City Manager Releases Tight But Thoughtful 2026 Recommended Budget

Corrected (addresses error in previous version about source of prior one-time additional allocation to the Human Services Fund)

Boulder City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde today released a 2026 Recommended Budget that aims to deliver on the city’s highest priority commitments to community while addressing significant economic pressures.

The overall spending plan calls for $407.68 million in allocations across all funds. While this amounts to a 2.1% increase compared to last year, it represents the slowest year-over-year growth in the city’s overall operating budget since the pandemic period.

Most notably, the city’s General Fund – which covers many of the fundamental responsibilities of local government – has been cut by 7.8% compared to the 2025 Approved Budget, with the total set at $194.5 million.

This reflects previous acknowledgments by the city that sales and use tax collections are flattening beyond already conservative forecasts. Boulder’s budget, especially the General Fund, is heavily reliant on the sales and use taxes the city collects when people shop, build or provide services in town. Other challenges include the impact of rising costs on goods and services the city purchases, a new state limitation on what local jurisdictions can collect in property taxes, and continued questions about how the new federal administration’s changes in budget priorities and grant requirements will affect Boulder.

“Not surprisingly, economic uncertainty in the world is changing local spending habits and stretching the resources we have. We need to account for this as we consider what community expects of us,” Rivera-Vandermyde said. “Through candid conversations, contributions from across the city organization and difficult choices, however, we’ve achieved a balanced budget that focuses on our many of our highest priorities. I’m proud of this work.”

While this is not a year of expansion in programs and services, the 2026 Recommended Budget accomplishes several key objectives:

• Balances a forecasted gap of $7.5 million in the General Fund
• Supports priority services, programs and goals, consistent with the city’s organizational and community values
• Leverages resources across all funds in best-practice and appropriate ways
• Positions the city for improved long-term fiscal sustainability

The spending plan includes limited new expenditures for high-priority needs, as well as decisions to allow departments to use existing money in different ways to drive their most important outcomes. It also includes reductions, which, in some cases, will impact programs, services and funding to outside partners.

The complete 2026 Recommended Budget, including breakdowns by fund and departments, is available in the Online Budget Book. Key highlights are summarized below; the City Manager’s Message includes significantly more detail for anyone who wishes to dive deeper.

The 2026 Recommended Budget takes a balanced approach to achieve the following priorities:

• Positions the city for new solutions to unsheltered homelessness by aligning resources to All Roads (formerly the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless) to bolster it as an essential partner in implementing the newly updated Homelessness Strategy
• Ensures that wildfire resilience and fire prevention are adequately resourced through strategic use of multiple funding sources
• Evolves the current approach to emergency behavioral health response, creating more opportunity for clinicians to support other clinicians on calls, with or without a police officer, based on data and learnings
• Supports arts, culture and heritage activities, in anticipation of the launch of a new Arts Blueprint in early 2026

The spending plan also recognizes the importance of core services and seeks to advance other City Council Priorities and Citywide Strategic Plan goals.

Making progress in these areas, however, will require trade-offs, and there are some services that will be funded at lower levels or discontinued. The following are a few notable examples:

• The city will eliminate three filled staff positions and 16 vacant regular positions to lower ongoing personnel costs.
• In the 2025 Approved Budget, the Human Services Fund received $100,000 in ongoing funding plus another $100,000 in one-time funding. The one-time allocation from the General Fund was intended to address immediate community needs in the aftermath of the pandemic. The city is not financially able to extend this one-time contribution into 2026 or make it ongoing.
• The Parks and Recreation Department anticipates having to increase some fees or adjust service levels to address an ongoing shortfall in recreational funding. It will rely upon existing policies – specifically the 2022 BPR Plan and 2023 Fee Policy – to make these decisions.
• The Open Space and Mountain Parks Department will accelerate a planned reduction in its land acquisition budget and scale back on some capital improvement work related to trail and trailhead enhancement next year. The 2026-31 Capital Improvement Program, however, includes support for Open Space capital improvement projects in 2027 and 2028 with Lottery Fund revenues. These future projects include the Fort Chambers/Poor Farm site Management Plan implementation, the Chautauqua Tanger Cottage and Trailhead redesign, local food farm site improvements and OSMP Climate Plan implementation efforts, among others.

In addition to offering valuable services and programs, the city also has a responsibility to take care of assets the community relies upon and plan responsibly for the future.

The total 2026 Recommended Capital Budget is $113.3 million across all funds, with $789.5 million programmed in planned capital investments across the 2026-2031 Capital Improvement Program. This allocation is anticipated to cover 115 projects in 2026 – with a recognition that increasing costs are resulting in rescaled projects and in some cases, extending the time it will take to complete planned repairs, improvements and construction.

Despite challenges associated with available dollars not stretching as far, the city will advance important infrastructure-related work in 2026. The following are a few examples:

• Completion of the Western City Campus community service hub at Alpine and Broadway, which will open in 2027
  • This project supports the consolidation of staff from nine deteriorating city buildings, resulting in streamlined community access to many city services, new opportunities for collaboration across teams, and cost savings associated with ending the upkeep of facilities that are past their lifecycle.
• Process and technology updates designed to improve customer experience for community members who seek to access services or interact with the city
• Equipment and venue investments to prepare Boulder for hosting the Sundance Film Festival in 2027
• Replacement of Fire Station 2 at Baseline Road and Broadway Avenue to serve University Hill, Chautauqua, and the CU Boulder campus – one of the busiest districts in the city
• Continued planning for enhancements to the Civic Area, with a goal of reimagining and reinvigorating the heart of the city; the primary focus in 2026 will be on completing important floodplain review processes

While the 2026 Recommended Budget stands on its own, its creation coincides with the ongoing development of the city’s Long-Term Financial Strategy. City Council set this as a top priority in 2024, recognizing that over-reliance on sales and use taxes put the city in a vulnerable position, especially during economic downturns. One of the focuses of this initiative has been on examining alternative revenue sources.

In 2026, the city will take a balanced approach to increasing revenue by adjusting some existing fees and adding a few new sources while continuing to study others. The recommended budget includes the following measures:

• Implementation of a Transportation Maintenance Fee: The potential of a fee has been considered and studied for several years, and the city is eager to move forward with a more sustainable way to fund maintenance of transportation infrastructure. Paid by property owners, this fee would fund critical needs such as bridge maintenance, pavement management, sidewalk repair and street markings. The city expects to collect an estimated $2.25 million in 2026 to put toward this important and underfunded work. Fees would be set based on property type – the fee for a single-family home, for example, has been modeled at $53 a year.
• An increase in parking fees: A very modest 50 cents increase in hourly parking fees for both on-street and city-owned garage parking in alignment with our current performance-based pricing model. This change is expected to generate approximately $800,000 in 2026.
• Launch of speed on green cameras: While the primary objective for this technology is to reduce speeds and increase safety, consistent with Vision Zero, this budget assumes collection of about $2.6 million in 2026, with a modeling assumption that revenue will go down as driver behavior changes.
• Single-family housing expansion fee: A $15-per-square-foot fee is proposed to be charged for expansion or replacement of existing single-unit dwellings if plans increase the size by 500 square feet or more. This is expected to generate $400,000 in 2026 to support affordable housing development.

These fee changes are designed to address some of the city’s highest priority but unfunded or underfunded needs, based on community input during the past few budget cycles.

City Council will discuss the 2026 Recommended Budget at a study session on Sept. 11, followed by public hearings on Oct. 9 and Oct. 23. Community members are invited to sign up to speak at the hearings. The city’s website has more information about how to participate in council meetings.