>> Welcome to election 2023 the Denver forum series on PBS 12, individual interviews with guests two at a time running for Denver mayor.

Joining me are Kwame Spearm and Debbie Ortega.

Kwame, why do you want to be Denver's next mayor?

>> Sure.

I'm so honored to be on this show.

I grew up watching you.

Longtime viewer, first time interview I guess.

I have a vision for Denver.

I want to be our neighborhood mayor.

I don't think that's what we need to be doing moving forward.

I want to go into our neighborhoods, listen to what our residents want and create goals and priorities at the city levels to do that.

And thing that's a vision that if we talk about homelessness, if we talk about safety, and if we talk about local economy with our neighborhoods, I think we can have an incredibly bright future and that's why I would like to run.

>> We'll talk about all of those topics, I hope we'll get to as well.

Debbie, tell me why you want to be Denver's next mayor.

>> First of all, I grew up and I love this city and we know our city is struggling right now and these are all solvable problems.

I believe now more than ever this city needs someone who knows the ins and outs of how the city works, can step in, hit the ground running, successful on working on big and small projects, and I know I'm the person ready to do that.

I'm worked on homelessness, I've worked on crime and safety, all the issues you're going to hear every candidate talk about, I've been in the weeds on those issues and I have solid plans.

You can go to my website, DebbieOrtega.com.

I'm here to ask for support from your viewing audience and I believe on April 4th I will be in the runoff and in the June runoff I will be named the first female mayor for the city of Denver.

>> Debbie, what do you want people to know about you that you think they don't know?

>> I'm a proud mother and grandmother.

I have a couple of proud family members in the audience tonight.

I come from a family of service.

Basically, my commitment to service started at a very young age.

When I saw my dad, I would actually go with him to deliver groceries and money to injured miners.

My dad was a coal miner.

He was killed on the job.

And the same families he helped came and assisted my family when he passed away.

That is part of my DNA.

When we moved to Denver, I saw my mom give back and do the same thing in the way that she volunteered at the VOA food bank and helped many families that were struggling and arch oftentime a lot of that food ended up on my table.

My service is a labor of love and I don't consider myself a career politician.

I believe I've been a public servant that does this because of my love for this city.

>> Same question to you, Kwame.

What would you like people to know?

Obviously, Debbie is -- >> I'm a political newcomer.

I want everyone to know everything about me.

No, I think that I have a unique set of experiences that I think make me incredibly qualified for this job.

Once again, I am a proud Denver native, born at Rose Hospital, went through Denver Public Schools, East High School which I always have to tell people about.

I had the opportunity to leave Denver, lived on the East Coast and learned my X's and O's around business and take that experience and come back home.

And so fundamentally, I feel like if you have a strong vision, you put yourself with a great team and you have the ability to make tough decisions you can do just about anything.

And I think it's that vision that we need for the city.

The other thing I want to know is I think it's time for a change.

As a small business owner I've been watching and viewing and living this city for the past few years and I'm not sure we're headed in the right direction.

I think this election to me is like 1983 where Mayor Pena challenged us to imagine a great city and he brought a new generation, a new voice, a new energy, a new passion because we have to solve really tough issues and I think we need a new perspective leading us on solving those issues.

>> You raised the issue about the current direction of the city and where it's been going.

Looking at the past 12 years under Mayor Michael Hanahan -- Hancock, what would be one of his greatest achievements and failures?

>> I think the way he handled Covids with admirable and I think in one or two years we'll realize Denver was a city on a hill.

I wasn't in Denver at the beginning of the outbreak.

I was outside the state and I wish I was here because the way Colorado and specifically Denver handled our restrictions, understanding the data, pushing residents to get vaccinated, that was his leadership and I think we've got to applaud him for that.

Obviously we are not where we should be with our unhoused population and I would say that's probably his greatest weakness and I think the mayor has acknowledged that himself and he too agrees we have to have drastic changes with how we think about our homeless situation.

One of the reasons I'm in this race, Aaron, I don't think we're having honest conversations with our residents about the homeless situation and I think once again we've got a lot of politicians who have been doing this for a long time and I think, one, their policies have helped to get us here and they're not really willing to have a conversation about how to get out of it.

