The list is not long, but it is worth a long, hard look.
First, we discover that Denver’s taxpayers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to lease space for the Civil Service Commission when the commission could operate rent-free in the city-owned Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building.
This week, we find out that several other city agencies, departments and City Council members lease space when they could operate rent-free.
In addition to roughly half-a-million bucks to rent the Civil Service Commission building in 2006, taxpayers will fork over another $2.35 million this year for other leased space.
That number comes from a spreadsheet provided by Denver deputy chief of staff Kelly Brough. “Every time a lease comes up, we always ask if (the agency or department) can move to city-owned space,” promised Brough, who runs Denver’s office of accountability and reform.
It might be worth asking about buying out leases because Brough said the Webb building is roughly 15 percent empty.
Some of the rent payments identified by Brough are unavoidable. Among other things, the Webb building has no place to house a helicopter, TV studios or corpses. The only way to save money on a hangar the Denver Police Department will rent for $12,000 this year is to drive the hardest bargain possible when the lease ends.
Ditto for the coroner’s office at 660 Bannock St., which will set taxpayers back $163,020 this year, and the specialized Channel 8 facilities at 2390 Syracuse St., which will eat up $205,592 in rent.
Brough reports that no rent-free space exists for the Denver County civil courts until 2010, when the city completes work on its newly approved justice center. Until then, the courts likely will continue to operate out of the Adam’s Mark Hotel at a cost of $420,079.50 this year, plus more than a million more before relocation.
While renting court space in a luxury hotel may seem a little weird, the city also rents a police station at 1555 Clarkson St. for $174,107.50 a year. It will continue to rent the space for the next decade.
Warehoused art, voting machines and surplus equipment cost the city nearly 300 grand a year in rent. It makes you wonder about closed public schools as a rent-free warehousing option.
What’s left on Brough’s list are roughly $1 million in what are, for lack of a better phrase, leases of convenience.
That means they provide services around the city that could be consolidated downtown, saving money for taxpayers but not necessarily time or comfort.
It depends on where you want to go to register your car or look for work or visit your City Council representative.
Right now, the greatest savings might be gleaned by moving the Mayor’s Office of Workforce Development from four rented locations around the city to the Webb building. Such a move depends on the need for computers, Brough cautioned. It could save taxpayers $428,632.85 a year in rent. If the folks who run the Department of Theatres and Arenas were willing to walk a few blocks, the city could save $86,147 for rent it pays annually for administrative space near the Performing Arts Complex. That rent, Brough pointed out, was recently renegotiated to half of what it used to be.
The city’s Office of Employee Assistance costs almost 38 grand in rent to operate a few blocks from the Webb building too. Brough says that is to ensure privacy for those seeking help.
Other easy savings would close a regional City Council office within a mile of city hall and also bring council members out of leased neighborhood offices and into the cost-free confines of city hall. This would trim $117,640.
Brough’s spreadsheet shows nine of the 13 City Council members – Elbra Wedgeworth, Michael Hancock, Charlie Brown, Jeanne Faatz, Rick Garcia, Judy Montero, Rosemary Rodriguez, Peggy Lehman and Jeanne Robb – renting space in their districts. Individually, those rents range from $14,400 a year paid by Wedgeworth to $8,800 a year by Hancock.
While not necessarily economical, this might make political sense. None of it is simple.
Still, a cold fact remains: Any city facing its fourth consecutive year of budget-balancing problems has no excuse for renting space unless it absolutely has to.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
