Mayor Mike Johnston has accepted all of Denver City Council’s recent amendments to his 2026 general fund budget. The final general fund budget stands at $1.66 billion, a reduction of roughly $64 million from 2025 spending — which was already cut earlier this year.
The council’s amendments totaled about $8 million in spending, including an additional $2.8 million for the Clerk and Recorder’s Office; $286,000 for the Denver Sheriff Department’s Mental Health and Programs Division; and $500,000 for the Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) program.
There will also be more money for a work program for unhoused people, the Safe Routes to School program, child safety grants, restored funding for the Out of School Time program, and cuts to the council’s own budget to provide additional funding for STAR.
The total budget is basically the same size as before the amendments, but money was shuffled around.
“This budget has grown stronger since we began this process in April thanks to months of collaboration between city agencies, City Council members, and advocates across the city,” Johnston wrote in his letter to the council.
The process has been contentious at times, especially as the city navigates an economic slowdown that has forced painful cuts.
The mayor has said the city is at an inflection point and needs to permanently change its financial path after years of rapid budget growth. While next year’s budget cuts about $64 million compared to this year’s spending, city officials have said the city essentially had to cut $200 million compared to the amount that spending was expected to grow. The city has already cut tens of millions of dollars from its current-year spending with layoffs and other changes.
Council members have accused the mayor of icing them out of deliberations and providing too little information about the state of finances for the city.
Meanwhile, the mayor’s office maintains the city has responded to more than 600 council questions, collected both public and community feedback and held multiple news conferences to keep the public informed – going above and beyond the normal process.
The mayor’s letter made nice, honoring the council for its work.
“City Council in particular has shaped this budget in significant ways,” Johnston wrote. “Of the 29 budget priorities that Council shared in June, 25 of them are reflected in this final document. 11 more proposals from Council were incorporated in October and now all ten of the Council’s requested amendments that were approved are accepted.”
Yet the mayor also expressed concern that the budget, as amended, may be dipping too much into the city’s emergency reserve, even as the city tries to slowly rebuild general fund savings equal to 15 percent of spending.
Johnston cautioned that increased funding for programs in 2026 means the city will need to find new funding sources in 2027.
“This budget is stronger for the work of City Council,” Council President Amanda Sandoval wrote in a statement. “This process has required countless hours, sleepless nights, and the dedication of public servants who care deeply about Denver and its residents.”
The mayor’s office boasted that it took a more “collaborative approach” than it has in previous years.
Longtime council members complained the entire process kicked off with the council being asked to set priorities at a May retreat without information about how severe the 2026 projected deficit would be.
Soon after, the mayor’s office announced the city needed to cut $50 million of projected spending this year and $200 million in 2026 — and the city would eventually lay off nearly 200 workers.
Council members said they were shocked, and that they might have set different priorities in their retreat if they had known just how bad things were. Even so, the mayor noted in his letter that the final budget reflected all but four of the priorities the council raised in May.
On Monday, the council will meet to approve or vote against the final budget. Either way, the budget will go into effect on Jan. 1.
