BOULDER, Colo. — The City of Boulder is expected to face a multi-million-dollar budget shortfall despite producing a 2025 budget described as "constrained."
The 2025 Budget was approved after revenues, including sales taxes and property taxes, were projected to be $492.5 million. That would have been a 6.6% increase from the total revenues predicted for 2024. But it turns out, that is not the case.
"What we're seeing in our collections from the end of 2024, which are just coming in now, and the beginning of 2025 is that we need to adjust our projections down lower," said Sarah Huntley, spokesperson for the City of Boulder.
The budget is typically finalized in March of the year before, Huntley said, so it's not uncommon to find out new information that will impact the future budget later on.
"When you have a budget that is so reliant upon sales and use tax and perhaps over-reliant, as we've been told for years, any sort of dip in consumer spending locally can make a big difference for local governments," she said.
According to the city, there's been a decline in sales and use taxes, property taxes, and taxes on marijuana and vaping products.
Legislation that will change property tax increases is also changing the projection for 2025.
Denver7 asked what could be on the chopping block to make up the difference.
"It's really too early to speculate. I can tell you for sure that we have instituted a hiring freeze so positions that become open between now and the end of the year if they are not deemed to be critical positions," said Huntley. "Critical will likely mean things like public safety, not just policing and fire, but also road safety, our water quality positions."
The city said it is trying to avoid layoffs by also asking departments to identify areas where they can trim costs themselves.
"We are really trying to be strategic about the cuts that we make, as opposed to saying every department has to carve a certain amount off your budget. We want to make sure that we are preserving the services that are most core, most essential to our community," said Huntley
Part of the decision-making will involve community input on which services people would like to see buffered from cuts.
Those public input opportunities will be coming in late summer and early fall, according to the city.
Denver7 asked how the city plans to protect critical services while also balancing the budget.
"We plan to protect critical services by being real thoughtful, real deliberate, very transparent with our community about what those we think those priorities are," she said.
Huntley notes that the city is considering any construction projects that could be paused without incurring additional costs.
"People have said, 'Well, what if you just didn't do this construction project?" And that is certainly something that we're looking at, but something that's important to understand about these capital projects is they're usually many years in the making, and with the economy the way it is right now, any delay in doing construction work is likely to cost us exponentially more later in the future," said Huntley.
