Policy Positions

Denver needs clear goals, responsible spending, and measurable results.
As a councilmember, I will focus on whether city policies are working, whether public funds are being used well,
and whether residents are seeing real results.
I will support good ideas no matter where they come from. I will ask what they cost, who they help, and whether they work.

Housing People Can Afford

Denver needs more housing, but more housing alone will not solve the problem.

Rental housing and private ownership both have a place in Denver. We should also expand housing that stays affordable and gives residents more control over where they live.

Policy tools:

  • Expand community land trusts, cooperatives, nonprofit housing, and supportive housing.

  • Use HOST funding and city-owned land to create long-term affordable homes.

  • Use long-term ground leases when selling public land would weaken future affordability.

  • Preserve older, lower-cost apartments before they are lost to higher rents.

  • Expand paths to homeownership for working families.

  • Support stronger tracking of large-scale corporate ownership of residential property.

  • Use local and state tools, where allowed, to reduce harmful concentration of housing ownership.

  • Require clear public benefits when major public funding or public land supports a housing project.

Put Empty Building Back to Work

Long-term commercial and residential vacancy can weaken business districts and reduce neighborhood activity.

Denver should create stronger incentives for productive use of vacant properties.

Policy tools:

  • Create a registry for large commercial properties that remain substantially vacant for more than one year.

  • Require owners to report plans for leasing, repair, reuse, or redevelopment.

  • Provide reasonable exemptions for active construction, legal disputes, and major code repairs.

  • Use code enforcement and administrative fees where legally allowed.

  • Expand adaptive reuse policies that make it easier to convert older buildings to housing, retail, offices, or other productive uses.

  • Use DURA redevelopment tools and tax increment financing where appropriate to support difficult redevelopment projects.

Grocery Access

Some Denver neighborhoods lack reasonable access to a full-service grocery store.

The city should use existing economic development tools to help make grocery projects financially viable in areas with demonstrated need.

Policy tools:

  • Identify priority sites using distance from existing grocery stores, population, transit access, land availability, and household spending patterns.

  • Use DURA tax increment financing where eligible.

  • Use federal Section 108 financing and New Markets Tax Credits where appropriate.

  • Use city-owned or publicly controlled land when suitable.

  • Support needed infrastructure and site improvements.

  • Use zoning and permitting tools to reduce unnecessary barriers.

  • Require supported projects to provide a true full-service grocery option with fresh food, household staples, and basic daily needs.

Denver does not need more plans that sit on a shelf. We need clear goals, smart spending, and leaders willing to change course when something is not working.

I will support good ideas no matter where they come from. I will ask what they cost, who they help, and whether they work.

Privacy and Surveillance

Public safety technology should have clear limits.

City government should not collect or retain more information than necessary for a legitimate public safety purpose.

Policy tools:

  • Establish clear data-retention limits.

  • Limit access to surveillance data.

  • Require access logs and regular audits.

  • Restrict unnecessary data sharing.

  • Require public reporting on how surveillance tools are used.

  • Require Council review of major surveillance contracts and renewals.

Heavy Industry and Data Centers

District 9 carries the lion’s share of Denver's industrial land. My goal is to move heavy industry away from residential neighborhoods and transition that land toward cleaner uses that better serve the people who live nearby.

I also support a citywide ban on new large-scale data centers.

Policy tools:

  • Rezone District 9 to phase out heavy industrial zoning near homes and neighborhoods.

  • Prevent new heavy industrial uses in areas targeted for transition.

  • Use redevelopment, land acquisition, incentives, and future rezonings to move existing industrial land toward housing, commercial space, light industry, and other cleaner uses.

  • Amend Denver's zoning code to prohibit new large-scale data centers within city limits.

  • Define large-scale data centers in code using clear standards such as electrical demand, building size, and infrastructure needs.

  • Protect existing neighborhoods from added pollution, truck traffic, noise, heavy power demand, and other industrial impacts.

  • Require redevelopment plans to address contaminated land and other environmental impacts before sites are reused.

Development without Displacement

Denver should support new housing, businesses, and investment while protecting existing neighborhoods from unnecessary displacement.

Residents should have meaningful input before major development decisions are effectively final.

Policy tools:

  • Use City Council's zoning authority and rezoning process to review major land-use changes.

  • Use neighborhood plans and equity reviews to identify local impacts.

  • Require stronger public benefits when projects receive major city support, public land, or significant zoning benefits.

  • Consider affordable housing, local business space, infrastructure, public space, and neighborhood services when negotiating public benefits.

  • Improve early notice and public involvement for major projects.

Public Safety

Public safety responses should match the problem.

Police should remain focused on violence, serious crime, theft, and situations involving immediate danger.

Health and social-service professionals should handle appropriate low-risk calls when police are not needed.

Policy tools:

  • Continue and strengthen STAR and other alternative-response programs.

  • Improve coordination with Denver's AID Center and community service providers.

  • Use diversion and treatment programs where they reduce repeat harm.

  • Track program completion and repeat incidents.

  • Maintain clear enforcement for serious and repeated criminal activity.

Responsible City Spending

City programs should have clear goals and measurable outcomes.

Funding should not continue automatically when programs repeatedly fail to meet those goals.

Policy tools:

  • Use Denver's existing budget, audit, and performance systems to measure results.

  • Require major programs to identify expected outcomes before funding.

  • Review performance before major contract renewals.

  • Require corrective plans when programs fall short.

  • Include long-term operating and maintenance costs when approving new projects.

  • Review existing spending before creating new fees or requesting additional revenue.

