After four hours of public comment and board discussion, the RTD directors voted to send the proposal back to the Operations, Safety and Security committee to hammer out details. A final vote on the issue is expected in September.

The board had in front of it a recommendation from RTD staff to increase the fare for Access-on-Demand rides from no charge to $6.50. RTD subsidies per ride would have been reduced from $25 to $20 under the plan. There would still be a 60 ride-per-month cap in place.

A stream of people with disabilities took to the microphone Tuesday evening and beseeched the RTD board to leave the Access-on-Demand program alone, calling it “life-changing” for those with limited mobility. One speaker said the service, which uses third-party services such as Lyft and Uber to provide rides, has made grocery shopping possible for her, and she asked the board to allow her to live the “same kinds of lives you live.”

During the course of the evening, directors proposed lowering the $6.50 fare to $4.50, and then to $2.50. Dropping the fare by $2 per ride would cost RTD $1.4 million in revenues.

Director JoyAnn Ruscha pushed hard to keep Access-on-Demand service free.

“People will lose jobs; they will lose access,” Ruscha said. “There is a human cost.”

Director Chris Nicholson pointed out that cutting RTD revenues by keeping the service free would result in financial impacts to other parts of the sprawling transit system.

A group of 50 or so people with disabilities gathered in front of RTD’s headquarters building on Blake Street on Tuesday afternoon. One person held a sign reading: “Our Mobility is Not Optional.” Another read: “We Can’t Drive — Don’t Cut Our Rides.”

Dave Bahr, who is blind and lives in Louisville, said he relies on Access-on-Demand to visit his girlfriend Chelsea Cook, who lives in Littleton and is also blind.

“It is literally our lifeline,” Bahr said. “It makes my relationship with Chelsea possible.”

Cook, who uses Access-on-Demand for such travel as getting to work or rock climbing outings, said Access-on-Demand is far more convenient and efficient than Access-a-Ride.

“You can be on that little bus for four hours,” she said of Access-a-Ride.

Bahr said being able to travel in a regular vehicle rather than on a specially equipped bus makes him “feel human.”

“It is my lifeline to where I go and who I see,” he said of Access-on-Demand.

Disability activists have a long history — stretching back to the 1970s — of fighting for services and accommodations from RTD.

In 1997, the agency added the “paratransit” minibus service, called Access-a-Ride, for people who, because of disabilities, cannot use buses or light rail trains. The minibuses require day-before reservations (standard fare $4.50) and cost RTD more than $60 per trip. Riders complain that they fail to reach their destinations on time.

The Access-a-Ride service complies with the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Five years ago, RTD leaders launched the Access-on-Demand, one of the first comprehensive programs in the nation to provide taxpayer-funded commercial ride-hail service for people with disabilities. It gives qualified riders up to 60 rides a month to locations they choose using Uber, Lyft or Metro Taxi.

RTD pays up to $25 per ride, which typically covers riders’ costs (the average ride cost is $16).

Hours and range of coverage for Access-on-Demand would “mirror” that of Access-a-Ride.

In metro Denver, riders with disabilities have embraced Access-On-Demand. The number of rides they took increased tenfold, from 6,250 a month in January 2021 to more than 62,750 a month, agency records show.

RTD’s monthly cost for Access-on-Demand has ballooned to more than $1 million. Agency managers recently told the board of directors that the program isn’t financially sustainable. RTD projects that the recommended changes would shave about $5.6 million off the $15 million price tag — or about 36% — needed to run the program.

Brian Grewe is executive director of Atlantis Community Inc., a Denver-based nonprofit that helps people with disabilities to live independently. He said he would like to see more emphasis put on building out the Access-on-Demand service over the Access-a-Ride program.

“AoD serves more people and costs less money,” Grewe said.

Inside the hearing room, Grewe told the board that $6.50 per ride doesn’t sound like much in isolation. But that cost is for just “one ride, one location” and that the total quickly adds up across multiple trips, he said.

In other business Tuesday, the RTD board voted unanimously to rename Civic Center Station after Wade Blank, a disability activist who was at the forefront of a movement in 1978 in which people with disabilities blocked downtown Denver streets to demand greater accommodations on RTD buses.

The station will be renamed the Wade Blank Civic Center Station in January. Blank co-founded Atlantis Community Inc.

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Francis has listened to lots of music — the other day he took a deep dive into the catalogues of Steely Dan and Led Zeppelin — while rolling the 48 miles down Interstate 25 from Loveland, where he lives, to Denver’s Union Station. Then it’s just about a mile to his office on Broadway.

The 62-year-old IBM manager doesn’t miss the white-knuckle driving through narrow passageways in I-25 construction zones. Or the sudden halts as a cascade of brake lights go red in front of him. Or, when he looks in the rearview mirror, the dread of a big rig bearing down on him.

