Denver, CO
Denver allocates $100K for investigation into fire department timekeeping practices
The City of Denver has authorized as much as $100,000 for an independent investigation into the Denver Fire Department command staff’s use of flex time, which first came to light via a CBS News Colorado investigation in April.
According to a contract signed last month between the city and former U.S. Attorney Robert Troyer, the investigation could run as long as two years. CBS News Colorado obtained the contract via an official request to Denver’s Department of Safety.
The Department of Public Safety gave CBS News Colorado Investigator Brian Maass this statement regarding the investigation, “We anticipate a quick and thorough investigation. While it is likely that the investigation will be completed within a few months, the contract timeline ensures that the investigation and any follow up identified as the investigation progresses can be completed without having to seek a contractual amendment. For the same reasons, the contract amount was set at $100,000 to avoid having to amend the contract if it exceeds anticipated timelines or costs. We do not expect the investigation to cost $100,000.”
In April, we reported that Denver Fire Chief Desmond Fulton, who makes $230,000 annually, amassed more than 400 hours of comp or flex time in a recent three-year period by attending memorial services for firefighters, retirement parties for his employees and going to a candlelight vigil for victims of a 2022 mass shooting.
“Disgusting” is how one current Denver firefighter characterized the practice. Numerous other firefighters, who requested anonymity, expressed similar sentiments.
Following our investigation, Denver Department of Public Safety Executive Director Armando Saldate ordered an immediate halt to the practice, saying he was unaware of it, and records show the city signed a $100,000 contract with Troyer in late April to conduct an investigation that’s capped at two years. The agreement calls for Troyer to “conduct an independent investigation into the practice of the Denver Fire Department Command Staff’s usage of ‘Kelly Flex Time.’”
Denver’s municipal code appears to explicitly forbid Fulton and the fire department’s executive staff from accruing comp time. The city code reads, “Division chiefs, deputy chief and the chief of the fire department who work overtime after the end of a regular shift shall not be compensated.”
One issue that will likely be probed is if Fulton or his command staff used comp or flex time to take time off and vacations, which then allowed them to cash out or “sell” unused vacation days back to the city at the end of each year. Selling unused vacation days is allowed under the collective bargaining agreement between the fire department and the city, but rank-and-file firefighters are heavily pressured not to engage in the practice, apparently to save the city money.
Records show that in 2023, the city paid Fulton $14,987.30 for vacation days he didn’t use in 2022. The city paid Division Chief of Operations Robert Murphy $10,992.66 for vacation days he didn’t use in 2022. For Fulton and his command staff, the city paid them a total of $81,043.93 for unused vacation days in 2022. When Fulton accepted the job as fire chief in 2020, he noted, “we’re facing a budget crisis like we’ve never seen.”
While top department commanders were pocketing thousands of dollars for unused vacation days, internal emails from 2022 show they were simultaneously pressuring rank-and-file firefighters not to do the same.
In a December 2022 email to department commanders, Murphy wrote to his colleagues, “Please take a look at the following members and let me know the plan to get rid of these vacation hours before the end of the year. These hours need to be used before January.”
That same month, Deputy Chief Kathleen Vredenburgh emailed department division chiefs and copied the email to Fulton.
Titled “2022 VACATION AUDIT,” Vredenburgh alerted the commanders to “look at the attached people listed from your division that still have vacation and ASL (accumulated sick leave) balances and make sure they get the remainder of their time in the books. There’s only three and a half weeks left in the year.”
City records show Vredenburgh was paid $9,243.77 for her unused vacation days from 2022.
A spokesperson for the Denver Fire Department said Fulton and his command staff would not discuss any current issues given the pending investigation.
Mayor Mike Johnston wrote to Chris Ferguson. the president of the Denver Firefighters Union, on May 1 officially informing the union of the comp time investigation.
“I know we are aligned on our expectation that Denver’s public safety work is conducted with integrity and transparency, at every level, and especially in leadership,” Johnston wrote in the one-page letter to Ferguson.
