After more than an hour of questions, a sales tax measure proposed by Mayor Mike Johnston has been tabled for more discussion by the Denver City Council. Councilmembers unanimously voted on Wednesday in the Safety, Housing, Education and Homeless Committee to delay sending the proposal to the full council.

It must be approved by the full City Council before August 26 in order to appear on November’s ballot. The bill will appear in committee again in early August and, if advanced, the council must “view” it twice, first on August 14 and again on August 21 where it will be voted on for the final time. 

The proposed sales tax, introduced by Johnston, will raise sales taxes in Denver by 0.5% and provide money for affordable housing developments citywide. The measure does not replace the Expanding Housing Affordability program Denver has requiring developers to build affordable units, or pay a fee to an affordable housing fund. Rather the two will coexist as Johnston attempts to facilitate the building of tens of thousands of permanently affordable housing units in the coming decade.

But the tax increase — if approved with other measures appearing on the ballot — will make Denver the highest taxed major city on the Front Range. A previous sales tax increase, a 0.34% increase to raise money for Denver Health, sparked criticism from councilmembers, with one worrying the city will begin asking too much of an already tax-burdened populace.

But Johnston and his team are pressing on, saying their proposed sales tax increase will only cost taxpayers $2 per week. And roughly 35% of the total cost would be passed off to those visiting the city, according to city officials.

This did little to soothe councilmembers concerns, who argued the city has the tools and money to address the affordable housing crisis.

“I have real concerns about throwing more money at a problem when the money is there. … The reason residents are being gentrified out of Denver is because $500,000, attainable, single-family homes are being scraped, and $2 million dollar duplexes are being built in their place,” Councilmember Amanda Sawyer said. “The fact that nothing has been done about that, but we want $100 million dollars a year for creative financing options to throw more solutions on the table is not fair to our residents.”

The fact that so many questions were asked — the committee spent roughly an hour in discussion — means it is not ready to appear before the full council, Sawyer said. Other councilmembers shared her hesitation and still others said the process had been going much too fast.

Councilmember Serena Gonzales Gutierrez generally doesn’t have a problem with some measures passing through committee quickly, provided the work is being done with “intentionality.” But on the sales tax proposal, she said there is “still a lot of thought that needs to go into this process.”

“There are other tools in our toolbox and we need them to be met with the same sense of urgency as this is because we know that it’s not just going to take one piece of the puzzle to actually solve the problem,” she said.

One major issue for Councilmember Jamie Torres goes beyond simply throwing money at a problem, it is the lack of specificity in the proposal language. Torres said she saw no example of what kind of housing the revenue from the sales tax increase would go towards and without that number in there, she could not support it.

A report from the Denver Regional Council of Governments suggested funding projects that target people making 60% or less of the area median income (AMI), according to Torres. The ballot language and associated bill documents, as proposed, do not have any information on whether it would be restricted to funding housing for people making 60% AMI and under, or whether it could be used to fund higher AMI restricted properties — some of which exceed 100% AMI.

“If we’re asking voters to approve something in the range of $100 million dollars a year, we should be able to tell them at the time that they’re voting what they’re voting to do,” Torres said. “We have to be very clear about who we’re building permanent housing for.”

A consistent voice in opposing the recent flurry of sales tax increases, Councilmember Kevin Flynn noted that Denver’s housing prices tracked very close to the national averages in a presentation from the city’s Department of Housing Stability (HOST).

While that doesn’t mean Denver is “affordable,” rather it highlights a nationwide housing crisis, he said. The information caused him to question the wisdom of shoveling money into the “gaping maw of the national housing market.” Housing costs don’t mitigate, he said, they stabilize.

The main reason Denver’s housing prices have kept going up is because the city keeps finding more money, he said.

“How many new fees, for the sidewalk, trash and stormwater, and sales tax increases does it take to make us affordable?” Flynn said. “In the interest of making Denver affordable, we keep adding to the cost of living, and that worries me.”

“And so I wonder, where does it end?”

In response to the delay, Johnston’s office issued a statement.

In it, Press Secretary Jordan Fuja highlights a new poll showing 90% of Denverites see the cost of housing as “a significant concern.” Fuja added it’s important for voters to see the measure in order to “make their voices heard on this critical issue.”

“Mayor Johnston is committed to acting with urgency to address this issue at the scale it deserves, and has been working around the clock with the five council sponsors to ensure the ballot measure directly addresses our city’s affordable housing needs,” Fuja said. “We know that the longer we wait the more difficult and more expensive it will be to address Denver’s housing crisis, which is why we will continue to partner with Council to finalize the most effective ballot measure possible.”