Opinion: Where did all the money go?

What started me on this subject was the recent discussions on the Boulder City Council about asking the citizens for more money. It would be one thing if there were a serious analysis of the long-term spending habits to date, but I have not seen anything remotely like this. And without that, it’s impossible to know if this money is truly needed to maintain our quality of life and preserve our environment, or if this is just what is perceived to be the simplest way to do whatever the council majority dreams up next.

Some time ago I did some analysis of the city’s expenditures over recent history; I updated my work in the last week. I attempted to compare the overall budgets from 20 years ago and 10 years ago with the current budget numbers. I adjusted the raw data to account for inflation (using the CPI) and for the city’s population, and also for the extra revenues from the separation of the library district.

What I found surprised me. From 20 years ago to 10 years ago, the per-person inflation-adjusted numbers were essentially stable. But, from 10 years ago to now, the same per-person inflation-adjusted budget numbers increased by almost 25%.

How much is that in actual money? The budget currently is in the $510-525 million per year range. Thus, the increase (per my calculations) is approaching $125 million per year above what was being spent per year 10 years ago, in today’s dollars. (Our population has been relatively stable over these years.)

How much is that in terms of real city projects? Well, during last year’s tax elections, the city said it had about a $380 million backlog of maintenance and repair needs, including roads, parks, civic buildings and rec centers. Alternatively, the 2025 Budget document discusses an $807.4 million spending need for the Six-Year Capital Improvement Program. It’s hard to accurately decipher this, but comparing it to the roughly $125 million per year increase I noted above tells me that it could all be funded without increasing taxes. And once done, taxes could perhaps be reduced.

I did try to look at the budget details. But, given the changing budget structure (partially a function of shifting work among departments), I found it impossible to decipher. The categorizations seem to have flexed, making year-to-year comparisons infeasible, at least by someone like me, who is not familiar with all the changes.

Regarding the current council money discussions, I recently read about the “Public Realm” tax idea. This would combine three current dedicated taxes, for Parks and Rec, Open Space, and Transportation, into one. Thus, the majority on the council at any given time could divert significant money to wherever they please.

Apparently, it has not occurred to some council members that these departments require a high level of certainty in their funding so they can plan their expenditures on a multi-year basis. For example, existing Open Space bonds for property purchases require regular payments. Transportation needs to schedule maintenance across many miles of roads. And Parks and Rec must make major capital investments for the South and East Boulder Rec Centers, likely requiring selling new bonds to be paid off over some years. (Bond underwriters generally require a dedicated revenue stream for good pricing.)

Perhaps more importantly, Boulder voters want to know where the money is going when they approve a tax. I doubt voters would support just handing their money over to whatever council happens to be elected to do whatever they want with. And with even-year elections starting this year and students more likely to vote, things will be even more uncertain.

Related to the city’s budgets for affordable housing, a couple of weeks ago, a Denver federal judge ruled in support of rent control and fees-in-lieu to achieve affordable housing goals, finding these measures to not be “takings of private property.” Given this, the intelligent move would be for this council to improve our regulations (and budget) by ensuring that housing that gets built is more affordable by extracting more money from developers, notwithstanding the city staff comments about fee increases “not penciling out.”

In my opinion, the council should be asking themselves: Where did all this money go over the last 10 years? To get useful answers, they should create a blue-ribbon commission of informed citizens, including some current and former council members, to spend a few months working with city staff, sorting out how we got ourselves so far behind, given the ever-increasing spending, and what fixes we should undertake.