver. No area has been greatly impacted by gentrification in Northwest Denver and losing affordable units. And they're getting displaced. It's displacing families. And so let's look at it. Let's see what's being proposed. Let's model it based on the last five years and see if we would have gotten different outcomes in northwest Denver. That's that should be fairly simple for a group of professionals. And the amount of money that we can put towards this, especially given the data is there the so it's it's and it's frustrating you hear me talk about the I show in my frustrations there and yes my bill our bill doesn't kill it right now because I don't want to create this sort of 12 month of 13 month open window where we don't have a linkage fee. We have delayed property taxes and we don't have an IATO. Well, it would be good in a lot of ways. I actually think we would get a lot of. Permit requests for a bunch of projects that would then try to circumvent a linkage fee, which is three times the amount of this mean an h o fee, which is three times the amount of the proposed linkage fee. So what this represents right now is a very significant discount to what somebody would have to pay if they were doing multifamily for sale product. And it's distributing that among every square foot that's being built in the city, whether it's single family, duplex, multifamily, commercial and and and not. And so it's a good idea. It's but it's it's it's not strong enough. It is a modest and balanced approach. I mean, but we could have had that conversation back in July. Let's go half a mill and get the other half of the $15 million from the public. And it seems like all we did was spend a year vetting that. I mean, you know, writing the legislation and getting the proof to get that outcome when in fact, we have a Nexis study that says we could slap a very, very substantial fee on the development industry, you know, in the $7 range that we keep saying about Seattle, and then you generate millions, tens of millions of dollars more, which is actually what you need for this. So we have Brendan explaining that we could we could actually generate $17 Million, putting 1.3 in a bill for 1.3 mills and capturing it for arterial paving and sidewalks, extra police and some community planning staff to actually address the needs that I keep hearing about. You know, why is 38 not paid? Why is Colfax in crummy condition, you know, nor federal I mean grants there see that stuff and we don't go in there but oh so it's just it's just it it is a it is a sort of very calculated political process. And, yes, that's what I'm here for as an elected official now. But I still don't I still buy it. You know, we don't we shouldn't be in this business to sort of score points. We should be in this business to really aggressively handle the outcomes, especially when this day, as members of this dais, all sort of almost the majority, I think, feel that this is not going far enough because the tools aren't there. It's just more money. And I'm sorry, but everybody right now pays in the federal who pays an income tax is already paying for the affordable housing programs that we have in the city through federal grants, through the state, and through this through through HUD, into the state. And so now we're going to charge property taxpayers a portion of this amount while they're still going to have their federal income tax going to something else. I mean, that's what we're doing is we're offsetting losses in federal revenue. There's been losses in federal sources that we've relied on in years past that are going away. But so rather than and we're filling it up a little bit more than we were, and so that's what I'm saying, is the status quo has created an issue, I mean, has created an issue, but has not been able to adequately address the situation. And this solution is just a slightly higher amount. And we're going to continue addressing the situation as we have been and we don't really have tools. And so we need a year in a very focused effort, just like we did having having talks, but not to justify a 5050 modest and balanced solution. We can fund that through our existing general fund or through an extra mil. And then capturing that saving. I mean, that that net increase I mean, what Brandon just said is we had a we have 9 million in net, we're at 19, 19% and change. So even if we were to draw down a 1.1 and maybe I'm screwing up my, my, your my CFO skills, we would still not we would be at at 18 and change and and we would still be well in excess of our 15. Now you can't budget that way, but that's that's relative to our actual spending. So let's look at I mean, that's his job. Look at your actual spending and say, well, is there actual savings here that can in fact pay for this without a tax increase? But even if we do, let's do a tax increase for the things that people paid. I mean, that we were sold when we did to a. Because I was sold on improved paving through streets and a whole bunch of other needs that were being neglected during a recession that still seem to some, to some degree beginning neglected and capture that money for those resources, mean for those needs and then use that surplus or not surplus, but additional revenue to then fund this to the degree that we're talking about, which isn't $15 million or $10 million, it's 2020 plus. And that's right now. So I'm rambling. So, gentlemen, you got Joe and Clark still waiting and just wanted to make sure we still got another bill on the floor that you can get comments to as well. All right. I did have a messy sketch. Here of what I. Want to say, so I'll go through it real quick. People of color were mentioned, and that's what I'm saying. They have been disproportionately it was stated that they have been disproportionately affected, but they've been disproportionately affected by the status quo. Again, I've said it before, this just perpetuates the status quo and a lack strength, credit, creativity and guidance to do the much more. Much more than satisfied the political narrative of 150,006,000 units, which falls woefully short of the need. In the future. The political right now these days has the political will to do more and actually existing. On this day, I said, I've got a nice scratch, this girl. So yet the sponsors of this moderate and balanced proposal are trying to kill the debate by kill it by putting this measure on the floor and trying to kill it right now. I