Much of our emphasis has been on committees this past month. We have finalized the charters for our committees, and we will be meeting with the committee chairs to ensure that we are all on the same page.
The Membership Committee has been reaching out to other buildings, and our name is getting out there. We now have members representing Spire, Brook’s Towers, Residence XXV, Neusteters and The Lofts at Denver Dry. It’s winter in Denver and the problems that we saw last summer have subsided somewhat. However, that is temporary and with the warmer weather those problems will reappear. I think interest in our cause will really ignite at that time.
The Safety and Quality of Life Committee has met with Commander Sanchez of the Denver Police Department, Evan Dreyer from the Mayor’s office and Sheriff Diggins of the Denver Sheriff’s Department. We have a follow-up meeting scheduled with Dr. Nikki Johnson who runs Denver’s Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) Program. Denver’s City Auditor, Timothy O’Brien, reached out to us and offered to meet to discuss how his office helps the city, and we have scheduled a meeting with him. We have attempted to contact Representative Alex Valdez who is the State Representative for our district (Colorado House District 5) and we are hopeful that we will be able to get something on the calendar. Our next outreach will be to Julie Gonzalez who is the Colorado Senator for our district (Colorado Senate District 34).
UpDoNA Cares has met and begun the process of surveying charities and agencies that address the underlying issues that cause people to continue to live on the streets, and who provide treatment to those individuals in order to move them into shelters.
The Clean Sustainable Denver Committee holds Community Cleanups on the first Saturday of each month. The Website/Newsletter Committee continues to need writers to help write articles and Business Spotlights. With the decrease in prevalence of COVID, our Social Committee will be planning our first social event! Stay tuned.
One other very important activity we’ve been involved in is the Denver City Council redistricting effort. You will hear more about this in the coming days.
One last item: Report – Report – Report
You are going to get tired of hearing this from me, but it’s so critical that I find I must continue to stress the importance of reporting problems as you see them. Denver is data driven. Every 911, 311, Denver Non-Emergency and PocketGov report is entered into a database. That data is used by the police to determine where to provide the most resources. If there are problems and they aren’t reported, the police won’t know about them, and they won’t deploy sufficient resources to deal with the issues. Report every incidence of illegal activity that you see. If you reported one and it wasn’t addressed by the city, report it again – and again – and again. Report drug use, illegal camping, trespassing, aggressive behavior, graffiti, vandalism – you name it. If it’s illegal, report it. If you don’t know how, go to updona.org, and click on the red “Report an Issue” button at the top left corner of our website. That page will tell you what to do for the most common issues. If something you observe isn’t covered on that page, let us know. We’ll find out who to contact and add it to the page.
If you see something, say something.
Thank you for your continued support of UpDoNA.
Rob
