DENVER — Denver Mayor Mike Johnston told 9NEWS Thursday the city is on track to spend significantly less on the migrant crisis than initially expected in the 2024 budget.
Johnston said the city budgeted out $90 million for the newcomer program but could end 2024 with up to millions of dollars left over.
“We think the budget we had set aside for migrants; we’ll actually be able to pull to support other city agencies,” Johnston said.
It comes as Denver’s Department of Finance warns city council members to prepare for additional cuts to the city’s budget in 2025.
The city was anticipating $1.7 billion in general fund revenue in 2024, but that number has now been reduced by $30 million to $1.67 billion.
Johnston said they may be able to make up some of that money with the leftover migrant aid money.
"A year ago, we may have had to pull from other agencies to support migrants. This year it’ll be the reverse,” said Johnston. “Our migrant program itself will be back-filling funding for things like police, fire, parks, trash infrastructure, things like those.”
The mayor’s office said they’re still looking into where the money will go, and what the newcomer program could look like in 2025.
They also stress that the migrant situation could change between now and the end of 2024. While current newcomers remain relatively low, there’s always the possibility that changes, according to staff.
“Some of it will roll over to next year, some that was unspent this year we can roll into next year, and the things that we might have wanted to budget for migrants I think we can budget much less and use those instead for other core services,” Johnston said.