Despite knowing that there are 69 miles of partially unmapped brick sewers under the city dating back to the 1880s, transportation officials did not include them as a possible factor in official documents guiding PCL Construction’s work on the project, in the report published Thursday.

This caused a strained relationship with the company after city officials insisted the extra cost should be covered by PCL. City leaders later accepted a settlement agreement and paid the additional $18 million, but those decisions were not sent to City Council for approval.

City staff say the update was a “change order,” which does not require Council approval, and not a contract amendment, which does, O’Brien wrote.

The auditor recommended city staff look at updating its project systems so the City Council reviews costly project changes, but city staff disagreed with that recommendation.

“As a result, it is possible council members do not know the true progress of several Transportation & Infrastructure projects,” O’Brien wrote. “In the case of 16th Street, council members were unaware of the deteriorating conditions on the project and the reasons for the delay, which limited their ability to make informed decisions.”

Councilmembers Shontel Lewis and Chris Hinds, who serve on the transportation and infrastructure committee, also shared concerns with the auditor’s office according to the report.

“(Lewis) said not keeping the City Council informed about it prevented them from making informed decisions around the city’s budget and matters affecting the public,” O’Brien said in the report.

Lewis and Hinds could not be reached for comment on the auditor’s report.

In a response published alongside the O’Brien’s findings, Denver transportation officials said they disagreed with the auditor’s recommendation because the department followed the rules, and the $18 million, 301-day change order didn’t alter the main purpose of the project.

O’Brien responded to that argument in an addendum published Thursday and said that the rules city staff followed are the problem. Altogether, project changes increased the 16th Street revitalization price tag from $149 million to $175 million.

City transportation spokesperson Nancy Kuhn reiterated the same position in a statement emailed to The Denver Post on Thursday.

“DOTI believes in consistent and thorough communication with City Council members on pertinent active projects,” Kuhn said. “That said, in this circumstance, a contract amendment was not required and our efforts resulted in keeping the project moving while we worked with (the State Historic Preservation Office).

O’Brien’s report was not entirely negative, and the auditor’s office found that how Denver handles project management is generally effective, though there’s room for improvement.

Denver transportation officials agreed with seven of O’Brien’s 10 recommendations, and Kuhn said the experience with 16th Street has already improved how the city deals with unexpected hurdles in other projects.

“The 16th Street project was extremely complex and dynamic and DOTI is proud of the outcome and our performance managing the delivery of this project for Denver, which has received multiple awards from leading organizations that promote the highest level of city-building,” Kuhn said.

In a statement, PCL Construction spokesperson Angelo Dalmacio said the company is proud to have completed the 16th Street reconstruction project and that the collaboration strengthened the company’s relationship with the city and other stakeholders.

O’Brien’s report also found problems with city officials enforcing the contract terms, including not fining the company $1 million for missed deadlines because they wanted to “support the city’s relationship with PCL.”

Only one of the 14 blocks removed in the 16th Street project was completed before the required due date and the project’s final completion was 35 days late, according to the auditor’s office.

City officials agreed that the department should collect fines under the contract but pushed back on the suggestion to have formal rules on when to not fine companies because “it’s in the city’s best interest to retain maximum discretion regarding this element of contract management.”

In another instance, O’Brien found the city’s bidding process to hire a contractor was not transparent, so it is “unclear why the department chose PCL over other companies.”

In response, Kuhn said the auditor’s finding was because the department could not produce one record from 2020, which DOTI was not required to keep under Denver’s records retention policy.

Transportation officials also agreed to O’Brien’s recommendation to improve how records are handled, but disagreed with the suggestion to strengthen oversight and another recommendation for dealing with subcontractors because the department’s current practices are working.

Bennet made the request in a Thursday morning letter to Sen. John Thune, the Republican majority leader, and Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader. It follows for the inspectors general of several federal agencies to investigate whether federal resources were used to target the state.

