Mayor John Hickenlooper said he is working with Councilwoman Carol Boigon to try to find ways to shore up Denver’s Department of Human Services, which is facing a projected $29 million budget deficit by 2010.
To rein in spending, the agency is reneging on a commitment to hire more caseworkers who help protect children from abuse. It also is proposing to slash spending on child care and homeless programs and considering other options.
Boigon has said she is especially concerned about cuts to the child-care program.
Hickenlooper, in an interview Friday, declined to give specifics but said options could include shifting revenues from other city agencies or other city sources into the human services budget.
The agency recently detailed some of the challenges in a memo to the City Council. Council members are set to discuss the agency’s projected deficit in committee Tuesday.
Under current spending, the agency will go in the hole this year, and the gap would widen to $15.6 million by next year. That level is well below the agency’s policy of retaining a fund balance of at least $13.38 million. The agency’s expenditures last year totaled $337 million.
The mayor said he and Boigon are analyzing state funding cuts, federal funding cuts, declining revenues and declining mill levies.
“Within that universe, where can we get the greatest savings with the least amount of risk?” Hickenlooper asked.
Although all city agencies are “under very significant financial constraints,” any cuts to human services “are putting at risk vulnerable people,” he said.
He said DHS might need some additional revenue to minimize the damage.
“We may have to figure out and try to move money from one agency to another and from one pot to another,” he said. “. . . That gets progressively harder as we get further into a recession, but we are all willing to look at that and say we might have to do that.”
He said that given the fiscal challenges the city is facing, “these aren’t oceans of money we’re dealing with.”
Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com
