Denver City Councilwoman Kneich on Homeless‏

I appreciate you sharing your concerns on this important issue. Resident safety is one of the foundational issues to any community, people must feel safe to want to live and work in our communities. Large numbers of individuals living on our streets does impact quality of life for other residents. But our concern for safety must also include consideration for those who are on the streets.

And as we discuss the issue of homelessness, we cannot ignore one of the root causes – a severe lack of affordable housing. A recent estimate showed Denver has a shortage of at least 27,000 affordable rental units given our population and the jobs/wages in our city. Ultimately, housing is the cure for most homelessness, and for many years I’ve worked to support more mixed income housing for low-wage workers, seniors and disabled populations. This continues to be one of my office’s highest priorities, with the greatest potential to make a difference on homelessness.

So it’s important to keep the eye on the cure to the issue. But treating the symptoms matters too, and there are a percentage of homeless individuals facing challenges beyond affordability of housing. There are a number of methods to decrease street-homelessness that Denver has not tried: 1) a true 24 hour shelter that never closes and allows individuals to sleep/rest and get services at all hours of all days, 2) improved shelter conditions/criteria so fewer folks are excluded – such as allowing couples to enter together, permitting those under the influence of a substance but not misbehaving, etc. 3) more shelter beds distributed to new areas where shelters are not currently concentrated, and 4) increased comprehensive mental health/substance abuse treatment which is going to become more possible in 2014 with health care reform, but could be expanded now with greater local resources dedicated. It is my strong belief that until Denver implements these practices we won’t have success through a law enforcement approach.

In terms of the proposed ordinance, we are still waiting to see what additional resources, if any, are being proposed to be paired with the ordinance. It is constitutionally questionable for us to arrest an individual for using a blanket on the street if there is no alternative – no shelter space for which that person is eligible, or if they are number 200 on a waiting list for treatment. So I’ll be looking at that issue closely.

I recognize the quality of life concerns that motivated this ordinance, and I will advocate for the approaches above as a better and more proven method for reducing the impacts while staying within the guidelines of the constitution and protecting the safety of those who are homeless with no other options.

Sincerely

Councilwoman Robin Kniech

Considering Homelessness

Councilman Albus Brooks, District 8, carrying the bill...


City Attorney Broadwell with legal considerations...


Director Milliner - Denver Road Home...


Other 2-min testimony...

Seasonal Street Sweeping Starts Tomorrow

Press release from Denver Public Works

SHOW YOUR PRIDE, MOVE YOUR RIDE! DENVER, CO ­— Monday, April 02, 2012 — It is that time of year when the street sweepers hit Denver’s residential streets and you are asked to ‘show your pride and move your ride’! Starting tomorrow, Tuesday, April 3, street sweeping on residential streets begins and continues through November. Sweepers and Right of Way Enforcement will be out Tuesdays through Fridays, 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., therefore it is vital that residents move their vehicles on their sweeping day(s). “Street sweeping works best when the sweepers are able to clean from curb to curb,” said George Delaney, Manager of Denver Public Works. “The only way the sweepers can do this is if our residents do their part by moving their vehicles on their street sweeping day.” Street sweeping plays a critical role in keeping Denver’s streets, air and water clean. Denver Public Works Street Sweeping Program removes dirt, leaves and debris from City streets, which reduces air and water pollution and supports a clean environment. Last year, Denver street sweeping crews swept 103,645 lane miles in Denver and collected 41,675 cubic yards of dirt and debris. Thanks to the efforts of Denver residents moving their vehicles in 2011, nearly 12% less street sweeping citations were issued and Denver Public Works wants to continue the trend of issuing fewer sweeping citations. Here are a couple of ways for residents to remember their street sweeping days: ·         Sign up to receive a free email reminder of your street sweeping day. Visit www.KeepItCleanDenver.org and click on the “Show Your Pride, Move Your Ride” sweeper icon to sign up. Be sure you know what day of the week your sweeping day falls on (for example, “the 3rd Thursday of the month”) so that you can enter it when you sign-up. The day of the week when street sweeping takes place on your street is listed on the red and white street sweeping signs.  – Winner of Westword’s “Best of Free Service 2011” ·         Request “No Parking” sticker reminders for your calendar by calling Denver’s customer service line at 3-1-1. Residential streets in Denver are swept once per month where posted (not every block has restrictions), so please be sure to move your vehicle according to the signs on your block and avoid a $50.00 parking citation. Additionally, residents must follow the sweeping time restrictions on their blocks and refrain from parking during the restricted times posted, even if it appears a sweeper has cleaned the street, as sweepers may need to return to the area for additional sweeping. Denver Public Works Street Sweeping program consists of 28 street sweepers (plus four backup units) and 10 dump trucks. The sweepers simultaneously mist the street while rotating brooms sweep debris and dust up into the unit (the hopper). When the hopper is full, the contents are transferred to a dump truck to be taken to the landfill. Other ways to help Denver Public Works keep our streets clean: ²  Be the Denver Difference and remind your neighbors to move their car on street sweeping day. ²  Trim low hanging branches on your street - the sweepers are 10.6 feet high and the trucks that accompany them are 12 feet high. ²  Remove items from the gutter on street sweeping days. ²  On your sweeping day, set trash and recycling bins off of the street on the apron of your driveway or on the curb as close to the street as possible, but not on the sidewalk.

