Denver's 2027 Budget Hearings 🧵for video and commentary on the Department of Finance's Overview of the 2027 Proposed Budget

How much does non-enforcement of expired tags cost Denver? Councilman Kashman asks a great question. Too bad staff didn’t know the answer; I hope he makes the number public. Listen to the Mayor’s response. Two items to note: 1. Risk of enforcement makes people comply. (Duh.) So why is DPD only allowed to do expired tag enforcement during special periods? 2. The Mayor mentions “notifying” tag miscreants in advance. Does he mean through the news? Or are we spending $ to send out mailers? Either way, the Mayor and Council’s push to stop DPD from this kind of enforcement except on special occasions keeps the problem going, makes the law-abiding suckers, and leaves money the City is actually owed on the table.

Incorrect. At least 6 hospitals vow to end child sex changes after Trump DOJ finds gender clinics have been committing flagrant healthcare fraud. They were diagnosing kids with diseases they didn’t have to get insurance to pay for hormones they never needed. This is literally the apex of criminal healthcare fraud. This is the kind of thing that sends docs to prison for decades (I think will be coming soon).🤞

Why are corporations leaving Denver? ReMax, Palantir, Optiv. These aren't unlimited piggy banks for them to raid. What built Denver into a strong city? Corporations. However they continue to demonized the biggest revenue makers for the city. It's a doom spiral.

Companies are the next victims of our rapacious desire for more bureaucracy and graft…

Had a homeless drugged out woman in my backyard yesterday in the AM. She just opened the front gate and came on in to the backyard. Said she was looking for water. I almost went off. I calmed down, asked her to leave. But before she left I gave her a lg bottle of water. She was barefoot, filthy. So sad but also sooo scary. There has to be a way to get these people off our streets. There has to be help or institutions for these people. We live in one of THE nicest areas in Denver. Bring back insane asylums ASAP. Ok call them long term mental hospitals. I don’t care but we MUST do something. I don’t know if she was dangerous, I’m just glad my husband was home. It’s a very sad state this country is in. And I have to tell you how much I would like to be in a position to do more for her, but the risk and danger to my life is just too much. It made me cry. It is just so sad. And I know it can happen to anyone mainly because of the fentanyl and drugs, but I cannot endanger my life to help. In the older days these people were institutionalized and they should be now. It is the only way to MAYBE turn their lives around.

I am forced to go to downtown Denver one day a month for work. I have disciplined myself not to buy a single item when I’m down there. I try not to buy anything in the city and county of Denver.

Anyone catch the “fee for fire inspections” as a way to potential gain revenue?

marxism can be traced back to the sophists. Bullshitters have been warping the perception of reality since time began.

Blake & 18th. Yesterday a vagrant tried to steal a woman’s bag. Witnesses say he knocked her to the ground, assaulted her, pulled her hair, and bit her. Witnesses report that it still took four guys and pepper spray to get him off her. Bet you didn’t hear about this on the news. @denversmayor

“given itself over to conspiracy theories and abandoned reason” This gives me chills. A population no longer interested in, or able to discern reality is dangerous. It is destabilized. It is unmoored & easily fragmented. I see it all around us. I’m continually surprised by the embrace of conspiracy-thinking & emotive subjectivism that seems to dominate so much of our discourse. People sharing conspiracy theories, & using emotional conjecture as parameters for the validity of their beliefs. It was most visible with people who identified as being on the Left, but now it’s very visible on the non-Left. Conspiratorial thinking & the sorting of people into categories seems to be an increasingly dominant mode of navigating the world. Collectivism is toxic. The friend-enemy-distinction in politics, & much of conspiratorial thinking are collectivist. They demand you identify groups (“friends,” “enemies”), & make it existential. But in so doing, they actually are making things existential. The sorting actually is threatening, & the closer everyone marches towards aligning with certain group identities & in opposition to others, the farther we get from the kind of society that makes individual liberty possible. The embracing of conspiracy & the rejecting of reason create the conditions for tyranny.

Businesses don’t pay taxes. People pay taxes. It’s all passed down in one form or fashion. No wonder 40% of Denver office space is vacant.

They really have no clue why businesses are leaving Denver.

Fucking clueless. They will never admit that their own policies have created this mess.

Excellent point.

Attention #Denver motorists and car commuters: don't look now but your pockets are about to be picked by a failing city desperate for revenue. @9NEWS reports that Denver’s 2027 budget plans to raise 51 percent more from traffic tickets and other court fines and forfeits: $6.2 million this year, $9.3 million next year. The city plans to see a $3.1 million jump in revenue generated by traffic stops, according to @9NEWS9NEWS: archive.li/viTVL. The city isn't adding officers. It will be pulling beat cops off patrol and siccing them on already besieged motorists and car commuters, in a campaign consciously aimed at replenishing depleted city coffers. The city's emphasis isn't on fighting street crime; it's on turning anyone who drives on city streets into a criminal (and cash cow). That is not a new thing. It's consistent with a prevailing pattern in the Mile High City, and another chapter in Denver’s war on cars. "Road diets" shrink the asphalt. Car lanes are subtracted, or become bike lanes. “Twenty is plenty” talk aims to slow the commute to a crawl. Each tactic makes the motorist and the car commuter more miserable, then treats the resulting conflicts (and collisions) as proof that driving is the problem. The roadway safety double standard fits the same pattern. Most cars have plates, licenses, and insurance, so they can be ticketed, filmed, and billed for a litany of potential infractions. The Lawless Swarm that has taken over the roads -- unplated minibikes, throttle “e-bikes,” ATVs, scooters, skateboards, rickshaws, tuk-tuks, you name it -- violates the rules with total impunity. Micromobility mob members need no licenses, no permits, no liability insurance, no nothing. The cops have given-up on reining them in or holding them accountable. When a crash comes, the insured driver pays, and is invariably cast as the villain. The uninsured machine and it's unlicensed and uninsured operator vanishes into thin air, or sues the skirt off the driver involved in the mishaps that predictably result from the complete chaos. "Vision Zero," in practice, means punish the motorist -- and free the micromobility mob to run wild, with zero costs or consequences. Now the mask is off. Budget shortfalls have turned drivers into cash cows. City leaders want to pick the pockets of the people who get licensed, register their vehicles, carry insurance, pay their taxes and try to play by the rules, while ignoring and enabling the scofflaws who have made Denver streets feel closer to Calcutta than anything else. Why is there a city plan to jack up motorist tickets and no plan to curb, or collect ticket revenue from, the lawless swarm? Because motorist misery and elevated risk is the policy; a revenue boost is the bonus. This isn't about improving public safety. It's about a city that cynically plans to milk and bilk the only road users it can invoice, all while incrementally raising the danger for everyone who uses a Denver street or sidewalk. #copolitics #coleg @MikeJohnstonCO @GovofCO #thewaroncars

It’s a very peculiar state of affairs here in Colorado. Our leftist friends in the Democrat Party of Colorado actually run their entire campaigns on raising your taxes and regulating everything you do and own to death and they win by fairly large margins. This is primarily due to their much smarter, kinder and more enlightened base of voters who are too cool for school to notice their surroundings turning to poo.