Local

Denver City Council braces for layoffs, deep cuts—but Mayor Johnston delays details

The Denver City Council met atop Lookout Mountain at Golden’s Boettcher Mansion last week to plan for the 2026 budget. The elected leaders knew they would likely need to make cuts — but nobody knew just how bad the city’s fiscal situation might be.

“I’ve been hearing rumors of layoffs and furloughs,” Councilmember Stacie Gilmore said as the all-day meeting began on Friday.

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A tale of two cities: How two Colorado mayors stand far apart on immigration

Colorado’s two most populous cities are separated by fewer than 60 miles, but when it comes to their approach to immigration law enforcement, the mayors of Colorado Springs and Denver stand much farther apart.

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Denver sees 58% drop in homicides amid stricter immigration policies and crime crackdown

A tougher approach on immigration and crime is yielding significant results in Denver, with the city experiencing a 58% drop in homicides during the first three months of 2025 compared to the same period last year.

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Governor’s executive order threatening loss of funding draws fire for overriding local housing control

Gov. Jared Polis is putting local governments on notice: Either they comply with state housing laws, or they risk losing at least $100 million a year in state funding.

The governor signed an executive order that takes the battle over local control to a new level. Over the last two years, he’s signed bills regarding residential occupancy limits and accessory dwelling units, transit-oriented communities and manufactured homes, and even limits on staircases and parking spots.

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Radio outage at Denver Air Traffic Control Center, FAA points to antiquated system and staffing levels

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a radio failure at the Denver Air Traffic Control Center, which covers approximately 285,000 square miles of airspace covering parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. The outage temporarily affected communications Monday.

According to the FAA, both transmitters that cover a segment of airspace went down around 1:50 p.m., causing a loss of communications to part of the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center for about 90 seconds. The FAA said the outage affected some flights approaching Denver International Airport.

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Denver Council Members say Johnston bond proposal is being rushed to voters

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s new $800 million bond package is expected to make its way to voters this fall, but some City Council members working to whittle down the wish list of projects said the process is rushed and the bond issue could wait until next year.

“I am not okay with the process at all,” District 5 Councilmember Amanda Sawyer told members of the city’s Vibrant Denver Bond working group on Wednesday. “I want to apologize to the staff in Department of Finance, because you guys have been set up for failure and you have been asked for extraordinary work in a very limited amount of time…So I want to make it very clear: you are doing an amazing job.”

Sawyer added: “The problems that we are talking about here are not your fault. They are the mayor’s office’s fault.”

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ICE’s gang member deportations linked to sharp drop in Denver, Aurora murder rates

New data shows that homicides in Denver and Aurora, Colorado, have experienced a significant drop in the wake of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) efforts to take down the Tren de Aragua gang members that had been causing so much chaos in the area.

But local Americans are still being killed by President Joe Biden’s migrants, including a 24-year-old woman killed in July of 2024 in Aurora by a 15-year-old reckless illegal-migrant driver. The local prosecutor just offered a sweetheart probation and community service deal to the youth migrant who is now applying for humanitarian asylum.

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First in the state: District 49 bans boys from girls’ sports, sues state over anti-discrimination laws

COLORADO SPRINGS — Colorado’s 18th largest school district, located about 15 miles northeast of Colorado Springs in El Paso County, appears to be the first to unilaterally develop transgender athlete regulations in adherence to recent presidential executive orders.

Saying that “there are inherent differences between boys and girls, meaning biological males and biological females” the Falcon 49 school board last week enacted a new policy specifying in part that “classification of sports team participation by biological sex is therefore necessary to preserve and promote equal opportunity for District 49’s female athletes.”

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