Funding for the reconstruction of the 16th Street Mall was solidified by the Denver City Council’s vote on July 20, but only after a last-minute effort to take away $56 million — half of the resources — and send $33 million of it to Denver Public Schools. Like nearly all questions raised as we debate public policy, this was a worthy debate to have, and I welcomed it. In the end, a meticulous review of all the circumstances shows that on balance, the best decision was made.
I’m writing in response to Paul Vranas’ guest commentary in The Denver Post of July 19, the day before City Council voted. The major problem with requests to defund the Mall project and fund DPS is that the schools, in need of funding especially with the budget impact of COVID, would not have seen any of the $33 million for another two and a half years. The Tax Increment Fund, which holds $56 million collected over decades of value-added property taxation in the downtown core, doesn’t expire until Jan. 1, 2023.
So, could the city and the Denver Urban Renewal Authority have renegotiated that agreement and break the fund now? Perhaps. Then what would happen? The windfall to DPS most likely would have triggered an offsetting reduction in K-12 state aid, which is based on districts’ property tax revenues. It would have been a Pyrrhic victory with little to no gain for the students at all.
But this was not entirely a zero-sum game. Far from it, in fact. Because yanking that DURA funding from the table at the last minute of a decade-long consensus-driven plan to rebuild the nearly 40-year-old transit asset would have collapsed the rest of the capital stack like a Jenga game. More than $20 million in federal aid flowing through the Denver Regional Council of Governments’ allocation process? Gone. Another $12.8 million in federal transit funding flowing through RTD? Gone. Even the $5.4 million from Denver Water to replace an 1880s water line deep below the street — evaporated. All that might have been salvaged would be $13 million in bonds voters approved in 2017 specifically to rebuild the mall, not enough for the job and not applicable to routine maintenance.
And make no mistake. The mall is a maintenance nightmare. Within a year of its 1982 opening, I wrote an article in the Rocky Mountain News detailing how the granite curbing already was pulling away from the sidewalks down near the Tabor Center. Downtown pedestrians have done their best impressions of Scott Hamilton or Michelle Kwan on the slick-as-soap pavers during rain and snow. The subsurface failures routinely loosen the stones to the tune of more than $1 million a year. This is not a vanity project, but a recalibration of one of our major mobility assets.
In a time of recession and high unemployment, it will provide good-paying skilled trades jobs to working families. Had this funding been pulled, more than 800 jobs would have gone with it. Worse, this valuable asset would continue to deteriorate without any reasonable prospect for reassembling all the funding sources, likely for many more years.
And all this for no real gain for DPS or its students. In the end, with everything considered, it was most reasonable to proceed with the project.
Kevin Flynn is the Denver City Council member representing southwest Denver’s District 2.
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