That's what I'm looking to do on this campaign because I can tell you when I see tents outside, it absolutely breaks my heart.

But, Aaron, I can also tell you that if those tents are outside of Tattered Cover we lose customers and can't play our employees and that's what we're seeing in Denver today.

>> I'm going to ask you the same question about Mayor Hancock.

What do you see as his greatest achievement and greatest failure?

>> First of all, I think the work he has been doing, incorporating race, social justice, inclusion, and equity into the work of all of our agencies through the budget process means that we're not leaving communities behind, which is something that has happened because I worked with his office and sent some individuals from the human rights and community partnerships office to Seattle to look at their program and come back and basically model that, train all the agencies, and then incorporate that work into the budget process so that neighborhoods that still needed curbed sidewalks with you incorporated into the budget process at our Department of Transportation and Infrastructure for example.

I think that work our ensured that voices of the community and council people continue to be part of making sure those neighborhoods get the things they need.

And it's always a competitive process when you deal with the budget adoption.

And this is one area where I think it's made a huge difference for many of our low-income communities.

In the area that everybody refers to as the inverted L along the 125 and I-70 corridors.

>> How about on the failure side?

>> I would say probably the airport and move forward with the great haul project with the company that was out of the United States that ended up taking $200 million away to just settle, just to basically get them out of the way so that Denver could step in and do that contract themself.

I did not support that contract.

When we were asked to look at the contract, it was two boxes of files and it didn't include any of the finances, which was the heart of the deal.

And I asked to see the details.

I was only given information on the questions that I had.

And I, you know, could not get myself to support that.

Having said that, we are at a place that the east side of -- the east terminal of the airport has been pretty much completed and it is important to complete the other side.

So the airport personnel brought the project back to move forward so that we could complete it and make sure that our TSA check-in is at the sixth level so that we're able to move people through that safely.

It became a safety factor after 9/11.

We had to look at the airport completely differently.

And my goal of the airport is to make sure it's the number one best functioning airport that can move people through where the toilets flush and the escalators work and we get people through TSA in a timely manner and keep the cost for employment down so the fees to fly through Denver International Airport are not the most important but affordable for families not just business travelers.

>> You brought up the airport issue and I think you were generous when you said the cost of $2 million to the company.

Of course, what end up happening is the rebidding process resulted in we're spending literally the same amount of total dollars but getting a lot less for it.

And Denver in essence is probably losing more on the order of three or four hundred million dollars.

Why has in your opinion, and Kwame, I'll ask you to chime in too, why has the mismanagement of the airport been a consistent theme for a number of years?

It's almost like you had the mayor's office and the airport's kind of left alone to do whatever it wants.

So tell me if that characterization is incorrect and tell me how you would manage the airport differently.

>> First of all, let me just show it to you.

When I chaired the committee that all the airport issues had to come through, I had regular meetings with Kim Day and her executive staff to walk through all of the different issues that I wanted to see come through committee.

This was during the time the hotel was being built.

And I wanted to make sure we were looking at those big expensive contracts and then determined which ones needed to come through committee versus some that would be put on a consent agenda.

I have the council president come to me and say that a council person complained that I was bringing too many issues to committee about the airport.

And my response was, this is our job, this is what the taxpayers expect us to do, to make sure that we are, you know, being good stewards of taxpayers' money and making sure that we're getting the best most efficient contracts out of this airport.

So, as mayor, what I would do differently, and I think you remember when all of the airport contracts used go through our department.

It was our Public Works Department.

Now it's our Department of Transportation and Infrastructure.

I think that kind of oversight is really important on those big contracts and it also makes sure there aren't special favors given to friends to get awarded those contracts.

I think they always have to be based on the best value contracting so that we're getting the best deal for the money.

>> So Kwame, what's your take on how the airport's been managed and what had you do differently?

>> I think it all comes down to accountability.

The reason why I think we need a new generation of political leaders is I think if we look at the past five, six, seven, eight years and if we were holding our politicians accountable we would say they weren't doing a very good job.

I think it's the same thing with the airport.

We should start from the perspective of we have the third most trafficked airport in the world which is amazing but it's a different airport than one or two decades ago when it opened and I think we need a different perspective and think more critical about who's managing the airport.

