8 AUGUST 20-26, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | team, she was told to come down to Denver County Court to dispute the ticket in front of a judge, because the online program had been canceled due to budget cuts. The permit department told her the situ- ation was handled and apologized profusely, but the right-of-way offi ce told her she still had to dispute it and schedule a court date, which would require taking off work to argue over a $35 ticket. “This is just an egregious waste of re- sources, because they could see that I have a valid parking permit, and in no way, shape or form should this go before a judge,” she says, adding that employees also seem distraught with the constant confusion and frustration from citizens. To Ilsely, it feels like screaming into a void. “Moving here was a breath of fresh air. Feeling like the city was putting time, effort, and resources into the community, whether it be rec centers, whether it be them updating the roads, actually fi lling potholes,” she says. “This has really been the fi rst time in which I’ve experienced what I feel like is just a total catastrophic failure to its citizens.” Part of the reallocation from the Transpor- tation and Mobility Special Revenue Fund is meant to rebuild the online dispute system, which is set to happen in about three weeks, according to DOTI’s recent announcement. Before then, DOTI has had “no staff” to comb through the online disputes, Kuhn said back in February, adding that “magistrates who previously reviewed online parking disputes were part of Denver County Court and were laid off by Denver County Court.” While DOTI has been dealt the biggest fi nancial blow, Parks & Rec’s cuts may have the most visceral effect on residents. Parks & Wrecked Former city councilmember Jeanne Robb says that having nice parks “increases the morale of all of the citizens,” but she has noticed a downturn in park quality over the past few years. “The city is growing. We should increase our parks, but the maintenance does not keep up,” she says. “They have done a fair job of planting new trees, but there are also dead trees that are not coming down. They’ve quit fertilizing. They don’t mow as often.” Robb admits that it’s hard to say whether the visual decline at parks is be- cause of budget cuts or a sustained drought throughout the state, but she theorizes that the parks would fi ght through the drought better if they were better maintained be- fore it began. Spear says his family is often asked by friends to meet at suburban parks instead of those in the city. “I understand the budgets are tight and cuts need to be made, but I just wonder if the big picture is really being considered, because when a group of families meets at a suburban park, if we go to lunch afterward, then it’s a suburban business that we’re patronizing, and that town gets the sales tax revenue on that,” he says. “I think there’s an obligation to maintain that asset as a public space. But I think they’re also an economic driver for the city.” Spear, who sits on the 7th Avenue Neigh- borhood Association Board, says members of his neighborhood used to volunteer time with Parks & Rec’s horticulturalist to main- tain fl ower beds on the 7th Avenue Parkway. Since the horticulturalist was laid off in 2025, Spear says his neighbors have no routes to offi cially volunteer anymore, depriving the parkway of free care. “I don’t even know if that’s visible to the city, that they have these 10 to 15 hours of volunteer hours every week that they just lost that were helping,” he says. Parks & Rec declined an interview with Westword, but provided a statement saying that the department “carefully managed op- erations to minimize impacts across our park system and recreation facilities, ensuring no single neighborhood or community bears a disproportionate share of those impacts.” The department did note that mainte- nance schedules have been “slightly” ad- justed over the last year. Trash Concerns Nora Heffernan has been feeling the weight of trash pileup. Heffernan is a garden leader for Denver Urban Gardens, a nonprofi t at 13th Avenue and Colorado Boulevard. The community garden has seven black trash bins, which 64 gardeners fi ll with weeds and waste from planting and maintenance. “We’ve had trash pickup since the garden’s inception in the ‘90s,” she says. “And all of a sudden, a month ago, they stopped picking up our trash. No notifi ca- tion, no communication, no explanation, essentially.” The organization reached out to the city’s Solid Waste Division. According to Heffer- nan, the division said it wouldn’t be picking up trash there anymore because it’s a com- mercial entity, but Urban Gardens is not a commercial entity. It’s a 501(c)(3) nonprofi t. Heffernan says her messages to 311, Den- ver’s non-emergency number, haven’t been read and her calls haven’t been returned. And while solid waste pickup, recycling and snow removal were protected from direct cuts to DOTI’s budget, staffi ng was not. “It’s, like, just a lack of caring, I guess. That’s what’s surprising,” Heffernan said. In DOTI’s 2026 budget presentation to the city council last year, the department predicted that residents would see longer response times to 311 calls, as reported by Denver7. “I fi lled out two cases to get new trash cans, because mine are cracked in half on Aug. 30, and I’ve never heard anything from DOTI,” Councilwoman Sawyer said during the Sept. 26, 2025, meeting. “How are we going to be able to address the needs of our residents and the things that they see and care about if we’ve got these longer wait times, and we’ve got less staff and kind-of- less ability to be responsive to it?” Other Cuts Brent Weisberg, spokesperson for the De- partment of Public Safety, tells Westword that Denver 911 was protected from any layoffs during the big cut in 2025 and is operating as usual. As the team looks to the future, it will “regularly monitor and evaluate staffi ng needs alongside call volumes and call-answering time.” Denver Police Department Chief Ron Thomas recently told city council that bud- get cuts have left the department unable to hire workers in the crime lab, records and identifi cation bureau and fl eet maintenance division. The Denver Fire Department may now have to start subsidizing fi re services in Englewood and Glendale after signing deals with the cities in 2015 and 2018. The deals locked in 3% payment increases every year, but with budgets already tight, offi cials told CBS News that the agreements may become burdensome. Denver Animal Protection no longer responds to calls for “sick or injured non- rabies-vector wildlife (squirrels, rabbits, geese, and other small wildlife) or young birds or mammals that appear abandoned or injured” due to budget cuts, according to the department’s website. When the the mayor proposes his 2027 budget in September, the outlook shouldn’t be as dire. Swartz says that due to the work the city has already done, such as eliminating vacant positions and fl exing around the reduced $1.6 billion in revenue, next year’s budget should not see signifi cant cuts as the 2026 iteration did. “You’re looking at much smaller tweaks rather than something large and signifi cant like last year with layoffs,” she says. Email the author at [email protected]. News continued from page 6 Nora Heffernan says the trash at the Denver Urban Gardens location on Colorado Boulevard has not been picked up in a month. Trash outside of the tennis courts at the Lowry Sports Complex Park in Denver on Aug. 13. SAGE KELLEY SAGE KELLEY