“I think that’s the beauty of it, is that my mood isn’t dictated by the drive,” Francis said. “Rather, I just sit and relax, have a snack and listen to whatever makes me happy at the time.”

But key to making the public transportation experience worthwhile, Francis says, is ease of use. And that’s where the Colorado Department of Transportation’s mobility hubs, the first of which opened in Loveland less than a year ago — with more to come in the next few years across Colorado — play a critical role.

“When I board the bus, it’s going to be a straight shot,” he said, “with no twisting and turning.”

On a recent weekday morning, Francis stepped on a Denver-bound bus at the Centerra Loveland Mobility Hub, a dedicated Bustang stop wedged between the northbound and southbound lanes of I-25 just north of U.S. 34. The bus rolled up, Francis got on and both were gone.

Time elapsed: about 30 seconds.

Danny Katz, a transit advocate and executive director of CoPIRG, or the Colorado Public Interest Research Group, said there’s no doubt the easy on-and-off that CDOT provides with these new facilities will add to the allure of transit. They may also bring some measure of relief to Colorado’s famously congested highways.

“Before these mobility hubs, the bus would have to get off the highway like everyone else and make multiple turns — some of them left turns,” Katz said. “In the best of times, it adds two to three minutes, and in the worst of times, it adds four or five minutes.”

Speed, reliability and frequency, he said, are the “key ingredients” of successful transit. And mobility hubs directly address the speed and reliability challenge by making the boarding and disembarking process seamless.

“It’s very train-like,” Katz said.

Opened last fall, the Centerra Loveland Mobility Hub was the first in a network of a dozen or so mobility hubs that CDOT will be rolling out in the coming years, mostly along I-25 from Fort Collins to Pueblo. A second hub in Berthoud, 10 miles down the highway, opened a few weeks after Loveland’s hub went online.

CDOT contractors broke ground on two more mobilty hubs in recent weeks — Broomfield/Thornton and Skyridge/Lone Tree, down in Douglas County. They are expected to be fully operational in 2026.

Longer-term plans call for mobility hubs in Castle Rock, Colorado Springs and Pueblo. On I-70, CDOT has hubs destined for Idaho Springs and Grand Junction. Another is in the design phase for Fairplay on U.S. 285.

CDOT executive director Shoshana Lew calls mobility hubs the “center of gravity” of Colorado’s regional transit network.

But it’s their connections to local, shorter-range transit options — be it local buses, shuttles, scooters or bike services — that make them hubs.

“The secret is to integrate into growing local systems,” Lew said. “We want to ensure that the buildout of the I-25 corridor is a multimodal one.”

Bustang ridership on the upswing

Bustang first hit the road a decade ago this month, taking passengers to and from Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins and Glenwood Springs. The system, including a Bustang Outrider offshoot, has grown to 20 routes serving far-flung locations in the state — Craig, Durango, Alamosa, Lamar, Crested Butte and Sterling among them.

CDOT also offers seasonal Snowstang service to several ski resorts in the I-70 corridor, and it runs Bustang buses to Broncos games in the fall.

Bustang’s fortunes, compared to the Regional Transportation District’s, are stark. RTD provides bus and train service across metro Denver. While RTD’s ridership decreased from 106 million in 2019 to around 65 million per year today — the result of pandemic restrictions and a shift away from traditional commuting patterns — Bustang has gone the other way.

Ridership on the state’s family of Bustang routes — including high-volume, dozen-buses-a-day service along I-70 between Denver and Grand Junction and I-25 between Fort Collins and Colorado Springs — exceeded 350,000 in the fiscal year that just ended June 30, according to CDOT. That was up from 175,000 in 2021.

“The North Line is up to prepandemic levels,” said Heather Paddock, CDOT’s region transportation director for northeast Colorado.

The North Line is the Bustang route that connects Fort Collins with Union Station in Denver. It’s the route Cecil Gutierrez, a former Loveland mayor who’s now a state transportation commissioner, takes when he wants to catch a show or attend a meeting in Denver.

“It’s been a big success,” he said of the line.

Not long after the Loveland mobility hub opened last fall, Gutierrez said, CDOT doubled the service frequency on the North Line, which has 12 buses a day now going in each direction on I-25. North Line ridership has exploded in the last five years, from just over 13,000 passengers in 2021 to more than 92,000 in the 2025 fiscal year that just ended, CDOT says.

“If we want to make Bustang reliable and accessible, the frequency of the ride is always going to be a piece of that,” he said.

Lew, CDOT’s executive director, said officials realize the agency is always “competing for people’s business.” So everything counts when it comes to making travel as easy as possible — both inside and outside the bus.

