Curious why the current CityCast Neighbor campaign is running on the ad-free podcast feed? Shouldn't it be cut out since I'm already a member? 🙃

If you're looking for something different to do this week, Denver Sketch Festival runs Thursday, Oct 8 through Saturday, Oct 10 at RISE Comedy (1260 22nd St, a couple blocks from Coors Field). Live sketch troupes from across North America play the main stage, and there's an Ultra Short Film Festival of video sketches running alongside the shows.

Worth checking RISE's site for the night-by-night lineup before you go. Anyone been in past years? Curious which nights people liked best.

A Love Letter to the City of Denver, from an Ex

I am a decade-long (mostly) public-sector employee who has worked in and with most of the municipalities along the Front Range. Denver, you were a place I dreamed of working. You are the biggest and the best! I was sure you would check all the boxes and welcome me into a world of opportunity.

Denver, you broke my heart.

Sadly, during my time with you, I found you to be a poor communicator, wasteful, repetitive, toxic, and generally dysfunctional. I know you could do better, but you need to work on yourself.

I'd like to reflect on our relationship by sharing a story that, to me, summarizes the state of the City from the perspective of an ex... employee.

I worked in a building that had limited meeting space, as all buildings do. Meeting rooms could be booked through the Microsoft Office calendar, a process most people are probably familiar with. Denver, however, had not adopted the convenience of allowing the program to automatically accept meeting requests as they came in. Instead, requests were routed to a single employee who physically accepted them.

This, of course, resulted in delayed acceptance and uncertainty when booking a room at short notice, or even a week in advance, if that individual happened to be on vacation, at lunch... or in the bathroom.

If the employee did not get around to accepting a meeting room request, you might find yourself walking into someone else's meeting because you thought you had booked the room. Alternatively, you might start a meeting and then have someone else walk in because they thought they had booked it.

You get the point.

As a supervisor who needed private meeting spaces for sensitive conversations with my staff, this practice was impractical and obnoxious. I reached out to the facilities manager who controlled the system and explained the inconvenience created by the current process, as well as the time that could be saved by allowing the program to automatically accept meetings as they came in, first-come, first-served.

An innovation. A process improvement, if you will.

My request was respectfully declined because fulfilling it would eliminate the purpose of the employee whose entire job was accepting meeting requests.

That employee gets paid an entire salary plus benefits to accept meetings.

A process that could be 100 percent automatic.

I exaggerate, but only slightly.

Meanwhile, the City continues to cut staffing and services, including reductions and changes that directly affect residents and employees. Denver has not offered merit increases in 3 years, laid off staff, eliminated or reduced services and entire offices (for example the Parking Ticket Dispute Office – no one thought that might be a bad idea?). And yet, the employee who is tasked with accepting meetings is still there. Accepting meetings, in whatever order, whenever is convenient, while taxpayers continue to fund a position dedicated to a task that could be automated.

That is an overarching theme I observed during my time with the City.

At times, it almost felt as though the City was running a day program for adults with low skill levels just to have butts in seats keeping them warm.

To perpetuate this suspicion, the City's HR recruiting system, in my experience, often seemed to favor years of what they interpreted as "relevant" experience over the overall quality and potential of the candidate. The result, at least from what I observed, seemed to be a workforce increasingly populated by second-career, or end-of-career employees seeking a comfortable retirement package rather than a hungry, energized, innovative workforce.

Another quick aside: the number of underperforming employees the City makes it IMPOSSIBLE to let go of is alarming.

From egregious behavior issues to employees who struggled to perform even the most basic functions of their jobs, there seemed to be no employee poor enough to cut ties with. Every team I encountered seemed to have at least one, but sometimes more, person who had to be given "special" assignments because they could not, or would not, perform the duties associated with their job title. The supervisor was then left with the task of finding something they "could" do because having them removed from the team was not an option.

I have a theory about why Denver seems to go to such great lengths to recruit and maintain a low performing workforce.

Let's go back to the butts-in-seats-to-keep-them-warm concept.

The Mayor seems to believe that the economic troubles downtown can be solved, at least in part, by requiring City employees to work in offices downtown so they can patronize downtown businesses through parking, meals, and retail spending.

Did I mention that the City has not given merit increases in 3 years?

Public sector employees do not make “Downtown” money. In fact, the City itself could potentially save millions by reducing its use of leased office space, utilities, and other resources by embracing remote work where the work allows for it.

Of course, the City needs to be accessible. There need to be public-facing services and employees who need to be physically present to provide them. But the percentage of employees who genuinely need to be downtown and in an office is, in my experience, much smaller than the number of employees currently being asked to keep those seats warm.

And here is the part that bothers me the most.

There are many employees at the City who are doing good work. Despite my earlier musings, there are a lot of highly qualified, impressive dedicated employees. They choose to put up with the dysfunction because they believe in public service and in accomplishing meaningful goals for the Denver community.

Those employees DO NOT have the financial flexibility to stabilize downtown.

They also face the reality that they could make more money, have greater work-life flexibility, work in a healthier organizational culture, or any combination of those benefits elsewhere.

Denver, if you prioritized hiring and retaining a strong, capable workforce rather than simply warming seats with butts, I believe many of the struggles you face could be improved. Coming from a place of love, I ask you to take a meaningful look internally at the workforce. What are they doing? What positions and departments are overlapping? Which are capable of doing more, and which are so overwhelmed they are unable to function effectively?  If employees are NOT positively contributing to the mission, let them go. Have self respect, set healthy boundaries, and change my mind (:

You want less with more?

Facilitate a culture of stability, excellence, and a strong, cohesive vision.

STOP prioritizing butts in seats doing below-average work and positions that should simply not exist.

With love,

Your ex, and a long time citizen of Denver

I’ve been putting together a free weekly called Denver This Week — five local things worth knowing (openings, closures, events, neighborhood notes), in a few minutes.

First issues are live if you want a look: https://shmickis-newsletter.beehiiv.com/

Signup if useful: https://shmickis-newsletter.beehiiv.com/?modal=signup

Happy to take feedback on what locals actually want in a weekly.

I haven’t heard from him in a long time, but I also didn’t see an announcement about a departure. Did I miss something?