Welcome back to this monthly meeting of the Governance and Intergovernmental Relations Committee of Denver City Council.

Thanks for joining us for the discussion.

The governance and intergovernmental relations committee starts now.

Good morning.

It is June 16th, 2026.

Interestingly enough, that would be 061626.

You have reached the governance and intergovernmental relations committee of Denver City Council.

My name is Paul Cashman.

I serve as vice chair for this committee, and also represent uh South Denver District 6.

And before we get into the uh meet of the meeting, we will uh let uh council members introduce, start to my right with uh council member Flynn.

Uh, Mr.

Vice Chair, uh Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver's District 2.

There will be two.

We tried harder.

Okay.

Good morning, Stacey Gilmore, District 11.

Good morning, Amanda Sawyer, District 5, Chantal Lewis, District 8.

Good morning, Florida Vidres Lucky District 7.

Well, thank you.

Do we have anybody online?

Nobody online.

Uh we have uh a couple of action items that we're gonna be looking at in a uh pair uh looking at uh Denver's budgeting process and uh then we have an uh executive session uh following that.

We do have a couple folks signed up for public comment on uh the action items.

So with that, uh the items are 26-0864 and 0867.

I will turn it over to my colleagues at the end of the table to explain what we're looking for.

Good morning.

Uh thank you for welcoming us to committee.

Uh my colleagues and I have been um working on this legislation for close to two years, and we're excited to be here in uh committee.

The legislation is budget together, Denver, and thank you, uh Vice Chair Cashman.

And um we are talking about proposed changes to Denver's budget process.

And so we'll um get into the slide deck, but I would also um like to thank sincerely the um what's I can do too.

Um the mayor's office.

Um, we have Dominicana very involved, Carolina Flores, the Department of Finance, um Justin Sykes and Nicole Dohey, and then um two amazing city attorneys, um Megan and Matt from the City Attorney's Office that really partnered with us to get it to this amazing spot uh to present to you this morning.

And so uh we'll have the agenda, we'll have a little bit of background, uh current budget requirements and timeline, uh the proposed changes, a new timeline that um just to not spoil it but gives council members and the public a little bit more time to review the budget and understand it, and then the legislative timeline and questions and discussion.

Uh the next slide is an overview of the city and county of Denver's fund structure, and so really I was sharing with Councilwoman Sawyer this morning that um for members of the media or others who uh are interested in how Denver's budget works.

This slide deck is so important because it shows you an overview and all of the different funds, and we're specifically going to be talking about the general fund uh this morning.

And so the next slide takes us through what the uses of the general fund is, and people really think of that as Denver's budget.

Uh and so it's the largest city uh financial fund, it has great flexibility in what can be spent, how it can be spent, and um, you know, it's always um over one billion dollars easily, and so that's a lot of money uh to be tracking and to be understanding exactly the uses of it.

And so primarily the general fund is for staff salaries, benefits, city programs, and general operations.

And then this next slide um takes us through Denver's fiscal policy, and in the annual budget, there is also always a schedule 100, which takes you through a high-level overview of what has been spent in the city, and so um there's really three buckets that we're gonna be talking about.

And so it's contingency, it's the general fund, and then it's the TABER reserves or the general funds unassigned fund balance, excuse me.

So those three.

And so the required fiscal policies is that the fiscal year is January through December.

It's a calendar year.

The budget must be balanced.

And capital improvement funds are only supposed to be used for capital uses and planning only.

Members of the public will understand that as the six-year capital improvement plan that we have within the city for those bigger projects.

Contingency must be at least 2% of those general fund expenditures.

And then the unassigned fund balance must have 15% of the annual general fund expenditures held back.

And then also the state requires a TABER emergency reserve, which is 3% of all those covered funds.

And I want to point out on this slide before we move from it that when you look halfway down, and it takes us through the beginning budget unassigned fund balance, you'll see that there's a negative there in the parentheses, and then the percentages at the bottom there, the 13.5, 10.3%, and 11%, those become very important in what our fiscal policies outline as the percentages that we should have available within these funds.

And this is one of these documents for anybody who is working with city government and policy really needs to understand how this works.

And so our next slide talks about the Constitution and the Charter and the required reserves, which I was talking about, are part of the general fund.

The contingency must be at least 2% of the general fund expenditures, what we're projecting.

Must be 15%.

It's a goal, it should be 15% as that goal, and then the annual of the annual general fund expenditures, and then lastly, as I stated on the previous slide, the state required TABER emergency reserve, which would be 3% of all covered funds.

And so contingency uses are unexpected events.

An easy one is whether or not we get snow and how much the snow hangs around, how much we need to spend on overtime hours to clear the roadways, et cetera.

We didn't have that this year, but that would be something that contingency funds would be used for.

We create a new law or the state creates a new law that we have to put additional IT dollars in or hire additional people to manage that change in legislation, that would be something that contingency would be appropriate for, or a one-time expenditure of advancing a programmatic or financial outcome.