11 07 25 Denver Mayor Mike Johnston on DEN Airport Adjustments, Burnham Yard Latest

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Denver International Airport, one of forty airports, reducing its
flights by ten percent this weekend amid the government shutdown.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
And the city proposing a plan to pay air traffic
controllers and then be reimbursed by the FAA after the
shutdown ends. Joining us on the KA Common Spirit Health
hotline is Denver Mayor Mike Johnston. Mister maher, appreciate your time.
As always, Let's start first, just to make sure, putting
you on the record, you weren't one of the fans
booing the broncos last night, right, I was not.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
I was there, but I remained steadily confident in the
four fourth quarter recovery and glad they brought a few
one more time.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Good good to hear. All right, So when we're looking
at what we're dealing with with flights nationwide right now,
I know that Denver is really trying to do what
it can to help our air traffic controllers. Curious where
this money would come from. Have we heard any update
from the response from the FAA, and really what else
can be done in order to help DIA.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Yeah, no response yet. I think what we know, Genisa,
the Denver Airport is the largest economic driver in almost
the Rocky Mountain West. I mean, it's the most important
economic driver for the state, for multiple states around us.
We rely on it for business, for tourism, for folks
who want to get home to see their families for Thanksgiving,
and so we just don't want to see that travel impacted,
and so we are just trying to be proactive about

(01:17):
solutions we can possibly find. And so for Washington, our
airport CEO is so you know, there are ways we
could use reserves at the airport to be able to
pay those federal employees proactively and then have the federal
government reimburse us. It's just going to cost the city
and the state far more money to have us lose
flights than it would be for us to cover those salaries.
And so we think there are common sense solutions here

(01:38):
and we want to keep the airport as open and
vibrant as possible.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Mister Mayor, I want to talk about Burnham Yards for
a bit. We expect the franchise to pay for a
new stadium, which is due to open in about five years.
Do we know with regard to infrastructure, Maybe we don't
know yet, But what will the city pay for when
it comes to roads and parking lots and the like
and how would that money be generated.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
Yeah, that process is just starting. So right now what's
happening is we have what's called the Community Benefits Agreement,
which is residents in and around Brohamyard or meeting with
the Broncos about what benefits they'd like to see for
the community. We have a small area plan where it's
a design process that the community goes through to lay
out what their priorities are for what should exist on
that site, whether it's housing, whether it's retail, what would

(02:24):
accommodate potential stadium site. And then the Broncos will submit
they submit their first draft of what they would have
as a plan for their development. Then over the next year,
really all those processes move forward, the Community Benefits Agreement,
the area plan designed, the Broncos site plan. Once all
three of those are done and completed, they would come
to the city Council for approval on zoning. And only

(02:45):
then we know what the actual plan looks like for
what roads are needed, what sidewalks might be needed, and
what the potential costs so those would be. And so
we're still very early in that process, but right now
have the exactly the right community steps we wanted to
have going in terms of getting feedback from residents.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Well, speaking about roads near Burnham Yard, some of those
were part of the Vibrant Denver bonds approved by voters
on election night on Tuesday, And honestly, you and your
team wasted no time kicking off some of those projects
literally days after it passed. With the Denver Health West
Side Neighborhood expansion project. How were some of these projects
able to just get up and get moving so quickly

(03:21):
after this.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Past Yeah, first of all, we're incredibly grateful for Denver
voters just a historic victory on Tuesday night. We had
almost you know, seventy percent voter approval on a number
of these measures, about sixty five sixty six percent average
across the board, and we had incredibly high voter turnouts.
I think Denver Rights came out in large numbers to
say they want to invest in their city, they want
to build a vibrant future if they believe in support

(03:44):
the direction we're heading to get that done. So we're
really grateful about that. And what we did when we
source these projects in the community is we tried to say,
let's look for what we call shovel ready projects, like
projects that are already ready, already designed, community knows where
to go. And yeah, and I think what might be
the fast is one I've seen. We had one of
these projects was a west side clinic on Federal Boulevard
that we've been working with Denver Health on. So Denver

(04:06):
Health provide some of the funding, We provide some of
the funding. They were ready to get going, and so
we actually just broke around in that yesterday, so about
forty eight hours off to the passage, we broke ground
in the first site. But we will see a lot
of progress over the next six to twelve months on
getting every one of these ninety projects moving in the
direction towards completion. So we're going to move fast and

(04:26):
all these and we're deciding to already break around.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
In one for voters who were curious about following the
completion project projects and obviously some of these multi year
how will they do this?