I think Bill Washington has done an excellent job but enabling him to do more structurally with clear goals to say this is where we're going, communicate the goals with the public and staff at the airport and tracking performance.

We don't do that enough.

You have long explanations of what went wrong when in reality if we had clear metrics and held people accountable, we would be in a very better spot.

>> We're running out of time so I'll fire questions to you on a variety of topics.

Kwame, how would you or not want to support the new immigrants and refugees coming to Denver on the assumption more are going to continue to come?

>> This is a sanctuary city and we have to take what that embodies and give our most resources to the folks who are here, whether they're undocumented or not.

Regarding our migrant crisis, the same rules apply, where we are in a situation where that's likely going to continue to happen.

We've got a broken immigration system.

We've got backlogged courts.

As the next mayor, you've got to just serve the people of Denver.

So what I want to do is ensure that every migrant who's here has the opportunity to get a job because if they're working, one, they're starting to build their livelihood and they're also using less government services.

I think as far as being a sanctuary we should do the same thing for undocumented workers who are here.

We've got to get them employed and helping within our community.

>> Would you support or oppose I.C.E.

notifications?

>> So I think that's a tricky one.

What I've learned over the past I would say week is that we probably shouldn't be partnering with I.C.E.

on this topic.

The history of I.C.E.

particularly within our communities of color is not great.

And there's not trust that's there.

We do have to have some solutions moving forward because once again our immigration system is broken and I think we've got to bring all parties to table.

Aaron, I don't know if you saw the article that came out today, but we spent $8 million in the month of December alone dealing with the migrant issue.

We're not going to be able to just turn our head and look away at this.

We're going to have to jump in and have real conversation Ossen -- conversations on this point.

>> Debbie, I.C.E.

notifications, what's your take on that?

>> I don't like them, first of all.

I know our sheriff's department is asked to provide that information when people are being released.

I haven't seen that people are being picked up.

I know under the last presidential administration, um, they had this punitive approach.

You haven't seen that happen with the Biden Administration.

This is a national issue.

It requires comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level.

I will work with our congressional delegation, our two U.S. senators and our representative, to really focus on what we can do and work with our regional, um, leaders in the metro area to try to get Colorado to help stand up what could be a push for that kind of comprehensive approach.

I want to commend Mayor Hancock for the work he did.

None of us were notified we would have bus loads of people showing up at our doorstep.

The main thing to do was address those immediate needs.

A lot of volunteers have come to the table from churches from non-profit organizations, helping get people connected to legal resources and as you know, both the city and the state help connect people that were not destined to end up in Denver but other places, to help get them relocated to those places.

I think those kinds of efforts and connecting them to employment, we've got employers that need workers.

So these are the things I think are important.

>> We only have eight minutes left, believe it or not.

One of the things that has struck me over the last 20 or 30 years is the multi-million dollar settlements related to police misbehavior, police criminal action.

And while I think everyone agrees that the vast majority of police officers try to do the right thing and do the right thing, clearly there's been a systemic problem in Denver when it comes to the need for these kinds of settlements.

What's your sense of what has been going on and how do we put an end to having to deal with these -- you can call them rogue police officers if you want, but clearly it's not just one or two people.

These situations are happening time and time again.

>> So first of all, I want to share with you that I didn't know this until I met with the Police Protective Association president.

And this was just a couple of years ago.

That we've had three different waves of officers who have come on our police force.

A number of them are getting close to retiring.

Some have retired.

Basically, they were trained in use of force.

We never went back and retrained them.

And that next wave had different methodology.

Now we're using best practices.

We have to go back and train everybody under the same consistent approach.

And training is really critical to making sure that people understand all of those best practices.

No doubt we should not be, you know, having these expensive payouts.

I think the culture is absolutely something that is important, but I know many, many officers who are dedicated to serving the public and doing the best job they can.

And their goal at the end of the day is to go home to their families.

It's a tough job.

And I support our police, but I also hold them accountable when their actions just deviate from the best practices and the way they were trained.

>> So, Kwame, what would you do about, you know, this number of incidents resulting in seven-eight-figure settlements.

