A resolution approving the Mayor’s appointment to the Board of Public Health and Environment. Approves the Mayoral appointment of Jennifer Jaskolka to the Board of Public Health and Environment for a term effective immediately and expiring on 12-31-24, or until a successor is duly appointed. The Committee approved filing this item by consent on 6-23-20.
Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman. All right. Next up, Madam Secretary, please put the next item on our screen. Well, I guess that's old language. Look at it on your own screens, everybody. But Councilmember Herndon, would you please put Council Resolution 569 on the floor for adoption, please? Yes, Madam President, I move that council resolution 200569 be adopted. Thank you. Can we get a second? I can. All right. Thank you. Councilwoman Swire, questions or comments by members of council council members say to Baucus. Thank you, Madam President. Just bringing this one back up, because last week we were asking some questions and nobody was here to respond. And I have the same question of. How was this member recruited. And how many applicants applied for this role? And so if Romanians here would love to know the answers. Romaine is definitely here. I provided you all with a presentation earlier today. Given the number of items on your agenda. Would you prefer that I just respond to questions, or would you like me to go through the whole presentation? I would really just like the answers to the questions. Okay. Is that agreeable with all members of council? Mm hmm. Yep. That'll work. Okay. The question was, how was she recruited? She self applied for the board. There were ten applicants. All ten applicants were reviewed by senior staff at the Department of Public Health. She was by far the most qualified of all of the applicants that we received. She expressed an interest in serving. I think today you received as well her statement of interest outlining why she feels that she can bring value to the board. And what are the qualification requirements for this board? There are no specific qualifications for this board other than. Members must serve five years. No business or professional group may constitute a majority of the board, and at least one member of the board must be a nonprofessional who is not in public employment. And so if there are no qualification requirements for this board, how is it determined that this person was the most qualified? As we looked at the composition of the board and reviewed what the various and sundry skill sets that the current members brought to the table, this was one area that the board and senior staff felt was lacking. And what was that area? Her legal expertize in health and safety. And was the corporate representation of Excel. Was that discussed as potentially not something we would want on this board? No, it was not discussed. We don't discriminate against individuals by virtue of their employers. We look at the individual and what are the characteristics that they bring to a board that enhances the board, can assist the board. As you know, this board is required to hear appeals on decisions made by the department. They also engage in rulemaking and they also advise the department on policy. Correct. Very familiar with that board. In fact, I'm curious having one of the or the most polluted zip code in America right here in our backyard. I'm wondering if it's ever been an interest of the board to have representation of the community from from that zip code. I can't speak to that. It has never been raised during my tenure here. Thank you very much. That's it for my questions and oh, actually, real quick. How does the public get a hold of the applications that were submitted? They can submit a court request. And do they do that to you or who would they do that for? For boards and commissions. That goes through our communications department. Thank you very much. They requests. Then they asked that mayor staff respond whether or not they have any information. Awesome. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman. We have Councilman Sawyer. Thank you, Madam President. And congratulations. Oh, sorry. I raised my hand again accidentally. There. So I just. Just. If we can have comments now, too, that. Would be okay. I actually talked to her today just to reach out and have a conversation about her qualifications. And it was a really interesting conversation, and I very much appreciated the opportunity to chat with her directly. So what? When know? I think one of the. Questions that really was important to me to be answered was, you know, if you're a corporate exile attorney, what are what are your qualifications for this board? And what was a fantastic answer was, I am not a corporate exile attorney. So that was hugely eye opening to me, because that is one of the things that was really brought to my email by constituents as a major concern. So Ms. just is not a corporate exile attorney. What she actually does. At Excel. Is she is one of the attorneys that that manages the safety the the community safety piece. So she does all of the policy for Excell, for all of their staff safety and for Excell for like corporate. So and she works on their pandemic responses and pandemic response teams. And and her whole focus. Is on staff, health and safety. So I actually think she is uniquely qualified and would be a fantastic asset for this board. And I was very glad that I had the opportunity to have this in-person conversation with her today. And, you know, I went into it not knowing what to expect and sort of expecting to have a difficult conversation with someone, you know, just sort of wondering what it was going to look like. And by the end of the conversation, I said to her, you know, here you are a person who is trying to benefit your benefit, our community. You're trying to volunteer your time. You're trying to do something wonderful for our community. You are clearly. Qualified. You are working very hard and we should be grateful to you. And instead we are putting you, making you jump through hoops in order to work for free and spend your free time to serve our community. And I am. So sorry for that. So, you know, I just want to put that out there. I think it's really important that we need to remember that these are people who are working for free, volunteering their time and doing something great for our community. And, you know, this is one of those situations. And so I just wanted to say that and I think that I. Will personally be supporting her tonight. And I think that this as we have these conversations. In the future, this is something that we need to. Remember. