Councilman Jolon Clark has loved Denver all his life. From being born and raised in Washington Park to representing District 7 on the City Council, Clark has dedicated himself to advocating for and uplifting his community.

Before running for City Council, Clark worked closely with District 7 while working for the nonprofit Greenway Foundation for 17 years, working to revitalize the South Platte River and reconnect its surrounding neighborhoods. He first started the job as a high schooler, giving gondola-style boat tours.

Afterward, Clark was elected to the Denver City Council in 2015. Since then, he has been elected as Council President and President Pro-Tem, served on several boards and sponsored numerous legislations, often centered around increasing mobility and protecting the environment.

Though he said Denver is in many ways far from the city he grew up in, Clark wants to do right by his home, where he is now raising a family of his own.

“Sometimes you have to squint pretty hard,” Clark said, “but the same city is still here.”

Half-way through his second term, Clark talked to The Denver Gazette about his experience representing District 7 – comprised of the Athmar Park, College View, Historic Baker, Overland Park, Platt Park, Ruby Hill, West Washington Park and Valverde neighborhoods.

What made you want to become your district’s city council representative?

It was definitely not in the master plan for me. I had been working at the Greenway Foundation since I was 17 and I was happy, but I’m a neighborhood nerd and I love local stuff. I got involved in my neighborhood association because I wanted to put on a movie in the park, I got involved in my kids’ PTA because my daughter wanted to have a dance at the school, and I got to know my predecessor Chris Nevitt through my work on the river, so he appointed me to be his representative on the Parks and Recreation advisory board. I loved getting involved in everything I could get my hands on so, when Chris decided not to run for a third term, people started asking me to run.

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When I got into the race, there was only one other person running. So, I thought, maybe I could do this. Within a month, there were nine people in the race and the first article about it said, “There’s former legislator Anne McGihon, rising star in the Democratic party Aaron Greco, and seven other people.” And I was just in the seven other people. I didn’t think that I was going to win but it worked out.

My motivations to run were more a passion to serve and give back than a passion to change. There were lots of thing on my list that I wanted to get done, sure, but I don’t think that was the driving force. The driving force was that call to service to be a voice for my community. For Denver to, no matter what was thrown at it, have someone that really, really deeply loves this community. The community where my parents retired, where they raised a family, where I raised a family and where my kids are growing up. It was wanting that community to be everything that it was for me as a kid and so much more.

How has your experience as a council member been so far?

It’s been an amazing adventure full of so many highlights, many of which are small moments where you get to help somebody, like a constituent whose trash didn’t get picked up or who doesn’t know who to call to solve a problem. And then, there are also all these big moments. Like, it was exciting to work with the community to get Denver’s first rainbow crosswalk to celebrate our LGBTQ community. I also got to shepherd the legislation to require gender neutral signage on all single-stall bathrooms in the city. And getting to sponsor ballot measures and get voter approval to create the Park Legacy Fund – $40 million for our park system – and the climate fund – creating the new Office of Climate.

For me right now, it’s vaccines. I’ve just worked with my seventh volunteer clinic that my office has put on. We’re going door-to-door with flyers and walking into businesses. I had this woman who came to our clinic and she said she’d been trying to find a vaccine and she couldn’t figure it out, it was too overwhelming. And then she said, “like a miracle, you guys showed up on my door with a flyer and it said who to call. And here I am so I can finally get my shot and be safe.” There were 100 moments like that. One woman was waiting in her car for her second shot and she started crying. She had lost her niece to COVID and she brought a picture of her niece with her to get her final vaccination.

It’s a bumpy, bumpy rollercoaster. Everything that our community has gone through, the people that we’ve lost, the civil rights movement that we’re all grappling with in the midst of a pandemic where people are getting sick and dying and losing their jobs. It’s been a really rough year. I’m looking forward to turning a corner and getting a shot in every arm that we can so we can crawl out and start to rebuild.

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As a council member, what are your priorities for the future?

We’re got to recover from COVID. We’ve got to get businesses back up and running, we’ve got to get people back to work, we’ve got to make it so people can go hug their grandkids and take care of each other again.

When that is in the rearview, we’ve just started tackling what we need to do from a climate perspective. We have this great climate action plan that was put together by a very diverse group of people who grappled with every piece of it, but we’ve just scratched the surface and we have to continue to live up to that document. We’re got to tackle our trash diversion. Of what we throw away, almost 80% continues to go to the landfill when only 25% of it needs to because we should be diverting it through recycling and composting.

We need to deliver on the promise of the Park Legacy Fund to make sure every citizen has a high-quality park within a 10-minute walk. We still aren’t there, and we have a lot of work to do to find the funding for sidewalks, tree canopies and building out a complete bike network. In the next year, we’ve got to continue our Safe Streets Program to make more of our streets friendly to people who are not in a car. We’ve got to look at changing the speed limits on streets down from 25 to 20 and looking at what we can do on bigger streets.

In my district specifically, we have the former (Police Activities League) building that’s turning into the Denver Youth Empowerment Center. Getting that fully opened and operating is a critical task for the next year.

It’s going to be a busy year, but I got into this because I care really, deeply about this community and I want to serve. I will continue serving until my time is up and I hope that I will have been a good voice for the city I love and that I left it a better place than when I found it.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.