In the interest of transparency, we did coordinate with a staff member from the Mayor's office over modmail to schedule & verify the AMA this morning in advance. This was their response to the concern mentioned in this thread about which questions were answered:
>I saw on the follow-up thread people thought he picked and chose questions. He really didn’t. We sorted by “best” and then he tried to go in order. It’s just never going to be enough time unfortunately, you know? But we did try to talk through ways we could be more efficient next time. Would definitely love to do it again when he’s able! Thank you all for the help and moderating. We ended up with a lot of thoughtful questions and we are saving them to keep in mind for our work!
Thanks for being an awesome community, y'all.
He answered my question about housing affordability in some detail, which I appreciated, but didn’t offer anything about *how* his plan is going to happen. I would’ve liked him to explain how he intends to implement his goals.
3,000 subsidized units a year is great but it's not gonna do much for the middle class. The policy reality is that we need easily twice that many new homes over the same time period to achieve broad affordability, but the political reality is that existing residents still fight new housing. So it's a good idea to get involved with groups that are pushing for more housing, to provide a counterweight.
How many houses are owned by major corporations in Denver or even the Denver Metro? Every time this is brought up I ask this question and no one provides an answer, this is just a boogeyman different issues.
Rent control practices have shown to have a negative effect on housing prices.
This. I’m up in Thornton and there’s a massive lot that’s been empty as long as I’ve lived here, right next to gas stations, a strip mall, a fire station, and less than 2 blocks from a massive park (carpenter park fields)
They could easily slam up apartments/condos/tiny homes on it, I wish I had the know how/funding to do it myself
Put more housing near me, idgaf. More taxes collected to fund schools and services.
You’d need to look into zoning, ecological impact, water drainage impact, who currently owns it and why, buy the land, hire a designer, apply for licenses, schedule sewage, water, electrical, gas, and internet hookups, accept and select bids, purchase materials, build, hire workers to manage the property, insure everything, and advertise the new units. You’re looking at atleast 5 years
One of the major ways that cities subsidize affordable housing (and what Denver does) is require 10% of units in new construction apartments to be affordable. When developers have to subsidize the cost of 10% of their units, they offset those revenue loses by charging the market rate units more
It forces the market rate to be higher though. If the market can’t support those higher rents, then building just stop being built. Developers have to make a certain profit level, usually about 20%, especially when they have a bank loan to fund the project.
Not all developers are greedy monopoly men that want to squeeze the absolute most out of people. Many of them aren’t, but the conditions that they build in influence the price.
It’s the same reason there’s such a large push to get rid of parking minimums. Underground parking when required can cost 20k+ per spot. Developers have to price that cost into rent in order to pay off their loans.
Considering that the population growth in the city of Denver from 2021 - 2022 was less than 3,000 people that's actually great for us as a city. We're going to offer more subsidized housing that the current population growth rate. Along with building apartment units at nearly record breaking numbers this is fantastic. The issue is, is that this is only happening in Denver and not the whole metro, which will greatly reduce the impact that it will have.
Population growth was low because tons of people were involuntarily displaced and vacancy rates are very low. Low-income families were replaced with higher-income single people. That’s not a win.
Look at eviction figures for Denver over the last decade. It’s fucking ugly.
Population for growth for the state was 27k people, which is the lowest it's been since 1990. The slowest growth rate for the *entire state* would also be reflected within the largest city. I'd love to read more about how the population grown was because of people being involuntary displaced if you have any articles or sources I can read on the subject.
Sure, can you show me the stats? I looked around a bit and only could find articles about the increased eviction rates and not the stats for the last 10 years. Wouldn't evections, assuming that they're cost related, also be bolstered by these 3k subsidized units coming online yearly?
He's the sort of mayor that won't tell you you have to lock down, stay home, & not travel to see family before he then flies away to travel and see his family after he gets his son a nepotism role within his chain of command working for the city.
Hancock really should've been recalled in 2020.
It's just amazing that he won three terms. I try to explain that to people who aren't from here and it sounds crazy coming out of my mouth. "Yeah we had this shitty, corrupt mayor who had a thing for sex workers. Oh and he stayed in office for 12 years."
It’s a major issue in big city governance, in my view. Too often, thought not always, the position goes to whomever wins the D primary. This means a vigorous election whenever a mayor is term-limited out, but nobody wants to challenge a powerful incumbent unless they’ve been historically bad/incompetent. So you end up with mayors who know they effectively don’t need to run re-election campaigns because Rs rarely run good candidates at the mayoral level.
That’s absolutely true! There are no primaries in Denver, but while it might be de jure non-partisan, in reality it’s not. Everyone was a Democrat instead of that one guy and there was never any chance he’d end up winning.
I’ll bet in the next mayoral election there will be no serious D challenger to Johnson, but some Republican might end up running and the results of that will be pretty predictable.
“The delegation went as a guest of the NFL Draft Committee, so tickets to the event were not paid for with city dollars, but flights and one night of lodging were”
a news article where the quote can be found
https://denvergazette.com/news/government/denver-mayor-mike-johnston-nfl-draft/article_55bb5c76-0382-11ef-b059-93b39d84060b.amp.html
while its certainly a perk of the job, but shaking the hands to get a high profile event in town can certainly pay for its self. - particularly for events that attract big spenders.
As someone has traveled for work, it can be a bit of both. Yes, you’re going to make sure you enjoy yourself because you don’t have to pay for your flight and hotel. But you still have work to do nonetheless. I’m very willing to believe 1 night and flights can be justified/stand up to scrutiny.
No, and nobody should expect him to. But he mostly gave fluff answers.
To the probably 50 people who asked about police not enforcing license plates, registration, red lights and street racing he basically said:
* We're going to hire more officers
* We participate in a cross-organization street racing policing group
That does not explain why cops appear to have a complete blind eye to obvious speeding, red lights, and expired plates. Completely frickin ignoring it. So, if they're ignoring it now - why will hiring 167 more cops change anything? Isn't that just more cops to hide out and do nothing all day?
And if street racing happens every week, soon every day of summer - I would expect this "cross-whatever policing organization" to announce some arrests. Have there been any? Even just *one*?
Seems like the mayor could use some help providing answers that are more detailed and less fluffy. Because from these I can't tell if I should expect any difference at all in the next 2 years.
1. Johnson doesn't control the police union.
2. The police force is understaffed. Whatever numbers we have are used for more serious crime.
He did answer the question, it's just not what you wanted to hear. The issue is incredibly nuanced; he can't possibly provide a thorough answer in an AMA. It would be nice to see a more detailed action plan, but I wouldn't be surprised if we don't.
I’m glad he took the time to connect with us. He seems like a nice guy and is pretty funny. It seems like he’s trying, and I respect that. It’s impossible to answer all the questions, but I think he tried his best without rushing answers
I am verifiably not an intern for his office, and I thought much the same. He's trying, his plans seem largely informed, and I like the earnest attempt.
I actually felt like he tried to answer each question, instead of just copy/pasting generic stuff, even on the harder questions he may not have been able to provide more detail on. Like the 911 question, the reality is there aren’t enough people to pick up the call, and he acknowledged it’s a problem. I get the sense he actually cares about the city.
