My plan for a thriving Denver stands on five foundations.

Denver got harder to afford when it built mostly for one kind of household, not every stage of life. In the late-2010s building boom, the only new market-rate apartments affordable below 80% of area median income were studios. Now Denver Public Schools has nearly 1,800 fewer students this fall, and the district names housing prices that push families out as one reason. I’ll vote to put the city’s housing dollars toward homes with two and three bedrooms. When Unlocking Housing Choices reaches council in 2027, I’ll also judge it by the city’s own aim: homes where elders can age in place and generations can live together. And I’ll vote for budgets that put parks, rec centers and childcare where the new homes go.

Every major city and airport project crosses the council’s desk. I’ll use that vote for community workforce agreements that put Denver residents and registered apprentices on the job, so the biggest construction pipeline in the state builds careers here instead of exporting them.

When big companies land millions in incentives to set up downtown while shops on Colfax report losing 30 to 50 percent of their sales through two years of city construction, the field isn’t level. I’ll raise the goals Denver already sets for contracting with minority- and women-owned businesses and make sure they’re met, so more local owners get a fair shot at city work. Keeping small businesses open is how the middle class survives.

My parents came here with nothing and became homeowners. The American Dream of homeownership should still be open, whether you own or rent. Denver already funds down-payment help and eviction legal aid; I’ll protect and grow both. On zoning, our adopted plans already say where new homes go: duplexes and fourplexes on corners and near transit, parks and schools. The next housing zoning vote, Unlocking Housing Choices, now comes to council in 2027. I’ll vote for it where it follows the plan neighbors wrote, with renter and homeowner protections in the same package.

The missing rung of Denver homeownership is the entry-level condo, and construction-defect law is a big reason almost nobody builds them. I’ll be the city’s advocate at the Capitol for reform with a real right to cure, so builders fix problems instead of litigating them. Accountability for bad work and the missing middle aren’t opposites. Denver needs both.

Wire the city’s workforce training straight into that local-hire pipeline, in aviation, logistics, the trades and the creative economy, so a kid from any block has a real path in. And open the trades wider, especially for women: construction builds real wealth, and Denver can’t keep half the city out of it.

Denver families can spend nearly $2,000 a month on childcare alone. I’ll keep investing in programs like the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program that make raising a family here possible, and back the friend, family and neighbor networks that care for so many of our kids.

Well-funded youth programs, well-lit and activated public spaces, and healthy community conditions are what make a block safe. I’ll fund what works.

Denver’s STAR team sends a clinician and a medic, not a squad car, to a mental-health crisis. It works, but it reaches fewer than half the calls it was built for because dispatch doesn’t route them. The council approves STAR’s budget and contracts, so: the routing fix written into both as a condition, and a public monthly count by neighborhood of calls that qualified and calls that got it. Then the question STAR can’t answer alone: where that neighbor goes the next morning.

STAR answers the call. The question is where someone goes the next morning. I’ll bring Denver what Greeley and Fort Collins have had for decades and we don’t: a place run by its own members, where a neighbor living with serious mental illness has somewhere to be every day, a job to work toward, and people who notice when they’re missing. Started with city and Caring for Denver dollars and sustained by the Medicaid benefit Colorado already covers.
The goal: fewer neighbors cycling back through 911, the ER and the jail.

Fund the training and resources responders need to do the job well, fill the police positions already in the budget, and pair those resources with community oversight and consistent enforcement.

On the Citizen Oversight Board I helped shape the ordinance that opened police misconduct settlements to public view. Next: 911 and non-emergency response times posted by neighborhood every month, so you can see whether your block got answered and whether the break-in was investigated or just logged. If the number doesn’t move, the money moves.

Already delivered: Denver Post: police misconduct settlements opened to public scrutiny →

The city signs about 3,000 contracts a year with no way to tell how many kept the money here. An ordinance I’d file in my first 100 days, Denver Dollars Stay Home, in three parts. One: on contracts paid with Denver’s own money, scoring points for Denver companies and Denver workers, capped, posted beside every award, and never on federally funded work. Two: on city-funded construction of $5 million and up, a written hiring agreement for Denver residents and registered apprentices. Three: a Denver-share line in the city’s Open Checkbook for every contract over $500,000: name, dollars, promised date, actual date, and how much stayed with a Denver business. No new tax, no bigger budget.

When the budget tightens, the answer isn’t gutting the services families rely on or the workforce that provides them. Shaping that budget is the council’s direct power, and I’ll use it to protect both.