Immigrant Protections

Denver residents should be able to report crimes, call 911, use city services, and work with local government without city government acting as an extension of federal immigration enforcement.

I support maintaining Denver's existing immigrant protections within the city's legal authority.

Policy tools:

  • Maintain Denver's Public Safety Enforcement Priorities Act.

  • Continue limits on using city staff, money, or resources for federal civil immigration enforcement except when required by law.

  • Maintain Denver's policy against holding people solely on an ICE civil detainer.

  • Keep immigration status out of routine city service applications when it is not legally required.

  • Maintain protections against using city information for civil immigration enforcement where prohibited by city law.

  • Maintain the ban on city 287(g) agreements.

  • Continue required notice of rights when ICE requests interviews with people in Denver custody.

  • Maintain funding for the Denver Immigrant Legal Services Fund and immigration legal clinics.

  • Require clear public reporting when city immigration policies or federal law affecting Denver residents change.

 

Green Space and Urban Nature

Denver should make better use of medians, traffic islands, rights-of-way, vacant public land, and other unused spaces.

Public projects should consider trees, native plants, shade, pollinator habitat, and green stormwater features instead of defaulting to asphalt, concrete, or unused turf.

Policy tools:

  • Create a citywide inventory of unused and underused public land that could support trees, native plants, pollinator habitat, or small green spaces.

  • Create a simpler city process for turning small public spaces into neighborhood green spaces.

  • Identify vacant and underused CDOT land in Denver and pursue leases, licenses, joint-use agreements, or acquisition when the land is not needed for transportation.

  • Pursue a standing partnership with CDOT for small landscaping and habitat projects along state-owned roads and rights-of-way.

  • Have the city handle CDOT permit coordination for approved neighborhood projects instead of requiring residents to navigate state and city agencies on their own.

  • Add native landscaping to suitable medians, traffic islands, roundabouts, and other public spaces while maintaining traffic safety and sight lines.

  • Use Colorado native and drought-tolerant plants that support bees, butterflies, birds, and other wildlife.

  • Expand tree canopy in neighborhoods with less shade and greater summer heat.

  • Replace unnecessary pavement with planted or permeable surfaces when streets and public property are rebuilt.

  • Use rain gardens, bioswales, and other planted areas to reduce runoff while adding green space.

  • Require maintenance plans and funding before projects are installed so landscaping survives long term.

A Better Plan for Homelessness

Different people need different levels of support.

Short-term financial hardship should not be treated the same as long-term homelessness involving serious health or housing barriers.

Denver should match services to the level of need.

Policy tools:

  • Use the Homelessness Resolution Fund, rapid rehousing, supportive housing, vouchers, and HOST contracts more strategically.

  • Measure permanent housing placements.

  • Measure housing retention at 6 and 12 months.

  • Track returns to homelessness.

  • Track time needed to obtain identification, benefits, income, and housing.

  • Measure the cost of lasting housing outcomes.

  • Require corrective plans when city-funded programs repeatedly miss performance goals.

  • Improve existing sites before expanding programs that are not meeting basic staffing, safety, sanitation, and housing-navigation standards.

8. Streets and Transportation

Denver's transportation system should be safe and reliable for people who walk, drive, bike, roll, or use transit.

Investment should focus on areas with the greatest safety and access needs.

Policy tools:

  • Use Vision Zero data to identify high-risk streets and intersections.

  • Prioritize missing sidewalks, dangerous crossings, school routes, poor lighting, and high-injury areas.

  • Use DOTI capital funding, bond funding, and state and federal transportation funds.

  • Set clear performance goals for major road and transit projects.

  • Measure crashes, travel times, transit use, nearby traffic impacts, and business impacts after major projects are completed.

  • Correct problems before repeating the same design elsewhere.

Neighborhood Representation

The District 9 Council office should remain accessible and accountable throughout the term.

Residents should receive clear information about major projects, votes, and neighborhood issues.

Policy tools:

  • Hold regular office hours throughout District 9.

  • Publish updates before major Council votes.

  • Create a public tracker for significant District 9 projects and concerns.

  • Provide early notice of major zoning, development, and infrastructure proposals.

  • Maintain regular communication with renters, homeowners, businesses, schools, RNOs, and community organizations.

  • Explain major votes and policy decisions in clear language.

 

LGBTQIA+ Safety and Equal Access

Denver already has strong legal protections for LGBTQIA+ residents. The next step is making sure those protections work in daily life.

Denver's own planning work has identified concerns involving housing and job discrimination, homelessness, and safety for transgender people in shelters. The city also operates a Safe Place program because anti-LGBTQ bias crimes are often not reported.

Policy tools:

  • Expand the DPD Safe Place program to more businesses, libraries, recreation centers, and other community locations.

  • Maintain dedicated LGBTQIA+ police liaisons and require public reporting on bias-motivated crime response and community concerns.

  • Require city-funded shelters to have clear LGBTQIA+ safety policies, trained staff, complaint procedures, and safe placement options.

  • Use HOST contracts to measure whether LGBTQIA+ residents can safely access shelter and successfully move into permanent housing.

  • Improve access to city support for people facing discrimination in housing, employment, and public services.

  • Work through the Denver LGBTQ Commission to identify gaps in city services and review progress each year.

  • Support housing and services for LGBTQIA+ youth at risk of homelessness.

  • Require city contractors and city-funded programs to follow existing nondiscrimination requirements.

  • Improve reporting and referral options for harassment, violence, and discrimination without requiring a person to first navigate several city agencies.