Improving Community Engagement and Constituent Services in Denver
A study for the City and County of Denver Agency for Human Rights and Community Partnerships and the Mayor’s Office, July 2022–August 2023 · Supported by the CU Denver Community Collaborative Research Center
Principal investigator: Carrie Makarewicz. Research team: Dina Bleecker, Ethan Greene, Julia Latham, Jason Schaefer, Jessica Whitney, and Samuel Ybarra (CU Denver MURP students). Research assistants: Aislinn Droski, Carla Nyquist, and Emilia Oscilowicz (CCRC). With the Fall 2022 Planning Engagement course (instructors Jade Orr and Dani Slabaugh).
Abstract
How a city engages its residents shapes whether they trust it, use its services, and take part in its decisions. In 2022, Denver’s Agency for Human Rights and Community Partnerships (HRCP) and the Mayor’s Office asked our team to assess how the City and County of Denver engages with communities and delivers constituent services, and to recommend practical improvements within the resources available.
From July 2022 through August 2023, we used a wide range of methods. We held a listening session with 22 representatives of small nonprofits serving marginalized communities and spoke with about 144 people in interviews and conversations, including all 13 City Council members, 51 city staff across 19 agencies, members of Registered Neighborhood Organizations (RNOs), and nonprofit leaders. We surveyed RNO members and residents (317 responses from 50 RNOs and 10 of 11 council districts), analyzed 115 of the city’s 190 RNOs and their boundaries against Census data, observed 25 RNO meetings, and studied 13 peer cities.
People across the city identified the same problems and the same solutions: silos among city agencies, gaps in the RNO system, and understaffed departments, along with real hope that things could improve. Because customer service and public engagement are distinct but connected, the report calls for a coordinated strategy rather than a single fix. Its eight recommendations, estimated at $2.46 million, include notifications open to all residents, a two-tier neighborhood organization system, an Office of Community Engagement within HRCP, Neighborhood Support Teams in every council district, investment in the City’s technology services, grants to nonprofit partners, civic education and training, and more engagement specialists in the largest departments. The study informed reforms to Denver’s constituent services.
