The Denver City Council voted down eight proposed amendments to the city’s 2025 budget on Monday night, including rejecting a request to give another $2.5 million to the Denver Basic Income Project, a program that is gauging the impact of providing direct cash assistance to homeless or formerly homeless Denverites.
The final vote on that proposed change was a 6-6 tie with one member, Councilwoman Flor Avlidrez, absent for the latter part of the meeting.
Even some council members who felt the project showed promise in improving participants’ lives and housing outcomes felt that the ask was too much. The city had provided $2 million in federal COVID aid money to seed the program in 2023 and another $2 million to keep it going this year before Mayor Mike Johnston rejected a council request to continue the city’s participation.
Monday’s amendment — sponsored by the council’s three most progressive members in Shontel Lewis, Sarah Parady and Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez — would have drawn the additional $2.5 million from the city’s strategic reserves or otherwise forced Johnston’s administration to move money around to protect those reserves.
“If these dollars were coming from somewhere else I would be supportive of it,” Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer said before voting no. “At the end of the day, they need more time in order to really prove the success, to make some changes that they know that they need to make, and to move this potentially life-altering project forward for some of our residents.”
But, Sawyer said, the city is already planning to move forward with only a 12.5% reserve built into its $1.76 billion general fund budget next year. That’s below the 15% that city financial officials recommend. Sawyer described the situation as a “financial crisis.”
Council’s marathon debate — and ultimate rejection — of all the budget amendments members brought forward on Monday night is indicative of the tight financial spot the city is in going into 2025.
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Denver relies on sales tax revenues for more than half of its general fund dollars each year. The Johnston administration, in the face of softening sales tax collections, created a budget that grows by just 0.6% next year over the $1.75 billion budget the city has operated under in 2024. It’s the smallest increase in a year not impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in more than a decade.
The council is now scheduled to vote on a final version of the budget on Tuesday, Nov. 12.
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