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman, we have Councilman Torres up. Thank you, Madam President. Okay. And you did, Romain. Thank you for that. Like Councilman Sawyer, I was able to chat with the applicant briefly today, and one of my bigger questions was why this forward as opposed to one that might be associated in the future with the Office of Sustainability? Given excelling, as Councilman Sawyer detailed the specific background of Jennifer, that became clear why she was interested in this board. What are the things that remain I'd appreciate receiving as we start to see nominations as well as appointments for boards and commissions are the boards diversity matrix. We had those as any chair C.P and even a commission for the Latino community. For the African-American community, they saw the diversity matrix. And so while they may not have prescribed kind of categories to fill all of our commissions, they should be still trying to achieve parity with gender representation for racial and ethnic communities at the very least. And so I'll be asking those questions as we start to see some of those folks come through. If folks don't have those ready to go, I'm sure HRC can help them by showing them what they do. Councilwoman Torres, we are very mindful of the need for diverse boards and commissions. We expect that all of our boards and commissions, whenever possible, have a diverse make up on this board alone. We have Hispanics, African-Americans. If Jennifer is confirmed, she brings a middle Eastern background that is also very helpful. Whether it's gender, whether it's oftentimes due geographically, we can't because they're Denver residents. However, we do strive to ensure that all of our boards are diverse and representative of our city and county of Denver. Thanks for my. Thank you. Councilman and remain councilwoman. Can each. Thank you, Madam President. And I think I failed to congratulate you after my last or my last comment, so my apologies. So I think it is good that we're educating folks and asking questions. And I just wanted to share why I am going to be abstaining tonight on this particular vote. I think that there is many of our boards are kind of more advisory and they help to highlight and elevate issues. They don't actually have actual rulemaking authority, but this is one that does rulemaking and it does actually hearing of appeals. So for me, that brings it up to a higher level of scrutiny, scrutiny in terms of who serves on it, first of all. And then secondly, I just want to say that, you know, I think I want to be really careful. I think attorneys having every every person, every entity out there deserves to be represented. And it's an attorney's job not to represent their own personal views, but to represent those of their client and to be their zealous advocate. And and I respect that. And I don't hold any attorney accountable for the personal or political or professional views of their clients. So I have no doubt that any reputable attorney who's licensed is going to be able to do their job in a in a different role or outside their job and consider it objectively. So I and I am as equally impressed as my colleagues with some of the backgrounds of this particular applicant. The challenge I have is that there is a deep concern about the appearance of conflict, of interest for the appearance of propriety. And I think that what's really important for me in this confirmation is to say, can someone who comes before this board, for example, with an air quality complaint, feel like they're getting a fair hearing when one of the members might be in an organization that's challenging air quality rules or complaints in other settings? Is there? You know, I believe workplace safety, while not the like we don't think of that, is the core of his role. When they are inspecting restaurants and doing some of that work. Worker safety is implicated, right, in making sure that there aren't wet spots that people slip on. So I do think that there are aspects of restaurant inspections and other pieces of the job that have to do with worker safety. And there are pieces in the history of this applicant about minimizing or limiting the accountability for those worker injuries. And so my concern is that there could be the appearance, right, of perhaps not having public health at the forefront because of that background. And so that is really challenging. That's not about this individual and it's not about whether or not she could be fair. I think what for example, with judges, we don't have them simultaneously hearing appeals and making decisions while also representing a client in potentially related settings. So, you know, we with boards and commissions that when they're hearing appeals like this, they are almost sitting as judges. And so I do feel like it's higher. I failed to be able to connect with some of the references, including the applicant herself that I intended to talk to today. And so because I was unable to kind of satisfy that concern about the appearance of impropriety, not impropriety, the appearance of