The Issues
Explore each of Shontel’s priorities and solutions.
Health & Wellness
The Health of our city is the Wealth of Our City. Too frequently, we measure the progress of our city in dollars when we should be prioritizing our social determinants of health — affordable housing, healthy and affordable food, quality health care, education and job training, community based resources, frequent and effective transit, and a flourishing culture. As your next City Councillor, I am committing myself towards making District 8 the healthiest District to live in in the City and County of Denver, while improving both individual and community health outcomes across the entire city.
Clean Air
Recent years in Denver have included some awful air quality days — the air pollution from oil and gas operations and transportation emissions along the Front Range is damaging the public health of everyone who lives here.
Along with the broader shift to multimodal transportation options and regulating industry to cut off major sources of pollution, Denver can also improve air quality within homes — and by extension, improve public health outcomes — by providing free HEPA air filters to underserved communities, preventing new fossil fuel infrastructure in new homes and major renovations, and assisting residential and commercial property owners in updating building ventilation systems. Improving ventilation systems has the added benefit of helping to combat the spread of viruses — a core recommendation by public health experts in the wake of COVID-19.
Clean Drinking Water
We know that Water Is Life out here in the West. Denver Water operates independently of the City Council, but there are many ways in which the next Council can improve Denver’s water use practices and ensure our water is clean. First, the city can follow Aurora’s lead, limiting sprawling lawns and golf course turf which waste water.
Denver has lead pipes in many of its older homes and neighborhoods, risking damage to the health of the residents who drink from them — federal dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act could be used to speed our rate of replacing these lead pipes. We also need to take actions to prevent entities like Suncor from dumping PFAS waste into waterways like the Platte River, and make them pay for the costs of restoration when they do.
Nutrition
Having widespread and reliable access to healthy foods positively impacts the overall health and well being of our entire community. Denver has a Food Action Plan created in 2019 to combat food insecurity in the city, but with the fallout of the pandemic present all around us, we’ve fallen behind on our goals.
The city of Denver needs to redouble its efforts toward Denver’s nutritional health by expanding the options for community and school gardening, foster more locally grown and sold food options in and around underserved communities, set aside small acreages for local agricultural production, and work to reduce residential food waste across the board.
Physical Fitness and Awareness
Denver has always been a city that values its recreation centers, parks and open spaces, but we’ve still got room for improvement. Our recreation centers are more than just a place for physical fitness — they’ve served as migrant shelters, protection against winter storms or sweltering summer heat, community gathering spaces, education centers and beyond. It’s important that we maintain these essential community services, and that includes raising pay to a thriving wage for public employees. The city can also improve awareness of these community health resources with more localized outreach, focused on historically excluded communities, along with targeted, collaborative programs that address public health and other community needs.
Mental Health Supports for All Ages
We’re all dealing with mental health challenges, either in ourselves or in someone we care about. Too often, the systems of mental health support are labyrinthian mazes which compound the struggles of someone looking to find care. Denver should expand its resources — like adding more crisis centers across the metro area, more mental health responders like STAR, and wider ranges of individualized care — but it also must make those resources more accessible, more flexible, and better communicated to those who need them.
Housing & Homelessness
Housing is a top issue for nearly everyone in Denver —an out-of-control housing market is making our city less and less affordable, forcing workers to either give up more and more of their disposable income or leave the community entirely. District 8 deserves a Councilmember who will step up, champion major policy changes, and create a welcoming community where working class people can afford to live.
Land use Reform
Facing a Front Range housing shortage, an ever-shrinking Colorado River, and a global climate crisis, Denver’s land use policy needs to adapt to the realities of our changing world. On the Council, I seek reforms to Denver’s zoning code which:
Allow and encourage denser housing types to be built across the entire city
Streamline permitting processes to reduce red tape and delays
Eliminate parking minimums near transit, and implement parking maximums in new developments near transit corridors
Prohibit new fossil fuel infrastructure in homes
Limit grass lawns and encourage more turf/gardening
Facilitate adaptive reuse of commercially-zoned properties into residential units
Tenant Protections
Rent increases continue to plague the tenant community in Denver, and with pandemic aid expiring, we can’t sit and watch the housing crisis worsen. I will stand up for expanding tenants rights in Denver, including:
Just Cause eviction protections
An anti-retaliation policy for the organizing of tenants unions
Relocation assistance to prevent evicted persons from falling into homelessness.
