If there is one thing Denver’s current election campaign has revealed, it’s that council candidates for the most part have no idea what to do about the city’s most widely cited problems.
So they voice what have become platitudes about increased density, traffic congestion, affordable housing and homelessness, whether the ideas actually have anything to do with addressing the problems at hand.
To be clear, this is not always an indictment of the candidates. Homelessness, for example, cannot be “solved” or eliminated, although it is our civic duty to alleviate it. Any candidate who claims, for example, that homelessness “can be solved through accessible and affordable housing options,” as District 7 candidate Ian Harwick wrote in a Denver Post questionnaire, needs to come down to Earth.
Most council candidates, thankfully, are more realistic and refuse to promise the moon.
Increased density and the resulting traffic congestion are two other issues that can’t actually be solved, because Denver is growing and because higher densities are baked into Blueprint Denver and the city’s 2010 zoning code.
What’s dispiriting, however, is how few of the staggering number of candidates have pledged to enforce the letter and spirit of those documents, not to mention neighborhood plans, and say they’ll resist attempts to rezone for higher density unless a neighborhood clamors for it.
At the very least, candidates might complain about the city’s misleading traffic and parking studies, as Rafael Espinoza to his credit does in District 1, rather than mouth vague pledges of a more responsive process in the fashion of so many candidates.
The conformist mantra reaches its apex when candidates discuss transportation. Nearly every one wants to make our city more “pedestrian friendly, create more bike trails and designate more bike lanes” (Liz Adams, in 6) while emphasizing a “multimodal” system (Aaron Greco, in 7) and “integrating pedestrian, bicycle and public transportation to encourage greater use” (Luchia Ann Brown, in 7), all with an eye toward making “alternatives to driving easier for all of us” (Kendra Black, in 4).
It is now simply an article of faith in our political circles that improved walking and biking routes, which I hasten to add are appealing goals in their own right, are all that is standing in the way of Denverites giving up their cars or using them much less. It’s a dubious proposition, to put it mildly. Absent a tremendous buildup in the convenience and breadth of mass transit, we’ll still be driving a lot.
But I suppose you’ve got to say something when voters ask about congestion besides, “I don’t have a clue.”
By the way, if we’re going to upgrade public transit well beyond what RTD offers, as a number of candidates clearly desire, how would it be paid for? Perhaps I missed it in the debates and questionnaires, but I did not notice a single candidate suggest a big tax hike for, say, an enhanced feeder system for transit or the addition of street cars.
There also seems to be support among many candidates for directing more money into housing subsidies — even for homebuyers (the lessons of 2009 now forgotten). The theory is that this will help tame overall costs and ensure that all who wish to live within Denver can find an affordable place.
Such a strategy hasn’t worked noticeably well in Seattle or San Francisco, where housing costs are even higher, but never mind. Something must be done and our politicians, reluctant to admit their limits, are sticking to their story.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.
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