Denver City Council RNO Outreach

[Office of Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez]

Dear Denver RNO Members and Leaders,

 

The offices of Councilwoman Gonzales-Gutierrez and Councilman Kashmann are looking into our city’s current RNO Ordinance with hopes to strengthen our RNOs and empower our residents to engage with their neighborhoods and government. The RNO Ordinance was written in the 70s and Denver City Council recognizes the need to update the ordinance to reflect the needs of today. Our hope is to increase equity, participation, and city support to the RNO network.

 

BUT before we get started, we want to hear from you! Our offices are dedicated to a robust community engagement process over the course of this summer and fall, to gather data and reform the ordinance with recommendations from Denverites. We are gathering our data by asking folks to fill out a survey and hope you can fill it out too! The link below directs you to our survey in English and Spanish (surveys in French, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Amharic will be available by next week). Please share the link with your members but also with friends and family who live and Denver and aren’t familiar with RNOs at all. We want to hear from everyone!

 

Survey link: https://linktr.ee/yourcityyourvoice

 

Additionally, our offices are partnering with Radian, authors of the RNO Equity Toolkit, and they will be reaching out to RNOs later this summer for a more targeted outreach. We anticipate holding facilitated discussions to hear from RNO leadership and members to better inform our potential reforms. Please email ourcityy...@denvergov.org (also CC’d on this email) and let us know who would be best to contact in your RNO for scheduling purposes.

 

Lastly, if you’re interested in having us table a RNO event this summer or fall, OR if you’re wanting more information, OR if you’re interested in sharing our information on your social media and newsletters, please email us at yourcity...@denvergov.org and we will can get in touch with you there. We have visuals and a communications toolkit we can share with you.

 

Thank you,

 

Offices of Councilmembers Gonzales-Gutierrez and Kashmann

 

 

	Office of Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez Office of City Council | City and County of Denver  Phone: (720) 818-6547 | (720) 337-7724
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[Office of Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez]

Hi all!

 

Sorry for the second email but there was an error in the spelling of the email address in the body of the email, but the correct email was CC’d. Please email us at yourcity...@denvergov.org.

 

Thank you,

Additionally, our offices are partnering with Radian, authors of the RNO Equity Toolkit, and they will be reaching out to RNOs later this summer for a more targeted outreach. We anticipate holding facilitated discussions to hear from RNO leadership and members to better inform our potential reforms. Please email yourcity...@denvergov.org (also CC’d on this email) and let us know who would be best to contact in your RNO for scheduling purposes.

[Bryan Wilson]

Thank you for sending this email.

As you may or may not know, registered neighborhood organizations must meet a set of eligibility requirements laid out in the Denver Revised Municipal Code, Chapter 12, Article III. RNOs receive notification of proposed zoning amendments, landmark designation applications, planning board and board of adjustment hearings, liquor and cabaret licenses and other activities occurring in the neighborhood as stipulated in the ordinance.  

This gives them a great deal of information that they receive directly from various City of Denver Agencies. This email is just one example & others can be found here, specific to Congress Park for ALL. Unfortunately, there are no requirements for RNOs to share this information more broadly with their community, to include everyone within their community, or even to hold open elections.

I've explained this previously to various Denver City Council Members & the Denver INC Executive Board.

I feel the RNO System needs completely revised to have only one per neighborhood with open elections. We can then have a coalition of RNOs that then aligns with either the City Council Districts or the Neighborhood Planning Initiative. This will allow us to have consistent communication across the city & equal opportunity for participation. Right now, it isn't equal.

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Respectfully,
Bryan Wilson
Congress Park for ALL

[Bryan Wilson]

I do have thoughts!

What would be the best way to provide them?

Respectfully,
Bryan Wilson

On Mon, Jul 7, 2025 at 9:43 AM Roberts, Taylor - CC Professional Administration Intern <Taylor....@denvergov.org> wrote:

Hi Bryan,

I am unsure whether to not somebody already responded to your email so apologies if you are receiving two different sets of communications.  We are working on reforming the ordinance as you know and any community/RNO feedback is incredibly helpful to us moving forward! Your input is very valuable to us and we will be sure to keep you in mind as we continue to go through the motions of reform. This is a very robust project for our offices and there is still plenty of progress to be made with the first steps being getting Denver residents to take our survey and give us their feedback.   Please keep in touch and if there are any questions we can answer or any more thoughts that you have please let us know!

Thanks,

 

                    Click HERE to take our RNO Survey!

---

From: Bryan Wilson <bryan...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2025 8:00 AM
To: Office of Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez <G-Gutierr...@denvergov.org>
Cc: Your City Your Voice <yourcity...@denvergov.org>; Kashmann, Paul J. - CC Member District 6 Denver City Council <Paul.K...@denvergov.org>; Steve Charbonneau <st...@findsolutions.org>; Executive Committee <exec...@denverinc.org>; ad...@radianinc.org <ad...@radianinc.org>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: Denver City Council RNO Outreach

 

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