The request comes a week after attorneys for the state of Colorado disclosed a December email from a White House aide summoning officials from several agencies to discuss “immediate actions that your department or agency can take with respect to Colorado.” The email was then followed by funding cuts, the proposed closure of Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research and the denial of disaster assistance funds.

Echoing allegations raised by attorneys for the state, who called the email a “smoking gun,” Bennet in his letter to Senate leadership accused the Trump administration of targeting the state because of Tina Peters’ then-continued incarceration. Attorneys for the state have also argued that Colorado had also drawn the president’s ire because of its mail-in balloting system and its laws limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

In court filings, the administration has argued that it’s not unusual for the federal government to “make decisions based on political or geographic considerations.” The White House has denied that Colorado officials’ refusal to release or transfer Peters played a part in the email or subsequent administrative decisions.

An ally of President Donald Trump, Peters was serving a prison sentence for her role in giving an unauthorized person access to secure voting equipment in Mesa County. Her sentence was commuted by Gov. Jared Polis in May, and she was released June 1.

Bennet said that presidential administrations were entitled to advance their political priorities but that they couldn’t “dictate terms to states.” Three constitutional law professors told The Denver Post last week that the email — and the coordinated effort it appeared to reveal — was unprecedented and likely illegal. One also warned about a permanent rupture of trust between state and federal authorities, an argument that Bennet also stressed.

“Allowing this unconstitutional overreach to go unchallenged sets a dangerous precedent, and unsettles the relationship between states and the federal government,” Bennet wrote. “No state should ever be subject to punitive measures for decisions that simply happen to go against a sitting president’s desires — and no American should be denied relief from floods and wildfires, or see their opportunity for clean water ripped away, simply because they happen to live in a state at odds with a given administration.”

Emails sent to Thune and Schumer’s offices were not immediately returned Thursday morning.

The December email, first reported last week by The Post, was read aloud in federal court on Aug. 11, and a copy was released in federal filings Wednesday.

Under the subject line “brainstorm call,” the email was sent by a Trump assistant to 14 federal officials and White House aides. The recipients included the chiefs of staff for the departments of energy, education, transportation, interior and agriculture. A deputy secretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development was also included, as was a White House lawyer and an associate director for the Office of Management and Budget.

Federal action against Colorado rolled out quickly after the brainstorm session. The next day, the Energy Department’s deputy general counsel summoned several people to a “portfolio review” meeting requested by the White House, according to additional records filed in federal court. Several emails withheld by the Justice Department, but described in a log turned over to the state, involved Energy Department staff discussing the portfolio review and “potential termination” of grants to Colorado in the days after the email.

Officials from within the U.S. Department of Agriculture swapped similar emails soon after the White House meeting. The log shows senior agency officials emailing each other about a new pilot program, which would have required Colorado to swiftly recertify Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program eligibility for 100,000 recipients. Some emails also included Emily Underwood, an assistant to Trump and the author of the initial “brainstorm” email.

Construction workers need to install a moveable platform on a bridge column that will allow crews to build the bridge segment by segment, CDOT said in a news release Wednesday.

To install the platform, CDOT will close one lane of westbound I-70 at exit 244 for U.S. 6 from 9 p.m. Wednesday to 5 a.m. Thursday.

One eastbound lane will be closed at the same exit from 9 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Saturday; 9 p.m. Monday to 5 a.m. Tuesday; and 9 p.m. Tuesday to 5 a.m. Wednesday so crews can remove some temporary structures on another column, state officials said.

Westbound drivers will merge into one lane and use U.S. 6 ramps to continue on I-70, while eastbound drivers will merge and exit at U.S. 6 and drive east on the U.S. 40 frontage road before getting back on I-70 at exit 248.

Construction may change based on the weather, and drivers can get by texting “floydhill” to 21000.

Earlier this year, Bow Mar announced plans to install gates for the “protection and safety of its residents,” including a proposed gate at its northern entrance on South Sheridan Boulevard. That announcement has drawn stiff opposition from neighboring Littleton and Denver, which question the small municipality’s authority to block access to public roads.

