Reader: While cops clean up Occupy Denver, city does another snow job

What constitutes an "encumbrance" in this town? The signs at Civic Center Park? Or the piles of snow on streets all over town? Several readers pointed out that while the city seems obsessed with doing a clean sweep of the Occupy Denver camp, it's ignoring the still-icy streets...

By Patricia Calhoun

December 30, 2011

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What constitutes an "encumbrance" in this town? The signs at Civic Center Park? Or the piles of snow on streets all over town? Several readers pointed out that while the city seems obsessed with doing a clean sweep of the Occupy Denver camp, it's ignoring the still-icy streets.

Says Waste:

While tax money gets poured down this hole of "enforcement," shoppers and diners (and tax income) avoid downtown because piled snow and ice are blocking parking spaces.

Nice allocation of resources, Mr. Mayor.

And downtown isn't the only place where the rules seem to be selectively enforced. Robert Chase adds this:

The City does not enforce the ordinance about shovelling sidewalks, or only very selectively. When it does snow, it is hazardous for pedestrians to walk in many places in the Denver -- the City doesn't even keep the sidewalks in front of its own facilities free of snow and ice!

Occupy Denver just marked its three-month anniversary -- and Kelsey Whipple has been covering the movement from the start. Read her three-month retrospective here.

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Patricia Calhoun is editor-in-chief of Westword, the alt-weekly she co-founded in September 1977. She’s been inducted into the Colorado Press Association Hall of Fame, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia Hall of Fame and the Colorado Restaurant Association Hall of Fame. She’s also received dozens of local, state and national awards for writing, including first place for feature writing and first place for column writing with the Society of Professional Journalists. Patricia is a weekly commentator on Colorado Inside Out, PBS 12's public affairs roundtable, which has won two Emmys.

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