Managing Through Change: Mayors Weigh In

Key Participants & Context

• Mary Ellen Reeder-Wohl (President/CEO, Accelerator for America) hosted the public finance forum alongside Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and Kansas City Mayor Quentin Lucas.
• Accelerator for America is a non-partisan non-profit focused on developing real-time economic solutions for cities, specifically assisting mayors and local leaders.
• The discussion centered on managing budget volatility, leveraging federal funds (ARPA, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act), and addressing systemic inequality through infrastructure investment.

Mayor Michael Hancock: Denver's Economic Resilience & Strategy

• Budget History: Upon taking office in July 2011 (post-Great Recession), the city of Denver faced an immediate requirement to cut $100 million from the budget within 45–50 days.
• Economic Shift: By 2013, Denver transitioned into a period of historic prosperity, becoming a top destination for living, working, and business, with population growth reaching 30% over a decade.
• Pandemic Response: In 2020, Denver prioritized public safety over economic continuity, anticipating disproportionate harm to low-wage earners, women, and people of color; the city leveraged prior investments in entrepreneurialism and small business supply chains to withstand the shock.
• Recovery Outlook: Denver is forecasted to be among the first cities to emerge from the economic slowdown, with a strategic focus on "building back better" by specifically targeting support for small businesses, women, low-wage earners, and people of color.
• Catalytic Project (Colfax Avenue): The city plans to use federal and state funds to redesign the Colfax Avenue corridor (a 3-lane surface highway) into a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system integrated with affordable housing and commercial redevelopment.
• Precedent for Investment: A prior $41 million investment in Brighton Boulevard successfully attracted billions in private commercial and residential development, demonstrating a public-to-private return ratio of nearly 10:1.
• Regionalism: Colorado passed a bipartisan bill to reform transportation funding strategies, emphasizing regional collaboration between Denver, bracketing cities, and rural areas to ensure equitable infrastructure benefits statewide.
• Homelessness Strategy: Denver allocated $190 million for the current fiscal year to address homelessness via a "housing first" model, integrating behavioral health services and addiction treatment to stabilize vulnerable populations.

Mayor Quentin Lucas: Kansas City's Federal Funding & Equitable Infrastructure

• Pandemic Adaptation: Taking office in 2019, Mayor Lucas faced immediate pandemic disruptions but utilized a "sharp" mayoral approach to maintain infrastructure projects and prepare for the influx of federal stimulus funds (Rescue Plan, IIJA).
• Strategic Readiness: Emphasizes the necessity of having pre-developed plans and community engagement strategies before federal dollars arrive to ensure workforce opportunities, small business support, and representation in spending.
• Catalytic Project (I-70 Highway): Kansas City aims to reconfigure the I-70 highway, historically built through and displacing Black working-class communities, to include wayfinding improvements, traffic safety upgrades, and economic stimulation for frontage roads.
• Equity Focus: The I-70 project seeks to transform infrastructure from a barrier of speed into a tool for community engagement, ensuring residents see long-term investment rather than just transit efficiency.
• Zero-Fare Transit: Mayor Lucas is advocating for the expansion of zero-fare public transportation, a model already being pursued by other mayors like Boston's Mayor Wu.
• State Relations: Despite being a "blue city" within a Republican-led state (Missouri), the administration prioritizes cooperation, framing infrastructure projects as beneficial for the entire state economy to secure legislative support.
• Growth Focus: Kansas City aims to sustain growth while addressing hard issues like mental health, addiction, and homelessness through a "housing first" approach to ensure the city remains attractive for businesses and residents.

Shared Strategic Themes & Forward-Looking Statements

• Systemic Change vs. Maintenance: Both mayors argue that current federal funding offers a unique opportunity to move beyond "plugging holes" (reactive maintenance) to implementing systemic changes that address historic discrimination and segregation caused by past infrastructure decisions.
• Mitigating Gentrification: A critical forward-looking condition for redevelopment is the implementation of secondary and tertiary strategies (e.g., affordable housing mandates, displacement protections) to prevent involuntary displacement of vulnerable communities.
• Bipartisan Regionalism: Success in 2022 and beyond relies on framing local infrastructure as regional and state-wide assets, requiring collaboration with rural communities and opposing legislative bodies to secure funding and political will.
• Post-Pandemic Priorities: Both leaders identify the successful exit of the Omicron wave and the full reopening of tourism/convention sectors as primary 2022 milestones, allowing a shift of focus to chronic urban issues like mental health and economic inequality.
• Call to Action: Mayors assert that cities remain the primary engines of policy implementation, urging continued collaboration between local, state, and federal entities to execute equitable outcomes.