Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, joined by his daughter Janae and wife Mary Louise Lee, right, greets supporters during an event kicking off his re-election campaign at Battery 621 on Feb. 3, 2015. (Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post)
After Michael Hancock kicked off his re-election campaign for Denver mayor on Tuesday, I sat down and asked him questions that came to mind during his speech. (.) Here are five exchanges, with my questions slightly edited for clarity and context.
If you have no major challenger, will you do much campaigning or just focus on doing your job as mayor?
I’m going to be campaigning quite often. We’re going to try to continue our efforts to get to every neighborhood. We’re assembling a team thatap going to put together a very aggressive ground game, because if anything, itap important to raise the issues we’re going to be focused on and make sure people understand the agenda that we’re going to pursue in a second term.
One of the things I believe is that we never stopped campaigning. The day we took office, we put together one of the more aggressive community strategies. The idea wasn’t so much to get re-elected but to connect people with government. And I just firmly believe you don’t try to do that just when itap time to campaign.
In your speech, you talked about progress with Police Department reform and alluded to recent challenges in the sheriff’s department, which have included jail abuse settlements. What do you see as the challenge?
Well, itap an evolving process, and we said from Day One that as we approach the issue of the sheriff’s department — kind of like with police, itap not going to be done overnight. We’re going to have to continue to chip away at it, seize opportunities, pick up best practices and really try to transform the culture of the department.
I believe that it has occurred, or at least itap continuing to occur. Itap not done. And I know that Chief (Robert) White is committed to the task. We’re committed to the task and we’re bringing the same thought process to the sheriff’s department.
Lately, some police incidents have attracted attention (including the shooting death of Jessica Hernandez). Is there still work to be done in reforming the Police Department?
You know, itap an ongoing process. We don’t stop what we’re going to do until we transform the Police Department. Obviously, we always want to make sure we properly investigate and look at every one of these incidents, absolutely. And we’re going to do that. But the process of building the best police department this nation has seen, right here in Denver, doesn’t stop that effort at all. We address those issues as diligently as we would if we weren’t undergoing a transformation process.
You also mentioned, in your speech, the airportap big south terminal project, which has had big cost overruns. Are the financial management issues under control now?
I believe we better understand the project going forward. When we came in, we found a project that was already trending over budget and nine months behind on schedule. We put in the change management process as soon as we came into office (and) really beefed up the review of the project and management of the project.
And so, am I comfortable with the project in terms of how we’re managing it and moving it forward? Absolutely, I am. Is it perfect? By no means, but we continue to create the opportunities around that project. You know, we knew coming in that it was more expensive than originally had been published. Itap still within the prospectus to be a profitable hotel. Thatap whatap important.
You have said the city’s Office of Economic Development is putting together a report recommending options for sustainable funding sources for affordable housing in Denver. How soon is that coming?
As a matter of fact, itap so funny, we were just talking about it two days ago. I expect to have that in the next week or two. Itap really just finding time to go through what are the menu of options that they’re going to recommend.
