Denverites may notice fewer streets being swept, paved and plowed next year, thanks to significant cutbacks proposed by Mayor Michael Hancock’s administration for the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure’s 2021 budget.

As is written now, the agency would receive $127.2 million next year, a reduction of about 14% compared with the year prior. DOTI also faces a significant increase in vacant positions, further complicating its forecast.

The agency kicked off this year with the lowest employee vacancy rate it had seen in the last seven years. After the coronavirus pandemic struck, however, vacancies have more than doubled at 19%, with at least 44 staffers taking advantage of incentive programs, including an early retirement package that was offered by the city to prevent mass layoffs.

“In those 44 positions, we lost over a thousand years of service,” DOTI’s executive director Eulois Cleckley told the Denver City Council during a budget hearing Thursday. “The intellectual capital loss is a concern for us, but we’re figuring out ways to manage and transfer that intellectual capital, so we don’t fall down and deliver no work.”

Vacancies also pose a threat to the city meeting project deadlines, as well as its ability to accelerate its bond program, said Lesley Thomas, DOTI’s deputy manager of project delivery.

The proposed project delivery budget — encompassing the planning, design and construction for the agency’s capital projects and programs citywide, which include special projects like the 16th Street Mall reconstruction and Colorado Convention Center expansion — is taking a hit of nearly 21%, at $15.7 million.

Vacancies this summer have already taken a toll on the department’s productivity, Thomas said. As the workload continues to climb, the city’s goal of completing 90% of its projects on time has become harder to maintain.

Reductions proposed elsewhere in the budget, however, will help “fill that gap and minimize the delay,” she assured council members.

Although Cleckley said the proposed slashes intend to preserve city programs and services and minimize impacts to residents as much as possible, he also acknowledged that maintaining city streets, traffic lights, right-of-way construction and more will inevitably take a hit due to a reduction of $12.3 million to its personnel.

The department has proposed overtime reductions, hiring freezes, work-from-home policies and more to help mitigate the economic downturn, which has put the city in a $220 million budget shortfall this year and left it to fill an estimated $190 million budget gap next year.

To keep things moving, the department’s operations team plans to shift crews between workgroups to prioritize emergency responses, including signal outages, which could impact routine work orders and other service delivery times, transportation officials said Thursday.

Still, slides in service could be felt by residents as soon as this winter.

“Snow removal is the challenge for us this year,” said Todd Richardson, DOTI’s deputy manager of operations. With a reduction in budgeted overtime hours and hiring freezes in place, “the biggest impact here is going to be how it could affect our snow operations if we have more than our normal snow events during the year.”

The transportation department has also proposed scaling back its services and supplies by nearly $7.4 million, which would include cutting down on materials, supplies and equipment related to meter maintenance and snow removal, Richardson said.

An additional $1.2 million in cuts to solid waste equipment has been proposed, which would delay trash can and recycle bin maintenance and purchases. Those cuts would also include reductions in a recycling and composting consultant and contractors, as well as decreases in community education services, extra trash collection/large item pickup and employee uniforms.

Overall, the department’s general revenue fund is down this year 33%, partly a result of the city shutting off its parking meters and suspending parking enforcement in the first few months of the pandemic. However, even after the meters were activated again, fewer people are parking at them. In 2021, revenue is expected to increase by 18%, but only off the lower revenue base, officials said.

The Denver City Council will continue to hold budget hearings through Sept. 24, after which council members will weigh what changes, if any, should be made to the draft. Whatever changes are proposed will be considered by the Hancock administration before the budget is finalized and sent to the council for approval in November.