Your street sweeping ticket is Denver's secret tax
So here's what's wild— Denver's street sweeping program just kicked off again, and if you're like me, you probably got a parking ticket last year. Or maybe your neighbor did. Or maybe it felt like *everyone* did. Turns out, that feeling isn't wrong. The city issued nearly 128,000 citations last year. That’s not a typo. One hundred and twenty-eight *thousand* tickets. And those tickets, at $50 a pop, brought in around $6.7 million for the city's general fund.
Okay, context— they say it's about keeping our streets clean, especially with all the runoff heading into the South Platte River. And yeah, clean streets are great. Nobody wants a bunch of crud washing into the river. But when you look at that number—128,000 tickets—it feels less like a public service and more like a revenue stream. Driving around Capitol Hill or along Broadway, trying to remember if it's the second or fourth Tuesday for your side of the street, it's easy to get caught. And it feels like the city isn't exactly making it easy to avoid.
### What This Means for Denver
* **A Stealth Tax:** For many, especially folks in older neighborhoods like West Colfax or parts of Baker where parking is already a nightmare, this is basically an unadvertised tax. * **The Cost of Living:** When you factor in rent hikes, rising gas prices, and then these consistent parking fines, it just adds to the squeeze on regular Denverites. * **The "So What":** It's not just an inconvenience. It's another small cut in the budget for families trying to make it work in a city that’s increasingly pricing them out. That money could go to groceries, or a kid's school supplies, instead of a street sweeping fine.
Mile high on the wire — altitude and attitude.
My buddies at the Morning Wire dive into this kind of stuff daily – you can catch 'em live at mornings.live.