Inside, there is free Wi-Fi service, along with bathrooms, power outlets and luggage bays. Outside, the service has to be constant and reliable, in the spirit of what RTD is hoping to provide with bus rapid transit on East Colfax, where buses will ride in a dedicated lane to keep from getting tangled up with other traffic.

Similarly, Bustang buses get to ride in the express lane for much of the distance between Fort Collins and Denver. (Express lanes are under construction between Berthoud and Longmont.)

That’s crucial to keeping the service running reliably, Paddock said.

Mobility hubs, she said, can range in cost from $3 million for a basic design to $25 million for something more ambitious. Centerra Loveland cost $15 million to build, Paddock said.

Calm amongst chaos

Using the Centerra Loveland Mobility Hub feels a bit surreal on a first go.

The station is located in the middle of I-25, a protected oasis inside a roaring interstate. You park your car or scooter and walk up a path to a lighted tunnel that takes you under the interstate. Branching off that tunnel are two more — one to a southbound platform, the other to a northbound platform.

The station has a sheltered bench and an electronic display that shows pickup times throughout the day. The Bustang bus peels off the left side of the highway and into the center median in a dedicated lane, stopping to pick up and drop off passengers. It then merges back onto I-25.

The whole process takes a minute at most. Paddock, of CDOT, said the new arrangement actually shaves 10 minutes off what it took to reach the Park-N-Ride that preceded the Centerra Loveland Mobility Hub.

Not all of CDOT’s mobility hubs will hew to the same design. The Skyridge/Lone Tree hub won’t be center loading, instead sending buses down traditional off-ramps for passenger pickup and drop-off before merging back on the highway. The hub will be tied together with a 260-foot pedestrian bridge over I-25.

Lone Tree Mayor Marissa Harmon said the hub will open next year in the midst of a fast-growing employment center and residential node in metro Denver. It will serve Bustang’s South Line, RTD’s southeast E-Line light rail and the Link on Demand shuttle service that connects to Lone Tree and Highlands Ranch.

The suburban city’s population of 15,000 is expected to double in the coming years.

“Our priority has always been investing in key infrastructure projects before they are needed,” she said. “Those rooftops are popping up quickly over on the east side (of I-25).”

Katz, with CoPIRG, said Lone Tree has done a “great job of creating businesses and residences” right at the nearby Lone Tree City Center rail station, helping to foster transit-oriented development.

Looking south, CDOT has plans for a mobility hub in Castle Rock, which has missed out on the transit game by not being part of the RTD system. CDOT says a location for the Douglas County town’s hub should be identified next year.

There are no completion dates set for the hubs in Colorado Springs and Pueblo.

Francis, the Bustang commuter from Loveland, said the $9 one-way Bustang ticket to Denver has been well worth it. While he could get to his job faster by car, saving time isn’t everything. By using Bustang, he saves wear and tear on his vehicle, keeps his gasoline bill low and doesn’t have to worry about finding and paying for parking downtown.

And there’s the peace of mind of not having to fight the thousands of other motorists on the road every day.

“I don’t know about the traffic and I don’t care,” he said. “This trip is not under my control, and I accept that.”

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As structured, nearly half of the proposed bond would pay for transportation, mobility and road safety projects, while about 25% would go toward improvements for city buildings and cultural facilities. Parks and recreation projects account for nearly 20% of the total. Further changes are still possible.

A couple of the proposed big-ticket items — for repairs, improvements and other work on the aging Sixth and Eighth avenue viaducts over Burnham Yard — would direct nearly $140 million in spending near one potential site for a new Denver Broncos stadium. That was among points that generated discussion during Tuesday’s committee meeting.

The 13-member council will take a first look at the Vibrant Denver bond package on Monday. It’s designed to provide a six-year funding stream for parks, transportation projects, health and human services programs, city facilities — new and existing — and housing and shelter efforts.

A final decision on whether to give voters a say on the measure is slated for Aug. 4.

“I think it is ready,” Councilman Darrell Watson said. “And we do not have time to delay this anymore.”

Watson, who represents District 9 in northern Denver, cautioned his colleagues against increasing the funding request from voters any further. Earlier this year, the prevailing estimate on the package’s size was $800 million.

“Nine-hundred-thirty-five million dollars is, I think, an extraordinary amount,” he said.

The Finance and Business Committee’s vote tally on Tuesday was 6-1, with Councilman Chris Hinds casting the lone no vote.

Some council unease about list

The meeting revealed fundamental unease — and some disagreement — among council members about which projects and which communities the city should prioritize for funding.

Hinds, who represents a central swath of the city, asked why improvements to East 13th and 14th avenues — between Broadway and Quebec Street — weren’t on the project list, given the number of accidents that happen on the one-way thoroughfares.

“I’m going to vote no because I don’t think this is ready,” he said.