Criminalizing homelessness

Old parking meter re-purposed for donation collection at Colfax and York - apparently not getting much use

As Denver City Council prepares to take up the issue of criminalizing homelessness (with an ordinance carried by Albus Brooks), I had to reflect on one of my first blog posts here at Denver Direct. From April 19, 2005:

STOP TICKETING THE HOMELESS

Let’s see, you are homeless and you have to pee. No luck at the filling station because RESTROOMS FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY. No luck at the park because the porta-potties are gone.
So you duck behind a dumpster, and five-oh rolls up on you and now you have a ticket, which turns into a warrant for your arrest when you don’t show up at court. You could have put up $100 bond and forfeited it when you didn’t show up, but of course you don’t have $100. If you are arrested later, you will generally serve 1 day in jail for each $100 ticket. Loitering, littering, public drunkenness, sleeping in the park, solicitation of passengers … wait a minute, what’s that last one? Solicitation of passengers?
That was the charge against a homeless man I know. Here is the ordinance: Sec. 39-20. Solicitation of passengers prohibited. It shall be unlawful for any person to solicit passage for any vehicle for hire or gratis upon any park premises without special permission in writing from the manager of parks and recreation. This ticket was issued by officer Patrick Mulhern on August 16, 2004, to a person who was not in a park and had no vehicle.
After this man was arrested on March 30, 2005 and taken to jail, a hearing was held before Judge J Marcucci, who said he did not understand the original charge, so he left it in place and added another violation Sec 39-7. Here is that ordinance: Sec. 39-7. Camping and erection of tents and buildings prohibited. (a) It shall be unlawful for any person to camp or otherwise sleep overnight in or upon any park, parkway, mountain park or other recreational facility, without first having obtained a permit to do so from the manager of parks and recreation. (b) It shall be unlawful for any person, other than authorized personnel, to build or place any tent, building, shack, booth, stand or other structure in or upon any park, parkway, mountain park or other recreational facility, without first having obtained a permit to do so from the manager of parks and recreation.
This man was not sleeping, had no tent, and was not in a park – he was panhandling at 17th and York. Amazingly, Marcucci sentenced him to 5 days in jail. I have to ask myself what the purpose of this incarceration might be. To punish this guy for breaking these laws? No. This is harassment pure and simple. This is one reason we have “overcrowding” in our jail.

Seven years and over 1000 posts later, not much has changed. Thanks to Denver Diatribe for kicking the subject around again (starts at about the 12:30 mark).

Addendum: Here's a site called Invisible People with homeless people telling their stories.

Hotel workers get contract back

By Dave Felice

Employees of the Hyatt Regency hotel in Denver celebrate their Unite HERE Local 14 union contract 

with their clerical representatives, Daniel Klawitter (center left) and Aaron McEmrys (center right).

