DENVER — Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said “our problems are solvable” before he unveiled his plan to solve or mitigate many of those issues as cuts to services begin to take effect due to the migrant crisis.
Spreading the goals out in four categories — Vibrant Denver, Affordable Denver, Safe Denver and Great Government — Mayor Johnston laid out his ambitious citywide goals for 2024 during a press conference Monday.
“We know the city faces real challenges. We believe each of those problems are solvable by both the city employees that we have assembled, and the community members who are willing to step up and lean in on the hardest issues,” Johnston said.
Some of the goals include identifying funding to create a safer and vibrant downtown, the ongoing effort to house 2,000 people experiencing homelessness, and an additional 3,000 affordable housing units by the end of the year.
“We want to get everybody inside and also connotes that we want the entire city to be all in this effort. It is not one department or one government alone. It is a collaborative community partnership,” Johnston said.
Many of his goals announced Monday did not address the ongoing migrant crisis directly. However, Johnston said his administration remains focused on the influx of South American migrants, and the city has teams already in place responding to those issues.
“This does not minimize the importance of that need,” Johnston said of the migrant issue. “What it does is focus on we know there will be reactive issues that come before the city for which our job is to be responsive, to be thoughtful, to be humane to be efficient in our delivery of services, we will continue to do that.”
The mayor announced earlier this month that due to the influx of migrants and a lack of federal funding, the city would be cutting some city services to help offset the cost of housing them.
Denver
Denver is cutting these services in 2024 to respond to the migrant crisis
His plan to achieve the goals set forth during Monday’s press conference is to establish “Tiger Teams” across all of Denver’s 27 agencies.
“So every city employee, every city agency sees themselves directly in the work of one of these citywide goals in addition to their department goals,” he said.
Johnston also has his eyes on improving the job satisfaction of the more than 11,000 city employees by 5% by the end of the year.
The mayor says he will release more details on Wednesday about how the city plans to address migrant services going forward.