The town board on Monday law firm Sweetbaum Miller PC and attorney Alan Sweetbaum as special counsel for the gate project, according to meeting records.

The town said it expects additional legal needs in response to the installation of gates and potential road closures and will pay Sweetbaum $560 per hour for its services.

Even though Bow Mar has a , its plan has drawn big-city-sized news coverage. The board on Monday also OK’d a contract with Greenlight Strategy, which will provide as-needed support to the town and its leadership, including media training, media outreach, message development, talking points, on-call media relations and crisis communications.

The firm will bill the town $300 per hour. However, the cost could vary as Greenlight also relies on several vendors, which typically bill at $75 an hour.

As proposed, Bow Mar residents would enter the community using RFID tags placed on their vehicles, while visitors would use a to get through. The town is also working with Wizard Works, a Colorado-based gate security systems contractor, to install the gates. In June, Littleton Mayor Kyle Schlachter and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston sent Bow Mar a joint letter asking the town to halt the project.

“We all prioritize the safety of our communities. However, this action will fundamentally and permanently change the prior conditions of public right-of-way access for Denver and Littleton,” the letter said.

“Those living adjacent to Bow Mar would be effectively excluded from using a signalized intersection to make left turns onto westbound W. Quincy Avenue, creating disruption and serious safety concerns for drivers. Bow Mar undoubtedly expects its residents to have reasonable access to Denver and Littleton roads and rights-of-way. Denver and Littleton expect the same in turn.”

The mayors said that if Bow Mar proceeded, the cities could between the proposed Bow Mar gates and cities’ right-of-way.

“The City of Littleton remains opposed to the Town of Bow Mar Board of Trustees’ decision to move forward with roadway gates at Sheridan Boulevard and Prospect Drive,” the City of Littleton said in a statement to The Post on Tuesday.

“Littleton has shared its concerns about restricting access to long-established public roadways that serve an important regional transportation function. We are committed to working collaboratively with Bow Mar on solutions that improve safety and address traffic concerns while preserving regional connectivity for all users.”

Still, some Bow Mar residents have expressed support for the project during town meetings, citing a need to address speeding, traffic and other public safety concerns.

Bow Mar Mayor Bryan Sperry has said discussions regarding the gate project have been challenging and have required significant time and effort.

He said in a May town meeting that traffic concerns and potential gate solutions have been discussed in the community for years and that the town has been working to identify a long-term solution.

Sperry has said the gates would not close Bow Mar to the public. Emergency services, school buses, deliveries and other essential services would continue to have access, he said.

For now, the gate project does not have a construction timeline or finalized plans.

Bow Mar is southwest of Denver and encompasses 520 acres, including 96 acres of water, in Arapahoe and Jefferson counties. The town has about 300 single-family homes on 1-acre lots, according to the Town of Bow Mar.

The next board meeting is scheduled for Sept. 21. The board of trustees hold regular meetings at 6 p.m. on the third Monday of each month except for December.

Representatives from Bow Mar did not respond to request for comment at the time of publication.

A at the intersection of 19th and California streets posted Tuesday on Reddit generated hundreds of comments that followed the normal journey of internet discourse, from lighthearted jabs to questions about the state of literacy and what the sign said about Mayor Mike Johnston’s leadership.

Johnston joked about the error in a , sharing a photo of the sign captioned “Colorado not Califorina” and thanking the person who spotted the error so the city could get it fixed quickly.

“We’ll leave spell check on next time,” Johnston wrote.

Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure spokesperson Cyndi Karvaski said in an email to The Denver Post that the sign was taken down Tuesday and a replacement sign will be installed Wednesday.

The initial sign cost $321.75, and Denver will not be charged for the removal, replacement or reinstallation of the sign because of the error, she added.

The city will roll out a new online parking ticket dispute system on Sept. 14 for tickets issued after Aug. 25, according to the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure. Going forward, tickets that are fewer than 20 days old will online.

