Despite a year-long delay, the sidewalk construction and repair program approved by Denver voters took a crucial step forward Tuesday: A City Council committee gave preliminary approval to a plan to charge most property owners a flat rate of $150 per year starting in 2025.
However, some owners of large properties – including the Denver Department of Parks and Recreation and other government entities with large tracts of land – face significantly higher bills if the sidewalk on their property is more than 250 feet long.
Under the proposed changes, these properties would be subject to development fees of $3.50 per additional foot over 230. That means that the owners of a property with 300 feet of sidewalk would pay $395 annually starting next year.
Calculations presented to the council’s Land Use, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Tuesday show those additional development fees would total $12.1 million next year, or 30% of the program’s total expected first-year revenue of $40.1 million.
The new plan is scheduled to be presented to the full city council on September 9, with the final vote scheduled for a week later on September 16.
Jill Locantore, executive director of the advocacy group Denver Streets Partnership, led the successful 2022 campaign that shifted responsibility for sidewalk maintenance from individual property owners to the city. She also led the advocacy committee that worked for 10 months on changes to the program, which are now being proposed as amendments.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Locantore said the change to a flat entry-level rate with additional development fees for larger lots is intended to avoid unusually high bills that were possible under the original billing structure, which would have charged all lot owners’ costs per foot. Under that structure, some people on corner lots would have had to pay hundreds of dollars more per year than their neighbors.
However, the committee decided that property characteristics should still be taken into account for large residential and commercial lots — those with frontage of three-quarters of a football field or more. When city officials first floated the idea of switching to flat rates in February, the change was intended to apply only to residential lots, while commercial property owners would still have to pay per foot.
Only 4.3 percent of properties in the city are required to pay these development fees. For single-family homes, that percentage drops to just 1.1 percent, according to a presentation given Tuesday by Locantore and Nick Williams, deputy director of internal and external affairs in the city’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure.
“Importantly, the committee was very concerned about maintaining revenue neutrality, so that the fee actually generates enough funds to expand the network in a timely manner and to keep it in good condition well into the future,” Locantore said. “And that’s exactly what these proposed changes do.”
Billing for the sidewalk program will be tied to the city’s existing wastewater billing system, so property owners can expect to be billed in two installments per year.
The council has suspended the implementation of billing for the program twice – for a full year in total – to give a special interest committee a chance to revise the wording of the ordinance. If the full City Council votes for the package of changes, the first bills for sidewalk fees would arrive between January and June.
The Land Use Committee also gave the green light to changes to the program’s low-income household rebate program. Residents who qualify for rebates on the city’s garbage collection fee based on their household income would be eligible for corresponding rebates on the sidewalk fee. People earning 30% of the area median income or less would be exempt from fees entirely. Multifamily property owners could also receive a 20% rebate if they can prove that 25% of their building is affordable housing.
The committee also agreed to relax the ordinance’s original commitment to take effect across the city “in nine years or as soon thereafter” as city transportation officials believed possible.
Finally, committee members approved a plan that would index fees to inflation in future years. Both rising consumer costs and rising costs in the construction industry will be used to determine fee levels in future years, according to the proposed changes.
Stay up to date on Colorado politics by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, The Spot.
Originally published:
