Mayor John Hickenlooper’s third annual “state of the city address” Wednesday featured an ambitious vision of a more livable and environmentally sustainable city. But the “Greenprint Denver” initiatives were also anchored in common-sense notions that will save taxpayer dollars even as they help conserve scarce natural resources for future generations.
Highlighting a lengthy action list for the final year of his first term, Hickenlooper urged building solar and methane power plants capable of powering and heating the equivalent of more than 2,500 homes by 2007. But the methane will be drawn from existing city landfills and thus turn a potential hazard into fiscal savings. Likewise his call for replacing worn-out light-duty city vehicles with hybrids should pay for itself as the cost of gasoline soars. Making new and renovated city buildings conform to energy conservation guidelines is similarly a blend of green goals and cutting costs.
Even the “Greenprint Denver” plan’s most visible symbol – his call to plant a million new trees – is snugly interlaced with two long-standing Hickenlooper themes, regional cooperation and partnership between public and private agencies.
Widely reported as a call to triple the tree canopy in Denver, Hickenlooper’s goal is actually to plant that extra million trees in the region over the next 20 years, not just in the capital city. His reputation as the most regionally minded of modern-era Denver mayors was underscored as about a dozen suburban mayors showed up at his speech, led by Aurora’s Ed Tauer and Lakewood’s Steve Burkholder. In a broader view, Hickenlooper repeatedly praised his suburban counterparts for helping pass economically beneficial and environmentally friendly projects like FasTracks and backing up the new rapid-transit lines with zoning plans that will allow people to live, work and shop in more energy and water-efficient ways.
In this region’s semi-arid climate, it’s useless to plant a million new trees without a way to water them. Hickenlooper addressed that problem by backing an aggressive Denver Water plan for conservation of existing resources. He also pledged to work with homebuilders to ensure they feature water-efficient Xeriscaping in show homes and other efficiency features.
Properly, the speech didn’t call for major new spending programs. Denver – still in recovery – has increased its reserve fund from $88 million in 2003 to $120 million this year and the mayor hopes to add another $20 million this year. Beyond that, he was content to restore some cuts made during the past three years of fiscal stringency, noting this year’s budget restored all of the park flower beds and began restoring some of the hours cut from library operations.
In the longer run, Denver will have to address its long backlog of such non-glamorous infrastructure needs as bridges and storm sewers. For now, the best the mayor could offer was forming a new task force to examine capital needs and to come up with a means of addressing them.
Despite such limitations, Hickenlooper’s revamped civic vision is a pleasingly pragmatic one, blending socially desirable “green” goals with long-term cost savings that will make them sustainable.
