Denver Mayor Mike Johnston opened his schedule Thursday to answer questions from a horde of Redditors for his second-ever “Ask Me Anything.”
The “Ask Me Anything” format, colloquially known as AMA, invites Reddit users to ask someone anything, as the name suggests. Johnston’s Thursday morning AMA garnered nearly 1,000 comments. He responded 33 times during the hour he took questions.
We took a look at his questions and found some highlights.
On traffic enforcement:
Something that has r/Denver’s collective goat is vehicles with expired registration tags or missing plates. Several users probed the mayor’s thinking on the state of traffic enforcement.
Denver Police began cracking down on expired plates earlier this year, as well as other metro area agencies.
Still, the most popular question in the thread asked why it’s so common to see expired or missing plates, burned out tail lights and street racing.
Johnston said the city is exploring new strategies to combat crime. (FYI: We’re copying and pasting Johnston’s answers as he wrote them — with very few capital letters…)
“as far as general traffic enforcement goes for speeding that is a real priority we are stopping people we are ticketing them we're looking to add more speed cameras across the city particularly on our high injury networks so that we will be able to catch more people for speeding without having to use officer time to be deployed on the streets all the time!” Johnston wrote.
On the Park Hill Golf Course:
The Park Hill Golf Course still sits empty, after voters rejected an attempt to develop the property.
News on the future of the 155-acre lot may be coming soon, however.
“we are in active negotiations on this one and are confident we will have an answer by the end of the year, stay tuned!” Johnston wrote.
On building 44,000 more homes:
Denver voters are weighing in on the opportunity to pass the Johnston-backed Measure 2R, which would raise sales tax by 0.5 percentage points to build 44,000 units of affordable housing over the next 10 years.
In response to a question asking where the city would build those units, Johnston said the city has to take advantage of all the open, underused land in Denver, like RTD parking lots.
“It is not zoning that is the gating factor its financing to keep units affordable - without this financing people just build luxury units,” Johnston wrote. “we need transformational financing tools to make sure the units are affordable and keep current affordable units too.”
On drug use and crime in central Denver:
Johnston has touted a “dramatic change” in Denver’s downtown, celebrating his office’s efforts to curb crime and homelessness in the area. This year, voters will decide whether to authorize $570 million in debt for downtown revitalization projects.
One Redditor complained that downtown is getting a disproportionate amount of attention from the city, and that more resources should go to cleaning up surrounding neighborhoods, like Capitol Hill.
Johnston said getting people in need into housing and drug recovery programs will help with that.
“we started a program last year called Roads to Recovery which was created specifically to support people that we know have much higher acuity addiction needs or mental health challenges,” Johnston wrote. “So this Road to Recovery program is designed to give people access to mental health treatment and addiction treatment in much more intensive settings while providing long-term housing. so we are right now expanding our outreach efforts to connect with those people and connect them to services both through street outreach as well as when officers contact them.”
Denver’s Roads To Recovery program aims to help 200 people struggling with addiction or mental health out of the criminal justice system.
Johnston also wrote that bringing the Denver Police Department up to “full authorized strength” is a top priority for his office.
On the airport:
Getting to Denver International Airport is becoming “more and more of a hassle,” according to Johnston. He said the city is looking at ways to encourage and expand the use of the RTD A-Line that goes from Union Station to the airport.
With the cost of A Line tickets compared to rideshares and parking, the train “doesn't always make sense,” he wrote.
He also added that the city is looking at ways to ease concessions lines at the airport by opening more restaurants both pre- and post-security.
On improving public transit:
Johnston touted “bus rapid transit,” or BRT, lines as the key to improving public transit in Denver Construction on the Colfax BRT started earlier this month, and similar projects are in planning for Federal Boulevard and Colorado Boulevard.
Questions for the mayor? Send them to [email protected] and we’ll try to get them answered.
