Fort Collins spent $75,000 for extra security and bus service for the Barack Obama rally on Sunday attended by 45,000 people, authorities say.
Most of the cost was for overtime for 80 police officers called in to provide additional security for the rally. It wasn’t budgeted, and taxpayers will have to cover the cost.
“Some of these costs will be absorbed in our budget,” said Diane Jones, deputy city manager of Fort Collins. “We don’t have a particular line item for special events.”
The Secret Service provided some security for the rally Sunday afternoon, but crowd control was the responsibility of local authorities, she said.
Normal bus fares were charged to people attending the rally at Colorado State University. But not all of the bus costs were covered.
Denver police said they have no idea how many officers were called in, if any, or how big of a budgetary impact the rally will have.
“We don’t ever release staffing levels for security reasons,” said Sharon Hahn, Denver police spokeswoman.
She said police try to use on-duty officers to cover such events.
The Obama campaign expected only about 25,000 people for the Denver rally. Instead, more than 100,000 turned out — a record for Obama rallies in the U.S., according to police estimates
But the unexpected influx had virtually no financial impact on Denver’s Parks and Public Works departments, said Revekka Balancier, spokeswoman for public works.
She said two traffic engineers received overtime pay but that five other workers called in for the rally were salaried and were not paid any additional amount.
“Everything went so incredibly smoothly, we didn’t have to call in any extra crews,” Balancier said.
She said the Obama campaign paid people to pick up the extra trash left by the huge crowd.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