Council President Amanda Sandoval spoke about the need to direct money to the West 38th Avenue corridor, where on Monday night a cyclist was killed by a hit-and-run driver near Tejon Street. The bond list includes about $55 million for multimodal and pedestrian safety improvements on 38th, from Sheridan Boulevard east to Fox Street.

But she worried that competition for Vibrant Denver funding could spur unwanted disputes between historically underserved neighborhoods.

“I do not want to pit Black communities against Brown communities,” Sandoval said.

Councilwoman Sarah Parady asked Patrick Riley, the bond program manager with Denver’s Department of Finance, whether improvements to the Sixth and Eighth avenue viaducts were getting big billing in the bond package because of the potential plans of the Broncos’ ownership nearby.

“It is impossible to ignore the Broncos as a thing in Denver,” Riley acknowledged. “So telling you that there’s no weight there, or that there’s no consideration there, would be insulting to everybody at this table.”

But he also said the condition of the viaducts has long been the subject of discussion and that work on them is an “independent need.”

The most expensive project listed is $89 million for the Eighth Avenue viaduct, including replacement of some of it with an at-grade road. Another $50 million would go to repairs and improvements on the Sixth Avenue viaduct.

What’s on the list?

Johnston announced the Vibrant Denver initiative in February. But getting council members and the mayor to see eye to eye on what should be funded, and at what level, has been a bumpy road in recent weeks.

In all, there are 59 projects listed for funding. Other high-cost items include $75 million for a newly consolidated first responder training center. Another $75 million would go toward making road improvements and building a railroad underpass at the National Western Center.

The buildout of a park on the former Park Hill golf course property would be allocated $70 million. Support for affordable housing projects by the city’s private partners would receive $50 million.

And Red Rocks Amphitheatre is identified to receive $39 million for backstage expansion and accessibility improvements. Riley pointed out that the iconic concert venue in Jefferson County essentially subsidizes Denver’s arts scene.

“Our arts and cultural health exists because Red Rocks allows it to,” he said.

Other notable projects include improvements at Boettcher Concert Hall, replacement of a Denver Health family clinic in west Denver, replacement of the Sixth Avenue and Lincoln Street bridges over Cherry Creek at Speer Boulevard, and renovations of the Denver Animal Shelter, the Montbello Branch Library and the Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library.

Changes to the list in recent weeks — in response to council concerns — included more than a dozen projects added. At the same time, a project at the Denver Zoo was reduced from $50 million to $3 million, and a project for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science also took a hit, going from $10 million to $3 million.

Denver’s most recent bond programs were Elevate Denver, a 10-year, $937 million general obligation bond package approved by voters in 2017, and RISE Denver, a five-year, $260 million program approved in 2021 — both of which still have projects underway or in the queue.

The city says the bonds issued under Vibrant Denver wouldn’t result in a property tax increase because they’d replace earlier debt as it was paid off.

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“That is our dream for this precocious Queen City of the Plains, where we don’t believe in ‘can’t.’ We don’t believe in ‘impossible,’ ” the mayor said. “A place where we turn to each other, and not on each other. A place where we believe in working to build something bigger than us, that includes all of us and lasts longer than any of us.”

He cast his hopeful phrase as the opposite dynamic of “learned helplessness,” or the fear that no matter what someone does, it won’t make a difference.

Johnston, who last Thursday marked two years since being sworn into office, touched on homelessness, immigration, the revival of downtown Denver — with its 7 million square feet of vacant office space — and the city’s role in tackling climate change. Also, to knowing nods in the audience: the future of the Broncos in Denver.

“Yes, we will get a long-term deal to keep the Denver Broncos here in Denver,” the 50-year-old mayor said to several hundred people gathered for the 40-minute speech in the Seawell Ballroom at the Denver Performing Arts Complex. Unlike in past years, the usual daytime speech was delivered at an evening event.

Johnston has scored successes in his first two years. Street homelessness has decreased in visibility under his tenure, the result of a massive sheltering effort. On Monday, the mayor said that data point has dropped by 45% since 2023 in Denver — “the largest multiyear decrease in unsheltered homelessness of any city in American history.” (Overall homelessness has risen, however.)

“We’ve closed every large encampment in the city, and reopened sidewalks to pedestrians and businesses,” Johnston said. “We have moved 7,000 people off the streets and moved 5,000 people into permanent housing.”

But there are layoffs of city workers in the offing — the first in 15 years — amid an anticipated $250 million budget shortfall. Johnston spoke about several other areas of challenge for the city during his speech, saying that efforts so far have not been “good enough.”

“We still have business owners on Broadway who don’t feel safe having staff members close up the shop and walk to their cars after work, and that’s not good enough,” Johnston said. “We still have teachers leaving our schools and nurses leaving our hospitals to move back home to the Midwest, because they can’t afford to live in this city anymore, and that’s not good enough.”