Expanding opportunities to purchase a tenant’s place of residence
Park Hill Golf Course
I’m a no on lifting the conservation easement with the Park Hill Golf Course, and I don’t want an defunct golf course — this is about fighting for community control and community benefits for the long haul, and whichever way the vote turns out I will work on Council with all parties going forward to ensure we make the best possible use of this space. I do not believe in Black or White decisions but the opportunity to dance in the gray – and the opportunity to dialogue. When we lose our dialogue, we lose our city.
Creating A Social Housing Authority
Denver’s government must do more to boost the supply of truly affordable housing stock, and expand its range of tools to build housing on the lands that it already owns. Through the creation of a mixed-income social housing developer, modeled after successful examples in Vienna and Singapore, the city of Denver can scale up its ability to provide for Denver residents’ housing needs.
Units are built, owned, operated by the community
No resident pays more than one-third of their income each month
Includes unit rental and unit ownership options
Climate-conscious, dense, transit-oriented development
Provides workforce housing for public employees such as RTD drivers and Denver Public Schools teachers
Homelessness
Denver needs to put its Housing First principles into practice, and end the practice of punishing homelessness as a crime. When we meet people’s need for housing, first, without burdensome restrictions, the evidence shows better outcomes for both homeless persons and for the city.
Expand the proven and effective Social Impact Bond Initiative with increased funding.
Expand Support Team Assisted Response (STAR), reducing the need for law enforcement in situations where a mental health responder can be more effective.
Reduce barriers to accessing behavioral health services and provide a continuum of care throughout the process of recovery.
Provide Safe Outdoor Spaces for those who cannot afford rent or cannot stay in a shelter.
Expand city purchasing and repurposing of properties (like motels) to enable a Housing First policy.
Transportation
As an RTD Director for District B, I know the vital role that public transit serves for our Denver community, and the many challenges of meeting the transportation needs of our diverse community. On the next City Council, there will be no fiercer advocate for our transit community or when it comes to justice and equity in Denver’s transportation policies. Denver deserves a city with exceptional transportation services and infrastructure — let’s build a city where people have all the safe and effective mobility options they need.
Vision Zero
Denver has a policy of Vision Zero, but the number of transportation deaths in the city continues to climb each year. The city must recommit itself to Vision Zero policy, and move with swift urgency to install life-saving traffic calming infrastructure. City leaders can also work with businesses and cargo delivery services toward more innovative and safe methods of transporting goods throughout the city.
Create a fully integrated, accessible, and protected city-wide bike network
Encouraging bike usage is one of the most important and impactful climate actions we can take on the local level. I will work with community partners, city planning and transportation staff, Denver’s many multimodal advocates, and the residents of Denver to rapidly build out the number of protected bike lanes and make our streets safer for all. In addition, the city should invest in secured bike parking near public locations, and encourage private entities to do the same.
Equity and Justice
Whether we’re building out Denver’s sidewalks, bike lanes, bus routes, or making our streets safer to drive on, equity and justice will be central to my decision making as your District 8 Councilmember. ADA compliance is not optional — it is essential to creating an inclusive and prosperous city for all. Creating safer routes for children and families to get to and from schools is a high priority for my campaign.
Collaboration on Speeding Project Timelines
Denver cannot resolve transit issues by itself — it’s going to take cooperation across agencies and advocates to speed up projects like Bus-Rapid Transit or build more effective RTD services. We need our state legislators to invest in improved RTD capacity and reduced barriers to public transit by boosting service and frequency of transit.
