The Denver City Council on Monday unanimously approved delaying the start of the voter approved sidewalk program and sidewalk fund to January 1, 2025.

Councilmembers Amanda Sandoval, Paul Kashmann and Kevin Flynn sponsored the change following a recommendation from the Denver sidewalk working group.

The delay will give the committee six more months to “work out all the details,” according to Sandoval. In turn, this also gives more time for stakeholders in the program to work with the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure and make amendments related to the fee structure.

City officials are about 97% of the way through the process of reworking the fee structure, Kashmann said. The reworks focus on making sure the fees are applied in an equitable manner so that a person who lives on a corner lot doesn’t get hit with monstrously high fees compared to their neighbors, he said.

“We simply aren’t ready to begin collecting the fees… The initiative voters passed calls for a completely connected sidewalk system, which means we need to install about 300 miles of sidewalk,” Kashmann said. “(We have) around 1,000 miles of sidewalks that are too narrow, and then we have to maintain the system.”

Kashmann noted the fee restructuring has taken a large effort from members of DOTI since, as a citizen initiative, there are several aspects they have to be careful with. Specifically, staff have had to ensure they are “honoring” existing statewide restrictions under the Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR).

The restructuring also had to be revenue neutral, which proved to be one of the more “limiting factors” in the process, Flynn said. He added that staff had to find a way to be revenue neutral and come up with a fee structure that generated the same annual amount as the original ordinance.

The delay to the sidewalk program, which was approved by Denver voters in 2022, appeared before committee earlier in June.

Notably, Monday’s decision did not solidify the program’s fee structuring, which Sandoval said will come as another ordinance later in the year. This also means everything related to the sidewalk program, including a master plan, will be delayed. Despite this, a member of DOTI said this doesn’t mean the department is standing by — quite the opposite.

“As we are not collecting fees, we don’t have the revenue to do the full-on study,” Nicholas Williams from DOTI said. “That’s not to say we haven’t been using our own general fund time to prepare and chart out how we can move as quickly as possible once we add that funding and are able to initiate a contract for the master planning effort.”