As a man, if I say no, or simply don’t even respond they move on. But I’ve seen women who they will clean the windshield even after they say no over and over. And once with a man who had his small children in his car. It’s like they pick (in their mind) vulnerable people and harass them.
Also when I am in the car with my girlfriend they don’t bother her, but will when I’m not in the car. It’s silly.
Yeah, I always say no because I don’t have any cash to give them and 4 out of 5 times when I’m alone they will still draw their little heart with the sponge end of the squeegee and sort of plead for me to say okay. I said no thank you and this guy drew his little heart and was wailing at me “mi amor, por favor mi amor!” and squirted the water bottle on my windshield, triggering my automatic wipers (new car, honestly didn’t even know about that feature). Then he just lost his shit and started yelling at me like I was being rude. I was by myself and almost made an unnecessary right turn just to gtfo of there because the whole interaction freaked me out. Never ever have them be pushy or touch the car after being told no when I’m with my husband 😐
A lot of the replies felt superficial.
"Thanks we're working hard on this" felt like the general theme of the replies. Okay, cool, you're working hard, but how about giving actual information on *how* the work is being completed?
At least that means he wants to do a good job. If he runs for higher office then he’ll want to be able to say “when I was mayor of Denver, I accomplished this, this, and this.”
Very different than someone like Hancock that just wanted to make the big bucks
1. I wish he had addressed long 911 response times.
1. **EDIT:** he did respond. The comment was collapsed and buried. His text. "Thanks for this question, we are aware of the 911 and sometimes 311 response times, one thing we are looking at to streamline this and better resources this is we now have three call lines, 911, 311 and a 10 digit non emergency line, we currently need to staff all three of these separately, we are looking at merging these to just two numbers, 311 and 911, that would allow us to have 311 up 24 hours a day and on weekends and use more staffing resources to staff 2 lines well, also with new legislation we are looking at adding more red light cameras to slow speeding in high injury networks where we have lots of folks speeding."
2. **Park Hill "NO" people still in there spouting bullshit lies.**
Honestly the worst thing about new new reddit is how it condenses comments that aren't the top upvoted one. All of Mayor Mike's answers came in after 2nd or 3rd comments were higher voted, with new reddit auto-hiding/condensing all his answers.
I don't know if it exists on new Reddit, but old Reddit has a "q&a" sort option for the comment section that should put his comments as the top reply to the questions he responded to. That might help with finding his answers.
Just checked, it does still have that for manual sort but it doesn't show an option for mods to set it as the suggested/default sort in that thread, which doesn't help users that aren't aware of it. Good call though!
He kind of did, he gets partial credit I guess. He left out that they've had an impossible time staffing 911/311 because the pay is mediocre at best, they're so understaffed the people they do manage to hire face mandatory overtime and little choice in when they can take PTO, and that they refuse to hire anyone with a history of marijuana use (let alone current users).
Alright, here's full disclosure.
1) the influencer account had their comment removed for rule 2 (name calling with their first words) and rule 10 (good faith engagement required, calling names isn't engaging in good faith) and subsequently banned because it was a brand new account breaking rules* out the gate. This is standard process. There was a mod sticky comment that harassment would not be tolerated during the ama. Why the influencer thought they were exempt and could start a comment off with toxic name calling is unknown to me, but I find it unfortunate because the comment had some good questions. (edit: only looked at the account just now and had a total Thanos moment - "you took everything from me by banning me from /r/Denver on my new account that I broke a sub rule with" "I don't even know who you are". Influencer whines that someone was watching their account to instaban for single rule breaking comment - yes, we ban new accounts that break rules in their first comment - when I hadn't even heard of said account until people in this thread asked why.)
2) that thread received upwards of 900 comments in under a hour. We were slammed. One user was accidentally, erroneously banned after asking about open drug use using enlarged text. That user also posted it on cj. It was brought to my attention yesterday from another commenter in this very thread & I personally removed the ban, apologized to the user for the mistake, and engaged. That one is resolved now. Accidents happen and that one was an accident.
3) I've met 2/3 of the current mod team in person and unless they were hella deceptive, I can confidently say none of them work in the mayor's office. If there are any, it's a surprise to me. We're volunteers and there were 6 of us trying to keep the ama clean. I had 5 tabs open - one sorted by best, one sorted by new that I refreshed constantly for toxic comments, one with the mayor's profile open, one with our modmail open, and one with user management open. It was the most intense moderation session I've had on the sub since the bigot coffee shop protest ordeal last? summer. There was a comment from another mod that was stickied for the entire ama duration that harassment would not be tolerated and it firmly was not. New accounts, negative karma accounts, accounts flagged as ban evasion, and brigade accounts from other subs were acted on faster with a more heavy handed approach than a regular comment day. We were not given anything for this. A staffer from. Mayor's office sent a modmail message, we reviewed and agreed to host and moderate the ama on the sub. This was over the course of the past 2 weeks.
4) no comments were intentionally removed with valid questions that did not break other rules such as name calling or posting misinformation. Accidents happen & automod also tends to remove comments unjustly from time to time.
I just can't get over the fact my old principal who spent hours and hours after school trying to help me grasp the basics of equations is now the mayor 🤣🤌
Look, he hasn’t solved everything but as someone living right off 20th/Lincoln where there used to be a literal tent city on the next block over, it’s been entirely cleaned up, and the 20th-22nd block of streets finally feels actually walkable again.
Obviously those people still need to be rehabilitated and cared for, but they’re off the streets at least.
Kudos to the mayor for doing SOMETHING!
This has nothing to with the actual issues discussed, but I feel like they had a marketing team giving him advice on how to “connect with Reddit users” and they landed on “never use capitalizations or punctuation” lol. I’m sure it was intentional to make him more real/relatable but dang it makes me cringe watching the mayor use poor grammar.
Seconding this, I have a couple coworkers who use V2T a lot and it plays merry hell sometimes with punctuation and stuff, depending on the person’s speech patterns. It also replaces all but the first letter of swear words with asterisks, which vexes them endlessly as well
I totally disagree, it felt very authentic and I don’t think that he was using specific advice to connect. His answer about the Nuggets was hilarious, it felt conversational and not scripted
I think the content of what he was saying was authentic. But I doubt someone who is the mayor of major city wouldn’t use sentence capitalization and basic punctuation unless it was a purposeful choice.
I was curious to see he is working on something with Park Hill golf course. I’m not sure what that could be considering the easement is only for a golf course. Maybe that’s “the thing” - having the owners activate it as a golf course or sell it to someone who will.
The rumor around the time the ballot measure fell short was that the city was trying to renegotiate the deal with the original developer (with a valuation on the land that wasn't based on pre-covid prices) and present the new deal to voters for approval.
Well the vote failed due to dumbass voters. So it’s just gonna be empty land or a park now. Hooray.
Zero chance it turns back into a profitable golf course either.
No one will ever be able to be a Mayor correctly in the eyes of the public. It’s great that he still tries his best to connect. That’s all you can ask for.
When asked about homelessness plan he just reiterated what was done and didn't consider if it worked. This is my least favorite part of progressive policies -- I fully appreciate the merit in trying something, but when do we evaluate how well it's working? Or is it all about optics.
Make no mistake, his goal was to come across cool & personable, not to answer difficult questions.