The mayor said the city is on the right track when it comes to public safety, noting that Denver’s homicide rate this year has dropped by 46%.

“Adjusting for population, our homicide rate this year is the lowest in the last decade,” he said. “Auto theft is down by over 50%, and catalytic converter theft has dropped by over 90%.”

He credited some of that improvement to better interaction between police and residents.

“We have officers out walking beats, building relationships with our neighbors on trust patrols,” Johnston said. “And in the midst of turbulent political times, our officers have stood up for freedom of speech and kept the peace at more than 200 demonstrations — both large and small over these last two years.”

Part and parcel of reviving downtown Denver, which was beaten down during the COVID-19 pandemic and then had to endure a multiyear 16th Street mall reconstruction project, is revamping the city’s permitting system, Johnston said.

Developers have complained for years that the city’s cumbersome construction permitting process takes far too long, adding costs to projects. In April, Johnston signed his first executive order, creating the Denver Permitting Office.

“We took a process that used to take three years and made a promise: Your permit will be done in 180 days or we’ll refund up to $10,000 in fees,” he said to applause.

But relations between Johnston and the City Council have not always been smooth of late, with some council members expressing frustration with the mayor for not paying enough attention to their concerns. One of those sticking points has been a mammoth bond issue that is being pitched to voters in the November election.

Through the measure, the city would pay for projects like road and park improvements by issuing debt if voters approve the “Vibrant Denver” bond package this fall.

Earlier this year, city officials estimated the proposal would reach about $800 million, but the most recent version — which isn’t yet final — totals $935 million, including contingency and administration costs as well as some added projects requested by council members.

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Commerce City this month launched the state’s first program of its type, in which operators can pilot drones quickly across town to put electronic eyes on emergency calls — with the goal of giving first responders a critical heads-up on what they might encounter at a chaotic scene.

“I don’t have to put an officer in a car with a drone and send him to a location to launch the drone,” said Commerce City police Cmdr. Jeremy Jenkins, who oversees the nascent program. “We can just launch the drone.”

And Commerce City did just that on July 9 — the third day of its drone-as-first-responder, or DFR, operations in the city of 70,000. A licensed police drone pilot used a new DJI M30T drone to track a man on a stolen motorcycle until he stopped at a residence, where officers then used the element of surprise to confront and apprehend him without incident.

A convicted felon with three felony arrest warrants, the suspect was caught with heroin and meth, a stolen firearm and a revoked driver’s license, police said.

“It was a drone’s first participation in a felony arrest,” Jenkins said, noting there was no on-the-ground police chase or violent encounter. “That’s a high-risk arrest for our officers on the street.”

Commerce City may be early to the concept of using drones as first responders, but it’s not the only Colorado police force embracing the technology.

Castle Rock last month signed a $200,000 annual contract with Flock Safety Systems to deploy its own DFR system. It is set to go live next month. The Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office is considering starting its own effort, while a spokesman for Aurora told The Denver Post that “tests are ongoing with multiple vendors” ahead of any decision by the city.

The state’s largest city does not have a DFR program yet, but a Denver police spokesperson wrote in an unsigned statement to The Post that “it is being developed.”

“The program is likely to develop in phases over the next couple of years,” the statement said. “We are hoping to have a pilot program running in a few months’ time.”

Police departments across Colorado have long used drones to perform searches and rescues or to manage traffic. Some use them to aid in investigations or to monitor large crowds of people, including at protests.

But the idea of drones on standby, ready for instant launching from a stationary dock, is newer.

Civil liberties and privacy advocates preach caution.

“You’re putting police robotic devices above people’s homes and communities — that’s an inherently sensitive thing,” said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union. “We are still in early days.”

Similar concerns have been expressed about some of Flock’s other products, including a network of cameras that read license plates in Denver and other cities. In May, the Denver City Council rejected a contract extension with Flock for that system, in part over concerns that federal authorities might access the data.

Launch from rooftops, always on

Commerce City has four drones in its program as part of a $150,000 annual contract the City Council approved last year with Houston-based Paladin Drones. They sit in standby mode in charging docks on different rooftops in the city, which Jenkins said enables quick citywide coverage.

Police officers with remote pilot certification from the Federal Aviation Administration guide the unmanned aircraft systems to the scene of a 911 call. Using the drone’s camera, officers on the ground who are heading to the scene can be alerted about what is going on and what to watch out for — be it a firearm, an accomplice or another developing hazard.

“Our hope is that the drone can reach any scene in less than three minutes,” Jenkins said. “Getting eyes on a situation before any officer gets there allows us to mitigate danger to our officers.”

The Commerce City Police Department received an FAA waiver to fly its DFR drones beyond the visual line of sight, meaning the pilot can operate the drone after it dips below the horizon and is no longer visible to the naked eye. Jenkins said pilots use the drone’s camera in concert with an integrated digital mapping system to navigate the airspace above Commerce City.

