Flanked by city department heads, Mayor Mike Johnston announced his big goals for the year -- 56 days into 2024 and weeks after the administration already began to hack into its $4 billion 2024 budget.
Johnston characterized the city as being in a "tornado," facing twin crises: homelessness and how to handle the arrival of new immigrants. Addressing those issues have cost the city mightily. New immigrants have received support that cost the city more than $42 million, while the city spent more than $48 million on his House1000 campaign to bring more than 1,000 people from the streets into shelters in the last six months of 2023.
Now, weeks after announcing he would cut flower planting, hours at rec centers for paying members and Department of Motor Vehicle hours, blaming the federal government for failing to support Denver's new immigrant support efforts, he decided to focus on something other than just crises and bring the optimism that he ran on during his campaign.
"Together, we can build a Denver that is vibrant, affordable and safe for all," he declared, stating the city's mission and vision. "Our problems are solvable. We are the ones to solve them."
He used the presentation as a chance to outline the city's priorities and how they plan to achieve the goals.
"We listen with humility to our community, partners and each other, learning together to drive action," he pledged, in a Powerpoint presentation. "We dare to be bold and creative, driven by the urgency the people of Denver deserve. We take ownership of every problem, deliver breakthrough solutions and never do it alone."
So what are the goals for the rest of the year, anyhow?
He pledged to engage all 11 City Council districts to "envision vibrant neighborhoods and a vibrant downtown, identifying funding for both by Dec. 31 2024."
He plans to bring 2,000 people from the streets indoors, but this time he's rebranded the effort from House1000 to "All in Mile High."
He also plans to "permit, secure, finance or support the development and preservation of 3,000 long-term affordable housing units by December 31, 2024," he said.
His promise to make Denver safe involves two goals. The first is big: reducing gun crimes by 20% while improving customer satisfaction by 15%. The second, not so big: "Move 200 individuals struggling with addiction or mental health out of the criminal justice system and into a coordinated intervention, treatment and pipeline by Dec. 31, 2024."
He also has two goals tied to "great government." He will re-envision how development permitting works and reduce the city's review time by 30%.
As part of that, Johnston has, after more than half a year in office, hired a head of Community Planning and Development, a position that will be announced this week.
He also plans to "reduce our response time to the top three constituent concerns by 20%."
Johnston's emphasizing cross-department collaboration he's dubbed "Tiger Teams" -- a military term he said he borrowed from the Apollo 13 mission. These groups will work across agencies and meet weekly with either the mayor, the Chief of Staff or the Chief Operating Officer.
"We will have public dashboards on these, and this is part of our commitment to transparency," he said. "We want to know what we're doing, why we're doing it and how we're doing it."
He acknowledged departments have been working on these goals, in some form or the other, for years -- only now, they have to do so while facing budget cuts.
The city's department heads stood behind Johnston as he announced the city's goals. Many of them have been asked to cut upwards of 15% of their budgets.
The administration will announce most of the city's cuts at the beginning of the second quarter.
Johnston did not mention the budget cuts in his prepared remarks, but he did tell reporters afterwards that he's been looking at places to reduce budgets and cut spending.
"In the middle of a tornado is the most important time to have a clear sense of where you're going and how you plan to get there," he said.
What took him so long to come up with 2024?
Johnston took office on July 17, 2023. On his first full day, he declared a homeless state of emergency and threw multiple departments into the work of ending homelessness and sheltering 1,000 people by the year's end. At the time, he did not have the same ambitious plan for the daily operations of the city.
Instead, he said, he waited to hire his department heads, a process that took him months longer than expected. Critics blasted him for not having a plan when he came into office, while supporters commended him for taking his time.
He said that it took well into 2024 to come up with the year's goals because so many people leading the city agencies were new.
"For many of us, this is a startup," Johnston said. "We are 30 days, 60 days, 180 days in, and there's new vision, new goals, new priorities, and so new team members. We needed to both get through that building together and then be able to start this process."