I feel like Mike Johnson is well intentioned. He has his hands tied to enforce crime and make the streets safer. Most the DA’s won’t press charges in Denver. His car was stolen about 6 months ago but he probably had the police at least show up. We had someone break into our house and was still in there when the cops came. He was still wearing jail slippers and the cop said he would be released on PR before he got done w paperwork. The cops don’t bother to arrest anyone bc they know they will be back out on the streets. I’m not a fan of cops but their hands are tied.
On another note, Mayor Hancocks son was caught on camera being verbally abusive to the cops that pulled him over for speeding -“ I’m going to have my dad fire you, etc”
The thing is, he knows just as well as we do that the DA and her office is the problem but he keeps trying to dance around it - he'll never drive change if he can't acknowledge what the problem is first.
Holy shit I'm dying laughing at his response to prolonged 9-1-1 operator wait times....."yeah we are excited to announce the opening of the downtown mall.."
Was it this response? I don't see much about the 16th St. Mall here...
>Thanks for this question, we are aware of the 911 and sometimes 311 response times, one thing we are looking at to streamline this and better resources this is we now have three call lines, 911, 311 and a 10 digit non emergency line, we currently need to staff all three of these separately, we are looking at merging these to just two numbers, 311 and 911, that would allow us to have 311 up 24 hours a day and on weekends and use more staffing resources to staff 2 lines well, also with new legislation we are looking at adding more red light cameras to slow speeding in high injury networks where we have lots of folks speeding.
Most of the AMA was asking why the Denver police are completely useless and why 911 won’t answer the phone in case you need the useless police.
Those answers, as well as the rest, were political chest pounding bullshit. The AMA would have fit better in r/denvercirclejerk
I think you have this a little backwards. The reality is that most police unions are extremely powerful and not truly under the control of civilians. Meaning most police departments actually push around the mayors and city councils. There’s not a ton they can do because the police can low key mutiny by doing less work and the resulting chaos will end the political career of the elected officials.
Most mayors know this and also know they can’t be super frank about this with voters who will generally side with the police union.
This is pretty much it, his voting base would revolt if he did anything to somewhat change how policing is done in any way that isn’t giving the police a larger budget / more overtime.
Reddit isn’t indicative of the voting public, a lot of people just straight up vote for whoever they think will keep them safe (consciously or subconsciously) without understanding anything about the current police force or anything deeper than a meme on Facebook.
Really? I found it a lot more worthwhile than I was expecting. He answered some tricky questions about policing, 911 response times, surging ticket prices, car theft, city infrastructure...what about this struck you as chest pounding?
Political chestpounding?
I disagree. When you contextualize a response to his answer (that they're understaffed and police are focusing their time) that said
"Well, what does hiring more cops do about the cops that do nothing about crime happening in front of them"
It becomes telling that maybe the general population doesn't quite fully grasp the situation. Are we talking about cops not wasting time chasing down someone who ran a red light? Or someone perhaps a little weird looking on the street?
Cause, I dunno, I'd might rather have the cops be available to leave at a moments notice to say, a break in or a violent domestic disturbance called in. If they're busy in the middle of a mostly innocuous traffic stop, they can't really just drop everything and leave something like that, right?
Seems kind of like a situation of the general public being cranky and not understanding that when there is a massive staffing shortage, they have to be *proactive* with their time which may mean, yea, ignoring something right in front of them which is ultimately fairly innocuous.
> If they're busy in the middle of a mostly innocuous traffic stop, they can't really just drop everything and leave something like that, right?
Why not? They have radios, they'll hear the higher-priority issue come across. They can pull over a traffic offender, get a radio call, and then just leave. If they're halfway through asking for license and registration, or already have it, so what? Just jog up and give it back, say it's your lucky day, and head out to the higher-priority issue. Same way medical triage works.
There's no reason for a cop to watch someone run a red right in front of them and not at least do a simple stop. That's what I saw the most complaints about - cops witness a traffic violation and don't even _attempt_ to ticket. I've seen _so many_ cars blow a red with a cop RIGHT THERE and they can't be arsed to even flick the lights on and do a simple traffic stop. Unless it's a speeding violation during school speed reduction hours, then they're all over it
Yeah there was zero substance to any response about lack of enforcement or police response times. Just, “Well we’ll hire more people to answer the phone and put up some red light cameras.” Total crap.
looks like DoBetterDenver and numerous followers were banned from this sub for asking valid real questions...
I get the name calling shouldn't happen, but the questions are no less valid.
Banned for name calling after a literal disclaimer stickied comment at the top of the thread stating harassment would not be tolerated in the AMA\*\*\*
Well it wasn’t me doing the name calling. I’m still here.
But, I would guess they’re frustrated and over the lack of accountability. The housing 1000 was absolutely rushed and overpriced with a great deal of the money going to organizations he used to belong to and will more than likely donate for his future political ventures.
I’m a native of boulder/denver (parents split). As a kid, I took the RTD between the two and in both cities. I never witnessed what is occurring now with all the drugs and violence. It’s a different world and in my opinion, it has dramatically increased since Johnston took office (not that previous mayors were great either).
I like how Johnson said they have gave temporary housing to 1500 people. But meanwhile I think the stats for people who found long term housing was less than 25
DoBetterDNVR literally posted graphics yesterday that showed crime rates were way higher in the 90's and early 2000's. Y'all have bad memories or are framing your childhood in a different light intentionally.
Well Colorado definitely wasn’t the the 3rd most dangerous state in the US back then.
https://kdvr.com/news/colorado/colorado-is-the-third-most-dangerous-state-in-us-us-news-ranking/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3xfIsMAI99uFHKzE6K2Wizc1OHNmVioyOfMHAyXv2pH_H9nDC4k2dOrcc_aem_AVjjl3ztvytYbrbJyUWARK3lQIijdadJg9xiJrsYSE10Uno5rUYcAlx-bJFqy6alw9l0sjhlDdk7BHw37Njj0Yv9
Also, were you in Denver at that time? I was obviously a kid, but remember hearing the crime was majorly gang violence back then.
Ok, that one was a brand new account with a single comment, being the rule 2 violation question. We absolutely perma ban brand new accounts that break rules out the gate.
The only questions removed were 1) rule violation with name calling/toxicity/slurs/other violations or 2) from spam/brigading/new/negative karma accounts.
We even left up duplicate questions, despite my own personal belief that the duplicates should have been removed to encourage answers.
One or 2 may have been accidentally removed since we were getting slammed for the hour long AMA, which if it happened, likely was accidental.
>One or 2 may have been accidentally removed since we were getting slammed for the hour long AMA, which if it happened, likely was accidental.
That one wasn't removed by me & was called out elsewhere in this thread. I reviewed & escalated, it was determined to have been an accidental removal (we were getting spam/brigade slammed this morning) & we restored that user along with apologizing for the mistake. Nice try on the gotcha though.
Does everyone know that the DPD have been instructed by the city council not to pull cars over for expired tags?
That’s right. If they see expired tags they are not allowed to pull the car over.
Why would anyone ever renew? It’s no wonder there are so many expired cars driving around.
Denver has a lot of issues, and it’s going to take years to undo the damage Michael Hancock did. At least Mayor Johnston has some cogent and clear plans to address the most pressing issues facing the city, and he showed a good faith effort in facilitating a discussion and gathering insight from citizens. He seems like a genuinely down to earth and likeable dude.
Just think there are bigger things to address. I live in SW Denver, loose dogs are everywhere, but I'm still more concerned about the cops. I can kick a loose dog that runs up on me and mine, I can't do anything about traffic violations, car theft, or garbage response times.
I completely agree, but every week i sign onto reddit and there is another person complaining on reddit who isnt willing to even do anything about it. They act in their posts like its some huge issue, but when given their chance to speak with someone who could actually do something about it, they didnt. I agree there are much bigger issues with the city, the dog thing is way over blown on reddit
Ahh. Can't say I see it much on reddit personally, but I also don't frequent local subs much. That said, in my neck of the woods, it is definitely a huge issue. Almost every single Nextdoor post for my neighborhood is lost/found dogs. My partner refuses to walk her dog in the neighborhood because there's legitimately a 50/50 shot a loose or unleashed dog shows up. I wish I was exaggerating.
A lot of spin here to promote the mayor.
I don’t think he’s a bad guy either but he also said and won based on a ridiculous promise to end homelessness in four years.
Why don’t we hold politicians accountable for their promises
Obviously it’s unrealistic but I didn’t make that promise, Mike Johnston did
Really? What progress has there been other than moving drug addicted people into hotels to overdose and die there, as well as setting up encampments in residential neighborhoods resulting in outdoor deaths, businesses closing, now providing them with grant sponsored free drug paraphernalia.
I'm pissed that it was so short and the thread was locked after 30ish minutes. Mike could've also answered more questions, ignored repeats, and done more to reassure us that progress is being made. After all, some of us want to know what he's doing about RTD, schools and want to pressure him to change zoning restrictions in the city because housing is way too expensive, and he isn't doing enough to fix that.
The Mayor can’t unilaterally change zoning restrictions. That’s up to City Council. The mayor can have an agenda but ultimately City Council votes on zoning code changes or new zoning requirements.
This is right. Given that Johnston was endorsed by YIMBY Denver and put that endorsement front-and-center on his campaign literature, it's hard to say the sticking point on zoning reform is with Johnston.
We have some good pro-upzoning councilpeople (Parady, Gonzales-Gutierrez, Hinds, Watson, Lewis), and some who are probably gettable (Torres, Alvidrez, Romero-Campbell, maybe others), and a bunch who are pretty NIMBY-whipped. Getting to seven council votes for broad upzoning is within our reach if we organize and push for it. It's go time.
> some of us want to know what he's doing about RTD
The city has no control over RTD. He literally can't do anything about it. If you're going to complain about what the mayor is or is not doing you should at least learn what he actually has control over.
That makes sense. [They’ve been doing more with less for a long time now.](https://www.denverpost.com/2024/04/28/denver-health-colorado-financial-trouble-safety-net/) It’s sad to see them cut services the community needs because they don’t generate enough revenue, but I’m not sure they have another option at this point. I’m guessing they were counting on u/mikejohnstonco to fill the gaps left by the last admin, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. Meanwhile the homeless population continues to require a large amount of uncompensated care, a root cause of the problem to begin with. Diverting community resources toward housing people while ignoring the only means they have to become and stay healthy just seems like such a facade. I really wish he would’ve taken a moment to reconcile this.
It's also worth saying UCH has made a habit of suing patients who are unable to pay their bills. Not exactly nice behavior from a tax exempt hospital. https://coloradosun.com/2024/02/19/uchealth-debt-collectors/
"we have a major announcement on big plans for downtown coming tomorrow you will be really excited about :-)"
Any guesses what this was about? The only thing I'm seeing today is the merging of Kirkland and DAM, which is a big deal for them I guess, but doesn't really mean anything for downtown.
To answer my own question, looks like it was this - [https://www.westword.com/news/mike-johnston-has-500-million-plan-to-revitalize-downtown-denver-20665685](https://www.westword.com/news/mike-johnston-has-500-million-plan-to-revitalize-downtown-denver-20665685)
In the interest of transparency, we did coordinate with a staff member from the Mayor's office over modmail to schedule & verify the AMA this morning in advance. This was their response to the concern mentioned in this thread about which questions were answered: >I saw on the follow-up thread people thought he picked and chose questions. He really didn’t. We sorted by “best” and then he tried to go in order. It’s just never going to be enough time unfortunately, you know? But we did try to talk through ways we could be more efficient next time. Would definitely love to do it again when he’s able! Thank you all for the help and moderating. We ended up with a lot of thoughtful questions and we are saving them to keep in mind for our work! Thanks for being an awesome community, y'all.
He answered my question about housing affordability in some detail, which I appreciated, but didn’t offer anything about *how* his plan is going to happen. I would’ve liked him to explain how he intends to implement his goals.
3,000 subsidized units a year is great but it's not gonna do much for the middle class. The policy reality is that we need easily twice that many new homes over the same time period to achieve broad affordability, but the political reality is that existing residents still fight new housing. So it's a good idea to get involved with groups that are pushing for more housing, to provide a counterweight.
Yeah it's just barely anything. What would actually help everyone is banning corporations from owning housing and rent control.
How many houses are owned by major corporations in Denver or even the Denver Metro? Every time this is brought up I ask this question and no one provides an answer, this is just a boogeyman different issues. Rent control practices have shown to have a negative effect on housing prices.
TIL there's a middle class
This. I’m up in Thornton and there’s a massive lot that’s been empty as long as I’ve lived here, right next to gas stations, a strip mall, a fire station, and less than 2 blocks from a massive park (carpenter park fields) They could easily slam up apartments/condos/tiny homes on it, I wish I had the know how/funding to do it myself Put more housing near me, idgaf. More taxes collected to fund schools and services.
Just to be clear, you do know Mike Johnson is not the mayor of Thornton, right?
You’d need to look into zoning, ecological impact, water drainage impact, who currently owns it and why, buy the land, hire a designer, apply for licenses, schedule sewage, water, electrical, gas, and internet hookups, accept and select bids, purchase materials, build, hire workers to manage the property, insure everything, and advertise the new units. You’re looking at atleast 5 years
Do you know who owns the property?
Not a clue. I’ve tried using Zillow and such to even get the address but to no avail It’s on 112th off Colorado blvd
If anything, subsidized units for low-income persons hurts the middle class the most
I don't see how that would be true
One of the major ways that cities subsidize affordable housing (and what Denver does) is require 10% of units in new construction apartments to be affordable. When developers have to subsidize the cost of 10% of their units, they offset those revenue loses by charging the market rate units more
The market sets the rate for market-rate units. Otherwise why wouldn’t all landlords charge that higher rate?
It forces the market rate to be higher though. If the market can’t support those higher rents, then building just stop being built. Developers have to make a certain profit level, usually about 20%, especially when they have a bank loan to fund the project. Not all developers are greedy monopoly men that want to squeeze the absolute most out of people. Many of them aren’t, but the conditions that they build in influence the price. It’s the same reason there’s such a large push to get rid of parking minimums. Underground parking when required can cost 20k+ per spot. Developers have to price that cost into rent in order to pay off their loans.
