Denver Mayor Mike Johnston delivers his first State of the City: "All our problems are solvable"
In his first State of the City address since taking office, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston says he's made dramatic progress and will make an even greater impact in the coming year.
"The single hardest problem we face is the belief that we can't solve these problems at all," Johnston told a crowd at the Paramount Theater in downtown Denver on Monday. "Once we have defeated that, anything is possible."
He says all the city's problems are solvable. The question is, at what cost?
The city is on track to spend $155 million on homelessness between July of last year -- when Johnston took office -- and the end of this year.
"In 2024 we had to acquire and buy all the infrastructure to build this system," he told CBS News Colorado afterward. "We brought on 1,200 units in six months and we had to buy those hotels, we had to buy those tiny homes, we had to build sites."
Going forward, Denver expects to spend about $57 million a year on homeless initiatives. It says it's moved some 1,600 people into temporary housing over the last year and says about a third are now in permanent housing.
Johnston is committed to ending homelessness in four years and told CBS News Colorado what that would look like: "You make homelessness brief, rare and non-recurring. So if there's 30 people becoming homeless every month in Denver, there's 30 people that are coming out of homelessness back into housing."
The arrival of 30,000 migrants complicated Denver's homeless challenges last year. The city says it has spent about $74 million on aid for migrants.
Some business owners on 16th Street Mall want the city to invest more in them after COVID, homelessness and years of construction.
"If you come to my office, I have an entire map of the 16th Street Mall which tracks every business, every vacancy, every occupancy rate, and we're working on, block-by-block, what is the plan to revive those blocks, revive those businesses," Johnston said.
Johnston would not commit to additional funding to help struggling businesses on the mall, or those along Colfax Avenue worried about the Bus Rapid Transit project eliminating their parking.
"We're working with them on where those parking spots are going to be, how people can still get access and our goal is we'll have a lot more traffic coming by bus," Johnston said.
He admits the budget is tight. The city is expecting less tax revenue next year and agencies are facing at least a 5 percent cut on top of cuts this year.
At the same time, Johnston is asking residents to give five hours of their time each month to a new project called Give5 Mile High that involves volunteering for city projects.
He's also asking them to approve a sales tax increase of .5% to fund affordable housing: "Even the homeowners in Denver are hit by this and they want a spot for their parents and kids."
The mayor says his goal is to make Denver affordable for everyone: "Our commitment is to see every problem as solvable and to stay at it relentlessly until we find a way."
He not only wants the city to be affordable but to be the safest city in the country. He says Denver police officers will start "Trust Patrols" or random visits to businesses or community centers to talk to people about what's going right and wrong in the city.
In addition to tax measures, voters will likely be asked to approve a measure in November that would allow all city workers to unionize. Johnston says he doesn't oppose the measure after he was able to amend it to exempt certain employee groups, that provide core public services, from being able to strike.
You can watch Johnston's full State of the City address here:
