Denver Mayor Mike Johnston didn’t veto any of the City Council’s 10 amendments to his proposed 2026 budget, according to a letter he wrote to the council Friday.
That effectively means the budget process is complete, pending a final vote from the council on Monday. Even without the elected body’s vote, the city budget will go into effect that day.
“The 2026 budget process has been one of the most challenging our city has faced,” Johnston wrote.
That sentiment echoes comments from City Council members earlier this week, who spent nearly seven hours considering 27 amendments to the budget on Monday. They ultimately approved 10 of them.
Most of those individual amendments made changes of $1 million or less. The council voted to give an additional $2.7 million to restore the Office of the Clerk and Recorder’s budget, $3 million to increase spending for youth violence prevention and $1.6 million for the Safe Routes to School program.
Other changes will create a crisis response team at the Denver jail, reinstate funding for the Out of School Time program, fund a grant program for youth violence prevention, fund the Denver Day Works program and aid the WorkReady program. They also unanimously voted to restore the budget for the Office of the Auditor.
The council rejected two amendments that would have moved $9 million from the police department to the Department of Housing Stability.
“This budget is stronger for the work of City Council,” Council President Amanda Sandoval said in a written statement. “This process has required countless hours, sleepless nights and the dedication of public servants who care deeply about Denver and its residents.”
The mayor’s office incorporated 25 of the council’s 29 budget priorities from June and added 11 more proposals the members suggested in October, Johnston said.
If Johnston had vetoed any of the amendments, the council would have had an opportunity Monday to consider overriding any of those vetoes, but would have needed a supermajority to do so.
The completion of the spending plan marks the end of an especially tense budget year after Johnston announced in May that the city would have to make $250 million in cuts to general fund spending over the next two years amid slowing sales tax revenue. As part of those efforts, city officials laid off 169 people in August.
In his letter, Johnston hinted that Denver’s financial woes are far from over.
“I am concerned that some of the passed amendments dip further into the city’s reserve and contingency funds before we even start 2026,” he wrote. “Because these changes require funding beyond the coming year, which contingency cannot provide, we will have to find different funding sources to sustain them in 2027.”
The city’s rainy day fund, also known as its reserves, has slipped below the recommended level of 15% of expenditures in recent years. As of June, it sat at about 11%.
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