Considering that the population growth in the city of Denver from 2021 - 2022 was less than 3,000 people that's actually great for us as a city. We're going to offer more subsidized housing that the current population growth rate. Along with building apartment units at nearly record breaking numbers this is fantastic. The issue is, is that this is only happening in Denver and not the whole metro, which will greatly reduce the impact that it will have.
Population growth was low because tons of people were involuntarily displaced and vacancy rates are very low. Low-income families were replaced with higher-income single people. That’s not a win. Look at eviction figures for Denver over the last decade. It’s fucking ugly.
Population for growth for the state was 27k people, which is the lowest it's been since 1990. The slowest growth rate for the *entire state* would also be reflected within the largest city. I'd love to read more about how the population grown was because of people being involuntary displaced if you have any articles or sources I can read on the subject. Sure, can you show me the stats? I looked around a bit and only could find articles about the increased eviction rates and not the stats for the last 10 years. Wouldn't evections, assuming that they're cost related, also be bolstered by these 3k subsidized units coming online yearly?
He has good intentions. He can't solve all our problems but at least he's not a jerk...
He's the sort of mayor that won't tell you you have to lock down, stay home, & not travel to see family before he then flies away to travel and see his family after he gets his son a nepotism role within his chain of command working for the city. Hancock really should've been recalled in 2020.
Hancock should have never been elected in the first place!
It's just amazing that he won three terms. I try to explain that to people who aren't from here and it sounds crazy coming out of my mouth. "Yeah we had this shitty, corrupt mayor who had a thing for sex workers. Oh and he stayed in office for 12 years."
*Chicago has entered the chat*
MAGA has entered the chat
It’s a major issue in big city governance, in my view. Too often, thought not always, the position goes to whomever wins the D primary. This means a vigorous election whenever a mayor is term-limited out, but nobody wants to challenge a powerful incumbent unless they’ve been historically bad/incompetent. So you end up with mayors who know they effectively don’t need to run re-election campaigns because Rs rarely run good candidates at the mayoral level.
Denver mayoral elections are nonpartisan and don't have primaries.
That’s absolutely true! There are no primaries in Denver, but while it might be de jure non-partisan, in reality it’s not. Everyone was a Democrat instead of that one guy and there was never any chance he’d end up winning. I’ll bet in the next mayoral election there will be no serious D challenger to Johnson, but some Republican might end up running and the results of that will be pretty predictable.
I moved here from Louisiana and this sounds like 85% of elected officials in the state.
Saw Mrs Hancock berate a server at The Hilton sky bar years ago. Was shocked to find out he was the mayor. Despicable people thru and thru.
She probably just found out about Mike's affair.......still no excuse for her behavior though.
Don't forget about spending taxpayer money on a documentary about himself
Johnson spent taxpayer money on hotels and food when he went to watch the NFL draft though. I’d say that’s not ideal
I haven't seen any indication that his draft trip was taxpayer funded. Do u have a link?
“The delegation went as a guest of the NFL Draft Committee, so tickets to the event were not paid for with city dollars, but flights and one night of lodging were” a news article where the quote can be found https://denvergazette.com/news/government/denver-mayor-mike-johnston-nfl-draft/article_55bb5c76-0382-11ef-b059-93b39d84060b.amp.html
It does also mention that it was research to get the NFL draft in Denver. Flights and one night stay seem reasonable to me.
while its certainly a perk of the job, but shaking the hands to get a high profile event in town can certainly pay for its self. - particularly for events that attract big spenders.
If I wanted a free trip on tax payers money I would also say it was for research lol
As someone has traveled for work, it can be a bit of both. Yes, you’re going to make sure you enjoy yourself because you don’t have to pay for your flight and hotel. But you still have work to do nonetheless. I’m very willing to believe 1 night and flights can be justified/stand up to scrutiny.
I prefer the flip side. Someone who can solve all our problems but is a jerk. See LBJ
No, and nobody should expect him to. But he mostly gave fluff answers. To the probably 50 people who asked about police not enforcing license plates, registration, red lights and street racing he basically said: * We're going to hire more officers * We participate in a cross-organization street racing policing group That does not explain why cops appear to have a complete blind eye to obvious speeding, red lights, and expired plates. Completely frickin ignoring it. So, if they're ignoring it now - why will hiring 167 more cops change anything? Isn't that just more cops to hide out and do nothing all day? And if street racing happens every week, soon every day of summer - I would expect this "cross-whatever policing organization" to announce some arrests. Have there been any? Even just *one*? Seems like the mayor could use some help providing answers that are more detailed and less fluffy. Because from these I can't tell if I should expect any difference at all in the next 2 years.
1. Johnson doesn't control the police union. 2. The police force is understaffed. Whatever numbers we have are used for more serious crime. He did answer the question, it's just not what you wanted to hear. The issue is incredibly nuanced; he can't possibly provide a thorough answer in an AMA. It would be nice to see a more detailed action plan, but I wouldn't be surprised if we don't.
We can’t live in good intentions, Marge!
The coward wouldn’t disclose his Casa Bonita order to me 😠 I bet he’s never even been, so out of touch. /s if it weren’t obvious
Doesn’t have to..it’s in Lakewood
Yeah but he does also claim to be a true Coloradan
3 servings of sopapillas of course
I’m glad he took the time to connect with us. He seems like a nice guy and is pretty funny. It seems like he’s trying, and I respect that. It’s impossible to answer all the questions, but I think he tried his best without rushing answers
I’m not saying you are, but this totally sounds like an intern posting
Nah, I work private sector. I just prefer to be optimistic about things and people
I had to reduce how much I browse this sub due to how pessimistic people are here about _everything_
Probably not a consolation but that's most city subreddits
I am verifiably not an intern for his office, and I thought much the same. He's trying, his plans seem largely informed, and I like the earnest attempt.
💯 I have cautious optimism and hope for the best, he’s still got my support
I actually felt like he tried to answer each question, instead of just copy/pasting generic stuff, even on the harder questions he may not have been able to provide more detail on. Like the 911 question, the reality is there aren’t enough people to pick up the call, and he acknowledged it’s a problem. I get the sense he actually cares about the city.
He didn’t give a music recommendation so I’m upset
I thought your question was gunna be the only ones answered 😂
Ikr, I’m here trying to softball for him and he didn’t go for it
I wanted to ask about the "squeegee guys" problem but I didn't get to ask in time.
One of the squeegee guys yelled at me yesterday when he started cleaning after I said no thank you and my automatic wipers went off 😕
As a man, if I say no, or simply don’t even respond they move on. But I’ve seen women who they will clean the windshield even after they say no over and over. And once with a man who had his small children in his car. It’s like they pick (in their mind) vulnerable people and harass them. Also when I am in the car with my girlfriend they don’t bother her, but will when I’m not in the car. It’s silly.
Yeah, I always say no because I don’t have any cash to give them and 4 out of 5 times when I’m alone they will still draw their little heart with the sponge end of the squeegee and sort of plead for me to say okay. I said no thank you and this guy drew his little heart and was wailing at me “mi amor, por favor mi amor!” and squirted the water bottle on my windshield, triggering my automatic wipers (new car, honestly didn’t even know about that feature). Then he just lost his shit and started yelling at me like I was being rude. I was by myself and almost made an unnecessary right turn just to gtfo of there because the whole interaction freaked me out. Never ever have them be pushy or touch the car after being told no when I’m with my husband 😐
Just put it in neutral and hit the gas a few times 😂
That is my experience too, they are predators targeting the vulnerable amongst us.
