The Denver City Council agreed on several tweaks to the mayor’s proposed 2026 budget this week as the deadline for final approval approaches, but some members’ attempts to make major cuts to the police department ultimately failed.
Now the ball is in Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s court, with a Friday deadline to agree to the small changes or veto them. The council’s decisions came as its members considered 27 amendments on Monday — the highest number of budget amendments that have been proposed in any budget cycle in recent memory, according to the city’s Department of Finance.
Councilwoman Sarah Parady sponsored the most amendments, with 15. Councilwoman Shontel Lewis sponsored 10.
The council approved 10 of the amendments, with most making changes of less than $1 million in the $1.66 billion general fund budget proposed for 2026 by the mayor, which is down from $1.76 billion this year. The council unanimously approved budget changes that would restore proposed cuts in the budgets of the Office of the Clerk and Recorder and the Denver Auditor’s Office.
Councilwomen Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez and Parady sponsored the most costly amendments, both of which would have transferred about $9 million from the Denver Police Department to the Department of Housing Stability. They asked that the department use those dollars to help families experiencing homelessness.
But those amendments failed on 8-5 votes.
“We know that we have families who are living on the street right now,” said Gonzales-Gutierrez. “That is a public safety issue.”
Johnston proposed his budget for next year, which calls for a tight spending plan, in September. One month earlier, the city laid off 169 employees amid flattening revenues and growing expenses. The council suggested changes to the budget in October, and the mayor agreed to some of them. The meeting Monday marked the end of the period when the council could ask for changes and the beginning of its members’ opportunity to force amendments to the city’s budget.
Johnston will have until Friday at noon to either accept or veto the amendments that passed. Then the council will have one final chance to override his vetoes — an action that requires a 9-vote supermajority of the council — this coming Monday. The budget will be finalized that day.
That will wrap up a process that Council President Amanda Sandoval called “one of the hardest budgets” she’s ever worked on.
The relationship between the mayor’s office and the council has shown signs of deterioration over the last year. Those tensions continued to boil over during the amendment meeting.
“The strong mayor form of government may be a strong mayor form of government, but it is not a kingdom,” Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer said during the meeting.
Recruiting neighborhood groups
The council members’ frustrations grew as representatives from the city’s 176 registered neighborhood organizations reported receiving calls from the mayor’s office, asking them to use their platforms and the council’s public comment period to oppose the two amendments that would have reduced funding for the police department. Some neighborhood groups did just that. Others questioned the tactic.
Jenn Greiving, with the Overland Park neighborhood association, said it’s normal for the mayor’s office to let RNOs know when there is an important vote. But it was unusual, she said, for the administration to urge the organizations to speak against a council amendment.
“It felt like RNOs and their contact lists were being leveraged in a way that positioned RNOs in the middle (of) council and the mayor,” she said.
Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez said during the meeting that she was disappointed that the mayor’s office would try to recruit the groups against an amendment and said administration officials mischaracterized the council amendments.
“This misinformation that they’re emailing our RNOs is not okay,” Alvidrez said.
A spokesman for the mayor’s office said it shared factual information with the organizations and said it wasn’t an abnormal political strategy.
“It’s not any different than what we see in the newsletters from council members,” said Johnston spokesman Jon Ewing.
A look at amendments
During the near-seven-hour discussion, the council also approved amendments to dedicate more dollars for the Safe Routes to School program, to create a crisis response team at the Denver jail, to reinstate funding for the Out of School Time program, to fund a grant program for youth violence prevention, to fund the Denver Day Works program and to aid the WorkReady program.
The council also moved more than $80,000 from its own budget and $500,000 from the Department of Safety and police budgets for the Support Team Assisted Response crisis response program, which sends mental health clinicians and paramedics to respond to some calls instead of police officers.
Its members unanimously restored the budgets of the auditor and the clerk. Representatives from both offices argued that the mayor’s proposed cuts to their offices would impede their work. Clerk Paul Lopez said he would have to decrease the number of ballot boxes and polling places for next year’s midterm elections if his budget wasn’t restored.
Those changes would cost about $2.7 million and $380,000 for the clerk and auditor, respectively.
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