“What are we saving – a million bucks?” asked Denver Civil Service Commissioner Anna Flores. “I’ll bet we can find a million bucks in this budget that is going to the suburbs.”
Denver’s Million Dollar Baby was incommunicado Friday afternoon. Too bad she didn’t swallow her tongue a few hours earlier.
At a meeting Friday morning, Flores tried to explain why taxpayers should pony up a million dollars over the next three years to lease a building for the Civil Service Commission when the commission can move rent-free to the Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building.
“Anna is a civilian,” commission president Chris Olson said. “She says what comes into her mind. She has a right to say it. It does not reflect the whole commission.”
Still, no other commissioners bothered to publicly contradict her. That’s because the majority also wanted to stay in their rented building at 1570 Grove St.
It’s got free parking, they said. It’s spacious. It’s accessible.
It’s expensive.
By year’s end, the city will have spent roughly $3 million to rent 1570 Grove, the result of a seven-year sweetheart deal that a former commission executive cut with a friend.
The Civil Service Commission’s collective conceit in thinking it might spend a million more on a three-year extension was presumptuous. As presumptuous as Flores’ assumption that the city has money to spare. Pushing to stay in a leased building when free space is available always plays poorly with taxpayers. But the Civil Service Commission was still holding out Friday morning, when Flores stuffed her foot in her mouth.
“We’ve been discussing the issue for many months,” Olson said. “Is the preference that we stay? Yes. We also understand there is a cost factor.”
You wonder if they do understand Denver’s ongoing financial bind. By Friday afternoon, Olson was finally trying to reach Kelly Brough, Denver’s deputy chief of staff and director of accountability and reform. “We’re going to say, ‘All right, we’ll go to the Webb center,”‘ Olson reported.
Only by Friday afternoon, Flores’ florid apologia had added fertilizer to the entire commission’s reluctance to move. What blossomed was a full-budded stinkweed.
There are 340 vacant “cubes” in the Webb building, Brough said. That’s plenty of space for the Civil Service Commission.
“We’ve always asked them to move to city-owned property because it is free,” Brough said.
That matters. For four consecutive years, Denver has had to balance its budget with spending cuts. It recently had to dip into reserves to make up for budget shortfalls.
While Flores minimizes a million bucks, the city pinches pennies.
A million bucks buys two firetrucks, Brough said. A million bucks hires 19 cops. A million bucks builds six playgrounds. A million bucks paves 45 alleys.
Here’s the skinny: When Flores sits as a Civil Service Commission member, she is not a civilian. She is a public official. So is every other commissioner. Public officials bear responsibility to the public. That dictates many duties, the most fundamental of which is fiduciary. That fancy word means you spend other people’s money reluctantly. A 50-cent term doesn’t make a dime’s worth of difference if you miss the point.
When you maneuver for months to find a way to spend a million bucks that you don’t have to, you miss wider than Colts kicker Mike Vanderjagt did against the Steelers.
“Realistically, there’s not much financial sense in paying rent of any amount when there are open buildings,” Civil Service Commissioner Sam Williams told me late Friday afternoon.
It would’ve been nice to hear him say that to Flores on Friday morning.
Sure, Denver should see if there is “a million bucks in this budget that is going to the suburbs.” But first, it must search for government appointees who understand whom they work for.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
