The Denver City Council voted down eight proposed amendments to the city’s 2025 budget on Monday night, including rejecting a request to give another $2.5 million to the Denver Basic Income Project, a program that is gauging the impact of providing direct cash assistance to homeless or formerly homeless Denverites. The final vote on that proposed change was a 6-6 tie with one member, Councilwoman Flor Avlidrez, absent for the latter part of the meeting. Even some council members who felt the project showed promise in improving participants’ lives and housing outcomes felt that the ask was too much. The city had provided $2 million in federal COVID aid money to seed the program in 2023 and another $2 million to keep it going this year before Mayor Mike Johnston rejected a council request to continue the city’s participation in 2025. Monday’s amendment — sponsored by the council’s three most progressive members in Shontel Lewis, Sarah Parady and Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez — would have drawn the additional $2.5 million from the city’s strategic reserves or otherwise forced Johnston’s administration to move money around to protect those reserves. “If these dollars were coming from somewhere else I would be supportive of it,” Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer said before voting no. “At the end of the day, they need more time in order to really prove the success, to make some changes that they know that they need to make, and to move this potentially life-altering project forward for some of our residents.” But, Sawyer said, the city is already planning to move forward with only a 12.5% reserve built into its $1.76 billion general fund budget next year. That’s below the 15% that city financial officials recommend. Sawyer described the situation as a “financial crisis.” Council’s marathon debate — and ultimate rejection — of all the budget amendments members brought forward on Monday night is indicative of the tight financial spot the city is in going into 2025. Related Articles Politics | Denver Mayor Mike Johnston adds more rent assistance money — but rejects most budget requests from council Politics | More money for rental assistance, Basic Income Project among $29 million in Denver council requests to mayor Politics | Denver Mayor Mike Johnston unveils tight 2025 budget as city faces softening consumer spending Denver relies on sales tax revenues for more than half of its general fund dollars each year. The Johnston administration, in the face of softening sales tax collections, created a budget that grows by just 0.6% next year over the $1.75 billion budget the city has operated under in 2024. It’s the smallest increase in a year not impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in more than a decade. Even revenue-neutral amendments and one change that would have added $3.2 million back to the general fund balance were rejected Monday. Parady sponsored an amendment that would have moved the Street Engagement Team, or SET, from the city’s Department of Public Safety to under the purview of the Department of Housing Stability, or HOST. Formerly known as the Street Enforcement Team, SET is a group of unarmed civilian employees training to enforce the city’s urban camping ban and respond to a handful of other municipal code violations that may not require an armed police response. When the program was launched in 2021 it was designed to be a softer approach to enforcing the camping ban with a focus on training team members to bring a trauma-informed response to interactions and an emphasis on connecting people who are homeless with resources that can help them, not just ticketing them and getting them to move along. But reforming or dissolving that team has quickly emerged as a priority for homeless advocates who see it as a tool for harassment and intimation especially as Johnston’s administration seeks to keep downtown neighborhoods clear of homeless encampments as part of his All in Mile High homelessness initiative. More than a dozen people who spoke at the council’s public hearing covering the budget on Oct. 28 called for defunding or reshaping that program including activist Amy Beck. Beck said she regularly sees SET members at homeless encampments and in her experience, they do not offer services and support that can help people get off the street. “They are not engaging. They are definitely out there just telling people to move along,” she said. “Can we offer some services? That’s why I am supporting that we move them over to HOST.” A handful of opponents to Parady’s suggested changes also spoke at that Oct. 28 hearing including business owners who said the team had been effective in moving along people who had been camping on their properties without clashing with those people. The amendment ultimately failed by a vote of 8-5 Monday. Parady also forwarded an amendment that would have taken $3.2 million from the Denver Police Department budget and moved it back into the general fund. The money was earmarked to pay for a third police academy class as the mayor seeks to add 168 new recruits to the force in 2025. In her comments Monday, Parady discussed several recent issues and controversies surrounding DPD’s recruitment and academy process. She referenced allegations made by Niecy Murray, the former director of the Denver Civil Service Commission. Murray claimed she was pressured by the Johnston administration to lower standards for DPD recruits. In one instance, Murray said she was pressured to pass along one applicant despite the person being deemed unfit for service after a psychological evaluation. Murray was fired from that commission, which oversees the hiring of police officers and firefighters, the same day she made those allegations public in May. “Why would we add pressure to this system right now and accelerate the traditional number of academies we’ve done per year?” Parady said in support of her amendment on Monday. Councilman Kevin Flynn was the first to speak out against the amendment. It would only do away with a third academy class in the coming year, but delay the other two, he said. Denver police Chief Ron Thomas, called upon to answer questions, said that the new Civil Service Commission director Gracie Perez has already made adjustments to the recruiting process that he feels means the next academy class slated to start in December will be filled with qualified candidates. “I can appreciate the desire to want to pause to try to fix what might appear to be a broken system …” Thomas said before voicing his confidence in Perez’s changes. That amendment failed by a vote of 10-3. The council is now scheduled to vote on a final version of the budget on Tuesday, Nov. 12. Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.