Denver County Court laid off all of its parking magistrates in August 2025 after Mayor Mike Johnston asked administrators to reduce its 2026 budget in response to the city’s $200 million projected budget shortfall. The court then shut down the online dispute system in September, forcing drivers to visit the courthouse in person to dispute tickets.

The desk where ticketed drivers could schedule hearings was only open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and hearings were scheduled months out, creating headaches for drivers who sought to dispute tickets, which range between $35 and $250.

The switch to in-person court hearings drew immediate criticism and Johnston in October 2025 agreed to reinstate an online dispute process. The new system moves the process from under the authority of Denver County Court to the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure.

“It’s something that a lot of people utilized that was sorely missed,” said Jon Ewing, a spokesman for Johnston. “The bottom line is we understand that it was frustrating and — it took longer than we would have liked — but we are happy it is going to be back, and better than ever, we hope.”

In-person parking ticket dispute hearings skyrocketed in Denver County Court after the online process was eliminated, jumping from 28 in the four months before the change to 464 in the four months afterwards.

Nancy Kuhn, a spokeswoman for the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, did not immediately return a request for more information about the new online process Monday.

State Patrol troopers responded to the crash on northbound I-25 at milepost 215, near East 58th Avenue, at about 5:25 a.m. Monday, according to a news release from the agency.

Investigators believe a Chevrolet Silverado lost control and struck a pedestrian on the right shoulder of I-25, state patrol officials said in the release. The pedestrian was thrown over the highway’s concrete barrier, landing on another road, state patrol officials said.

The man killed in the crash will be identified by the Adams County Coroner’s Office.

As of 7 a.m. Monday, the between 48th Avenue and 58th Avenue for the crash, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation.

The crash remains under investigation.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

In one of those cases, a man crashed through a perimeter fence gate, causing more than $2,000 in damage as he drove onto the airfield, according to records obtained from the Denver Police Department. In another, a man jumped the fence after crashing his car nearby and was found sitting on an active taxiway at about 6:40 a.m. A third fence-hopper told police he was trying to walk to Texas.

Airport safety experts say the number isn’t immediately alarming. While incidents may appear to be happening more frequently, it����ap likely a matter of better detection and increased reporting, said , an assistant professor of aviation and aerospace sciences at the Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Heth has worked in the aviation industry since 2009, spending years as both an airport operations manager in Florida and a flight coordinator for a Colorado flight school.

Fatal incidents like the May crash that killed Michael Mott are extremely rare, Heth said. Advanced technology means security can usually catch trespassers before something bad can happen, she said.

“Fences are there to keep honest people out,” Heth said. “If somebody is really intent on getting through a fence, they’re going to get through.”

Mott, 41, scaled DIA’s 8-foot, barbed-wire-topped security fence and walked onto a runway shortly before 11:20 p.m. on May 8. He was struck and killed by a Frontier plane accelerating for takeoff, and Denver Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Sterling McLaren ruled his death a suicide.

�Ѵdzٳ�’s breach of the airport security fence was unusual, but not the airport����ap first encounter with trespassers, according to police records.

Since January 2023, Denver police officers have responded to six cases of people breaching the airport perimeter fence, including the fatal May crash, and two trespassing cases in which people jumped the boundary fence into the airport����ap warehouse area, police records show. The earliest incident in 2023 occurred in September, according to those records.

At least two of the airport����ap eight trespassers had active arrest warrants at the time of their breach — one for a failure to appear in Denver court on a traffic charge and one for motor vehicle theft, according to the probable cause statements.

The report for the incident resulting in �Ѵdzٳ�’s death was not yet available because the case remains under investigation.

DIA officials declined to comment on the trespasses.

It����ap difficult to know how DIA’s perimeter breaches compare to the rest of the country because airports all report trespassing incidents differently and there’s no national database, Heth said.

But the Federal Aviation Administration does keep track of at airports with traffic control towers, including DIA, .

