A resolution approving a proposed Amendatory Agreement between the City and County of Denver and Environmental Hazmat Services, Inc. to provide trained personnel to collect discarded and abandoned solid wastes, including putrescible wastes, medical waste, used syringes and drug paraphernalia. Amends a contract with Environmental Hazmat Services, Inc. to expand the scope of work to include additional rapid response services in the collection of discarded and abandoned solid wastes including putrescible wastes, medical waste, drug paraphernalia, and other materials in alleys, sidewalks, parks, and other public spaces, citywide. No change to contract amount or duration (ENVHL-202053184; ENVHL-201844158). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 3-16-20. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 2-12-20.
All right. Thank you, Councilmember. Seen nothing else on this item? I'm sorry. Did you put this on? I'm sorry, ma'am. Secretary next item, 68. Yes. Councilmember Hines, you just had your comment. QUESTION You're good. Yet? No questions. Thank you, Mr. President. Sorry. Okay, Madam Secretary, next item on our screens. And this one is the one that we want a vote on. Council Member CdeBaca. Yes. On six. Okay. So, Councilmember Hines, if you please put Resolution 68 on the floor. Mr. President, I move we consider and do pass resolution 20, dash 68. All right. It has been moved and seconded comments by members of Council Councilmember CdeBaca. I am calling this one out. We've had extensive conversation on this expansion of really the authority under this bill, and I am calling it out because I want to go on record as a no vote, but also wanted to call up somebody who can talk to us a little bit about what is happening with our government dollars during these hazmat cleanups. Is Brandy is it possible for me to call up somebody? I believe there's no reason you can't. I mean. It's. Proper you to call somebody in the audience. Here she comes. And and while she comes up, I'll just explain a little bit of background on this has met this $6 million that's encumbered for emergency cleanup which is also known to the community as the homeless encampment sleeps sweeps. When this happens, people's property is taken, people are pushed along. We've witnessed them. We've participated in watching what happens to people, whether they're offered shelter or not. Often they are not offered shelter, not taken to shelter, only pushed along and possessions confiscated. And so while I recognize this is not an expansion of the $6 million, I do think it's important for my colleagues to recognize that under no circumstances should we be expanding the authority of who gets to draw down on these dollars. And in fact, in the midst of a housing crisis, we should be reallocating these dollars toward the solution rather than a reactive response to the symptoms of a problem. We are participating and exacerbating. So. Go. Go ahead, Brandi, and tell us a little bit about your experience. Can you hear me? Hold it close. Close. Close me. Closer. Can you hear me now? Yeah. All right. I'm just going to read it to you real quick and I'll be really. Brief and say your name and who you are. Yes, my name is Brandi Majors. I am currently homeless and what you call urban camping. I'm outside. I'm just going to read this real briefly because it was just easier to organize my thoughts on $6 million contract with DHS. Off duty police officers paid to take on extra shifts for $68 hour above time. Enough. That's crazy. I'm currently homeless and like I said, and urban camping. I personally have lost over 10/10 in ten different suites. I'm disabled. I can't take care of myself. I always had a can't meet. We lose tons of things such as valuables to our warmth, shelter from the elements. Danger. I've been arrested three different times during sweeps, harassed, threatened by the police. But he just. And the police crushed my chair in the compactor and felt no remorse for it until outside advocates donated me a new one. They had also confiscated this chair that I'm actually in now and didn't alert me as it was as I was in the hospital. But for weeks I had no idea who had it. They returned it damaged. I now, right now could really use just 800 of that 6 million to get a new chair and bring my husband home from a detention center asleep earlier in the day. Your mike went out. Earlier in the day was the mike. Yeah, you might. Should be. Testing. Testing, testing. Yeah, I'll do it, she said. I did a sweep earlier in in this last week that I wasn't in, but I was it over there off of a I believe it was 2015. I would say, well, killed went across from, um, sunny Lawson Park. Uh, my husband had, I was actually in the hospital for hypoxic respiratory failure admitted in and my husband had to go ahead and pack down our campsite and move it away from all the other campers just due to the chaos. He wasn't the it was just too much for him. He has epilepsy and has seizures. A little later on that evening, I am released from the hospital. We're just trying to figure out where to camp because he had actually moved our stuff all the way into more towards Downing in 30th, but kind of far away. And we you know, I kind of forgot where he put the seizures. So we're looking for it. He actually had was riding his bike. He had a patch I had a seizure in front of the police. And they happened to be the night the the night officers who constantly come later on in the evening and basically say , you guys aren't welcome here, you're violating the the camping ban and whatnot, and you have to move. And they recognized him. They looked at his pockets, ran his name. And I took him to the hospital and then took him to jail. Because of this, I only lost all my things, you know, because I have no way to take care of me. But also my my sole caregiver, I got my chair back is, you know, it's it's not working, right? It's hard enough already out there. But people like myself have to go through extraordinary, difficult circumstances with nobody to help. And we're outside, let alone begging for sort of resources and not knowing whether or not we're going to be able to be blessed with a motel voucher due to whatever circumstances we have to currently live in being disabled, being sick and being having to be urban, camping and banned from all the the the resources that help people like myself, especially women bed from the only woman shelter here forced to camp outside and okay keep everything going. You know and