Employees at the only hotel in Colorado with a union workforce are celebrating restoration of their collective bargaining agreement. With help from several advocates on the Denver City Council, employees at the city-owned Hyatt Regency now have a contract running until 2013.

In January 2011, members of Unite HERE Local 14 workers were shocked to learn that because of what was termed a “legal technicality,” Hyatt would no longer recognize the union as the exclusive bargaining agent. The contract has finally been reinstated after a year of negotiations.

On Tuesday, March 20, Unite HERE Local 14 gathered at Emily Griffith Opportunity School to observe the contract restoration success. City Council members Chris Nevitt, Paul Lopez, Susan Shepherd, Robin Kneich, and Debbie Ortega joined the observance.

Unite HERE Local 14 has been successful in reducing the housekeeping work load at the hotel, as well as securing affordable health care and better wages for the hotel staff.

Around the country, labor supporters criticize Hyatt for mistreatment, disparagement, and mistreatment of employees.

Workers in the San Francisco area rallied on International Women’s Day, March 9, to protest the firing of two women at the Hyatt Hotel in Santa Clara.

This story is reported exclusively by Denver Direct. The home delivery newspaper does not carry the story. Critics claim management of The Denver Post has a strong bias against organized labor.

Update: “Both sides are to be commended for the peaceful settlement of the labor dispute at the Hyatt.  This strong and diverse workforce stayed united and focused on their goal of seeing the contract honored, and after a long period, the Hyatt finally agreed with City Councilmembers that it was in the best interests of the City and the Hotel to honor their contract and avoid an unnecessary legal battle.  I commend them for doing so.” Councilwoman Robin Kniech.

Abolish Private Prisons in Colorado

Privatization erodes public control and oversight. Nowhere is privatization more insidious than in the corporate takeover of our criminal justice and immigrant detention systems. For-profit corporations own and run hundreds of prisons, jails, and detention centers in this country. For these companies, every prisoner is a profit center, every crime a business opportunity, and rehabilitation is bad for business

That's why I signed a petition to The Colorado State House, The Colorado State Senate, and Governor John Hickenlooper, which says:

"We believe that no one should profit from the incarceration of human beings. Abolish for-profit prisons and immigrant detention centers in Colorado."

Will you sign this petition? Click here:

http://signon.org/sign/abolish-private-prisons?source=s.em.cp&r_by=733839

Thanks!

Walkabout - March 27, 2012

In which I take a stroll around my neighborhood to see what catches my eye. Today, the "Woolley" Dog Park and Gardens at 16th and Josephine is up for review. (See header photo above.)

Recall that the City of Denver paid $6 million for this property which it had previously assessed at $1 million. After that The Better Denver Bond money kind of ran out so instead of the Recreation Center we voted for we got a dog park and garden.







The sign heralding the rec center is getting a little worn, but the dog park seems to be a huge success as a place to park your car. Today there were 44 cars parked around the dog park and about 15 - 20 dogs.

The garden looks like it hasn't gotten a spring cleaning yet, but it's still early so I'll give the gardeners the benefit of the doubt - it's probably too early to plant - but it looks like winter may be gone for good this year. Still, April, like March, is said to be among our snowiest months. But then again, this March may be one of the driest.



On the way back, I stopped to photograph the East High Parking lot block house. It gets painted every year by the graduating class. A few years back the graffiti got a lot more extensive (all over the pavement at 16th and the Esplanade) and way more obscene. The principal complained that it wasn't her sidewalk and all but threw me out of her office after I delivered a photographic portfolio of the most obscene stuff to her desk. Nonetheless, the graffiti was removed later that day.

At the corner of 16th and York, on a shiny control box, a bit of understated graffiti.

PROMOTE GENDER EQUITY and JUSTICE WITHIN THE DENVER POLICE DEPARTMENT

A pattern of activities by the Denver Police Department including: appointments of all-male leadership to the Chief and Deputy Chief positions; the violent assault of Latina women by police in the Denver Diner case; the brutal beating of two young gay men of color in Lodo; and the demotion of a prominent woman of color division chief who championed gender and racial responsiveness within the department have raised significant community concerns about fairness and gender equity within DPD.
A group of professional women, grassroots organizers and allies are mobilizing to ensure that gender justice is not left to chance within the leadership and practices of the Denver Police Department. We are holding an organizing meeting this Friday evening. If you are interested in joining us, please respond to lisacalderon123@comcast.net for the time and place.