Incursions boil down to planes, vehicles and people being in the wrong place at the wrong time. According to the FAA, incursions include air traffic control errors that don’t leave enough space between planes and obstacles on runways or that clear aircraft to take off from or land on closed runways; pilot actions that violate federal aviation regulations, like crossing runways without clearance; and pedestrians or vehicles entering airport runways or taxiways without authorization.

Of the 19,482 airports in the United States, 527 have air traffic control towers, . Just over 5,100 of those airports are public, and more than 14,300 are private.

Roughly 5,890 runway incursions were reported at airports with air traffic control towers between January 2023 and June 2026, according to quarterly totals from the FAA’s . Of those, 1,022 involved unauthorized pedestrians or vehicles entering the airfield.

Only two of the incidents documented by police at DIA during that time appear in the FAA’s . A total of 37 incidents involving unauthorized vehicles and pedestrians at the Denver airport show up in the database, dating back to April 2006.

The Denver Police Department has a dedicated Airport Police Bureau at DIA “with officers at the ready to swiftly respond to emergencies and safety issues,” police spokesman Doug Schepman said in a statement.

“The Airport Police Bureau works closely with Airport Operations at DEN and monitors operational data, and the bureau adjusts resources when trends are identified,” Schepman said. “This is the same approach the Denver Police Department takes in its citywide operations.”

The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board declined to comment on DIA’s perimeter fence breaches.

“Trespassing doesn’t necessarily equal a security failure,” Heth said. “The fact that we’re talking about these right now often means that the system worked. The alarms were activated, the airport operations center sent out law enforcement and they responded.”

When Heth worked as an airport operations manager at Pensacola International Airport in Florida, a position she held from 2009 to 2015, she said a gust of wind was enough to set off the warning sensors and launch an investigation into the potential trespasser.

Now, alarms and cameras are more sophisticated, and it����ap much easier to catch fence jumpers before anything bad happens, she said.

“We’ve got better analytics, better technology, an improved reporting culture and better training with our airport employees,” Heth said. “I don’t think that it����ap anything alarming or dramatic.”

Still, Heth said it����ap important that airport officials look at each incident and learn from it, “closing any vulnerabilities” that may have made it easier for people to enter the secured airfield.

Under the subject line “brainstorm call,” Emily Underwood asked officials from five agencies to join a call later that day “prepared to discuss immediate actions that your department or agency can take with respect to Colorado.”

“The purpose of this call is to prioritize Colorado for the purposes of ensuring grants and federal support are in line with administration priorities,” Underwood, a deputy assistant to the president, wrote to officials from the departments of energy, transportation, interior and agriculture, as well as the Office of Management and Budget.

The email was sent at 2:43 a.m. on Dec. 15, hours before Trump over the continued imprisonment of former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters.

The Underwood email was disclosed publicly during a hearing in Denver on Tuesday as part of a Colorado lawsuit alleging retaliation by the Trump administration that state officials argue was motivated by the president’s frustration with Peters’ incarceration and by the state’s mail-in balloting system.

According to a transcript of the hearing reviewed by The Denver Post, a senior state attorney said the email amounted to a “smoking gun”: In the days that followed Underwood’s note, several agencies included in the email announced adverse actions against Colorado, canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and moving to close a renowned climate lab in Boulder.

“It’s extraordinary,” David Moskowitz, Colorado’s deputy solicitor general, said during the Tuesday hearing in U.S. District Court. The state had requested the hearing — and produced the email — in an effort to force the Trump administration to turn over more records. “And it’s extraordinary because the scheme was run directly out of (the Executive Office of the President).”

The White House on Thursday denied that the Underwood email was related to Peters. A spokeswoman did not comment on the record for this story, other than to direct questions about grant funding to the budget management office.

Throughout the fall, tension had mounted between the state and Trump administration.

In November, Colorado prison officials had rejected a request to transfer Peters, a Trump ally who was serving a prison sentence for facilitating a plot to give a third party access to secure election equipment. , demanding Peters’ release. (In May, Polis reduced her sentence and released her early.)

