Denver sidewalk fee ordinance changes make it out of committee, head to council

DENVER — After months of delays, Denver property owners could soon start seeing a fee for the constructing, reconstruction and repairing of their sidewalks.

In 2022, Denver voters approved the Denver Deserves Sidewalks initiative, which shifted responsibility for building and repairing sidewalks from private property owners to the city and established a fund for the buildout and maintenance of those sidewalks via a property fee.

"In the original ordinance, the fee was based on the linear frontage of the property, so pretty directly tied to how many square feet of sidewalk do you need adjacent to the property," said Jill Locantore, executive director for Denver Streets Partnership . "That meant that the fee did vary pretty widely from one property to the next, and there were concerns about particularly residential properties in the higher end of that fee scale."

That is why billing has been delayed for months.

On Tuesday, members of a citizen stakeholder committee went before the city's Land Use, Transportation and Infrastructure committee to put forward the recommended change.

"A flat fee of $150 per year, which is roughly equivalent to the average that would have been charged under the original ordinance, plus an impact fee for especially large properties in Denver that do require a significant addition to the sidewalk network to serve those properties," Locantore said.

The ultimate purpose for this is to fix Denver sidewalks.

"Sidewalks are the most basic infrastructure that we need to have safe, accessible neighborhoods, particularly for children, older adults, (and) people with disabilities," Locantore said. "All of us are pedestrians at some point in the day, and so all of us depend on sidewalks to get where we need to go safely and comfortably."

But for some, like Alissa Nava, who has lived in the Westwood neighborhood her entire life, sidewalks aren't a concern, even though she said they are narrow.

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Instead, she said she is more concerned about what the additional fee will mean for her rent. It is something she and her landlord talk about often, she said.

"They're getting ridiculous," she said. "They're trying to add in nickel and dime fees everywhere to homeowners, and it really affects us renters. It really, really affects us renters."

Though, the fees are going directly to property owners.

During Tuesday's committee meeting, members voted to move forward with the ordinance changes.

If they're approved by Denver City Council, charging and repairing sidewalks is expected to start in January 2025 . Work is expected to be completed in nine years or more.

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