The Denver City Council continued its hearings for Mayor Michael Hancock’s 2022 budget proposal Friday, meeting with the offices of the auditor, climate action and human services to hear their spending plans.

The Auditor’s Office and the Office of Human Services are independent city agencies, each set to receive small fractions of the $117.19 million set aside for all independent agencies. That is approximately 8% of the $1.49 billion budget proposal.

The Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency will receive its funding from the city’s administration budget — $59.35 million or less than 4% of the budget.

After holding its final hearings on Monday, the City Council will propose amendments to the budget in early October. The council must vote to approve the final budget before it can be implemented.

Auditor’s Office

The budget proposal would delegate $11.6 million to the Denver Auditor’s Office. That is up from the office’s $10.5 million budget in 2021 and its $9.6 million spending in 2020 and 2019.

Just under 50% of the $1.1 million budget increase would go towards the office’s personnel, said Cyndi Lubrano, the officer’s business manager.

“We’ve had a little bit of growth,” Lubrano said, adding that the office’s full-time employees have increased from 71 in 2019 to a projected 81 in 2022. “The jump to next year is really just the reinstated positions that were frozen last year.”

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The office would use over $384,000 to restore five positions frozen during the COVID-19 pandemic: one financial manager, one senior auditor and three technicians. Another $80,000 would be used to increase compensation for on-call outreach workers in the office.

The remaining budget increase would be spent on services, supplies and capital investment, including $75,000 for increased outreach regarding wage laws and over $71,000 for new laptops and software.

The new software would include updates to the certified payroll system for the city’s local hire workforce initiative for city projects. The system tracks whether workers are being paid appropriate legal wages.

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The auditor’s office is responsible for recovering workers’ lost wages as a result of wage theft by their employers. In 2021, the office has recovered over $550,000 in unpaid wages so far and, in 2020, it recovered over $1 million in unpaid wages, Lubrano said. 

Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency

The newly created Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency would receive $5.7 million in the proposed budget — an increase of $1.6 million from 2021 and nearly double the office’s original $2.9 million budget in 2020.

This comes as the office has doubled in size since it was launched last year, going from 11 full-time employees to 22 with four positions to be added soon, said Chief Climate Officer Grace Rink.

With the office’s expansion, over $900,000 of the budget increase would fund the transfer of employees and programs from the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure to the Office of Climate Action.

The transfer would include moving the Denver Recycles Team and its seven employees to the office, rebranding it as the Resource Management Team. The team would continue to promote waste diversion, composting and recycling, in addition to now promoting circular economy and natural resources.

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“Adding this group to our unit allowed us to begin a focus area in natural resources, which we think is a natural fit and something we want to do,” Rink said.

The fiscal administrator position in charge of the oversight and implementation of Denver’s new Bring Your Own Bag ordinance would also be transferred to the Office of Climate Action.

The budget increase would also provide $285,000 to reboot the Certifiably Green Denver program — providing environmental education and technical assistance to local businesses — and $200,000 to the Benchmarking Ordinance — requiring owners of large buildings to report annual building energy performance.

Office of Human Services

Finally, the budget proposal would delegate $16.4 million to the Office of Human Services. That is $2.8 million more than the office’s budget in 2021 but still short of the office’s $16.7 million budget in 2020.

In addition to the budget increase, around $13 million of the office’s existing budget would be redistributed by deducting the funds from several of its departments. This includes $8.7 million deducted from Disabilities Access due to the reallocation of services and unspent budget rolled over from 2020.

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The Office of Human Services is responsible for developing and retaining Denver’s workforce, overseeing a dozen departments from Economic Resilience to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

Around $6 million of the budget increase and redistribution would be spent on personnel, including $1.7 million for the Child Welfare department to add two case workers, add two supervisors and restore multiple positions cut during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year alone, the department has received over 8,150 reports of suspected child abuse or neglect, according to office staff.

Four new positions would be added to the office’s Performance Improvement Division, 11 would be added to Family and Adult Assistance, two would be added to Financial Services, three would be restored in Child Support Services and two would be restored in Community Outreach.

Other spending plans include $112,553 for personnel raises, $100,000 to increase language access, $82,200 to create a grant program coordinator position, $30,000 for equity and diversity training and $27,600 to support multi-agency Youth Violence Prevention efforts.