Boulder County commissioners approved the 2024 budget on Tuesday, totaling $653 million. The budget includes additional spending on pay for public employees, electric vehicle purchases, expenses related to the 2024 presidential election, an affordable housing program and additional financial support for two homeless shelters, including the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless.
Much of the discussion ahead of the vote on Tuesday centered on budget cuts to Boulder County Public Health and Environment. Commissioners reduced county spending on the agency’s budget by $1.56 million from $8.56 million. In doing so, commissioners requested that the agency consider its fee structure, eliminate duplication of services and report back on how it spends county appropriations. Commissioners Ashley Stolzmann and Marta Loachamin supported the cuts. Commissioner Claire Levy opposed them.
Levy said the cuts will force the agency to make “fairly precipitous reductions.” She also said the agency does not receive enough money to implement state and federal mandates, therefore it is “incumbent on Boulder County to make up the difference.”
“Public health got us through this Covid-19 pandemic,” Levy said. “Their staff and the Board of Health absorbed a great deal of public anger — awful, awful public anger — over masking requirements, over vaccines, over restrictions on gatherings.”
“We all applauded our public health employees as heroes.”
The 2024 budget is about 10% higher than this year’s $594 million budget. Meanwhile, the county is facing a “structural deficit,” meaning its ongoing expenses are greater than its ongoing revenues.
“We have a structural deficit and we have to make tough choices for how to best serve the community,” Stolzmann said. “In 2021, there was a global pandemic. I think it’s unreasonable to expect that we would fund public health at a level that we were during a global pandemic on an ongoing basis.”