Denver city leaders will alert an untold number of employees Monday and Tuesday that they have lost their jobs — notifications that will mark a painful moment for city workers, residents and officials as the first mass layoffs in local government since 2011.
“This has been the hardest leadership task I’ve probably ever had to undertake,” Mayor Mike Johnston said during a televised meeting with City Council members last week.
The layoffs come as part of the response to the city’s budget crunch. The cuts will help close a $200 million budget gap projected for 2026, one that formed because of a slump in sales tax revenue and growth in city expenses, Johnston announced in May.
The city’s reserve fund is also running critically low after Johnston’s administration chose to let it creep below the recommended level since taking office two years ago.
City officials plan only one round of layoffs to help make the budget whole — and officials will limit the announcements to the first two days of this week, said Jon Ewing, a spokesman for the mayor’s office.
Officials declined to specify last week how many people would lose their jobs but said they would announce numbers publicly early in the week.
In that vacuum, speculation has run rampant inside and outside city offices, with many believing hundreds of jobs are potentially at stake.
Morale among employees has hit rock bottom as workers wait to find out if their paychecks have an expiration date, said Mike Wallin, a Department of Transportation and Infrastructure employee. He also is the president of Local 158 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which represents nearly 100 Denver city employees.
“Constituents aren’t getting the level of service that they deserve and have come to expect over the years,” he said.
Many workers have held off on starting new work projects in recent weeks because they weren’t sure if they would still be employed by the end of the month, he said.
“In the past, we would create a case and address the issue within a couple of weeks — but now it’s like, ‘Well, we’ll get to you when we can,’ ” he said.
Most union-represented employees are in the city’s public safety departments, but all uniformed officers are exempt from layoffs and city-ordered furloughs.
Several council members have come out against the layoffs. Most of the group also opposed a recent decision by the Career Service Board allowing managers to use some merit-based factors to lay off employees, rather than relying only on seniority.
Councilwoman Sarah Parady said she doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that the new rules will come into effect a few months before thousands more city employees become eligible to unionize under a voter-approved 2024 ballot measure.
“Our government cannot fulfill its purpose of serving the people of Denver without the trust, buy-in and expertise of these employees,” she said.
Councilwoman Stacie Gilmore said she doesn’t understand why the layoff decisions are coming mere weeks ahead of the mayor’s unveiling of his budget proposal for 2026.
“Include City Council in the conversation, please,” she said in a social media video about Johnston. “Let us work together and come up with a good solution.”
After the mayor proposes the city’s budget, which must happen by Sept. 15, he will work with the council to make amendments and reach a final financial plan for next year.
City leaders said last week that they knew the names of the people who would be laid off, but they wouldn’t provide details on figures until they had alerted the individuals.
Some of the positions eliminated are likely to be vacant ones.
DOTI leaders plan to notify all employees about that department’s layoffs on Tuesday, according to a recent all-department email from Amy Ford, the executive director. She planned to attend each of those notification meetings, she wrote.
That department was also asking anyone who could work from home that day to do so.
In a town hall meeting with her staff, Ford said departments were looking to cut 15% to 30% of their costs and added that she expected DOTI to be on the lower end of that spectrum, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Denver Post. Such figures could include savings beyond layoffs, Ewing said.
The city’s general fund pays the salaries for about 9,700 full-time employees.
Laid-off employees are set to receive 30 days’ paid leave, including salary and benefits. They will also get up to eight weeks of severance pay, depending on their length of service. Their last day at work will be the day they receive notification of a layoff.
City officials are seeking to carry out the layoffs without hits to services, but some impacts will be unavoidable as a result of those cuts and furlough days.
DOTI announced earlier this month that city crews won’t provide any compost collection the weeks of Aug. 25 and Nov. 24 because of all-staff furlough days scheduled for Aug. 29 and Nov. 28. Crews also won’t collect recycling the week of Nov. 24, DOTI said.
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