“The waiver allows us to reach more remote parts of the city,” he said.

Commerce City covers 36 square miles. Castle Rock, nearly 40 miles to the south, covers roughly the same area. Its contract with Flock will give the Douglas County town two DFR drones.

“The draw of this product is that it is staged in a dock and it’s on standby at all times,” said Castle Rock police Cmdr. Todd Brown, who will oversee the program. “It lands and charges in place.”

Castle Rock police have obtained a waiver from the FAA to fly at 200 feet above the ground, but town officials want to apply for permission for its drones to reach as high as 400 feet.

“At 200 feet, you can hear that drone,” Brown said, “whereas at 400 feet, it is considerably quieter.”

Chula Vista, California, is often seen as the pioneer in the field, having started its drone-as-first-responder program nearly seven years ago.

The Southern California city, located just a few miles from the Mexican border, has flown more than 22,000 DFR missions since 2018, police Capt. John English said. They have included calls for help, welfare checks and domestic violence incidents.

“Most of what we fly to could be considered disturbance calls,” English said.

One call in late 2023 stands out in his mind. It involved a motorist who drove off Interstate 5 and crashed on a ramp. The drone was able to use thermal imaging to quickly locate the burning car and guide officers to the trapped motorist, he said.

“They were able to pull this motorist to safety seconds before the vehicle became fully consumed,” he said.

Mass-surveillance threat?

English said he saw the drone program as a de-escalation tool, as it gives responding officers a better idea of the lay of the land before they get to a scene. But to allay civil liberties concerns, he said, the Chula Vista Police Department rolled out its program deliberately and with plenty of community input.

“You can’t just bring out the technology and expect the community to be supportive of it,” English said.

To that end, the city has pledged not to use the drones for surveillance or to weaponize them. And it posts every drone flight on its website.

“The public can see exactly where the drones flew and at what times and for what purpose,” he said.

The ACLU’s Stanley said an open approach to police use of drones is a must, and that also applies to the emerging first-responder programs.

“Are they being transparent about it? Are they publishing information about the flights?” he said.

Stanley worries about how long police agencies will retain drone video footage and how investigators might use it. He asked: Will artificial intelligence be used to tease out incidental discoveries — like, say, a marijuana leaf or a car with tinted windows — so police can come down on citizens who might not have had anything to do with the original call?

“The biggest danger is that it morphs into a mass-surveillance device,” Stanley said.

Jenkins, the commander with the Commerce City Police Department, said his department is putting in place guardrails to ensure the mission of the drones doesn’t creep into areas it ought not to be.

There is no plan, he said, to use the first-responder drones as surveillance tools. And when they’re flying, their pilots will be strictly fixed on the task at hand.

“When they are not at the call, the camera is forward-looking and heading to its dock,” Jenkins said. “We absolutely have to maintain our legitimacy with our public.”

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The 7-3 vote defeating an ordinance that would have referred a pay boost measure to the November ballot means council members will continue to make $22,700 a year while the mayor’s salary will stay at $98,000.

Several council members said they heard from constituents that the raises being asked for were too steep.

“Pay raises are hard to pass,” Mayor Mike Coffman said during Monday’s council meeting. “I just don’t think that’s going to fly with the voters.”

The proposed raises — to $151,000 annually for the mayor and to approximately $75,000 for council members — would have substantially boosted pay among Aurora’s elected leaders. Under the proposal, Coffman’s salary would have risen by 52% while most council members would have seen their pay more than triple.

Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky said raises of that magnitude are “pretty much unheard of” for local public servants. The council unanimously passed an introductory version of the pay raise measure on June 23.

Aurora is Colorado’s third-largest city, with just over 400,000 residents calling it home.

The pay raise proposal was structured to pay the Aurora mayor, which is a full-time job, the same as an Arapahoe County commissioner and council members half that amount. The pay adjustments, had they been passed by voters in November, would have taken effect Jan. 1.

Several alternate scenarios for increasing compensation for Aurora’s elected leaders were offered during Monday’s discussion — one reducing the amount of the pay increases and another pushing out its effective date to 2028 — but neither prevailed.

Voters last gave Aurora’s mayor and council members a raise in 2018.

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If voters approved the raises in November, pay for council members and the mayor would jump far more than it did in 2018, when the last change took effect. Mayor Mike Coffman’s salary, now about $98,500, would rise by 52% to more than $150,000 annually. Most council members would see their pay more than triple, from about $22,700 to around $75,000.

The raises — about which some city officials are skeptical, including Coffman — would go into effect Jan. 1.

City Attorney Peter Schulte said the request for bigger paychecks did not come from anyone on the council but came from him and City Manager Jason Batchelor. With Aurora on the cusp of ranking in the top 50 most populous U.S. cities — it now comes in 51st, according to 2024 census estimates — Schulte said council hopefuls should “be able to afford to run for office.”