Open letter to Denver Councilwoman Kniech from Tom Anthony

Dear Councilwoman Kniech,

My family and I live in the middle of the Stock Show property and have for 14 years. This makes us a bit vulnerable to voicing our opinions on Stock Show matters since we're also trying to be "good neighbors." A bit hard when "management" sees you as an obstacle to their goal of owning everything in sight.

The new concept of splitting the Stock Show into a profit/non profit two headed hydra is predictable; since they're showing a profit now when four years ago they were showing a loss, they have more money to spend on CRL Associates, even though they're supposed to be maintaining the "old, decrepit buildings" along the way; tradeoff for the $1 a year lease rate and no property taxes.

The modern business model for a profit-making business is to get the government to subsidize you, at which point once that public investment has been made the stream of public dollars just keeps broadening to make sure they didn't make a mistake the first time.

As to the Stock Show itself, besides being a cultural anomaly, I think they're a worthy beneficiary of a certain amount of largesse because frankly it's a unique venue with a unique constituency: lots and lots of "landed gentry" who may wear cowboy hats and jeans but probably represent real estate holdings equal to the states of California and Texas combined. Giving them an excuse to drive to Denver in January is a stroke of public genius that should continue to see play. In fact, more play.

As to unleashing the "for profit" venue management monster to compete with every other programming site in the region at public expense; from the standpoint of the North Neighborhoods at minimum, that's like tossing the Baltic states to the Soviets. The Denver March Pow-Wow came to the Coliseum this weekend and the Stock Show website didn't even mention it (for example.)

Another case in point, the Stockyards sit empty 11.3 months per year, and are slated to have a brand new commuter rail station next door by 2016. They are a perfect site for a major weekend outdoor public market. The North Neighborhoods proposed this to the Stock Show in 2000; however we were told that Aramark had to manage all the food and beverages, even though they had no current business in the stock pens and the Market couldn't succeed without the diverse mix of ethnic foods we envisioned from hundreds of small business people. The fact that Stock Show pays $1 a year lease and no taxes didn't seem to merit any consideration of overarching public benefit.

Instead of providing a matrix for a thriving small business community north of I-70, the Stock Pens still sit empty 12 years later. Frankly, capitulating to a few minimum wage jobs with Aramark as a tradeoff to helping 750 small entrepreneurs fulfill their dreams and the Denver Metro area find a new source of pride and community never has seemed a viable choice.

Senator Michael Johnston is proposing a bill to create a District which would allow for expansion of the Stock Show and other activities, such as sports venues which could help Denver host the Winter Olympics. This possibility could mesh with the Platte River Greenway development north through Adams County and provide for a rejuvenation similar to the Stapleton success story. However, the existing neighborhoods need to have a seat at the table to ensure all boats float with the rising tide. It's much too easy to turn loose a tiger to devour all it can amongst the defenseless "villagers." In fact, Auditor Gallagher's notion of having the City own the facility (like the Coliseum or Convention Center) and lease it to Stock Show during January seems the best business model by far. The City would have a self-interest in seeing complementary small businesses thrive and pay taxes; the Stock Show will only see dollars that somehow escaped its clutching paws.

