There is no problem the City of Denver can't fix. That was the message of Mayor Mike Johnston's first State of the City address.
The first-term mayor offered an optimistic look at his inaugural year in office and the year to come.
Johnston spoke about his work on homelessness solutions. He celebrated Denver's response to the arrival of thousands of new immigrants from the Southern Border and how city workers rose to the occasion.
In an often moving speech he wrote himself, he rallied residents to combat cynicism and show up, volunteer and support his vision to make Denver an affordable, vibrant, safe city — the best in the country.
1. 'All our problems are solvable and we are the ones to solve them.'
This was the overarching theme of Mayor Mike Johnston’s first State of the City speech.
While tackling challenges like street homelessness or thousands of new immigrants arriving in the city, he’s pushed this message consistently in his first year.
His goal has been to draft a blueprint for other communities through his administration's actions.
“We will make mistakes from sprinting," he said, "but never by standing still."
2. A vibrant Denver has to be one that includes all of us.
Johnston wants to create a city where restaurant workers, theater ushers, new immigrants and school teachers can all afford to live.
He acknowledged that many cannot now. If things don't change, even more residents will be forced to leave.
He cautioned the city not to view this as an insurmountable problem, and he proposed a fix.
He painted a picture of three Denverites. There was a mom who can't afford a $200 hike in rent. A grandma who wants to live here and support her grandchild, but can no longer afford to do so. And a recent college graduate who is heartbroken she has to leave the city.
"If we want to keep the mom and the grandma and the college graduate in Denver, we can," he said. "But we have to choose it. And we have to fight for it."
3. Johnston's solution for displacement is to raise the sales tax to pay for his affordable housing program.
Johnston's pushing City Council and voters to approve a .5 percent tax increase. The tax would bring in money to create and preserve 44,000 units of affordable housing in ten years.
The cost, he said, would be roughly $2 a week for Denver residents.
After the State of the City address, he told Denverite that the affordable housing measure is a way to make up for some of the pandemic-era emergency funds that will dry up at the end of the year.
Creating enough housing so every Denverite can afford to stay may seem impossible, he said. But it's doable if residents combat the cynical belief that change can't happen.
"Finding a way to reverse the economic impacts of a global pandemic on our city center is hard," Johnston said. "Replacing cycles of violence with centers of joy is hard. Living on the streets in a tent in a freezing Denver winter is hard. Leaving everything you have and walking 3,000 miles with a nine-year-old to an unknown future is hard.
"And finding the resources and strategies to bring on enough housing to keep a growing city affordable is hard," he added. "But if there is one thing we’ve learned in the past year, it is that the single hardest problem we will ever face is the belief that we can’t solve these problems at all. Once we have defeated that, anything is possible."
4. Johnston said he plans to make Denver the country's safest city.
He celebrated the city's drop in crime and talked about crime reduction strategies.
He is implementing a program where police officers do a "Trust Patrol." They will visit businesses, community groups and residents to ask what is and isn't working in their community. By the end of the year, he's committed to completing 6,000 such interactions.
But Johnston also insists that safety is about more than police work. He's created an Office of Neighborhood Safety, launched a summer work program for youth and funded neighborhood events citywide.
"The opposite of crime is not safety," he said. "The opposite of crime is joy."
5. Johnston's asking all Denverites to devote five hours a month to making the city a better place.
He's calling his initiative Give Five Mile High. This effort will kick off on the third Saturday of August.
Each month will have a different theme.
In August, the focus will be supporting Denver Public Schools students.
In September, Give Five Mile High will be devoted to making every block in the city beautiful.
"We all can serve," Johnston said. "And our city is better when we do."
6. He pledged downtown will be vibrant again.
Johnston described downtown as the "living room" for every resident of the city and pledged to turn it from a Central Business District to a Central Neighborhood District.
That includes bringing more homes, childcare centers and public parks to the area.
It also means reopening the stretch of Downtown that has been shuttered for years.
"By the next State of the City, 16th Street will be open from Union Station to the Pavilions," he said. "Buses will be running. People will be strolling down our new broad sidewalks. Brand new stores will be open. And a whole new generation of Denverites will be coming downtown to make a new generation of memories."
7. Johnston wants Denver to model how a community can unite around shared challenges and opportunities.
Here's how he finished his speech:
"In these uncertain times, the world will flood you with examples of hatred and division and dysfunction. It will ask you to doubt. It will tempt you to distrust. It will invite you to pass judgment. It will beg you to walk away.
"In those moments, you will long for proof that we are right to believe in each other, that we are right to think we can find a way, that we are right to trust that we can try one more thing one more time that we haven’t tried before and break through.
"In those moments when your friend or your neighbor or your parent has given up, let them look to Denver and see that those problems that have torn other cities apart have brought us closer together.
"Those challenges that have overwhelmed other communities have only made us stronger, because the one thing you won't find in Denver is that destructive contagious belief that we can’t.
"Here in this capital of the New West where the mountains are tall and the rivers are deep, people believe in each other," he concluded. "And they lean on each other. And they fight for each other, fortified by the deep belief that all our problems are solvable, and we are the ones to solve them."