“We are a big city with big-city issues,” he said, noting that the job can easily demand 40 hours or more of work a week. “It’s not just the (council) meeting twice a month.”

Coffman said he puts about 60 hours a week into his job as mayor of the city of 403,000 — Colorado’s third-largest.

“In addition to meetings on weekdays, I often have scheduled meetings and events on nights and weekends,” the mayor said last week. “This Saturday, I will be doing a 10-hour shift (ride-along) with an (Aurora) patrol officer from 6:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Even when I’m at home, I’m reading reports and answering emails.”

Under the city’s charter, the top position in Aurora is considered full time, while the council seats are considered part-time roles. If the salaries measure is sent to the November ballot, voters would decide on it while also considering candidates for five council seats that are up this year.

In 2017, city voters approved the last major changes to city officials’ salaries, setting them at $80,000 for the mayor and $18,550 for council members. Since then, they’ve received cost-of-living raises, putting Coffman’s salary closer to $100,000 now.

But he doesn’t want another big pay boost.

“I think that the current pay is sufficient for me,” he said. “At age 70, I have outside income from previous careers in government, business and the military, so I’m not reliant on the mayor’s salary as someone else might be, making it difficult for that person to serve.”

Coffman plans to offer an amendment during Monday’s council meeting “to take the mayor out of the proposal.”

“And if my amendment fails, I will oppose,” he said. “Public service is, by itself, supposed to be a sacrifice.”

During the June 23 council meeting, during which a first reading on the issue passed unanimously, Councilwoman Angela Lawson noted that today’s low pay requires some members of the council to work a couple of jobs — in addition to their civic duties — to make ends meet.

Councilwoman Crystal Murillo, who in her day job serves as executive director of the social justice advocacy group Colorado People’s Alliance, thinks higher compensation would broaden the pool of hopefuls who might seek office.

The median household income in Aurora last year, according to census data, was $84,320.

“People can’t survive off this amount,” she said of the still-part-time salary voters approved for council members eight years ago. “I think this is a step toward making this job more accessible.”

Pay is inconsistent across cities

The structure of Aurora’s proposed compensation package for its elected leaders, Schulte said, is directly tied to the pay that Arapahoe County commissioners receive. The mayor would get a commissioner-level salary — $150,991 annually — while the council members would bring home half of that, or around $75,000 per year.

The advantage to this approach, he said, is that salaries in Aurora would automatically float upward in concert with regular cost-of-living adjustments that are made to commissioner pay. It would essentially depoliticize the process of determining compensation by putting future salary increases on autopilot.

“It’s going to be out of the council’s hands if this passes,” Schulte said.

Aurora’s move would echo a measure Denver voters passed last fall. It ended the requirement that the City Council there vote on the salaries of elected officials every four years in favor of adjusting pay levels to track the rise in the consumer price index.

At a yearly $205,991 salary, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston is the highest-paid mayor in Colorado. Council members in the state’s biggest city make $110,596, while the council president is paid $123,846.

Denver has a “strong mayor” form of government, which means that the mayor can hire and fire department heads and veto ordinances that the council passes. Colorado Springs adopted a similar system 15 years ago, but the city’s mayor makes far less than Johnston.

Aurora, for its part, has a council-manager form of government, in which mayoral powers are more equal to those of council members, though the city considered bolstering the mayor’s role two years ago. The effort fizzled out.

Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade’s annual salary is $129,740, the result of a $15,000 bump in pay approved two years ago. But the members of the council for that city of nearly half a million people are still paid a pittance — $6,250 a year.

“We’re the second-largest city in this state — it’s just appropriate for there to be fair pay,” said Colorado Springs Councilwoman Nancy Henjum, who was reelected to a second term in April. “If you want an equal and representative government, you need to pay a living wage.”

There have been many discussions in Colorado Springs about going back to the voters to ask for more money for the city’s elected officials, but so far it hasn’t happened, she said. The last time the council asked for more pay 12 years ago, voters resoundingly said no.

In Greeley, the answer to whether the mayor and the City Council should get a bigger paycheck was also no. That rejection came not from voters but from the potential beneficiaries of the pay bump themselves.

In November, the Greeley council unanimously voted down a raise, keeping annual pay at $12,600 for council members and $18,000 for the mayor.

“We felt pretty consistently that we’re not in it for the pay — so leave it alone,” Greeley Mayor John Gates said. “Salary is not a reason to have people run — and I sort of like that.”

While Gates thinks council pay is sufficient for his fast-growing city of 115,000, he acknowledges the responsibilities and pressures of the office are far heavier in Colorado’s big cities to the south.

