Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper has asked city officials to be prepared for a lean budget next year.
Department heads are putting together plans for 2008, and Hickenlooper has asked them to prepare two options: One anticipating 4 percent growth and a second that assumes only a 2 percent increase.
“This will mean finding even more ways to reduce expenditures and provide services more efficiently,” the mayor wrote in a memorandum.
The memo said Denver’s property and sales taxes are growing at a normal clip, but “we see real potential for declines in other non-tax areas,” such as licensing fees and ticket revenues.
Kelly Brough, the mayor’s chief of staff, said the city is trying to prudently plan for the coming year. She noted Hickenlooper’s success balancing a city budget after years of budget shortfalls.
“This isn’t going to be the way it was when we came in here,” Brough said. “It isn’t some across-the-board radical reduction for the city.
“We have been relentless about (finding efficiencies), and we could have a growth budget and we still would look for those.”
As examples of cost savings, Brough said the city will look at everything from printing on both sides of a page to save paper to large-scale projects like the city’s group fuel buy.
The city, in a partnership with Aurora, Westminster, Greeley and Denver Public Schools, locked in prices for vehicles, saving Denver about $900,000.
Claude Pumilia, Denver’s chief financial officer, cautioned that it is still early in the budget process. He said the city is planning the way any business would.
“What is important is that we have a rigorous budget cycle” to determine where the city can get the most return on its money, he said.
Still, an e-mail sent to department heads titled “budget key messages” notes that “the environment is not bleak, but it is challenged.” Budgets for the 2008 calendar year must be submitted next month and will be approved in the fall.
Staff writer George Merritt can be reached at 303-954-1657 or gmerritt@denverpost.com.