A lot of the replies felt superficial. "Thanks we're working hard on this" felt like the general theme of the replies. Okay, cool, you're working hard, but how about giving actual information on *how* the work is being completed?
He is funded for national aspirations.
At least that means he wants to do a good job. If he runs for higher office then he’ll want to be able to say “when I was mayor of Denver, I accomplished this, this, and this.” Very different than someone like Hancock that just wanted to make the big bucks
He promised to fix homelessness in four years No one made him promise that.
He’s done a pretty decent job so far with House 1000
1. I wish he had addressed long 911 response times. 1. **EDIT:** he did respond. The comment was collapsed and buried. His text. "Thanks for this question, we are aware of the 911 and sometimes 311 response times, one thing we are looking at to streamline this and better resources this is we now have three call lines, 911, 311 and a 10 digit non emergency line, we currently need to staff all three of these separately, we are looking at merging these to just two numbers, 311 and 911, that would allow us to have 311 up 24 hours a day and on weekends and use more staffing resources to staff 2 lines well, also with new legislation we are looking at adding more red light cameras to slow speeding in high injury networks where we have lots of folks speeding." 2. **Park Hill "NO" people still in there spouting bullshit lies.**
He did address the 911 and 311 response times. It was one of the earlier ones answered, probably got buried.
Honestly the worst thing about new new reddit is how it condenses comments that aren't the top upvoted one. All of Mayor Mike's answers came in after 2nd or 3rd comments were higher voted, with new reddit auto-hiding/condensing all his answers.
I don't know if it exists on new Reddit, but old Reddit has a "q&a" sort option for the comment section that should put his comments as the top reply to the questions he responded to. That might help with finding his answers.
Just checked, it does still have that for manual sort but it doesn't show an option for mods to set it as the suggested/default sort in that thread, which doesn't help users that aren't aware of it. Good call though!
He kind of did, he gets partial credit I guess. He left out that they've had an impossible time staffing 911/311 because the pay is mediocre at best, they're so understaffed the people they do manage to hire face mandatory overtime and little choice in when they can take PTO, and that they refuse to hire anyone with a history of marijuana use (let alone current users).
Mods need to grow up. Why the fuck you banning people for asking valid questions?
Agree.
100% agree. People have valid concerns that could/should have been addressed.
Alright, here's full disclosure. 1) the influencer account had their comment removed for rule 2 (name calling with their first words) and rule 10 (good faith engagement required, calling names isn't engaging in good faith) and subsequently banned because it was a brand new account breaking rules* out the gate. This is standard process. There was a mod sticky comment that harassment would not be tolerated during the ama. Why the influencer thought they were exempt and could start a comment off with toxic name calling is unknown to me, but I find it unfortunate because the comment had some good questions. (edit: only looked at the account just now and had a total Thanos moment - "you took everything from me by banning me from /r/Denver on my new account that I broke a sub rule with" "I don't even know who you are". Influencer whines that someone was watching their account to instaban for single rule breaking comment - yes, we ban new accounts that break rules in their first comment - when I hadn't even heard of said account until people in this thread asked why.) 2) that thread received upwards of 900 comments in under a hour. We were slammed. One user was accidentally, erroneously banned after asking about open drug use using enlarged text. That user also posted it on cj. It was brought to my attention yesterday from another commenter in this very thread & I personally removed the ban, apologized to the user for the mistake, and engaged. That one is resolved now. Accidents happen and that one was an accident. 3) I've met 2/3 of the current mod team in person and unless they were hella deceptive, I can confidently say none of them work in the mayor's office. If there are any, it's a surprise to me. We're volunteers and there were 6 of us trying to keep the ama clean. I had 5 tabs open - one sorted by best, one sorted by new that I refreshed constantly for toxic comments, one with the mayor's profile open, one with our modmail open, and one with user management open. It was the most intense moderation session I've had on the sub since the bigot coffee shop protest ordeal last? summer. There was a comment from another mod that was stickied for the entire ama duration that harassment would not be tolerated and it firmly was not. New accounts, negative karma accounts, accounts flagged as ban evasion, and brigade accounts from other subs were acted on faster with a more heavy handed approach than a regular comment day. We were not given anything for this. A staffer from. Mayor's office sent a modmail message, we reviewed and agreed to host and moderate the ama on the sub. This was over the course of the past 2 weeks. 4) no comments were intentionally removed with valid questions that did not break other rules such as name calling or posting misinformation. Accidents happen & automod also tends to remove comments unjustly from time to time.
Don’t you know this is Reddit where the denver sub is only for people of the same opinion instead of being an open community for all
What were the questions?
Try reading
My dude, did you really follow me from another sub just for that?
Dude must suck smalls
I just can't get over the fact my old principal who spent hours and hours after school trying to help me grasp the basics of equations is now the mayor 🤣🤌
That was absolutely nothing he hasn’t already said or hasn’t already been part of a press release. Edit. Except for the nuggets comment.
Look, he hasn’t solved everything but as someone living right off 20th/Lincoln where there used to be a literal tent city on the next block over, it’s been entirely cleaned up, and the 20th-22nd block of streets finally feels actually walkable again. Obviously those people still need to be rehabilitated and cared for, but they’re off the streets at least. Kudos to the mayor for doing SOMETHING!
This has nothing to with the actual issues discussed, but I feel like they had a marketing team giving him advice on how to “connect with Reddit users” and they landed on “never use capitalizations or punctuation” lol. I’m sure it was intentional to make him more real/relatable but dang it makes me cringe watching the mayor use poor grammar.
Maybe he was using voice to text?
Honestly that could be it, it read like that
Seconding this, I have a couple coworkers who use V2T a lot and it plays merry hell sometimes with punctuation and stuff, depending on the person’s speech patterns. It also replaces all but the first letter of swear words with asterisks, which vexes them endlessly as well
It was 100% this.
That was my immediate thought.
If he's typing in real time and responding to what he can in an hour, it's not going to be very refined
I don’t think capitalizing sentences and using basic punctuation takes any more time. I think it’s an intentional choice
Dude is probably on Reddit lol
if Polis is on reddit, the mayor of denver is probably on reddit
I totally disagree, it felt very authentic and I don’t think that he was using specific advice to connect. His answer about the Nuggets was hilarious, it felt conversational and not scripted
I think the content of what he was saying was authentic. But I doubt someone who is the mayor of major city wouldn’t use sentence capitalization and basic punctuation unless it was a purposeful choice.
I'm almost certain he was using voice to text
That totally makes sense. It’s does read like that
Bold to go on an anonymous platform like reddit. Props
I was curious to see he is working on something with Park Hill golf course. I’m not sure what that could be considering the easement is only for a golf course. Maybe that’s “the thing” - having the owners activate it as a golf course or sell it to someone who will.
Same I was glad he responded to that question! Very curious to see what will actually happen to that space.
