Catie Cheshire
Audio By Carbonatix
In February, a stakeholder committee established by the city Department of Transportation & Infrastructure (DOTI) to refine the sidewalk suggested several changes and collected public feedback.A Denver City Council committee has advanced legislation to delay Denver sidewalk fee collection until January 2025. If approved, it would mark the second delay on fee collection since voters approved the new system in November 2022.
Councilmembers Amanda Sandoval, Paul Kashmann and Kevin Flynn sponsored the bill during a council Land Use, Transportation & Infrastructure committee meeting June 4. The measure has just under a month to make it through to the full council before July 1, when fees are scheduled to begin.
City officials still aren’t sure exactly how much in fees will be collected from whom, which is why another delay has been proposed. In February, a stakeholder committee established by the city Department of Transportation & Infrastructure (DOTI) to refine the sidewalk ordinance suggested several changes and collected public feedback. The committee is not yet ready to present its final recommendations to city council, however.
“The process takes time, and we need a little bit more time,” says Jill Locantore, executive director of the Denver Streets Partnership and chair of the sidewalk committee.
Kashmann said during the committee meeting that the delay is also needed for DOTI to have more time to prepare a billing system.
The Denver Streets Partnership had been advocating to switch the administration of sidewalk repairs from individual property owners to the city since 2015; Ordinance 307, approved by 56 percent of the vote in 2022, is supposed to make that switch.
As approved by voters, the law institutes an annual fee for property owners based on the linear square footage of frontage on their property. Those fees will then be paid into a fund for building sidewalks in places that don’t have them while also upgrading existing sidewalks in disrepair or that don’t meet Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations. The Denver Streets Partnership had estimated it would take the city 400 years to complete its sidewalk network without the ordinance.
But the ordinance has been subject to many changes and delays, starting in October 2023, when city council voted unanimously to postpone the implementation of fee collection from January 2024 to July 2024 because residents were concerned the fee structure would force some homeowners – such as those with corner lots – to pay double the fees of smaller lot owners, no matter the condition of their own sidewalks.
Council Displeasure
Councilmembers passed the new delay unanimously, but most on the committee expressed unhappiness with continued postponements.
“I will move this forward, but I’m not excited about it,” said District 10 Councilman Chis Hinds.
Hinds said he’s heard from many constituents who have reported broken sidewalks to 311, only to get an almost instant “case closed” message. While the city waits to implement fees, it can’t conduct repairs – even though responsibility for those repairs has already shifted off of private citizens, according to Hinds.
“We don’t have the funding to do those repairs until we start collecting,” DOTI’s Nick Williams confirmed. “But what we can do is we have a considerably smaller amount of funding that can be used, and our team is working on prioritizing some of the worst of the worst in this interim period to be able to go out and repair those.”
Williams said he would reach out to the city’s 311 team to try to create alternative responses to residents and ask for patience instead of just telling people their cases are closed. In the meantime, Kashmann asked the Denver City Attorney’s Office to figure out whether the city is liable for potential injuries that occur because of delinquent sidewalks during the interim and once the fee structure is fully implemented.
Councilmembers also clarified that even after fees are collected, the city won’t be prepared to immediately start fixing sidewalks or adding new paving to places that lack them. A sidewalk master plan must be finished before all of that, and Williams expects the plan will take a year to complete.
While DOTI is waiting to collect fees, the department’s staff is conducting preliminary work and required research needed for the city’s sidewalk master plan.
“We’re ready to push that button as soon as that funding comes in,” Williams said.
According to Williams, DOTI officials are confident it can complete some repairs while the master plan is crafted – but first Denver needs to figure out exactly what and how it will be charging property owners for sidewalks.
Suggested Sidewalk Fees
The sidewalk stakeholder committee suggested that all single-family residential units taking up their entire lot be charged a flat rate of $148.64 annually. Multi-family residential units would be charged $27.83 per unit on the parcel of land. All other properties would keep the linear foot fee, which ranges from $2.15 per linear foot for local roads and residential and commercial collector roads to $4.30 for main streets and downtown roads.
The changes also altered the suggested financial assistance for low-income property owners, from an automatic rebate for certain neighborhoods to one that will be based on individual incomes, and softened the language on repair timelines from nine years to as soon as possible.
But the City Attorney’s Office identified a legal issue that could arise from treating residential properties differently than commercial properties.
“The committee spent some additional time consulting with the City Attorney’s Office and other city agencies to come up with similar recommendations that would apply to all properties and not differentiate between residential and commercial, and that’s what we’re hoping to put forward in the next month or so,” Locantore said.
The idea now is to apply a flat fee to all properties, though the specifics and exact numbers are still being reviewed internally. The numbers and final suggestions should be ready within the next few months, according to Locantore.
The delaying legislation will be discussed in a weekly meeting between the mayor and city council on June 11. If successful, it will be heard by the full council on June 17 and have a one-hour public hearing on June 24 before its final reading, so the measure could be completed just one week before fee collection is currently scheduled to begin.
