Ili Bennett felt ill Tuesday and forgot to move her Ford Explorer on the day that city street sweepers were scheduled to cruise down her Congress Park block.
As has happened before, she received a ticket for the violation, but this time she was outraged. The penalty this year is now double: $50.
“This is horrifying,” said Bennett, who stomped down to City Hall to join a queue of other people complaining about their street-sweeping fines.
She even took her complaint to the mayor’s office and scheduled an appointment. And then she called the media.
“This is highway robbery,” she said. “If they are going to change something like that, there should be a 30-day notification. What else are they going to up and do without notification?”
Daelene Mix, spokeswoman for the Denver Public Works Department, said the city did not change the rules but is instead now enforcing the $50 tow-away ordinance for street sweeping. That law has been on the books since at least 2008, she said.
In the past, the city has enforced the $25 ordinance that made it unlawful for motorists to park in violation of city signs.
In fact, Mix said, the city could enforce both ordinances, which would mean a $75 fine. Plus, the city could short-tow vehicles, meaning they would be moved to a nearby area where sweeping is not taking place.
The new manager of Public Works, George Delaney, made the decision this year to begin enforcing the tow-away ordinance.
“We are enforcing these laws as they are written,” Mix said. “People who are getting these are breaking the law. People should be obeying the law and paying attention to signs. We’re not doing this to increase revenue. We need to recoup the cost of towing cars out of street-sweeping zones.”
Last year, the city issued 124,055 street-sweeping tickets totaling $3.1 million for cars parked illegally on downtown and residential streets. That rate could double if people continue to park illegally in the same manner as last year, Mix said.
“We don’t want to issue these tickets,” she said. “It’s just something we have to do to meet our environmental needs.”
The city last year swept up 41,335 cubic yards of dirt and debris as part of the program that cleaned 113,700 lane miles of Denver streets.
But Bennett thinks something else is going on, that the city is trying to fill its $100 million budget hole by increasing fines for citizens.
“Why are we paying for this deficit and these losses when we didn’t create them?” she said. “I am fed up with this city. This is outrageous.”