Speaker 3 (04:36):
I know you have a plan for this. Yeah, we're
really excited about this. We're going to launch our own dashboard.
It'll be like you know, it'll be like watching the
scores on ESPN and you'll be able to we'll show
you all ninety projects. We'll show you what their start
date is, what their completion date is, what the cost is,
what stage they are in the process, are they being
designed right now? Are they breaking ground? So in the
first few months of twenty twenty six, we will launch

(04:58):
that whole dashboard with all ninety projects on it. We
obviously didn't want to spend any money building it until
we knew it passed. But now that's passed, we have
a team in our finance department who's going to put
that together and you'll be able to track day by
day like a scoreboard with them. We're doing on this bond,
mister Mayor.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Pivoting topics, but also staying on what we saw in
the ballot. The Flavor Tobacco band did pass. I know
that was something that you supported and endorsed. But we've
spoke with a number of small businesses, vape shops, those
on the near sixteenth streets that are concerned that they're
just going to have to shut their doors now they
won't be able to continue operating in our city. What's
your message to those that are concerned that they will

(05:35):
not be able to just keep adding and helping out
our city when it comes to just tax dollars and
revenue from their businesses.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
Yeah, I've been talking to some of those business leaders
and they are still a top priority for us. We
want to support every small business in the city, and
we knew that this was a tough trade off. We
both want to protect young people from the exposure to tobacco,
and if we can prevent kids from developing those habits
and developing long term cancer that could shorten their lives
or have a dramatic negative impact, we want to do that.

(06:03):
We also really want to support these small businesses, and
so we're going to keep working with them on what
are the other things we can do to support them
to make their lives easier, bringing down crime, bringing down homelessness,
driving more economic activity in the city. That all helps.
We know they have lots of product lines in their
stores that aren't flavored vait pens, and so there's plenty
of other legal tobacco products they can still sell, and
plenty of other resources we can help push, and so

(06:24):
we are all in to help them in any way
that we can because we want to see those businesses thrive.
We just think this was a common sense step to
protect young people from developing a deadly habit too early.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
Mister mayor, your former school principal, the candidates that you
supported in this week's selection for the Denver Public School
Board did not win. What are your thoughts about the
new makeup of the Denver Public School Board.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
Yeah, I haven't met a lot of the new members.
All look forward to meeting them and working with them.
I think it was clear that the voters of Denver
wanted a change and some of the leadership that was
on the school board. They voted for some of that,
and we'll trust that those new folks will come in
and want to work colloudly together. We've had a good
working relationship with several public schools the last two years,
and I'm optimistic that will continue. We have a city

(07:07):
District Coordinating Committee where the superintendent and I and a
couple of school board members and council members meet regularly
to look at priorities we have that are shared. We
have a big focus on getting more and more kids
into after school and summer programming and getting more high
school kids put to work, and so we're unpathed meet
our targets to get about sixty thousand kids in after
school programs and about three thousand kids into jobs through

(07:29):
each summertime. And so we'll stay focused on that and
look forward to partnering with the new board members on
getting that done and wrapping.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
Up with you real quick. I know the Denver City
Council did add some amendments to your proposed budget that
included the clerks Paul Lopez's asked for two point seven
million dollars to his budget. What are the next steps?
Is it going to be a back and forth of
what we see of what's amended and what's not.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
Yeah, we work through those today and actually we'll get
responses back to the City Council this afternoon on our
path forward on that, and we're we're optimistic we're going
to find a strong, responsible budget that will move the
city forward in twenty twenty six. I think we find
local government works works better than some of the chaos
you see at the federal level. And so we're in
regular contact with the council. We're going to be in

(08:12):
collaboration today and we'll figure out before the day's over
a path to move forward and try to close the budget.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, thank you. Mayor as always for
joining us on Colorado's morning news.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
Thank you all have a great day.