He asked in his letter “that local 858 support the investigation and await its completion before taking any formal action.”
That line appears to be aimed at fending off a potential “no confidence” vote in Fulton, which has been discussed among Denver firefighters.
“I recognize the frustration and anger your members may feel,” read the mayor’s letter, which noted, “our desire to get an accurate account of what happened.”
Although Fulton has repeatedly declined to be interviewed about the flex time issue, he previously released the following statement:
“I want my team in the fire department and our broader community to know that I’ve always followed what I believed were best practices to promote transparency and uphold the public’s trust. Tracking Flex Time is a long-standing practice that fire chiefs have used for many years. During my transition into the Chief’s appointment in 2020, I continued to follow the practice and track all activities and hours in our reporting system — a practice that has been in for at least the last decade by other department leads. I fully support an investigation of how these hours were used and have asked that department leaders cease this practice immediately.”
Craig Morton, a Broncos Ring of Fame quarterback who played professionally for nearly two decades, died Saturday at his home in Mill Valley, Calif., at the age of 83.
Morton’s family confirmed his death through the organization, which announced the news on Monday.
Morton led Denver to its first Super Bowl appearance in 1977, quarterbacking the team best known for its ferocious Orange Crush defense. That season, at the age of 34, Morton earned the league’s comeback player of the year award and sparked a six-season run with the Broncos.
“He was our leader that year that we went 12-2, the first year he came to Denver,” fellow Broncos Ring of Famer and former safety Steve Foley told The Post. “It was a magical season. He was just tough as nails.”
Morton was hurt throughout the playoffs and Foley said the quarterback was in the hospital before the AFC Championship Game, when the Broncos beat the Oakland Raiders, 20-17, and advanced to their first Super Bowl appearance.
“I don’t know how he even suited up,” Foley said. “He was black and blue and yellow all over his hip. … Man, he came out and had a great game. He was just tough.
“And what a gem of a guy. Oh, yeah. He had the best heart.”
Morton was the first quarterback to lead two different teams to the Super Bowl, taking the Cowboys there in 1970 before later leading the Broncos.
Morton was born in February 1943 in Michigan, but graduated from high school in California and played quarterback in college at Cal. He also played baseball in college. He was selected No. 5 overall by Dallas in the 1965 NFL Draft, five years before the AFL and NFL merged.
Early in his career, Morton started for Dallas over Roger Staubach before Staubach eventually took over the job.
Morton, though, engineered a long and successful career in pro football.
He played in 207 career games over 18 seasons, including 72 games (64 starts) for the Broncos from 1977-82. Morton was 41-23 as a starter and threw for 11,895 yards for Denver.
“He had a confidence about himself. Kind of a swagger,” Foley said. “Our offense picked up when he arrived. We just knew he could win. He brought that to the team. And man, he had an arm. Oh, yeah. He had a gun.”
Morton was inducted into the Broncos Ring of Fame in 1988 as part of a three-man class along with Haven Moses and Jim Turner. Four years later, he was enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame.
Morton’s tenure in Denver helped put the Broncos on the map.
“Absolutely, it did,” Foley said. “It made everybody wake up and say, ‘Who is this team on the interior of the United States?’ Unless you played on the East Coast or West Coast, you weren’t getting much coverage.”
Foley said he last saw Morton in the Champions Club at Empower Field during a game sometime in the past two seasons and said he remembered thinking, ‘Man, he looks great.’” Players from the Orange Crush era were surprised and saddened, then, to learn of the quarterback’s passing.
“It’s a little bit shocking,” Foley said. “He was a beautiful guy.”
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Rocky Mountain sandhill cranes battle warmer conditions due to drought
Wildlife biologist Jenny Nehring and farmer Rob Jones talk about Sandhill cranes and their impact on the San Luis Valley.
