City Manager Releases Constrained, But Strategic 2025 Recommended Budget

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:

• Sales and use taxes – Boulder’s largest single source of revenue – are flattening.
• Several property tax initiatives are creating heightened uncertainty for governments across the state.
• Costs related to goods, materials and services continue to rise, in some cases, dramatically. This pressure is especially apparent in connection with new construction, but also as the city addresses a backlog in maintenance work and equipment replacements necessary to uphold current functionality.
• The city’s commitment to exploring minimum wage, worked into the budget assumptions, has financial implications.
• And lastly, invaluable funding from the American Rescue and Recovery Act, passed federally to meet the challenges of the worldwide pandemic, is expiring.

“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:

• A significant boost (100 new units and needed maintenance to 44 existing units) to the city’s affordable housing stock
• Efforts to meet the ongoing and pressing needs of low-income community members, through increased funding for safety-net partners and rental assistance
• The continuation of the city’s innovative Safe & Managed Public Spaces program, with a particular focus on operationalizing the successful urban rangers concept
• Inclusive and meaningful engagement to inform the upcoming Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan update
• The creation of an Immigration Legal Defense Fund and additional funding for the Office of Equity and Belonging to implement cultural competency assessments
• Disaster recovery planning to protect against cybersecurity and technology attacks
• Continued Community Connectors coordination support and programming
• Increased EXPAND recreational opportunities for people living with disabilities
• Arts and culture enhancements in 2025, along with the development of a forward-facing blueprint to best leverage taxpayer investments in support of these goals.

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:

• A two-year Community Wildfire Resilience coordinator position
• Staffing investments in wastewater treatment and water quality operations
• A one-year extension of victim services specialist and the hiring of a new civilian Property & Evidence supervisor that will allow for a sergeant to be reassigned downtown
• Permanent staffing for urban parks rangers
• A full-time position for a Bilingual Family Resource Schools Program Manager at Crestview Elementary
• A new attorney to support several city programs, such as the Community Court program, extreme risk protection orders, and the chronic nuisance program

“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:

• Maintenance work across several city buildings, including existing fire stations, the Public Safety building, the Atrium Building, and the North Boulder Recreation Center
• Extensive energy retrofits and public-facing enhancements at the East Boulder Community Center
• The continued development of a consolidated and climate-friendly office hub on the Western City Campus and affordable housing at the old Boulder Community Hospital site, on Broadway, between Alpine and Balsam
• Infrastructure improvements along University Hill to better connect districts
• Transportation commitments, including ongoing Core Arterial Network planning and implementation, replacement of the Violet Street Bridge by Primos Park, and equity-centered micromobility improvements
• A two-year plan to replace aging fire apparatus – the cost of which has tripled in the last seven years.

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 Equity initiative. 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:

• Reduced risk of wildfire to vulnerable homes
• Reduced percentage of Boulder residents who experience foreclosure/eviction
• Equitable access to all recreation facilities, services and community benefit program
• Increased availability of multimodal transportation options to-and-from districts
• Lower total costs of ownership of city buildings
• Preservation and restoration of important habitat blocks and corridors
• Small businesses, including women- and minority-owned businesses, continue to receive technical assistance and connections to financing and other resources to help them thrive

“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 brief is 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.