Public Safety Rooted in Public Health
I believe in an evidence-based, trauma-informed approach to public safety and policing, where restorative policy is the first resort and poverty or mental illness are not treated as crimes. Denver’s public safety policy should aim to address the underlying causes of community division and dysfunction, moving us beyond punitive reflex and toward deeper understandings of harm, healing, and reconciliation.
Inequity of Selective Policing
When communities of color voice their issues with how their communities are policed, too often the communities' concerns are not listened to. Selective enforcement of law undermines the public trust, and makes our communities less safe. As your District 8 Councillor tasked with oversight of these public agents, I will hold Denver Police accountable to their community and to the community’s safety needs.
Shift traffic enforcement duties away from law enforcement
Law enforcement frequently spends its time responding to vehicle crashes and enforcement of traffic laws, leaving less ability and capacity to deal with more serious crimes. The city of Denver should explore methods of shifting traffic enforcement away from armed officers, freeing up law enforcement resources for other purposes.
Expand STAR
The nationally-recognized mental health responder unit for Denver is hoping to expand in the coming years, reducing the need for law enforcement officers in dealing with persons experiencing a mental health crisis. With overdose deaths at an extremely high level and deaths of despair on the rise, it is critical that the next council must protect this program and its life-saving mission.
Prioritize prevention, provide aid for vehicle and bike thefts
Denver has the distinction as the motor-theft capital of the world, and bike thefts have soared to new extremes. These thefts are particularly harmful to workers who use transportation to provide for themselves and their families, and the city should have a program to provide immediate resources to aid workers deprived of their transportation needs.
Climate Justice
When we talk about climate justice, we’re talking about a critical lens to examine and improve all of our social and economic practices towards a sustainable and just future. This includes everything from how we think about public health, to protecting air and water, to building and maintaining infrastructure, to how we move people and goods around, and to what economic practices are rewarded or restricted by public policy.
It means understanding how poverty is a barrier to climate action, as well as a risk magnifier for climate-related harms. It means cultivating practices of stewardship toward our natural systems. It means committing, in our part of the world here in the City of Denver, to the proposition that nobody should be left behind in the transition to a sustainable future.
Electrify Everything
Expedite Denver’s Climate Protection 5-year plan, and fund the Climate Action office with any necessary revenue needed. No climate agency should be pinching pennies in this critical decade of action.
Make Polluters Pay, Reward Protectors
Denver is home to some of the most polluted areas in the country, a burden borne primarily by low income, black and brown communities. When corporations pollute on our lands, in our waters, or in our air, they should be held fully accountable for the economic and social damage caused by that pollution. Also, people and businesses who act as stewards of the environment should be rewarded — economically and socially — for their contributions toward preserving the commons.
Denver Airport
Although DIA is a critical revenue generator for the city, it also generates a dangerous volume of emissions, and that’s without including the airplanes themselves. The undeveloped land near the airport — along heavily frequented transportation corridors — means an opportunity for housing as well. Denver should make better use of the airport’s value through reducing its emissions in the region, leveraging its land for public benefits, and ensuring Denver is serving both its residents and its visitors.
Make public transport travel to the airport free
Reducing parking subsidies: incentivize alternative forms of transportation to and from the airport
Installing community solar gardens over airport parking lots to generate clean energy for community use and/or develop housing on underutilized airport lots.
A tax on private jets — emissions from private jets are far more than most working-class individuals will emit in a lifetime. It is the responsibility of public servants to strongly deter this reckless behavior, and use the funds of such a tax for climate justice policy.
Use public contracts with Uber and Lyft to protect their drivers from employer misconduct and abuse.
Community Engagement
I am a firm believer in representative government, that elected officials should be accessible and accountable to each and every one of their constituents. Too often, residents of Denver feel they are heard, but not listened to.
Expand Participatory Budgeting
Increase accessibility of City Council meetings, including time for public comment
Digital engagement opportunities in Council Business beyond public testimony
Community-led issue advisory committees for the District 8 Office
I want to hear from You.
Please use the link below set up time with Shontel so that she can learn more about the concerns and celebrations of the district, and so that you can learn more about her vision for D8.
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