DENVER — Denver Mayor Mike Johnston on Thursday released his 2025 budget plan, which includes several big pockets of spending: health care, housing and homelessness.
In a news release Thursday, the mayor called the budget plan "a down payment on the brighter, more vibrant future" for Denver residents. The city's General Fund budget for 2025 is $1.76 billion dollars, which the mayor's office said is 0.6% more than last year. The office said it's the slowest rate of growth for the budget in 14 years.
The General Fund supports 9,738 city employees. According to the budget proposal, the city is reducing FTE, the number of hours considered full time, by around 200 positions. The release says the city will do this without furloughs of layoffs, partly through restructuring how positions are funded and removing vacant positions from the budget.
The city's biggest spends are on health care, affordable housing and homelessness initiatives.
The mayor is proposing to spend $74 million on Denver Health, the city's safety net hospital. That's a 3% increase from the hospital's current funding. The hospital said in June that it's facing a financial crisis due to uncompensated care costs.
Johnston's proposal calls for $60 million to create or preserve affordable homes, with additional investments for rapid rehousing and project-based vouchers to create housing for 3,000 households.
The mayor also plans to spend $57.5 million to fund his All in Mile High program to get people experiencing homelessness off the street. This is a decrease from its previous budget of $84 million, though the City Council ended up approving more than $111 million in expenditures, putting the initiative far over-budget.
Here's how the rest of the mayor's proposed budget is divided:
- $27.6 million for workforce development.
- $6.4 million to invest in small, disadvantaged, minority and women-owned businesses.
- $2.5 million toward businesses on Colfax Avenue and 16th Street impacted by city infrastructure projects.
- $1.4 million toward city planners working across southwest and downtown Denver and La Alma Lincoln Park to create plans for neighborhood growth and resiliency.
- $22 million toward rent and utility assistance, as well as legal defense services for evictions.
- $1.2 million to support 24/7 cold weather shelters when temperatures drop to 25 degrees.
- $14.9 million for crisis response, which includes $6.9 million for the Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) program, $2.6 million for the co-responder program, and $5.2 million for the Behavioral Health Solutions Center. It also includes $2.8 million for Roads to Recovery, which helps people in the criminal justice system struggling with addiction or mental health.
- $11.9 million toward recruiting and training new public safety officers: 24 new firefighters, 168 new police recruits and 60 sheriff's deputies.
- $11.7 million for the Office of Neighborhood Safety to support crime prevention.
- $1.2 million toward a new burn building for Denver Fire's real life training conditions.
- $2.5 million for participatory budgeting and a new Office of Community Engagement.
- $2.2 million toward transportation and mobility projects in neighborhoods.
- $13.4 million to replace city vehicles with electric vehicles and build charging infrastructure for city and public use.
- $8.5 million toward programs for Denver kids, including affordable child care, youth violence prevention and afterschool programming.
- $3 million for training and partnerships in green jobs and natural resource management.
- $12.5 million for newcomer support.
- $220 million in reserves.
The budget also includes a 4% average merit increase in pay for city employees.