4 AUGUST 20-26, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Budget Breaks DENVER’S MONEY PROBLEMS HAVE CREATED CRACKS IN CITY SERVICES. BY SAGE KELLEY Marc Spear likes to spend a lot of time at a “variety” of Denver parks. According to the father of one, Denver’s park system was a big reason why he moved here over two decades ago. “When I fi rst came to Denver, it really was this system of parks and parkways and public spaces that really made Denver stand out as a place to want to be and want to live,” Spear says. But many of those green spaces have de- clined over time, according to Spear. Chees- man Park has several dead trees and weeds overtaking a picnic table. Lowry Sports Complex Park has trash “all around” the tennis courts. “I’m saddened by it, because they were, and still are, a reason to live here,” he says. The city’s park system is vast and nation- ally lauded, with around 90% of Denver resi- dents living within a 10-minute walk from a park. But Denver Parks & Recreation is one of many city departments dealing with budget cuts this year, undergoing an $11 million budget cut as part of the city’s $1.66 billion 2026 General Fund. The Parks & Recreation and Cultural Facilities Budget, which also includes the Denver Public Library, saw the second-largest of the budget cuts, which set out to fi x a looming $200 million defi cit. Parks & Rec cuts included canceling cable TV at city-owned recreation centers and ending hazmat cleanup contracts at parks, but Denver City Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer recently said budget cuts have di- rectly affected facilities and projects at parks already within the city, with residents “not getting the value for their dollar.” “This is not okay,” she said during a coun- cil meeting on Aug. 3, pointing toward May- fair Park in the Montclair neighborhood, which has no bathrooms and no portable toilets because Parks & Rec told her there aren’t enough funds. Denver park-goers aren’t the only res- idents scorned by budget cuts, with the echoes of tough fi nancial decisions stretch- ing to bike lanes, law enforcement, trash services, parking tickets and beyond. “The challenge that we know most Amer- icans are facing is the one we just spent four months working through,” Mayor Mike Johnston said during a briefi ng about the budget last September. “As a part of that, you have to make the hard decisions to live within your means.” How Did We Get Here? The city’s budget cuts have been hanging over departments for more than a year. First, 169 city employees were laid off and over 600 open positions were eliminated in August of 2025, the City of Denver’s largest rounds of layoffs since the Great Recession. This also led to around 70 positions being cut from city-affi liated independent agencies, such as the Auditor’s Offi ce, and independent govern- ment branches, like the Denver County Court. Johnston said those job reductions cut into the budget defi cit by around $100 mil- lion, but there were still challenges ahead as the 2026 budget was fi nalized. Juan Carlos Lopez, an associate profes- sor in the Department of Economics at the University of Denver, says the hefty defi cit comes from three different factors. The fi rst involves Denver’s population boom and subsequent plateauing in recent years. Denver saw a stark increase in resi- dents in the 2010s, going from approximately 600,158 in 2010 to 715,509 in 2020, according to the United States Census Bureau. But the exponential jump slowed in the past few years, with the 2025 population hitting 740,613. Lopez says the combination of population growth, increased housing needs and rising local salaries led to a moment of economic safety. “People are going out, the economy’s good, they’re spending money, and in that they’re paying taxes. And so revenue for the city was relatively high,” he says — but more people also leads to more public services, so city spending went up. The second factor: After an economic boom in 2018, Denver was one of the major cities most affected by price infl ation. “No matter what’s happening with our revenue, our city expenses go up every year. Your utilities go up, the cost of asphalt for your roads goes up, your service contract for hosting your website goes up, your employee salaries and benefi t costs go up,” Laura Swartz, spokesperson for the city’s Depart- ment of Finance, tells Westword. According to Lopez, the combination of a slower-growing population and worsening economy in the 2020s has led to a decline in tax revenue. The third factor is COVID. Since the pandemic, people aren’t working or visiting downtown Denver as often as before, causing businesses to shutter and major properties to sell for fractions of what they were purchased for less than a decade earlier. And if people aren’t spending time downtown, they aren’t eating lunch, getting their hair cut or spending more money to go toward Denver tax revenues. Around 55% of the city’s expenses are funded by the city’s 5.15% local sales tax rate. During the COVID lockdown, Denver sales tax revenue dropped by around 24% in some months, according to a Common Sense Insti- tute pandemic analysis. Revenue rebounded around 2021 and even grew 9% in 2022, but that number has stagnated while expenses have grown, with just 1.5% growth in 2025, according to the city’s budget. “So trying to fund the same level of public services that now cost more to produce than they used to,” Lopez NEWS continued on page 6 KEEP UP ON DENVER NEWS AT WESTWORD.COM/NEWS Budget cuts in Denver have impacted Parks & Rec, transportation, trash and more. A seasonal Parks and Rec worker cleans up weeds at the Lowry Sports Complex, a park some claim has been neglected by the department since budget cuts. DESIGN BY KRISTIN BJORNSEN SAGE KELLEY