“I would feel differently if I was Mike Coffman or Mike Johnston, working the job full time,” he said.

Roles have gotten ‘more complicated’

Kevin Bommer, the executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, which represents many cities and towns around this state, said it’s one thing for the mayor and council members of small cities to go without pay.

For example, Morrison has always had a volunteer mayor and board of trustees, though that will change next year when the trustees are set to start receiving $6,000 a year and the mayor will net an additional $3,000 annually.

“It’s difficult work, it’s time-consuming and it often prevents someone from pursuing a normal career, at least for the time they are serving in public office,” Bommer said. “These positions have gotten more complicated over the years, and let’s face it: We don’t live in the most civil society.”

Aurora Councilwoman Francoise Bergan, who has served for nearly a decade, said she puts in anywhere from 30 to 50 hours a week into the job, serving on three policy committees and several outside boards.

Putting the pay hike proposal before voters at a time when the city is facing a budget shortfall between $20 million and $30 million “is certainly not ideal,” Bergan said.

“In fact, I’m not particularly in favor of it,” she said, “because I believe it could shift the motivation for serving from public service to financial gain.”

Several members of the public spoke out against Aurora’s proposed pay raises at last month’s city council meeting. One man scolded the council while participating in public comment over the phone: “Before you ask us to open our wallets, earn it.”

Coffman, the mayor, said if the Aurora council forwards the measure to the ballot on Monday, it will find out in November whether it has earned the extra cash or not.

“Ultimately,” he said, “the decision will be up to the voters.”

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Fires were spotted on the north and south rims of the Black Canyon after heavy lightning activity early Thursday morning, park spokesperson Lori Rome said. The fires are near Kneeling Camel and the park’s west boundary.

The South Rim fire is burning on 400 to 500 acres and dropped below the canyon rim as it moved west, according to the Gunnison Regional 911 Center. A size estimate for the fire on the north rim was not immediately available.

Multiple aircraft are fighting the fire and a federal incident management team is set to take command of the fire first thing Friday, emergency officials said.

U.S. Bureau of Land Management crews are also fighting the fires, Rome said.

In an early Thursday afternoon post on X, the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention said that one of its engines was responding to the fire on the north rim. The agency stated that the Colorado State Patrol has been called in to help evacuate campgrounds in the park.

There is extreme fire danger in the park and Montrose County is under Stage 1 fire restrictions because of high temperatures, extremely low humidity, gusty winds and dry vegetation, NPS officials said.

Colorado public health officials issued an air quality advisory for Delta, Montrose and southern Mesa counties on Thursday afternoon until Friday morning because of the wildfire smoke.

People should consider remaining indoors and limiting outdoor activity when there’s heavy smoke, state officials said, and if visibility is less than five miles, smoke in the air has reached unhealthy levels.

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Nine of those arrested by agents with the Regional Anti-Violence Enforcement Network were juveniles.

RAVEN initiated the investigation into the gangs in June 2024 after intelligence gathered from the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, an ATF ballistic imaging system, confirmed several suspects were responsible for numerous gang-motivated shootings across metro Denver, according to a Thursday news release.

“RAVEN and its local, state and federal partners are committed to reducing violent gun crime in the Denver metro area,” Aurora police Lt. D.J. Tisdale, who serves as commander of the RAVEN task force, said in a statement. “This case should serve as an example that our dedicated investigators will not stop pursuing those who use firearms to victimize our community until they are arrested and held accountable for their actions.”

The adults arrested are Raijon Bass, 22; Quincy Johnson, 20; Troydell Dixon, 20; Denalii Marshall, 19; Cai-reis Curby, 20; Blanca DeLaTorre, 38; and Ramekia Amerson-Bey, 44.

They face numerous charges of attempted first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, along with varying charges of assault, menacing, aggravated robbery and criminal mischief. Additional charges include possession of a handgun by a juvenile, possession of a high-capacity magazine, illegal discharge of a firearm, and unlawfully providing or permitting a juvenile to possess a handgun. 

The suspects are also accused of violating the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act. They have been charged in Denver District Court.

Lead investigators from the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office and Aurora Police Department worked with Organized Crime Unit prosecutors from the Denver District Attorney’s Office for a year to investigate and document the gangs’ criminal activity.

Investigators said they linked the gangs to at least 16 violent criminal episodes, as well as numerous weapons-related offenses. On June 18 and July 8, RAVEN investigators conducted two operations targeting key members and associates of the gangs.

RAVEN is a regional task force led by the Aurora Police Department, with members from numerous law enforcement agencies around metro Denver and several federal agencies.

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Police said officers responded to a report of a vehicle crashing into a tree in the area of 46th and Tennyson streets at 8:32 p.m. The motorist, an adult male, was pronounced dead at the scene.

The crash is under investigation and no other details were immediately available.

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