just asked that my colleagues move both for the benefit of Denver and its citizens. We need to be talking about real, real digging deep and finding solutions. And that's all that's all I'm looking for and doing because I can I'm happy to put this on tape right now, just like I would have done on the show had I been sitting at the dais here. It's not sufficient. And this we're going to be having this thing and there's a lot of talk about this is just a baby stepping. It's a foot in the door. And and now you got the justification. Now you've got the need. Now it's stated in the legislation on both of them, unprecedented level of property, population growth in the housing of the city has not kept pace with demand. So I don't know. I just urge my colleagues to move both and let us continue to have a discussion about how we actually can address true affordable housing needs, get the funding to the people that are doing the work and figuring out incentives to capture our are proposed upcoming legislation and and mobilize our industry to actually find ways to deliver units faster than we can because the units that we fund right now aren't going to go on market next year. There's a design process, a permitting process and a construction process, but yet there are units out there that we could capture, but we don't have the mechanism right now. Thanks. Councilman. Councilman Clark. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. CFO, can I ask one more question? You had mentioned the bond rating. Our bond rating. And one of the things that they look at is that percentage of reserves. So is that is there a magic number in there? I know we've set a policy at 15. Is there a magic number on that side at 15 or is higher always better than lower as a general rule? They've affirmed our policy as strong financial management practices as well as the level itself. Back in 2007, when we established the Department of Finance, we did a blue ribbon task force that reviewed our fund balance policy because we got into conversations like this often about it, can we go below a certain level? And they established that policy to maintain a strong financial position that the credit rating agencies to look at for some sort of certainty. So that way they know that we're properly managing our reserves. So there isn't an absolute number. Believe me, I've asked about that in passing conversation because if the number, you know, 15 needed to be higher than that as we grew as a city, I would certainly be advocating for that as well. But they have continued to affirm that 15% is a strong financial position. So they've affirmed that 15 is strong, but they haven't told us that 14 would not be there. There's not there's not an equation that they would they would advocate for. Perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Clarke. And I'll just make a closing comment on on the bill that's on the floor as amended. You know, I have said this before. I said this over and over again, and I'll say it again, having been a part of a more open, inclusive, thorough process, both folks who are for against and everybody in the middle. And I'm so glad that councilwoman can each took time to put this thorough outreach process down. You know, Councilman Councilman Herndon said, you know, let's let the council get the opportunity to do this. Councilman Espinosa said, we haven't had the opportunity to get in. How we do business on this council is when we will deal with large issues. A couple council folks lead them. So for Sidewalks Councilman Clark, Councilman Cashman or Lena for short term rentals, you only have one partner and we didn't have a partner council assessment led that process. That's how we do things because we can't be experts or or passionate about everything. We let other council folks take the lead and we never get upset about that. That's just how we do business. And so I think it's important for the public to know that and clear for the folks up here. There was a comment that kind of irked me. It was called someone said usual suspects. These weren't usual suspects. These are called experts, both on the development side, on the on the affordable housing side. And so these are people that we go to to get advice. We are not experts in here, but there are people in our community that we trust. And we've had many public meetings where where community folks have gotten the opportunity to to share their opinion and most of the public meetings. The theme was, you're not doing enough. And gosh, I, you know, as a leader, really believe that. But there's this deal called fiduciary responsibility up here. And we have to know with the money that we have that we can actually build the units that we can actually deliver. No one in here can build 20,000 units. No one. But I know that if we can ramp up on a moderate and responsible plan, we can do that. I won't be supporting 626 because I've been a part of this thorough process, because I have been at the table when others who have been invited did not come and didn't show up. And I really believe that 626 is just another effort to go another year. We're going to come back to the table. No one's going to agree because someone at the end of the day is going to be unhappy. And we're going to be right here where we were on marijuana at a six, seven vote. We're in the exact same place and someone will not agree. So I will not be supporting this. I'll be supporting the bill next time. 625. I will say this. This bill and this discussion in this conversation has helped us all think about a bigger, bolder vision in the future. But the question is, what are we going to do today? That's the question. What are we going to do today? And so we all agree that we need to be bigger. We need to be bolder. And everyone out here is going to get that opportunity because you're all on record. So what are we going to do today? Madam Secretary, roll call. Herndon, I. CASHMAN No. Kennedy No. Knew Ortega. Sussman All right, black eye. CLARK All right. Espinosa, I. FLYNN Hey. GILMORE No, Mr. President. No. And that's the voting. I close the voting, announce the results. Seven eyes, five knees. Seven eyes, five knees. Counsel Bill 626 has been ordered published counseling can each. Will you? You've caught out 625. What would you like to do with this bill? Thank you, Mr. President. I would like to request a combined public hearing of one hour combined with Council Bill 626 on September 19th, 2016.