Denver’s City Council flexed “collective strength” to push new mayor on $4 billion budget

The Denver City Council approved next year’s $4 billion budget on Monday, capping a process that saw an assertive, progressive-leaning council push hard for — and win — more money for renters at risk of losing their housing.

It was the first budget crafted by new Mayor Mike Johnston and six of the 13 council members. The give and take took on a distinctly different feel from previous budget debates, which usually ended with the mayor’s office winning out on spending priorities — with a smaller exception last year.

Nowhere was the council’s impact felt more than in funding for the city’s rental assistance program, which more than doubled from a $12.6 million allocation in Johnston’s September budget proposal to $29.1 million by the time the plan was finalized Monday.

Third-term Councilwoman Stacie Gilmore, who was in the thick of that push, nodded to the council’s more aggressive stance before Monday afternoon’s unanimous vote to approve the 2024 budget.

“When I was elected to Denver City Council … our culture was vastly different,” Gilmore said. “Since then, we’ve worked hard to transform our council into a group that leverages its collective strength to shape our city’s budget and do more to deliver for Denverites — and, more importantly, include them in their city government.”

Denver’s city charter gives the mayor a strong upper hand on budget matters. But at a news conference last month, Gilmore touted that the push for additional rental assistance — amid a fast-rising cost of living and surging evictions — had supermajority support from at least nine of the 13 council members. That is the threshold needed to override a mayoral veto of a council amendment.

By Monday’s final budget vote, which approved a plan that includes $1.74 billion in general fund spending next year, that contentiousness had faded.

The difference between this budget process and those under former Mayor Michael Hancock was striking from the start.

After Johnston unveiled his initial budget proposal, the council requested more than $81 million in adjustments — a more-than-four-fold increase over the total additions requested from Hancock last year.

Johnston agreed to $10.6 million worth of changes, including increasing rental assistance by $3 million. That wasn’t good enough for many council members, who had asked for an additional $17.5 million for that program.

They sought both to offset federal funding the city was losing next year and to increase the overall level to meet what they and advocates for renters saw as a higher level of need.

After nine council members last month passed an amendment adding another $14.8 million from the city’s reserves, Johnston offered a compromise. They settled at an additional $13.5 million, with some of that covered through a reduction in services and supplies across all city agencies. The final increase brought the budget line item to $29.1 million.

The council also passed two smaller amendments that Johnston accepted. One moved $550,000 to sustain funding levels for the city’s Vision Zero traffic safety initiative, and the other added $450,000 for the Safe Routes to School transportation safety program.

“As we conclude the 2024 budget season, I want to thank you for your advocacy and hard work on behalf of our community,” Johnston wrote in a letter to the council accepting the changes.

In 2022, the council overrode a veto from Hancock to budget an extra $1.1 million to install more pedestrian crossing signals throughout the city this year. That was the only formal council amendment to Hancock’s final budget.

In a recent newsletter, first-term Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, who represents parts of northeast Denver, celebrated the emergence of new power dynamics at city hall after a decade of what she characterized as “municipal leadership held in lockstep with the Mayoral lead.”

Most of the 2024 budget changed little from Johnston’s initial proposal. Besides rental assistance, it includes about $230 million for other housing and homelessness initiatives; money to add a projected 167 police officers; an expansion of the Support Team Assisted Response, or STAR program, which dispatches mental health clinicians and paramedics to some 911 calls; and initiatives and projects aimed at drawing more people back downtown.

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