A bill for an ordinance amending Section 14-131 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code (DRMC) to delete the residency requirement for the Municipal Public Defender Commission. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 6-19-19.
Thank you, Loraine. And thank you, Councilwoman CdeBaca. Or you all get on the questions. All right, great. Madame Secretary, please put the next item up on our screens. Councilman Flynn, what would you like us to do with 0581? Madam President, I'd like to have a separate vote on this so that I can vote no. Thank you, Councilman. Councilwoman Sandoval, will you please put Council Bill 581 on the floor for passage? Right. I move that resolution ordinance 581 be adopted. All right. Please don't. Placed on. My. Consideration and do pass. Awesome. Very good. It's been moved and seconded. Questions or comments by members of council. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. That that mumbo jumbo, I think, actually is has meaning to it. It has to be verbatim. Yes, Madam President, I comment on this last commented on this last week, because it does away with the requirement that members of the Municipal Public Defender Commission be people who actually live in Denver and our county court district. And in the meantime, I asked our staff after the meeting last week to go through all the boards and commissions and try to find out how many of them require Denver residency, do not require Denver residency, and are silent on it. And I really want to thank the fantastic works. I didn't think we could get it done by Emily lapel on our our legislative staff who put together at least 79 of the 3,482,000 boards and commissions we have but 79 of them and found that of those 37 require Denver residency. 20 specifically do not. And the remainder are silent on. And so one would assume that you could or could not be a resident of Denver in a time when at least my first term I worked a lot with for the southwest side and with former Councilman Lopez on the West Side to try to increase the representation from folks west of the Platte River on boards and commissions. But I often found it frustrating when we appoint people to advisory, even just simple advisory boards who live in Golden or in Littleton or in Brighton or in Aurora. When we have, we are the largest county and city in the state of Colorado. About 716,000, I think, was the last estimate from the ax, from the census. And I believe that it is possible to find qualified candidates, particularly for boards such as this one, that deal with our county court system to find those applicants and those nominees from within the city and county of Denver. So for that purpose and that purpose alone, Madam President, no reflection on the presiding judge on the court who who supports this. I just wanted to vote no on it. I'm not asking that it be voted down unless other people feel the same as I do. But I just wanted to register my continuing support that we dig deeper in our communities to find folks from underrepresented neighborhoods such as those west of the Platte and elsewhere in the city to serve on our boards. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Flynn. Councilman Cashman. Yeah, thank you, Madam President. Pro tem like Vacca. What Councilman Flynn said, as well as kind of. Piggyback off a lot of what's been said by Councilwoman CdeBaca and some others this evening. While I understand the reason for this ordinance, and I understand that we're having trouble filling boards and commissions, but this may just be a signal that we need up our game all across the board on reaching out. And I think that's the tact that we should be taking. I wouldn't want this to lead to a string of these changing to looking for representation from outside of Denver. So I'm going to join my colleague in voting no on this. Thank you, Councilman Cashman, Councilwoman Canete. Thank you very much. I agree completely on broader outreach, and I hope that our news outlets who are following so closely tonight will be willing to put all of our openings in their and their blogs and newspapers so that we can get the word out to people who don't subscribe to our thrilling newsletters. That said, one of the things a number of our boards and commissions have on them is a need for particular expertize. And I will say that there are times where I want for my residents a person with outstanding, maybe harm reduction expertize who happens to live outside the borders or some other specialized expertize in child development or things like that. And so I don't want to sacrifice the good expertize for residency. And this board, I believe, has some of those very particular qualifications for some of the seats where you have to have a very specialized knowledge, you have to work in a particular role. And so where those types of positions are at play, I am much more willing to look at nonresidents than I am for just a community voice. Community voice, as I believe should be our residents and where we can find experts who are our residents as well. But I don't want to lose the best substance abuse expert or child development expert or whatever it may be. And so for that reason, I will be voting for the bill tonight with the absolute doubling down on the recruitment side so that we don't need to go to nine. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Hines. Thank you, Madam President. Pro tem. I want to second our echo councilman ten inches fights. And I know that there are people who call this city the mile high income city. Whether you agree with that or not, I think that we all agree that we have a challenge making sure that people can afford to live in the city of Denver. And we want to make sure that we have the best people with the right thought process and the best qualifications for our for our boards. And so I look forward to having a robust set of people who can apply for this, who meet the particular criteria. So thank you. Thank you, Councilman Hines. See no other speakers. Madam Secretary, welcome. Flynn? No black. I see the Barca. No Herndon. I find. I. Cashman. And. Kenny Ortega. No. Sandoval. Sawyer. Nay. Torres. Nay. Madam President, I. Seven knees. Five eyes. All right. Seven nis council Bill 581 has failed. That concludes the items to be called out. All bills for introduction are ordered published. We are now ready for the block vote on resolutions and bills on final consideration. Council members remember this is a consent or block vote and you will need to vote.