a potential conflict of interest with the goals and the mission of which is to hold folks accountable to the highest standards and to protect worker safety and to protect air quality. I just am unable to to vote on this affirmatively tonight. I wish that there were more hours in the day and fewer issues on her agenda, but I was not able to get through those phone calls. She only contacted me today. Unfortunately, I was I was booked solid, so I'm going to have to abstain today. Again, I have the deepest respect for this applicant's background passion, but this board, in my opinion, does require a little more scrutiny. And I just was not able to complete that, and I take responsibility for that. But I can't in good conscience, forward a nomination that I have some serious questions about. So again, based solely on that professional appearance that we might have from future folks who might have to appear before that board. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilman. Councilwoman CdeBaca, we have you back up. Thank you, Madam President. Just another quick question that came to mind after Councilman Torres talked about the rubric, the potential rubric, so that we could understand what boards and commissions need or have. As far as. Diversity. Romain, can you tell me how the public is supposed to really understand boards being representative or not? Is there a rubric that's public facing? How do we how do we get that that information? Because when we when we look it up, sometimes if they're populated, there's a list of people, but not too much information on how long they've been on the board, what area of expertize they fall under or represent on the board. So can you help us understand that piece of very important public information? There are over 130 boards and commissions in the city and county of Denver. Each one of them is unique in terms of the number of members, the terms whether or not individuals are eligible for appointment reappointment. Some are prescriptive. Most you're not. We strive to ensure that the information provided on the websites of each of these boards and commissions is maintained and is accurate. Agencies have undertaken the challenge to ensure that that information is available. When we provide information not only to staff but also to the mayor, we do, in fact, cite what the diverse nature of a board or commission is. We can certainly ask that staff liaison when they're updating their boards and commissions website can reflect that similarly. So. So it's not reflected currently, is what you're saying? No, it is not reflected currently other than internally. And when you guys are recruiting, what communication do you have with council districts? We do not reach out specifically to council members. Oftentimes we will, for example, if we're looking for a member to serve on a board or commission, and the legislative intent is that it be from a specific council district, we will reach out to that council member. But we tend to reach out to the entire city as a whole. And and how do you do that to the entire city? We do it in a number of ways. We post on the individual websites of the boards and commissions. We post it on our own website. Often times there are listservs of individuals who have expressed interest in serving. We send out emails when I say we, I'm talking with regard to in conjunction with staff liaisons to boards and commissions. pre-COVID, I spent a great deal of time talking to a variety of leadership organizations with regard to educating them and informing them of the process for applying for boards and commissions. And so when possible, we would I personally would love to speak to whoever the staff liaison is that's putting this outward information on our website. I think that we like to think of ourselves as a sophisticated city, and there are cities that are doing this much better than Denver. And I would like to recommend some ways or best practices that I've seen other cities implement that I think that the public here in Denver deserves. So thank you very much. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman CdeBaca or I'm sorry you were on the screen. Councilwoman Torres, do you have your hand raised? Thank you. Just wanted to offer in a row Romaine paints, I think, a more general picture of the chaos. I think that can often underlie a lot of boards and commissions as stuff to a number of them in the past. Reaching out to the individual departments is often the work and finding out do you have vacancies? Are you recruiting? h.R. Has ten commissions and an advisory board and they recruit at different times. They are looking for different folks and their outreach methods are different. So it would be ideal if 130 boards and commissions were pipeline through a single public notification process or something like that. And maybe that, you know, that could be built at that at some point. But right now relies on probably 130 different staff liaisons in some cases who work directly with those those bodies. So I share can someone see who's interested in the public access points, which can be difficult if you're going to individual departments and public liaisons. But I also recognize remains got a handful. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Torres. And thank you, Ramon, for for joining us. See no other questions or hands raised by my colleagues. Madam Secretary, roll call, please. IBAKA No. Part. All right. When? I mean. I. Hines. I. Cashin. I. Can each abstain. Sustainable. I. So I. I. Torres, I. Black I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results. One nay. One abstentions. And at. Thank you. One nay, one abstention and ten ions. Council Resolution 569 has been adopted. Madame Secretary, please put the next item on our screens. Councilman Herndon, will you please put Council Resolution 654 on the floor for adoption?