File Photo by Philip B. Poston/Aurora Sentinel
AURORA | City council is moving forward with a 2027 budget that would require $10.2 million in cuts to spending, but will avoid staff layoffs.
Lawmakers went through the budget in-depth at an Oct. 3 workshop, where they added a fourth homelessness mobile response team and a code enforcement officer and cut funding for Flock security cameras at Aurora Public Schools.
The proposed cuts will include five furlough days for staff and reductions in recreation subsidies and training and travel budgets, as well as the end of prosecuting domestic violence cases at a municipal level.
While the city is not planning any layoffs, nine vacant positions will be eliminated and eight open positions won’t be filled.
Next year’s general fund budget, which is the main source of funding for city operations, including public safety, transportation, parks and libraries, is expected to be $570.5 million after the cuts, while revenue is estimated to be $567.6 million.
The general fund’s total shortfall for 2027 was more than $19 million, which the city’s Finance Manager Greg Hayes attributes to a combination of increasing costs and revenues not meeting projections. As of July, sales tax revenue, which accounts for 58% of the city’s income, is up 0.6% compared to last year.
In addition to the $10.2 million in cuts, the city will balance its budget with $7.3 million from other funds including its recession reserves and an expected $1.8 million in new revenue from additional audits and charging for police services at outside events.
The largest spending category increase for the city is for staff pay and benefits, including the 2027-28 police and fire union contracts.
The majority of spending in the general fund, 51%, is for public safety services, including police, fire and 911. The police budget is planned to be about $189 million, up from $177 million originally planned for this year. However, this year’s department budget is $9 million more than originally planned and is projected to be $186 million. The increase is largely driven by increased personnel costs, including overtime, shift-differential, on-call pay and end-of-year leave payouts for retiring officers.
Police Chief Todd Chamberlain said the city has to spend significantly more on overtime because, while the department is fully staffed, the ratio of police officers to residents remains low for comparably-sized cities. Aurora voters at one time imposed a mandate of a ratio of two officers per 1,000 people, which the city has never met and changed several times.
“We are still about 131 (people) below where we should be if we were at the staffing level of a consistent or a similar department across the United States,” Chamberlain said. “So to supplement that lack of staffing that we have, that is where the overtime usage comes in.”
Similarly, Aurora 911 and Aurora Fire are $3.3 million and $2.4 million, respectively, over the original 2026 budget because of the high call volume and demand on personnel costs through overtime. With the additional spending, the projected 2026 budgets for Aurora 911 and Aurora Fire are $21.5 million and $103 million.
The fire department budget is $104 million, up from $103 million in 2026, while Aurora 911 is budgeted to have $18.5 million, slightly up from the planned $18.3 million 2026 budget. One full-time position for a SWAT team medic will transition from the police budget to the fire department.
The city council’s budget is also increasing by roughly $491,000, largely due to the city hiring five council aides. Other departments seeing an increase are general management, non-departmental spending and public works, while departments that face a decreased budget include judicial and court administration, as well as housing and community services, which is largely due to a position being moved to the council budget for an aide.
During a discussion about the savings from no longer prosecuting domestic violence cases at the municipal level, Councilmember Stephanie Hancock said she would like to see further cuts to the public defender’s office. Hancock suggested the department cut four positions instead of the two that were planned.
Hancock’s proposal received the support of Mayor Mike Coffman, who told Lead Public Defender Elizabeth Cadiz that he didn’t think she is “capable of making hard administrative decisions.” Cadiz defended herself and her office’s budget by noting that eliminating two positions is equivalent to a 10% reduction in staff, which no other department proposed.
Ultimately, the proposal was voted down.
The council also discussed the possibility of ending the prosecution of all criminal charges at the municipal level, which would mean those cases would be filed to the county courts, in an effort to save money. Most cities in Colorado that have a municipal court only prosecute traffic, animal and code violations.
Some of the capital projects the city has budgeted for next year include constructing two new fire stations, upgrades at Box Elder Creek, remodeling the council chambers to be more accessible and improving East 56th Avenue.
Other capital improvements may also be funded through a sales tax increase the council put on the November ballot, which would bring in a projected $264 million to pay for 65 different projects.
The 2027 combined water and wastewater proposed operating budget is $258.5 million, which is $8.1 million (3.2%) more than in 2026. Aurora Water Executive Director Marshall Brown said mandated costs for utilities, ditch assessments and sewer and stormwater services have increased, necessitating the bigger budget.
The estimated 2027 revenue for water is $276.8 million and for wastewater, it’s $133.1 million.
Spending across all of the city’s funds, including water and capital projects, is expected to be $1.5 billion. Revenue from all sources is predicted to be $1.8 billion.
The largest portion of all planned spending, 46%, will be for water and wastewater operations and capital projects, including the construction of new sewer lines and improvements to water tracking technology.
Through the capital improvement program, which funds water, wastewater and other capital projects over a five-year period, the city is planning $2.9 billion in investments through 2031. Those include $1.3 billion for construction of the Wild Horse Reservoir and more than $400 million in improvements to water treatment facilities.