>> With taxpayers dollars, I think our residents deserve safe environments and I think right now there's a fear that they're not safe as they need to be.

We have to empower police officers to be able to do their job.

But they need the same accountability that everyone else needs.

What I keep hearing from other candidates or, you know, people is that there's no accountability.

And I think that if you have a police chief, the police chief has to know that having these settlements will end in one thing: They won't have their job anymore.

And I just think we need a new perspective.

And I think that as a small business owner, I don't have the option of just making excuses and having things happen and having them pile up.

If I don't act, I lose that business.

And we're in that urgency right now and I think we have to ask ourselves as a city and voters do we want to hold the people accountable who have been running this place for the past decade.

>> Certainly I think a lot of voters will hold the mayor accountable.

Speaking of accountability, even though the Denver mayor is certainly not on the school board, I think a lot of citizens are concerned about the failure of the Denver Public School system, that we're not doing our kids justice, we're not teaching them to read and write at grade level.

What would you do to aid the kids of Denver?

>> So, Aaron, even in this -- this particular question actually shows the void of leadership in the city.

You're 100 percent right.

The mayor has no control over Denver Public Schools.

And where I would challenge our existing leaders is how did you let Denver Public Schools become such a mess, where were you?

The only people who lose are students.

And quite frankly, our lower income students.

So here's an issue in which no one who is in this race actually has any control over other than to lead.

Our leaders or our perceived leaders aren't leading right now.

And if we don't have a new perspective and somebody who comes in and says I will use my bully pulpit to call this stuff out because it's horrible for our city and our kids.

That's not happening right now and it needs to.

>> Debbie, when you look at K through 12 education and so many kids failed by the system, what would you do as mayor?

>> First, I want to say I'm a proud DPS graduate, so is my daughter and grandchildren.

Kwame knows the mayor doesn't oversee the Denver Public School system.

Neither does city council.

There is a body that brings the two bodies together, the school district with their leadership, the city with its leadership, to lead on a regular basis to talk about school closures, the safety issues.

Kids from East High School are asking for school resource officers back in their schools.

>> We've got at least one school board member saying he doesn't want to see that happen because the school board already took action on that.

We have to listen to parents.

They came to city council asking for those resource officers.

Our kids want to feel safe in the place where they're supposed to be safe.

And when they don't feel that, we have to listen to the teachers, the parents, and the students.

And this is a case where together we can work to solve those issues.

I've been the person from city council who has asked our president to bring those two together so that we could address these important issues.

>> Two minutes left.

>> Let me just add though, because I actually went to East High School and Tattered Cover our biggest location is across the street from East High School.

If students from East have gone to city council and asked for support, where is the support?

That's the problem.

>> That's the decision.

>> We've got 60 seconds left.

I want to give you each -- Kwame, I want to give you each a chance to answer one last question, which is -- >> Sure, equal time.

>> And I'll ask you both the same question.

>> Equal time.

>> In in your first hundred days in office, what would you like to accomplish?

>> We're going to back to our neighborhoods.

I'm passionate about the fact that we're not listening to our residents.

I'll go back to it.

If students from East said they needed support, I don't care if I have control over the school board or not.

I'm going to use the power of the mayor's office to give them that support.

We'll look at our neighborhoods the way New York City thinks about its boroughs and have specific plans for each one of those neighborhoods.

They're going to have goals.

And those goals will have accountability associated with them and I'll hold them accountable.

>> How about you, Debbie?

>> First thing I would do is create a metro crime task force so we're getting guns out of our community and out of our schools, getting these deadly drugs that are causing severe mental illness out of our neighborhoods, out of our schools, off of our streets, and then also addressing the criminals who are stealing cars and stealing catalytic converters that are turn people's lives upside down and bring people in the pipeline as quickly as possible because that housing is desperately needed for people in the community.

>> I want to think my guests Debbie Ortega and Kwame Spearm for joining me today.

Watch our programs on Fridays at 9:00 PM on PBS 12 and on PBS 12 every Sunday at noon.

You can also watch our programs online at PBS12.org.

And make sure you go to HarberTV.com/mayor to find out about this series and find information about events to see me at to join our candidates.

I'm Aaron Harber.

Thanks for watching.