Tom Anthony
5001 National Western Drive
Denver, CO 80216
303-299-0202

Backstage Past - book review by Phil Goodstein

The acoustics at Red Rocks are superb. A whisper on stage is audible at the back of the amphitheater. Or so Barry Fey reports in his memoirs, Backstage Past (n.p.: Lone Wolfe Press, 2011). He does not ask why, if that is the case, musicians have to have overwhelming amplification for their concerts there. The omission is typical of the book. It is filled with juicy stories and boasts of the man who dominated the promotion of rock concerts in Denver during the last third of the 20th century. At no place is there any retrospection. Even so, Backstage Past a marvelous document outlining the operations of the music machine and its culture of decadence and death.
During the 1960s, some had the belief that loud, technologically driven noise, i.e., rock and roll, was somehow on the cutting edge of liberation and a new age. The trite and the foolish continue to believe this. Champions of environmentalism, for example, cannot conceive of their ecology celebrations without the energy-draining technological of high decibel level “music.” The understanding that instruments combined with the power of the human voice do not need microphones and that people have been able to sing and dance for millennia without amplification is beyond these individuals who claim they are working to give the earth a chance. The same has been true with the Occupy movement. Traditional and contemporary songs of protest have been missing from it while backers have seized whatever amplification they can find for their reproductions of the music machine as part of their festivities. The human microphone are Occupy events is more a product of weakness—the inability of speakers to project their voices—than an alternative to business as usual.
Rock music emerged amidst the technocratic fixation of the mid-20th century. More than telling a story, it emphasized loudness. Far from being a people’s music whereby everyday individuals could join in the lyrics and share a message, it was designed to be passively consumed by audiences in the same manner than schoolchildren are the captives of teachers who endlessly lecture them. While some musicians, especially those who came out of the folk tradition, did have lyrics of social commentary, the entire industry was geared to the norms and values of Wall Street.
The power of the protests of the 1960s literally rocked the music machine. It responded by seeking to co-opt them. Simultaneously, the rock industry was an ever more profitable commodity. The music machine was also an opiate, a seeming way of protesting the system by having listeners emulate performers with the heavy use of drugs and alcohol. The evolution from Woodstock to Altamont was rapid: from a seeming free festival to the brutal beatings and murders of those who dared question the corporate control and culture of the rock music industry.
Shortly before Woodstock, Barry Fey put together the Denver Pop Festival in the summer of 1969. Violence was its essence, complete with clashes between protestors and the police outside of Mile High Stadium. In the process, the men in blue gassed the crowd. The fumes wafted onto the football field. Far from questioning whether this was a deliberate, cynical ploy by the police, Fey simply accepts the police’s version that Denver’s finest did not know the gas could blow onto the field. Meanwhile, the rock promoter created his own self-professed goon squad as enforcers to assure the music machine functioned as an efficient means of merchandizing amplified noise in a semi-hysterical setting having resemblances to Nazi rallies at Nuremberg.
Even at that, Fey repeatedly emphasizes the need for a promoter to assure the well-being and enjoyment of the audience. That he has to repeat this point is indicative. an extreme contempt for those willing to pay immense sums to be barraged with noise is the essence of the rock music industry. As much as anything, Backstage Past is valuable for its numerous stories of the way performances have scorned their audiences, promoters, lovers, and each other. Their extreme personal decadence has seemingly been the hallmark of their success. Many of the stars such as Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix soon died from the way they abused their bodies and everybody else.
Namedropping is at the center of Backstage Past. More than anything, it is designed for those who believe gossip is the heart of musical criticism. (Classical music commentators are just as bad if not worse than writers on pop music in this regard.) Even so, in passing Fey does an excellent job of bringing out the corporate success of rock music. The author outlines the way ticket prices soared. The immense service charges of monopolistic ticket providers is illustrative of the corruption of the field. Promoters get a share of these charges. Consumers, in turn, have shown themselves willing to submit to any indignity and pay virtually any price to be part of the music machine’s performances. As much as anything, this is the true success of the rock phenomenon.
All the while, Fey has some fascinating stories. While he muffs many of the specifics, his tale of the collapse of the Denver Symphony and the birth of the Colorado Symphony is indicative. The Denver Symphony failed primarily from the sterile elitism and scorn of ticketbuyers of the masters of the culture industry. The Colorado Symphony originally succeeded by emphasizing a rapport between musicians and listeners. Once it stabilized itself, it eagerly sought to emulate the worst of the Denver Symphony.
Backstage Past is a collector’s item. It has an excellent, creatively designed dustjacket that can be converted into a poster. While the book’s typography is problematic and Fey desperately needed a good copy editor, he tells a captivating story, one that is far more entertaining and enlightening than anything he ever put on stage.