From the start of his political trek years ago in Colorado’s Legislature, Mike Johnston seemed to be the proverbial young man in a hurry. Today, as Denver’s mayor, Johnston still comes across that way even if he’s no longer young.

He’s in a hurry to lay out bold plans of action; in a hurry to claim success; in a hurry to move on to the next issue. Or, maybe the next political office, if you believe the rumors.

Yet, even if he wants to keep his foot on the gas and ignore the rearview mirror, a lot of us wish he would tap the brakes — long enough to reflect on what he got wrong.

That sensation set in as Johnston delivered this week’s annual State of the City address midway into his first term as Mile High mayor.

He’s of course entitled to recap his accomplishments, a staple of such speeches. But to gloss over the glaring errors requires correction.

And when it comes to glossing over, nothing could beat his attempt on Monday before an audience of political and civic notables to recast the most glaring error so far in his tenure as, somehow, a windfall to the city. That would be his decision against all reason to roll out the welcome mat for some 43,000 illegal immigrants, mostly from Venezuela, who inundated Denver over the past couple of years. They were lured by the city’s repute as a sanctuary to the world, no questions asked.

Johnston opened the city’s coffers to feed, shelter and provide medical care to the incoming. To cover some of the cost, the mayor cut basic services such as parks, rec and DMV office hours to rank-and-file Denver residents. The total tab was around $90 million, and Denver’s taxpayers were stuck with most of it.

He may have viewed his open-door policy as a way of thumbing his nose at the Trump administration and its crackdown on illegal immigration, but it really amounted to another kind of hand gesture to the general public, which had to pay for it.

The mayor similarly inflected in reviewing his other major milestone in his first two years on the job, his blitz on homelessness. He deserves bona fide praise for acting so swiftly — more or less his first day in office — to implement his new policy. Kudos to him, as well, for shutting down a number of the city’s homeless encampments, particularly in and around downtown. That was a real boon to residents and business owners alike, who’d long sought relief.

But moving the homeless into hotels only swept the problem indoors rather than addressing it at its roots — by and large, addiction and mental illness. Although he promised his audience his policy’s next step would be connecting the homeless with “high-quality and long-term support services,” most likely will return to the streets sooner or later unless a concerted effort is made to place the chronically homeless into rehab, mental health care and employment.

Simply housing them for free only will create a lure for more homeless — making Denver a sanctuary for yet another population.

Hence, the troubling data in the metro area’s latest homelessness tally. Although fewer people are sleeping on the streets in Denver, the total number of homeless in the city grew this year to 7,327, which is 788 more than last year.

Meanwhile, Johnson’s understandable good cheer about a citywide drop in violent crime also must be tempered by another development: violent crime is actually on the rise in Denver’s ailing downtown.

Colorado’s Common Sense Institute released an analysis this week that revealed murders downtown have increased 40% compared to 2024, and by 133% compared to 2020. Aggravated assaults downtown are up 24% in the past year.

The first step to reinvigorating downtown is making people feel safe to visit there again.

State of the City addresses are inevitably self-congratulatory and glib. Now, it’s time to get back to work. Our hope is to remind the mayor of a few of the things that remain undone — and some that shouldn’t have been done in the first place.