Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced a decrease in city services on Friday to help offset costs inflicted by the city’s migrant crisis.
The reduction includes cuts in the hours of operation for several Department of Motor Vehicles offices, and the city’s Parks and Recreation services will reduce their spring programming by 25%. Community centers will also reduce the number of days they are open from seven to six.
Johnston, a Democrat, said these changes do not involve layoffs for current employees, but hourly workers can expect fewer hours. On-call workers and seasonal workers will be most affected.
“This is a plan for shared sacrifice,” Johnston said in a news conference. “This is what good people do in hard situations as you try to manage your way to serve all of your values. We want to continue to be a city that does not have women and children out on the street in tents in 20-degree weather.”
The mayor also claimed the cuts were not the last, or the hardest, for the city.
Denver has received more than 40,000 immigrants in the past year, according to Johnston, including 4,000 that remain in the city’s care. The majority of the 4,000 are families that include women and children.
Johnston said without federal support, the city will come up with a plan on how to adjust the types of services provided to immigrants, the number of immigrants it can take in, and how to make those services more cost effective.
The city has spent a total of $46 million on the migrant crisis so far, with the majority going to food and housing, but $5 million was spent on transportation to other liberal cities, such as Chicago and New York, according to Denver-7. New York City has seen the largest influx of asylum-seekers so far, having received more than 150,000 immigrants since the spring of 2022.
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Johnston told city residents that the immigrants were not to blame for the crisis, but the federal government who would not allow the newcomers to work in the country without proper authorization.
The news comes after Congress failed to pass a border security bill this week despite months of negotiations.
