"If the city is going to cut its budget, it's going to affect everyone and bother citizens, and I ask for forgiveness for that," Mendoza says. "But from the human perspective, we're in the streets, sleeping with clothes on top of us; we haven't bathed; we wash up and look for a little bit of warmth in a Wendy's or Walmart."
Simply put, he adds: "We need help. If we had work, we'd help ourselves. It's tough, and we're responsible for the situation we're in. But we're humans. I'm sorry."
At a press conference on Friday, February 9, Mayor Mike Johnston shared his disappointment in the U.S Senate for killing a bipartisan border bill that would have put $1.4 billion towards local shelters and programs to aid the migrants coming into this country, and announced where the city will make budget cuts so that it can continue responding to the crisis without federal help. The Denver Motor Vehicle Division and the Department of Parks & Recreation, in particular, will have to cut back on services, hours and hiring.
"Trump and elected Republican leaders saw this as a chance that if this bill actually passed, it would have successfully solved the problem," Johnston said. "They would have rather seen it fail so they could exacerbate these problems, extend the suffering of American people and of newcomers for their own electoral chances this November. That was far beyond what I expected from even the most cynical of political operators."
At the beginning of the year, Johnston projected that the city will have to spend $180 million to continue to provide shelter and services for migrants. The city has already spent more than $40 million since December 2022 to either shelter migrants or send them to another location. Almost 40,000 migrants have arrived in Denver over the past fourteen months, although many have moved on; Denver currently has about 3,600 migrants in city-run shelters.
"I am incredibly proud in what the city has done and in what city employees have done," Johnston said. "We have welcomed [about] 40,000 newcomers to this city, and if we're talking about fifty or sixty of them that are unhoused today, that means 99.9 percent of the folks who have shown up to this city in sandals and a T-shirt, with no support and no infrastructure, we have successfully integrated into the fabric of this country."
The $180 million projection was always a worst-case scenario, says Jon Ewing, spokesperson for the Department of Human Services. The city would only reach that number if it had to continue sheltering and serving migrants through the year at the rate it was in early January, when nearly 5,000 migrants were in city-run shelters.
But "without that federal support, we will have to start operating towards that $180 million gap," Johnston said today.
The city had already asked departments last month to begin looking for possible cuts in case Denver had to meet that $180 million projection, which works out to $15 million a month.
To save just $5 million, the city is cutting back some in-person services at DMV and Parks & Rec. While the city is also canceling a few new hires and plans not to activate on-call workers for the summer, Johnston said layoffs won't be necessary — although hourly workers in both departments will lose work hours. Also, the city won't be able to plant its flower beds this spring.
Johnston acknowledged that among the on-call summer workers are "folks that have been seasonal workers for us for twenty years who count on that income, so I don't want to hide the fact that this matters," he said.
David Lopez stands on Federal Boulevard with a sign asking for work and roses he's offering in exchange for donations.
Bennito L. Kelty
The cuts won't affect services offered by the Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles, such as providing driver's licenses, ID cards and instruction permit testing, among other things. County motor vehicle departments like Denver's set their hours and fees separately and offer different services, which the state notes online.
Starting March 4, the Denver Motor Vehicle Division will stop in-person vehicle registration renewals, requiring residents to do the process through the mail, online or at kiosks. Residents can mail their renewal applications to the main DMV location, and a map of kiosk locations is online. Some in-person services will still be available, including obtaining license plates, new vehicle registrations and title services.
Meanwhile, Parks & Recreation will cancel a quarter of its spring programming, registration for which begins on March 5, and rec centers will reduce hours. Regional recreation centers — such as the Carla Madison and Washington Park centers — will go from opening seven days a week to six. Local and neighborhood centers will stay open six days a week but will reduce their hours of operation.
The city will provide updated schedules next week; the new hours of operations for rec centers will start on February 20.
Parks & Recreation will also stop taking new applications for three types of permits: public event permits, special occasion permits and tournament permits. Any permit requested on or before February 4 for historic or new events — like the Outside Festival — won't be affected, however.
The city already made cuts in January to pay for its migrant response. It took $10 million from its contingency fund and $15 million from $29 million set aside to remodel the Richard T. Castro building, a general office and public services center that houses more than 800 employees with the Department of Human Services, the agency leading the migrant response.
With the January cuts and the cuts announced February 9, Denver is saving $30 million that can be used for its migrant response down the road. Johnston said the city plans to "decrease the number of newcomers served," too, but didn't detail how it plans to do so as migrants continue to arrive.
Because many migrants haven't been able to get permission to work, some have taken to the streets to squeegee car windows. Lately, more have started offering roses in exchange for donations.
David Lopez, a Venezuelan migrant who arrived in Denver four days ago with his wife and daughter, bought a dozen roses for $7 from another migrant earlier and was selling them on the corner of Federal Boulevard and West 23rd Avenue on Friday. He offers "thanks to the United States and Denver for the opportunity to come here with my family," but says that services from the city "is all the support we have because we can't work."
Like Mendoza, Lopez says he and other migrants "don't want to cause any problems for the people here. We're selling roses and working on our own account to find food and bread for the day."
Grateful for Denver's help, Mendoza points to a baseball cap he's wearing with one of the Denver Broncos'retro logos. "I'm a Broncos fan now," he says. "Someone gave this to me and told me that this is Denver's football team, and I decided I'll be a Broncos fan. I want to be a part of this city because it's done so much for me."