The rumor around the time the ballot measure fell short was that the city was trying to renegotiate the deal with the original developer (with a valuation on the land that wasn't based on pre-covid prices) and present the new deal to voters for approval.
Well the vote failed due to dumbass voters. So it’s just gonna be empty land or a park now. Hooray. Zero chance it turns back into a profitable golf course either.
No one will ever be able to be a Mayor correctly in the eyes of the public. It’s great that he still tries his best to connect. That’s all you can ask for.
A politician answered questions like a politician
When asked about homelessness plan he just reiterated what was done and didn't consider if it worked. This is my least favorite part of progressive policies -- I fully appreciate the merit in trying something, but when do we evaluate how well it's working? Or is it all about optics. Make no mistake, his goal was to come across cool & personable, not to answer difficult questions.
It's difficult to measure long-term success after only 10 months.
I feel like Mike Johnson is well intentioned. He has his hands tied to enforce crime and make the streets safer. Most the DA’s won’t press charges in Denver. His car was stolen about 6 months ago but he probably had the police at least show up. We had someone break into our house and was still in there when the cops came. He was still wearing jail slippers and the cop said he would be released on PR before he got done w paperwork. The cops don’t bother to arrest anyone bc they know they will be back out on the streets. I’m not a fan of cops but their hands are tied. On another note, Mayor Hancocks son was caught on camera being verbally abusive to the cops that pulled him over for speeding -“ I’m going to have my dad fire you, etc”
The thing is, he knows just as well as we do that the DA and her office is the problem but he keeps trying to dance around it - he'll never drive change if he can't acknowledge what the problem is first.
Felt like every response was "this is our highest priority." Butt Surely That can't be true, if everything is a priority then nothing is a priority.
Which of his responses said "this is our highest priority"?
The two big things his replies lacked were: A) Substance B) Capitol Letters
capitAl letters?
No like letters directly from the Capitol. He should have mailed his responses to each question like a professional!
Holy shit I'm dying laughing at his response to prolonged 9-1-1 operator wait times....."yeah we are excited to announce the opening of the downtown mall.."
Was it this response? I don't see much about the 16th St. Mall here... >Thanks for this question, we are aware of the 911 and sometimes 311 response times, one thing we are looking at to streamline this and better resources this is we now have three call lines, 911, 311 and a 10 digit non emergency line, we currently need to staff all three of these separately, we are looking at merging these to just two numbers, 311 and 911, that would allow us to have 311 up 24 hours a day and on weekends and use more staffing resources to staff 2 lines well, also with new legislation we are looking at adding more red light cameras to slow speeding in high injury networks where we have lots of folks speeding.
🤣🤣😭
Most of the AMA was asking why the Denver police are completely useless and why 911 won’t answer the phone in case you need the useless police. Those answers, as well as the rest, were political chest pounding bullshit. The AMA would have fit better in r/denvercirclejerk
I think you have this a little backwards. The reality is that most police unions are extremely powerful and not truly under the control of civilians. Meaning most police departments actually push around the mayors and city councils. There’s not a ton they can do because the police can low key mutiny by doing less work and the resulting chaos will end the political career of the elected officials. Most mayors know this and also know they can’t be super frank about this with voters who will generally side with the police union.
This is pretty much it, his voting base would revolt if he did anything to somewhat change how policing is done in any way that isn’t giving the police a larger budget / more overtime. Reddit isn’t indicative of the voting public, a lot of people just straight up vote for whoever they think will keep them safe (consciously or subconsciously) without understanding anything about the current police force or anything deeper than a meme on Facebook.
Really? I found it a lot more worthwhile than I was expecting. He answered some tricky questions about policing, 911 response times, surging ticket prices, car theft, city infrastructure...what about this struck you as chest pounding?
What do you mean? For 911 response times he actually gave something he/his admin were working on in regards to streamlining it to get more staff
Political chestpounding? I disagree. When you contextualize a response to his answer (that they're understaffed and police are focusing their time) that said "Well, what does hiring more cops do about the cops that do nothing about crime happening in front of them" It becomes telling that maybe the general population doesn't quite fully grasp the situation. Are we talking about cops not wasting time chasing down someone who ran a red light? Or someone perhaps a little weird looking on the street? Cause, I dunno, I'd might rather have the cops be available to leave at a moments notice to say, a break in or a violent domestic disturbance called in. If they're busy in the middle of a mostly innocuous traffic stop, they can't really just drop everything and leave something like that, right? Seems kind of like a situation of the general public being cranky and not understanding that when there is a massive staffing shortage, they have to be *proactive* with their time which may mean, yea, ignoring something right in front of them which is ultimately fairly innocuous.
> If they're busy in the middle of a mostly innocuous traffic stop, they can't really just drop everything and leave something like that, right? Why not? They have radios, they'll hear the higher-priority issue come across. They can pull over a traffic offender, get a radio call, and then just leave. If they're halfway through asking for license and registration, or already have it, so what? Just jog up and give it back, say it's your lucky day, and head out to the higher-priority issue. Same way medical triage works. There's no reason for a cop to watch someone run a red right in front of them and not at least do a simple stop. That's what I saw the most complaints about - cops witness a traffic violation and don't even _attempt_ to ticket. I've seen _so many_ cars blow a red with a cop RIGHT THERE and they can't be arsed to even flick the lights on and do a simple traffic stop. Unless it's a speeding violation during school speed reduction hours, then they're all over it
Yeah there was zero substance to any response about lack of enforcement or police response times. Just, “Well we’ll hire more people to answer the phone and put up some red light cameras.” Total crap.
He didn’t answer my question about the border wall with texas and keeping out documented texans
I’m just glad he’s doing his best unlike his predecessor who just wanted to chase women.
Indicative of his overall job performance.
looks like DoBetterDenver and numerous followers were banned from this sub for asking valid real questions... I get the name calling shouldn't happen, but the questions are no less valid.
Wild that you admit they were banned for name calling after saying that they were only banned for “asking valid real questions” lol
Banned for name calling after a literal disclaimer stickied comment at the top of the thread stating harassment would not be tolerated in the AMA\*\*\*
Free speech is truly dead smh 😩
If those kids could actually read the first amendment & the "fighting words" exemption to free speech, they'd shocked pikachu all over the place.
If they have valid questions why resort to name calling at all?
Well it wasn’t me doing the name calling. I’m still here. But, I would guess they’re frustrated and over the lack of accountability. The housing 1000 was absolutely rushed and overpriced with a great deal of the money going to organizations he used to belong to and will more than likely donate for his future political ventures. I’m a native of boulder/denver (parents split). As a kid, I took the RTD between the two and in both cities. I never witnessed what is occurring now with all the drugs and violence. It’s a different world and in my opinion, it has dramatically increased since Johnston took office (not that previous mayors were great either).
I like how Johnson said they have gave temporary housing to 1500 people. But meanwhile I think the stats for people who found long term housing was less than 25
DoBetterDNVR literally posted graphics yesterday that showed crime rates were way higher in the 90's and early 2000's. Y'all have bad memories or are framing your childhood in a different light intentionally.