The Justice Department’s pardon attorney told Trump ally Steve Bannon that federal officials were putting “the right kind of pressure” on the state to secure Peters’ transfer; Trump had also promised “harsh measures” if the former clerk remained incarcerated.

Four days before Underwood’s email, the president .

Within days of that “brainstorm call,” that the Department of Energy was cutting $615 million in funding intended for Colorado. The Department of Transportation said to the state. The Office of Management and Budget moved to shutter the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. Federal emergency officials on the Western Slope. The Department of Agriculture .

Before the month was out, Trump vetoed legislation that would have brought clean water to parts of the state.

Underwood’s email appeared to leave the federal judge overseeing the case aghast. According to the transcript, U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson said the administration’s apparent targeting of Colorado “makes no sense in our democracy,” and he ordered the Executive Office of the President to turn over more documents and records to the state.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never even imagined something like it,” Jackson said of the email, which he read aloud in court. “The very idea that the president of the United States or the Executive Office of the President would target a state because they don’t feel that the state and its administrators are in line with the current administration’s priorities is phenomenal.”

“That’s not the country I think we live in,” he said later in the hearing.

In a statement Thursday, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser called the email “shocking” and said it proved that “the White House orchestrated an unconstitutional scheme to weaponize the federal government to attack and punish Colorado for its lawful decisions over elections and our criminal justice system.”

Polis spokeswoman Ally Sullivan said in a separate statement that the Trump administration “has taken a number of actions that have negatively impacted Coloradans and our communities. If those decisions were based on political retribution against Colorado, we hope the courts will provide relief to Colorado.”

Sullivan did not respond to specific questions about the timing or substance of Polis’ call with Trump last year.

Officials in Colorado and elsewhere have long argued that the Trump administration has used the regulatory and financial powers of the federal government to target states that have run afoul of the president and his priorities. The lawsuit that produced the email was initially filed over allegations that Trump had moved U.S. Space Command from Colorado Springs because of the state’s mail-in balloting system. Last month, that they’d terminated clean energy grants for several states, including Colorado, “based solely on the political identity” of those states.

During Tuesday’s hearing, lawyers for the state said they wanted the president’s office to turn over evidence, including records of oral or written communication, that may further prove that Colorado was targeted for unconstitutional retaliation. Moskowitz, the deputy solicitor general, said that the state has already received evidence that showed there was a “mad scramble” after the Dec. 15 meeting to “immediately identify actions against Colorado.”

He said the USDA had acknowledged that it had proposed its SNAP review after the call. The Energy Department, he said, held a “high-level mandatory (meeting) … to discuss what they were going to do.” That same day, the Interior Department “immediately requested … a compilation of all outstanding grants to Colorado or any entity simply located in Colorado.”

The hearing was about evidence discovery, and Adam Fox, the Justice Department attorney representing the Trump administration, largely did not respond to statements about the email, though he did not dispute its reported contents.

He argued that the state’s requests for more information from the president’s executive office were overly broad and burdensome, and that the state hadn’t first exhausted other avenues to get evidence that may help its case.

Jackson was largely unmoved. He asked Fox whether there “were so many written communications about actions or threats against Colorado that it’s an undue burden to even try to find them all.”

He ordered the federal government to comply with most of the state’s requests for additional evidence. He said he understood that the government should be protected from turning over information, particularly if it’s sensitive, to anyone who files a lawsuit against the president.

“But these are extraordinary times we’re talking about, and this is an extraordinary memo,” Jackson continued. “And it’s very troublesome to this court. And I think it would be very troublesome to most people if this were broadcast in The Denver Post, for example. This is something that I have never even conceived of before.”

The New York Times contributed to this report.

As of 8:50 a.m., southbound U.S. 285 had reopened between Colorado 8 and Parmalee Gulch Road, near Morrison, .

One vehicle was involved in the fatal crash, . Additional information about the crash was not immediately available on Thursday.

This is a developing story and may be updated.