Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade, the Colorado Springs City Council and more than a dozen city staff members met Thursday morning to kickstart the process to establish the 2026 budget.

City leadership went around a table on the second floor of the Penrose House Conference Center to give their priorities for what a potentially tight budget should focus on. In general, officials agreed that the city needed to focus on public safety and the Colorado Springs Police Department and wanted to shift the discussion away from the sales tax shortfalls affecting this year’s budget.

“It reinforces the perception that we can’t do it,” Councilmember Tom Bailey said. “Stop making excuses for the revenue we have. It’s the hand that we were dealt.”

Finance Director Charae McDaniel ran through some of the nuances and requirements that the city budget has to balance. Several portions of the budget are covered by enterprise funds that have dedicated revenue that can only be used for that field. Programs such as the 2C road improvements and the public safety and sales tax have minimum spending levels set by voters.

Sales and use tax is the largest portion of the city’s $430 million general fund and makes up around 25% of the total city budget. McDaniel said the tax revenue is coming in around $9.2 million below what was expected in the 2025 budget, which the city was working to find short-term solutions for.

A few councilmembers bristled at implying the city was in an economic downturn when the sales tax revenue was at the same level as last year.

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“It concerns me that we’re having this mindset that we’re going to have a rebound when I don’t know what we are rebounding from,” Councilmember Brian Risley said.

“We’re just creating our revenue expectations around the economy that we are seeing now, which is not growing as strongly as it had in prior years,” McDaniel said.

The “key unfunded” projects listed in McDaniel’s presentation all involved the Police Department to some degree. The major projects include increasing staffing for the 911 Call Center, providing new technology for Colorado Springs police to use and dedicating more resources for clean-up programs.

Police Chief Adrian Vasquez overviewed some positive trends that the Police Department was seeing this year. Call response times had improved significantly since last summer for calls at multiple priority levels. Between the first half of 2024 and the first half of 2025, Vasquez reported a small increase in violent crimes against people but around 600 fewer motor vehicle thefts.

The biggest change was a spike in the number of traffic tickets. Colorado Springs police issued more than 30,000 tickets through the first half of 2025, compared to around 23,000 tickets for the same time last year. Vasquez and other officers said the tickets were a downstream result of the improved response times and other changes.

“Now that we have been able to lower that pending call volume, officers have more time for officer-initiated activity and that means more traffic enforcement,” Deputy Police Chief Jeff Jensen said.

McDaniel planned to hold a series of smaller meetings with councilmembers over the next two months to determine other priorities. The Mayor’s Office will release the official 2026 budget proposal on Oct. 6.

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