🧑‍💻 Mayor Johnston faces the Reddit mob

⚰️ Are CO Funeral Homes Still the Worst?

After a surprise inspection, a funeral home in Pueblo was found to be in possession of several improperly stored decomposing bodies. The impromptu check-in was the result of legislation passed in 2024 to combat a startling trend in the mortuary business. One expert explains why Colorado’s funeral home industry is like this. [City Cast Denver 🎧]

⚖️ Mayor Johnston Countersues Trump

The City of Denver is fighting back against a Trump administration lawsuit that claims Denver’s immigrant-friendly policies impede federal immigration enforcement. “We're not sure if they don't understand the laws or just don't want to follow them,” Mayor Johnston said, "Denver has never violated federal statute.” [Westword]

🔋 Building Owners Sue (Again) Over City’s New Energy Rules

When a group of local apartment and hospitality associations sued the city over new — stricter — energy-use standards last year, a judge dismissed the case, saying the plaintiffs’ claims of burden were purely hypothetical. But now that an audit has shown that building owners are potentially looking at hundreds of millions of dollars in upgrades to comply with the new rules, the judge is allowing them to resubmit their suit. [BusinessDen 🔒]

🏡 How’s the Mayor’s Homelessness Initiative Going?

Mayor Johnston is well on his way to achieving his goal of bringing another 2,000 unhoused Denverites off the streets before the end of the year. At the end of July, he’d moved over 1,400 people into shelters. [Axios Denver]

• However: As for his other goal to get 2,000 unhoused Denverites into permanent housing this year, he’s short of halfway at just 743 successful cases.

Yesterday morning, Mayor Mike Johnston took to the keyboard for an hour-long “Ask Me Anything” session on the local r/Denver subreddit — and Denverites didn’t hold back. Users grilled the mayor on everything from Denver’s housing crisis and traffic enforcement to Denver’s best burger and the tunnels under DIA. While he didn’t answer all the top-upvoted questions, we rounded up some of his most revealing responses.

Dangerous Driving and Traffic Enforcement

Questions about traffic enforcement — or more accurately, the lack thereof — made up the majority of participants’ questions by a landslide. Participants wanted to know why traffic infractions like speeding, expired plates, and running red lights weren’t being taken more seriously, with one commenter suggesting that “it seems like a free for all right now.”

“We are focused on increasing traffic enforcement,” the mayor responded, “both on speeding, where I'll support putting in more red light cameras and speed cameras, and we have developed a strong system on unregistered tags where we will occasionally do surge enforcement on unregistered tags.”

Denver’s Best Burger

A user named FeistyBlackWoman was downvoted like crazy after the mayor chose to answer her question about the best burger in town. “Cherry Cricket,” the mayor responded. “I do cricket burger but add pepper jack cheese, jalapeno and egg ... and sometimes onion ring strings.”

Regardless of what they thought about the Cherry Cricket, this wasn’t what some reddit users were hoping to hear: “I'm disappointed that this is [one of] the first questions answered here when there are a lot of really good questions about issues that actually affect Denverites' health, safety, and quality of life,” one user replied. Tough crowd!

The Threat of Trump and the National Guard

The top-upvoted question in the whole AMA was what the mayor planned to do if / when President Trump attempts to deploy the National Guard in Denver to address crime as he has in Washington D.C. Johnston was firm in his response:

“Any first year law student in America could tell you that deploying the US military on the streets of American cities in times of peace to enforce domestic law is clearly illegal. Denver does not need any help from the national guard as we are seeing the largest decrease of violent crime of any top 50 city in the country. We will be prepared to take them to court on day 1 if they threaten to do so.”

Flock Cameras and ICE

When asked why the city continues to use Flock security cameras despite its known association with federal immigration authorities, Mayor Johnston defended his decision:

“Yes we are [still using Flock] because we think we keep people safe. We have not seen a single instance of Denver's flock data being used for the purposes of civil immigration enforcement and DA has already committed we will prosecute anyone who does. What we have seen are hundreds of arrests for everything from murder cases to kidnapping to car theft using flock cameras, so we do aim to keep them in place. If you have your car stolen, or heaven forbid have your car stolen with your kid still in the carseat, we want to be able to find it immediately.”

Read more: See the mayor’s response to questions on homelessness, peer cities, and more ⬇️