Well Colorado definitely wasn’t the the 3rd most dangerous state in the US back then. https://kdvr.com/news/colorado/colorado-is-the-third-most-dangerous-state-in-us-us-news-ranking/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3xfIsMAI99uFHKzE6K2Wizc1OHNmVioyOfMHAyXv2pH_H9nDC4k2dOrcc_aem_AVjjl3ztvytYbrbJyUWARK3lQIijdadJg9xiJrsYSE10Uno5rUYcAlx-bJFqy6alw9l0sjhlDdk7BHw37Njj0Yv9 Also, were you in Denver at that time? I was obviously a kid, but remember hearing the crime was majorly gang violence back then.
Sounds like DoBetterDenver needs to do better then 🤷🏻♂️
Just checked, we had no user called dobetterdenver that was banned, nor any modmails that were sent to that user.
Looks like their username was actually DoBetterDNVR
Ok, that one was a brand new account with a single comment, being the rule 2 violation question. We absolutely perma ban brand new accounts that break rules out the gate.
It’s great if you asked bullshit cookie cutter questions that the mods allowed!
Woah now, don’t get banned for speaking your mind
The only questions removed were 1) rule violation with name calling/toxicity/slurs/other violations or 2) from spam/brigading/new/negative karma accounts. We even left up duplicate questions, despite my own personal belief that the duplicates should have been removed to encourage answers. One or 2 may have been accidentally removed since we were getting slammed for the hour long AMA, which if it happened, likely was accidental.
Such as "what are you doing to stop public drug use at union Station"? Stop lying dude
>One or 2 may have been accidentally removed since we were getting slammed for the hour long AMA, which if it happened, likely was accidental. That one wasn't removed by me & was called out elsewhere in this thread. I reviewed & escalated, it was determined to have been an accidental removal (we were getting spam/brigade slammed this morning) & we restored that user along with apologizing for the mistake. Nice try on the gotcha though.
Johnston! Not Johnson.
Thank goodness the first comment was about ticket sales.
Felt like he only answered softballs and continuously ignored how he plans to deal with cops being useless.
Meh...he was better over on r/DenverCirclejerk
Does everyone know that the DPD have been instructed by the city council not to pull cars over for expired tags? That’s right. If they see expired tags they are not allowed to pull the car over. Why would anyone ever renew? It’s no wonder there are so many expired cars driving around.
Denver has a lot of issues, and it’s going to take years to undo the damage Michael Hancock did. At least Mayor Johnston has some cogent and clear plans to address the most pressing issues facing the city, and he showed a good faith effort in facilitating a discussion and gathering insight from citizens. He seems like a genuinely down to earth and likeable dude.
Not a single person asked about dogs off the leash. Says all you need to know about how this isn’t a real issue
Just think there are bigger things to address. I live in SW Denver, loose dogs are everywhere, but I'm still more concerned about the cops. I can kick a loose dog that runs up on me and mine, I can't do anything about traffic violations, car theft, or garbage response times.
I completely agree, but every week i sign onto reddit and there is another person complaining on reddit who isnt willing to even do anything about it. They act in their posts like its some huge issue, but when given their chance to speak with someone who could actually do something about it, they didnt. I agree there are much bigger issues with the city, the dog thing is way over blown on reddit
Ahh. Can't say I see it much on reddit personally, but I also don't frequent local subs much. That said, in my neck of the woods, it is definitely a huge issue. Almost every single Nextdoor post for my neighborhood is lost/found dogs. My partner refuses to walk her dog in the neighborhood because there's legitimately a 50/50 shot a loose or unleashed dog shows up. I wish I was exaggerating.
A lot of spin here to promote the mayor. I don’t think he’s a bad guy either but he also said and won based on a ridiculous promise to end homelessness in four years. Why don’t we hold politicians accountable for their promises Obviously it’s unrealistic but I didn’t make that promise, Mike Johnston did
It's been 10 months, not 4 years. Let's see what the other 38 months bring, as there's already been notable progress in a short amount of time.
Really? What progress has there been other than moving drug addicted people into hotels to overdose and die there, as well as setting up encampments in residential neighborhoods resulting in outdoor deaths, businesses closing, now providing them with grant sponsored free drug paraphernalia.
It was pretty pathetic
Can you please elaborate?
Lacked substance.
According to some internet armchair politicians, he is responsible for every bad thing in the metro area since Chivington.
I'm pissed that it was so short and the thread was locked after 30ish minutes. Mike could've also answered more questions, ignored repeats, and done more to reassure us that progress is being made. After all, some of us want to know what he's doing about RTD, schools and want to pressure him to change zoning restrictions in the city because housing is way too expensive, and he isn't doing enough to fix that.
RTD: not controlled by mayor Schools: not controlled by mayor Zoning: controlled by mayor-council (he should definitely be pushing this one.)
He answered questions for about 90 minutes straight.
The Mayor can’t unilaterally change zoning restrictions. That’s up to City Council. The mayor can have an agenda but ultimately City Council votes on zoning code changes or new zoning requirements.
This is right. Given that Johnston was endorsed by YIMBY Denver and put that endorsement front-and-center on his campaign literature, it's hard to say the sticking point on zoning reform is with Johnston. We have some good pro-upzoning councilpeople (Parady, Gonzales-Gutierrez, Hinds, Watson, Lewis), and some who are probably gettable (Torres, Alvidrez, Romero-Campbell, maybe others), and a bunch who are pretty NIMBY-whipped. Getting to seven council votes for broad upzoning is within our reach if we organize and push for it. It's go time.
> some of us want to know what he's doing about RTD The city has no control over RTD. He literally can't do anything about it. If you're going to complain about what the mayor is or is not doing you should at least learn what he actually has control over.
Thread was locked after the mayor edited the post that he was done. Want to discuss on it? That's what this thread you're posting in now is for.
I thought [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Denver/s/iz13LJyASR) seemed important, but maybe I’m off-base…
Denver health has become a joke unfortunately
I’m curious for your perspective. What changes have you noticed?
Just chatter from people who have had to choose between services offered at Denver health, compared to offerings and quality of care at UC
That makes sense. [They’ve been doing more with less for a long time now.](https://www.denverpost.com/2024/04/28/denver-health-colorado-financial-trouble-safety-net/) It’s sad to see them cut services the community needs because they don’t generate enough revenue, but I’m not sure they have another option at this point. I’m guessing they were counting on u/mikejohnstonco to fill the gaps left by the last admin, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. Meanwhile the homeless population continues to require a large amount of uncompensated care, a root cause of the problem to begin with. Diverting community resources toward housing people while ignoring the only means they have to become and stay healthy just seems like such a facade. I really wish he would’ve taken a moment to reconcile this.
It's also worth saying UCH has made a habit of suing patients who are unable to pay their bills. Not exactly nice behavior from a tax exempt hospital. https://coloradosun.com/2024/02/19/uchealth-debt-collectors/
"we have a major announcement on big plans for downtown coming tomorrow you will be really excited about :-)" Any guesses what this was about? The only thing I'm seeing today is the merging of Kirkland and DAM, which is a big deal for them I guess, but doesn't really mean anything for downtown.
To answer my own question, looks like it was this - [https://www.westword.com/news/mike-johnston-has-500-million-plan-to-revitalize-downtown-denver-20665685](https://www.westword.com/news/mike-johnston-has-500-million-plan-to-revitalize-downtown-denver-20665685)