08/30/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 08/30/2024 13:43
Boulder City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde today released a 2025 Recommended Budget that recognizes financial limitations while providing for modest and strategic funding enhancements in priority areas.
The spending plan seeks to sustain, and in some notable cases, increase the city's commitments to City Council and community priorities, especially around equity, livability and safety - which rose to the top as concerns through engagement earlier this year. At the same time, it emphasizes responsible governance, especially in maintaining critical facilities and equipment.
"As we've said repeatedly, economic factors are making this budget leaner than in previous years. Simply put, constraints require choices," Rivera-Vandermyde said. "I am, nonetheless, proud of our recommendations, which balance support for promising programs that address some of our community's greatest challenges with prudent, and in some cases, overdue, capital spending necessary for us to continue to deliver core services."
The total 2025 Recommended Operating Budget is $399.3 million across all funds - this represents a 1.3% increase, when excluding debt service payments and internal service charges, such as fleet replacements and technology costs.
Several factors are contributing to this year's conservative approach. Among these:
"These constraints limit the spending power we have as local government," Chief Financial Officer Kara Skinner said. "In consultation with the City Council, we're working on a Long-Term Financial Strategy to address these pressures. As this strategy continues to take shape, we need to be very clear about the outcomes we're trying to achieve and allocate the smaller pot of available dollars to proposals with the greatest impact."
Despite these challenges, the 2025 Recommended Budget includes significant allocations designed to advance many of the important objectives outlined in the city's Sustainability, Resilience and Equity Framework, City Council priorities, and the recently adopted Citywide Strategic Plan- all of which guided decision-making.
Meaningful investments in 2025 will support:
While seeking to manage workforce growth, the recommended budget also includes 24.35 new regular positions or fixed-term position extensions. As emphasized in other parts of the budget, most staffing allocations support equity, safety and livability goals. Examples include:
"The important and sometimes, difficult, work we do as a city requires talented employees," Rivera-Vandermyde said. "These limited new positions are essential to helping us to meet our community's expectations."
In addition to operations, the city's overall budget includes a capital component. The total 2025 Recommended Capital Budget is $190.2 million, with $807.4 million in planned spending across the Six-Year Capital Improvement Program. This represents a 34.7% increase in capital investments compared to the 2024 Approved Capital Budget.
"During the pandemic, our attention shifted - as it needed to - toward people," Rivera-Vandermyde said, "with fewer resources allocated toward issues that seemed less urgent, like maintaining buildings and replacing aging fleet. While these kinds of expenditures may not be as exciting to community, the cost of addressing deferred investments in infrastructure will only increase over time."
As a result, the 2025 Recommended Budget calls for significant one-time expenditures for capital spending. Highlights include:
In considering any budget, community members have a reasonable expectation that money the city spends is resulting in positive and meaningful outcomes. This year's budget process represented the final year of an intensive Budgeting for Resilience and Equityinitiative. As part of this effort, every city department identified at least three outcomes each program will work toward, along with either a performance measure or a plan to create a performance measure. These outcomes are detailed in the budget and will be tracked as part of a public dashboard.
The following is a sample of some of these outcomes:
"Outcomes are a critical way for us to align around our goals - and evaluate the progress we are making toward them," Rivera-Vandermyde said. "The commitments that came forward through this process were nothing short of inspiring and reminded me, yet again, about what an honor it is to lead this organization and serve the forward-looking Boulder community."
The complete 2025 Recommended Budget, including breakdowns by fund and departments, is available in the online budget book. The budget in briefis also a helpful resource.
City Council will discuss the budget at a study session on Sept.12, followed by public hearings on Oct. 3 and Oct. 17. Community members are invited to sign up to speak at these hearings. An online sign-up form will be available starting at 8 a.m. on the Friday before the hearing date and end at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, the day before. The city's website has more information about how to participate in council meetings.