DENVER — Zoos are of necessity big gulpers of water, a fact that has some zookeepers in the drying American West working to rapidly upgrade efficiency and reduce unnecessary irrigation or leaks.
Denver Zoo, formally known as the Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance, has rapidly reduced its demands on threatened and declining water sources, including the Colorado River.
Among the upgrades is a sea lion water filtration system that allows most of the water to be cleaned and reused each time the pool is drained. That’s saving more than 8 million gallons a year, zoo sustainability director Blair Neelands said. “You can get in there, scrub it with a toothbrush and refill it with the same water,” she said.
Similar upgrades to an African penguin showcase reduced its water use by 95% by largely eliminating what’s sent down the drain. (Like a backyard swimming pool, though, these tanks sometimes still need to be drained and refreshed with new water to reduce mineral buildup.)
“The biggest thing for us is swapping from dump-and-fill pools to life-support systems,” Neeland said.
Another biggie is replacement of a 50-year-old water main with funding of about $3 million from the city. There’s no way of knowing how much that pipe had leaked over the years, but Neeland suspected it was more than a million gallons a year. The savings should become apparent as the zoo tracks its water use over the next few years.
Creating hippo-sized water savings
When The Arizona Republic visited in 2025, the zoo was on the cusp of eclipsing a goal to reduce its water use by half of what it had been in 2018. The zoo had used 80 million gallons in 2024, or about 219,000 a day, a 45% reduction in just a handful of years. Much of the savings had come in the form of smarter irrigation practices and use of drought-tolerant native plants where possible. The landscaping also pivoted to recycled “purple pipe” water from the city, which owns the zoo’s land, restricting potable water to areas where animals really need it.
“When people hear ‘recycled water,’ they get worried about cleanliness and hygiene,” zoo spokesman Jake Kubié said. “But it’s safe for the animals, and it’s not their drinking water.”
Getting past the water conservation goal would mean draining the pool where Mahali the hippo spent most hours lurking with just his eyes, ears and snout visible to visitors. Because he spent so much time in the pool, the water needed daily changes. It amounted to 21 million gallons a year, not to mention water heater bills that drove the cost to $200,000 a year, according to zoo officials. They estimated that Mahali used as much water as 350,000 four-person households.
“This facility is outdated,” Kubié said. “Some day this will become a huge saver of water.”
That day came before year’s end, and it indeed brought a tremendous savings. The zoo shipped Mahali to a new home (and a potential mate) at a wildlife preserve in Texas and drained the pool one last time. Ending the daily change-outs shaved more than a quarter of the zoo’s entire water usage from the previous year. It put the zoo significantly beyond its goal.
Denver Zoo’s water savings are part of a broader waste- and pollution-prevention effort aimed at being a good neighbor in uncertain times, Neeland said.
“Water savings and drought is top of mind for anyone who lives in the Western United States,” she said.
In Phoenix, a different mix of animals
That’s true of the Phoenix Zoo, as well, where zookeepers must maintain landscaping and animal exhibits in a city that baked under 100-degree-plus high temperatures for a third of the days last year. The zoo creates a “respite in the desert,” spokeswoman Linda Hardwick said, but has no hippos, penguins, grizzly bears or many of the other species that would require big water investments for outdoor swimming or cooling.
“We really specialize in animals that will thrive in the temperatures here,” Hardwick said.
The Phoenix Zoo uses most of its water on landscaping. After a consultant’s 2023 irrigation assessment, the staff centralized irrigation scheduling under a single trained technician and employed technologies including weather-based controllers and smart meters. Salt River Project awarded $70,000 in grant funds for the upgrades and several thousand more for training.
The zoo uses about 189,000 gallons a day, she said. That represents a 17% reduction from 2023, or 20% when adjusted for the year’s particular weather and evapotranspiration demand.
Brandon Loomis covers environmental and climate issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Reach him at brandon.loomis@arizonarepublic.com.
Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and @azcenvironment on Facebook and Instagram.
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