Preparing the Town’s annual budget is akin to making sausage. The process takes about eight months, and it culminates in four acts—a day long budget review meeting, two public hearings, and a vote.
The final public hearing on the Town of Estes Park’s 2025 proposed budget will take place Tuesday night at 7 p.m. during the regular meeting of the town trustees trustee board meeting in Town Hall, 170 MacGregor Ave.
During months of preparation, the Town staff incorporates spending priorities established by the board, staff recommendations, and the 2025-2029 Capital Improvement Plan.
An all-day budget review session held Oct. 9 gave Town trustees a chance to comment and make recommendations to staff on the draft budget which contains approximately $79 million in projected income, $88 million in expenses, and uses nearly $9 million of the Town’s fund balances to make up the difference.
“The easy way to think about fund balances is they are the savings account we are going to take into 2025 from 2024,” said interim Finance Director Duane Hudson.
Town revenue is generated primarily through tax collection, licenses and permits, charges for services, fines and forfeitures, rental income, investment income, grants and donations, and transfers in from other funds. Expenditures are spread throughout numerous Town departments including staff, police, judicial, streets, trails, stormwater, power and communications, water, parks, the museum, and community reinvestment.
The projected revenue for 2025 is a conservative estimate that reflects lower than expected sales tax revenue received in 2024.
Two of the increases over the 2024 budget are a 2% cost-of-living raise and a 2% merit pool for Town employees.
Slicing and dicing
At the first public hearing on Oct. 22, members of the public advocated for base funding requests received from several local nonprofit organizations.
The Estes Nonprofit Network requested $65,000. Town staff recommended $25,000, $1,000 more than what the organization was awarded in 2024.
Ravit Michener and Victoria Endsley appealed for the Estes Arts District, a nonprofit that promotes art in the Estes Valley. The organization requested $65,000. Staff recommended $15,000.
Coleen DePasquale, executive director of the Estes Chamber/Estes Economic Workforce Council defended her request for $65,000, which staff did not recommend cutting.
Trustee Marie Cenac expressed concern that some organizations also collect taxpayer funds through other requests and allocations and asked if staff followed up on how the money was spent.
“The intent behind base funding is to support overhead expenses,” said Machalek who explained that it is easier to fund specific programming costs than the overhead and general administrative costs of running a nonprofit.
Assistant Town Administrator Jason Damweber explained that base funded organizations must submit a report by the end of May. “At least for the five years that I have been here, every one of our base funded entities have done more and more every year,” Damweber said. “So, we haven’t had any pause about ensuring that they are fulfilling their mission and providing services to our community members.”
Trustee Frank Lancaster confirmed with Machalek that funding given to the Estes Chamber/EEWC would go toward the workforce council, and not to Chamber operations.
“There are some big, big discrepancies between requests and suggested awards,” said Trustee Kirby Hazelton. “There are some that are pretty darn high and have always been high.”
Trustee Bill Brown asked why some funding requests jumped up so high from last year’s awards, “if it’s just overhead we’re talking about.” He specifically mentioned Salud Foundation’s $50,000 request compared to the 2024 base funding which was $24,000, and the EAD which received $21,000 this year but requested $65,000 for next year.
Machalek explained that Salud experienced severe cuts due to the contraction of Medicaid, referring to the disenrollment of many individuals when the COVID public health emergency expired in May of 2023. The EAD is working toward becoming a Colorado Creative District and was hoping to support additional staff time for that effort, Machalek explained.
“These requests are backed by legitimate stories, it just becomes a point at which, you look at 100% increase, or more than 100% increase, and even if there is a valid story, it becomes harder and harder to fit that in the town’s budget,” Machalek said.
Trustee Cindy Younglund asked for clarification regarding the additional $9,000 requested by the Estes Valley Crisis Advocates for overhead expenses and why Estes Valley Investment in Childhood Success’ request was reduced by $10,000 over 2024 levels.
Machalek reported Crisis Advocates is experiencing a change in their federal funding and while EVICS does receive taxpayer money in the form of 6E funds, those funds cannot be used for EVICS’ entire service portfolio.
Younglund also asked why in a restricted budget year, 2025 recommended base funding for these organizations went from $282,000 in 2024 to a staff recommendation of $296,000 for 2025.
“My objective was to be at or below 2024 funding, because I see our revenue is decreasing with the town,” said Trustee Mark Igel. “I do agree that you have to invest in personnel and keep pace, and so that may be an expense that goes up, whereas we can cut other areas. We are not doing a lot of cutting today.”
“I want to see production from each of these entities that we regularly fund,” Hazelton said. “They are kind of in a protected class, because they get base funding from us every year just about, so the standard for what they produce, I think, is higher.”
Both Younglund and Hazelton recommended moving funds from other places to organizations they see as needing the funds most.
Igel didn’t want to move anything until the entire budget was reviewed. Cenac said that funding could be moved within the requests, seeing senior services as vital for survival, while others are just for enjoyment.
The consensus was to leave the base funding recommendations as is for the first public hearing.
The board directed staff to find an additional $6,000 to increase EAD’s request back to the 2024 award of $21,000. During the final public hearing on the budget, details of where this funding is coming from will be presented before the trustees adopt the budget.
It is notable that in a budget of nearly $79 million, the base funding requests totaling less than $500,000 from nonprofits received the most attention at the first public hearing.
“It’s kind of like passing over the $100 bills to pick up nickels,” said Lancaster.