The Denver City Council- approved 2006 budget is about $29 million short for basic maintenance of parks, streets and other municipal assets when compared with a mayoral task force’s recommendations.
Mayor John Hickenlooper’s infrastructure task force reported this year that the city needed to boost its annual spending on maintenance 80 percent, to $56.8 million.
The budget the mayor recommended and the council approved, however, cuts spending 11 percent to $28 million.
The decrease is bad news for those such as Fidel “Butch” Montoya, 54, who keeps complaining to the city about West 52nd Street in west Denver’s Inspiration Point neighborhood.
Montoya said the street is a muddy mess, with dangerous potholes and buckling asphalt.
“I’m sure a lot of cars have scraped it and left an oil pan or two,” he said.
The Denver Botanic Gardens faces nearly $20 million in repairs. The irrigation, mechanical and electrical systems need work. Greenhouse windows are crumbling. And the roof of the tropical plant conservatory, built in the 1960s, needs repair.
“The deterioration is very obvious when you are around the outside of the building,” said Robin Doerr, director of the botanic gardens’ marketing and public relations. “We’ve got some crumbling concrete and some leaks in our roofs.”
At Cheesman Park, bathrooms are in such disrepair that they have been closed.
Those are just a few examples in a long list of pressing improvement and maintenance needs identified by the task force.
The task force of citizens and public officials said spending should be raised to assure a “minimum standard” of maintenance.
The task force said the needs are so great that a tax increase may be needed to address them.
Even if the recommended boost were made, the city still would need another $376 million infusion over the next 20 years, the task force’s report states.
Hickenlooper downplayed the task force report, which was issued in February.
“They talk about achieving certain levels or standards, but those standards sometimes are very high,” Hickenlooper said last week. “Those aren’t necessarily what the citizens would call minimum standards.”
Council members, however, say their constituents are clamoring to have potholes fixed and dingy park bathrooms replaced.
“We have a minuscule budget for capital improvements,” council President Rosemary Rodriguez said.
Loren Thomas, a Quitman Street resident, got so frustrated over a street caving in over a sewer line that he joined other residents and signed a petition calling for the city to fix it.
“We’ve lived here nine years, and the city has never done anything to the road except put a little patch on it,” Thomas said.
Hickenlooper said that while some of the city’s maintenance needs are urgent, he isn’t worried because there’s plenty of room for a bond referendum to pay for maintenance and new improvements without raising taxes.
Over the next 20 years, the city could issue up to $300 million in bonds without raising taxes, according to an analysis by the city’s treasury department.
“I’m sure that every eight or nine years, this city will come together and do a significant bond referendum,” the mayor said.
Councilwoman Elbra Wedgeworth, a task force member, said she’s not sure voters support a bond referendum right now.
On Nov. 1, voters approved a $25 million property-tax increase for a new salary plan for teachers and a $4.2 million annual boost in the lodgers’ tax.
During more flush times, the city had a large capital improvement budget. In 2000, the city spent more than $117 million on capital improvements, supplemented by more than $45 million in general-fund expenditures.
Today, as the city strives to recover from a stagnant economy, there’s no general-fund money available for the capital budget.
In Councilman Michael Hancock’s district, the pinched times mean residents in the Montbello neighborhood will wait for the 90-acre park they want developed.
A recreation center sits on the land, but “people say they can’t find it, because it’s hidden in the prairie,” Hancock said. “It’s nothing but weeds right now.”
Staff writer Christopher N. Osher can be reached at cosher@denverpost.com or 303-820-1747.
