Boulder council starts FY2027 budget process, directs staff to recategorize expenses and prepare deliverables

Boulder’s town council opened an informal FY2027 budget kickoff on March 26, emphasizing community-building, building maintenance and tighter stewardship of public funds as its top priorities. The meeting centered on cleaning up accounting codes, improving time tracking and preparing a list of capital projects to be grant-ready.

The meeting chair said council members should “think about the core goals” for the coming year and identify items that could be reflected in the budget, while the town CPA cautioned: “A budget is just a guide,” urging conservative estimates and regular review. The CPA explained that some funds are restricted — for example, Class C road monies are earmarked for street repairs — and that the town should decide whether to charge projects directly to those restricted funds or transfer money to the general fund before spending.

Council discussion repeatedly returned to a concern that prior transactions were miscoded and that administrative categories had unintentionally absorbed expenses for parks, utilities and other public services. Staff said past years’ entries were not consistently line-itemized and pledged to clean up coding so the FY2027 baseline reflects actual service spending. One council member urged improved time tracking for staff and maintenance personnel so salaries can be allocated to the departments that use them.

Members examined revenue charts showing heavy reliance on tourism-related taxes and noted that property tax constitutes a relatively small share of the town’s receipts. That mix increases revenue volatility, the CPA and several council members said, prompting discussion of longer-term options such as pursuing a truth-in-taxation process or a resort-tax change to raise fixed revenue. The CPA and staff were asked to prepare a truth-in-taxation timeline for the April meeting.

The council also identified specific near-term budget items: a $20,000 estimate was mentioned for landfill compliance work this year, and staff and council discussed whether that work should be treated as an operating expense or as preliminary engineering for a capital project. Other projects the council listed as candidates for grant-ready preliminary engineering included ADA access upgrades to the town building, potential sports-court resurfacing, a commercial kitchen and long-term landfill replacement or transfer-station planning.

Next steps set by the council call for a small working group of council and staff to recategorize budget line items, break out maintenance employee time across departments and prepare an updated spreadsheet for review at the April meeting. Staff aim to present a tentative budget for the May meeting and to schedule the required public hearing at least 10 days before the June final-adoption meeting.

A routine motion to adopt the meeting agenda was approved at the start of the session. The council adjourned on schedule at 04:29.

What happens next: staff will return with recategorized accounts, a timeline for truth-in-taxation deadlines and a grant-ready capital projects list for the council’s April meeting; the council expects to use those inputs to frame the May tentative budget and June adoption schedule.