Fund Our Future: Our Community’s Priorities

The city's Long-Term Financial Strategy Project is a current City Council priority designed to guide the city’s financial future in a sustainable, equitable and resilient way. As part of the project, we are looking at city services that are currently underfunded and working to develop shared expectations about our offerings.

Over the past two years, we have been hosting engagement opportunities to help us understand what our community expects us to provide and where the greatest need is for our city services.

In early 2026, we hosted a series of community engagement opportunities to share more about this topic and to hear from community members about what they consider to be core, essential services and what acceptable performance looks like in these areas.

As part of the Fund Our Future Community Conversations, we heard from over 500 community members about where they would increase, maintain or reduce investment across 25 city services. The featured services ran across city departments and covered a variety of areas such as facilities maintenance, wildfire response, recreation, public safety, housing assistance and more.

Overall, community input prioritized wildfire response and preparedness, ongoing maintenance of city facilities, snow and ice response and public safety, followed by homelessness-related services.

We heard that wildfire is the clearest cross-community ask for increased service levels and prioritization.

Community members also shared what additional city services they would prioritize. These broadly included recreation and wellness, older adult services, and climate and environment. Within these areas, land management science and research, open space education and outreach, youth and older adult indoor recreation, and Age Well Centers were specifically noted.

Housing came up as an area of difference among respondents. Some framed housing stability as core infrastructure and an area for prevention-first investment; these responses were more heavily from renters. Some thought the city should fully fund housing stability programs, while others were explicit that city dollars should not subsidize housing or rental assistance, which aligned primarily with homeowner respondents.

A share of respondents raised general concerns about the city's overall cost structure and called for closer attention to budget efficiency before new revenue. Tax and revenue were the most common open-ended topic, and it cut both ways: some respondents urged new or higher revenue, including ideas such as taxing vacant commercial property, while others felt the city already collects enough and should reduce spending first.

In Boulder, we recognize that local government makes better decisions and creates more responsive programs and services when the community it serves has a meaningful voice. Hearing from our community helps inform policies like long-term budgeting, sustainability and planning.

Read the full Fund Our Future Community Conversations engagement summary

Using community input to guide funding prioritization is crucial as the city works to navigate its current budget shortfall, including $400 million unfunded capital maintenance backlog.

And the community will have more opportunities to weigh in leading up to the next election. This November, Boulder voters may see items related to our city’s financial future on the ballot. At a recent City Council Meeting, City Council decided to move forward in considering two ballot measures for the November 2026 ballot: $400 million infrastructure bond and a residential vacancy excise tax.

While ballot details won’t be confirmed by City Council until August, if passed by voters in November, the potential measures will help pay for underfunded city facility infrastructure and maintenance. The areas funded through these measures, from recreation centers to civic buildings such as the public safety building, will make our community more accessible, equitable and resilient.

The city is reworking our long-term financial strategy to guide future budget decision-making and establish a sustainable, equitable and resilient way to meet our community’s needs.

This is the fourth in a series of blogposts about the city’s Long-Term Financial Strategy.

• Learn more about the strategy
• Read the first blogpost - Fund Our Future: An Overview
• Read the second blogpost - Fund Our Future: A Retrospective
• Read the third blogpost – Fund Our Future: Investing in a Better Boulder

The City of Boulder E-newsletter is a bimonthly roundup of city news, including information on the city’s Long-Term Financial Strategy initiative.

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