A new Broncos stadium, a home for the Summit, Denver’s women’s soccer club, and the buildout around Ball Arena are landing at once, and the council votes on the agreements that shape them. No stadium or arena deal gets my yes without a community benefit agreement in writing: local hiring, Denver small businesses first in line, and what we pay and what we get back spelled out. Council had to force that on the Summit stadium, where the city committed $70 million.

Cameras, license-plate readers, facial recognition: the city keeps adding surveillance tech with no real rulebook for residents’ privacy. Writing one is squarely the council’s job. A surveillance ordinance: no data collected, kept or sold without public rules that safeguard our rights.

A plain-language budget, and a neighborhood-level view on top of the Open Checkbook the city already runs, so any resident can see where the money goes. I’ll never vote on a contract I haven’t read. And guarding dollars includes paychecks: Denver’s Auditor has recovered millions in stolen wages, and I’ll back that office with the tools it needs, with wage-stealing employers covering the cost of recovery.

Getting a permit in Denver should be simple and easy. The city pledged to review every building permit within 180 days or refund the fees.
I support this, and I’ll work to write that promise into law so it outlasts any one administration, and make sure small and local builders see the benefit. Same rule for every bond project: the promised date posted next to the real one.

A Cultural Corridor Ordinance with a named list: Santa Fe Drive, Welton Street, Morrison Road, Little Saigon on Federal, West Colfax. Each gets zoning that fits its street, shops at the sidewalk, heights that fit the block, no drive-thrus, not a one-size-fits-all template handed down from downtown. And when the city tears up one of these streets, business relief starts the day the cones go down, written into the construction contract, not a grant that opens nine months late.

Denver protects affordable homes with land trusts. Do the same for the studios, venues, workshops and family restaurants that make a street worth walking: a cultural-space land trust, built with the council’s budget and land-use tools, so the rent can’t push out the people who made the street.

Already delivered: Rocky Mountain PBS: the Latino Cultural Arts Center’s Las Bodegas →

Expand the city’s support for youth arts and weave creative skills into workforce pathways, so a kid from any block can build a creative career here at home.

Strengthen the city’s arts funding for the venues and cultural entrepreneurs who are both an economic engine and a gathering place, and be a relentless advocate for the regional cultural funding our scene depends on.

Invest in the culture that draws the world to Denver and roots our own community in it.

A Shade Standard with a number in it: a canopy percentage published for all 78 neighborhoods every year, the ten lowest planted first, paid from the half of the climate fund already aimed at the hardest-hit blocks.
No new tax.
No bond contract for a park, rec center, street or plaza gets my vote without shade in the plans, and no development agreement without shade on its sidewalk. Ash trees on city land get treated before they get cut. A tree is infrastructure: it cools a home, cuts a utility bill and cleans the air.

Globeville, Elyria and Swansea have absorbed generations of pollution from highways, industry and truck traffic that other neighborhoods never had to. I’ll use the city’s land-use and permitting power to put distance between homes and heavy pollution, and push for real air monitoring where the air is worst. The interstate is mostly a state and federal call, so there my job is to be relentless and to use every local tool the city does control.

I co-authored the River Sisters framework, now part of Denver’s West Area Plan: the South Platte and our westside waterways as parks that protect us, with flood protection, cool green corridors and places families can actually reach. The council approves the capital budget that turns plans into shovels. I’ll keep that promise moving.

Already delivered: River Sisters, adopted into Denver’s West Area Plan →

Denver voters created a climate fund in 2020 that now brings in nearly $50 million a year, with a written goal of sending half to the communities hit hardest. In 2025, 55% went there. The council approves that budget. I’ll keep it honest: plain-language public reporting, and dollars landing first on the blocks that need them, the way voters were promised.

I used the same Xcel programs and state HEAR rebates I’m talking about on my own Harvey Park home, a dual-fuel setup that runs electric most of the year and keeps gas for the coldest snaps, so I know where the process works and where it doesn’t. I’ll push to expand those rebates, windows included, and cut the permitting red tape that locks out the multi-unit buildings so many renters and condo owners live in.

No family should have to own a car just to reach work, school or a park.
Denver has more than 300 miles of missing sidewalks and built about ten last year, on a fee you already pay, and 93 people died on our streets in 2025, the most on record. So: sidewalks and crossings ahead of new amenities in every budget, starting with the walk to school, and no new fee. Federal, Colorado, Sheridan and Leetsdale are state roads, so I’ll be in the state’s face about them, and the streets our buses run on are ours to fix.