Denver’s 2025 budget is growing by just 0.6 percent, the city’s slowest growth in 14 years, aside from the pandemic.
It’s also the first time in a decade, other than the pandemic, that the city is reducing full-time employees.
Denver will decrease full-time staff by 200 people through reductions in vacant positions while avoiding furloughs and layoffs.
The budget also includes reductions in spending on homelessness and new immigrants.
Mayor Mike Johnston announced the $1.76 billion operating budget for 2025 on Thursday. His office attributed the slowed growth to a slowdown in consumer spending, something cities across the country also are experiencing.
It’s Johnston’s second budget since his election as mayor in 2023.
The proposed new budget comes in the middle of a turbulent financial year for the city, in which Denver spent millions of dollars responding to an influx of new immigrants and instituted budget cuts in February and April.
“Our remarkable success responding to the crisis of homelessness and surge in asylum seekers, we are now reducing spending on those programs,” Johnston wrote in a statement Thursday. “Through prudent cost-saving measures, we can ensure we continue to provide world-class public services for all Denverites.”
Spending on new immigrants will drop from $90 million in 2024 to $12.5 million in 2025. Spending on Johnston’s homelessness program will decrease from $141 million in 2024 to $57.7 million in 2025.
Johnston said much of that decline is happening because the city made some significant one-time capital purchases in 2024, especially buying hotels and other property to use as shelter sites.
Unsheltered homelessness did decrease in Denver in 2023, but overall homelessness in the metro area has risen. Johnston faced criticism from City Council over the growing costs of his homelessness plan in 2023.
The number of new immigrant arrivals in Denver has also dropped off significantly since highs in January and February.
More stories about the budget and how cities work:
- Denver City Council 101: Your guide to what they do, how bills become law and more
- What should Denver spend its money on in 2025? Here’s what City Council thinks
- How did Johnston do with his first budget?
This is a developing story and will be updated.