Denver will cut hours at recreation centers, end in-person vehicle registration renewals and eliminate spring flower beds to save $5 million this year, a response to the migrant crisis that is expected to cost the city $180 million.
Mayor Mike Johnston on Friday blasted Congress for failing this week to pass a $118.3 billion bill aimed at stopping the flow of illegal entry at the southern border and making it easier for migrants who enter legally to get work permits.
About 40,000 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, have arrived in Denver over the past year, and more than 3,500 are living in city-funded hotel rooms. Thousands took bus rides to other American cities after arriving in Denver, and an unknown number are trying to stay in the city, find jobs and send their kids to school.
Denver has received more migrants per capita than any other city in the nation, the mayor has said.
Denver set up emergency operations to welcome the new arrivals, opened city buildings as shelters and is organizing clinics to help those who are eligible apply for work authorization. Volunteers, meanwhile, mobilized to bring food, and in some cases, tents and propane heaters for those who are living outside.
“I want to thank every resident in the city who has showed up to cook a meal for someone who has arrived, who has welcomed somebody to their home, who has offered them a job, who said, ‘We will help you find your way,’” the mayor said during an emotional news conference in which he got choked up more than once. “You’ve done your part. The city will do our part. The federal government did not do their part.”
The budget cuts announced Friday amount to just one-fortieth of what the influx of newcomers will cost the city, Johnston said. They are also just the beginning, he said, as he plans to talk to the City Council about more cuts in the weeks to come.
Recreation centers will close one day each week. Division of Motor Vehicle satellite offices in the city will alternate closing one week at a time beginning March 4, and residents can no longer renew vehicle registrations in person. Denver Parks & Recreation will not plant flower beds this spring and will cut spring programs by 25%.
No full-time employees will lose their jobs, the mayor said, but some hourly and seasonal workers may have hours cut or positions will be left open. “I want it to be clear to Denverites who is not responsible for this crisis that we’re in: The folks who have walked 3,000 miles to get to this city,” Johnston said, describing families he met who were fleeing violence and poverty in Venezuela.
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The mayor said he met one Venezuelan father who lost half of his family along the treacherous journey through the jungle. The family left their 13-year-old daughter behind in Colombia because they worried she would get raped on the journey. The rest trudged over a mountain pass, where the 8-year-old reached for his dog near the edge of a cliff.
“And the dog goes over the edge. And the child goes over the edge. And the mom goes over the edge chasing that child and that dog, and the dad is standing there watching his entire family be lost in a matter of seconds,” Johnston said. “Those folks get up the next day, and keep walking and keep walking and keep walking until they get to this country.”
“And they have asked for nothing but the ability to work and support themselves.”
Johnston said the city is “paying careful attention” to the minority of migrants who are living in encampments, a number he estimated at 50-60 people.
“That means 99.9% of the folks who have shown up to this city in sandals and a T-shirt with no services and no support and no infrastructure, we have successfully integrated into the fabric of this country,” he said.
But the help that Denver has provided over the past year is not sustainable, he said. “What is true now is we’re entering into a different stage, which is without any federal support, without any work authorization, without changes to policy, we’re going to have to make changes to what we can do in terms of our city budget,” he said.
Members of Colorado’s congressional delegation were also seething about the sinking of the immigration reform bill.
“Unless Congress tackles comprehensive immigration reform, we’re just kicking the can down the road,” U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat who served as Denver’s mayor from 2003 to 2011, said in an emailed statement.
“If we only seek to restrict legal pathways into this country, then the few that remain available will always be overwhelmed. We need an immigration system that isn’t so dysfunctional that families have to risk their lives with cartels and desert crossings to seek a better life.”
A bipartisan group of lawmakers had spent months working on the immigration reform bill before releasing it Sunday. A group of Republican lawmakers in the U.S. Senate blocked the bill. It needed 60 votes to pass, but failed on a 49-50 vote.