Denver residents and visitors no longer have to visit the courthouse to dispute their wrongful parking tickets after the city officially Monday.
The new system’s launch ends a year of frustration for unlucky Denver drivers who received parking tickets for things like failing to pay a meter when they had, in fact, paid the meter. Those who fought tickets they claimed were bogus complained of long waits at the backed-up courthouse and months of lead-up time for their court hearings.
In August 2025, city officials laid off the five parking magistrates who reviewed the online disputes and shut the system down in September.
Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration initially proposed eliminating the online option, but the City Council pushed back, asking his office to keep the digital disputes as an equitable option for those who couldn’t easily visit the courthouse. Johnston’s office agreed, but it took nearly a year for the system to come back online.
When the Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure announced the option was returning last month, a spokesman for the mayor’s office acknowledged it had taken “longer than we would have liked.”
“We are happy it is going to be back, and better than ever, we hope,” Jon Ewing said at the time.
Nancy Kuhn, a DOTI spokeswoman, said three “dispute technicians” and a supervisor will handle the online disputes. The reviewers will all be employees of DOTI, the agency that hands out most parking tickets, rather than the courts, as was the case under the previous online parking dispute system.
The city has budgeted $8.75 million from the Transportation and Mobility Special Revenue Fund for several initiatives, including up to $400,000 to bring the new employees on board and relaunch the parking dispute system. Some members of the council have called foul on that decision, saying the fund, which takes in money from an increase in parking meter fees but is supposed to pay for programs that help improve transportation and mobility, wasn’t intended for things like parking.
The allows disputes only for tickets that are fewer than 20 days old.