and the fact that here Denver is my secondary home I spent my entire life here to know that you guys would quit and just say that it's okay to get $6 million for for all this harassment, the loss of things that we already have to go and gather everything that we have to do just to keep ourselves warm. I have no internal thermostat. I require like eight or nine blankets plus a make in. I'm still cold, it's horrible. And I keep working, losing things. We keep having to bail ourselves out or figure out a way out. And people like me are suffering because of this. Please, you know, $68 an hour for off duty officers who are me and would threaten us on any given basis, harass us, whether being homeless, disabled, black, any sort of anything that's not with them. And their belief system is wrong. It's wrong. And we shouldn't we should not give them this much money where we can allocate this. I live in a gentrified five points now and I can't even enjoy that gentrification. And I am a U.S. citizen, born in this airport in the United States, and I can't even enjoy it. What was it given to us for? What was gentrification for? But for us initially, yeah, we leaned it for remember that it was to help the poor people, I think poor and you know, can we, can we take a portion of that? Can we do something for us, please? Thank you. Thank you so much, Brandy. And that was just one story. We've worked with multiple people throughout this entire process, our office, case managers, situations like this intensively and very differently than our colleagues. And so we've walked with people from the moment that they're encountering the hot team two weeks after when they're supposed to be getting the support they need to get into housing. And what I can say is that this $6 million could be used so much differently, especially if we if it is indeed true that they're not drawing down on the entire $6 million, we need to reallocate these dollars and not expand the authority of who can draw down on these dollars. In fact, we should be limiting who can draw down on these dollars and not implementing contracts under one department's name and letting another one draw down. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember Sandoval. Yeah. Can someone from Denver. Denver Department of Environmental Health come up and answer your question? Is anyone in the high? Good evening. My name is Paul Bedard with the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment. Good evening. Thank you for being here. So she just mentioned off duty police officers. Does this contract allow after the payment of off duty police officers to be used or are we using on call police officers who are not getting paid time and a half? I'm not sure I can answer that question directly. I understand. That this. Contract is only to pay third party commercial contractors to pick up solid waste. So in the power. So I'm looking and you don't have access to this but on the in an on our site we can look at the document. It says that it's for Denver Department of Rec. Parks and Recreation. Yeah, Parks and Rec. And it says safety. So that's two agencies that this contract also does. So. The fact that you can't answer if there's off duty police officers being paid is a little bit concerning to me right now. So I understand that in the power point. Excuse me. Can I. Help you? Yes, please. Can you help. Charlotte? Solid Waste Management. We do utilize some off duty police officers to support staffing our storage facility hours. When that storage facility is open, we have an off duty officer there to support that team. So can I ask you one more question? They're not the they're not the officers that are going out and actually like assisting with Denver Parks and Rec. Those cou it's it's the officer who's who basically is keeping the the pride, the the personal property safe. And the staff. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. All right. So no other questions or comments. I just wanted to add, first of all, it was Brandi, right. Thank you for sharing your story. I think certainly I can't imagine that there's anyone up here who thinks that we are doing enough. We have a lot more to do when it comes to better serving people experiencing homelessness in our city and drastic and dramatic levels of what we need to increase. And we've been we've had our homeless retreat. We have been touring shelters. And that doesn't mean that we have all the answers or that all the answers are legislative in nature. But I think certainly you will continue to see a lot of of of work and effort for us to do much better up here. I think I just want to on this contract specifically take out of the the PowerPoint presentation that we had in committee that this contract allows for the collection, inventory and store and secure items that people leave behind on sidewalks or in parks, as well as items that people choose to store with the city manager and oversee the storage area and maintain open hours for people to retrieve their belongings, address the collection and disposal of household hazardous waste and items that are illegally dumped. Identify, manage and dispose of household hazardous waste, drug paraphernalia, unidentified substances or substances in unmarked containers and items that are soiled with bodily fluids. I think these are critical things. We have to be able to store people's personal belongings. Well, they may be somewhere doing whatever they're doing, working or whatever. When the when we come across them, we have to be able to manage that area so that people can have access to that. And, you know, on Broadway in my district right now, there are a lot of small business owners that are picking up a lot of tab cleaning up hazardous waste so that they can get in and get to work so that they can have deliveries at work. All of those things that they shouldn't be having to pay for, that the city should be helping to handle and manage. And I think that those things are critical. And so for that reason, I will be supporting this contract today. Madam Secretary, roll call. CdeBaca. No black I. Flynn I Gillmor. I. Herndon. I. Hines. I. Cashman. I. Kenny Ortega. I. Sandoval. I swear no. Torres, I. Council President. I am secretary. Please close the voting. Announce the results. Tonight. Two days. Ten days, two days. Resolution 68 has been adopted. All right, Madam Secretary, if you please, for the next item on our screens. And Councilmember Hines, will you please put Resolution 182 on the floor?