Four things the public record shows about Denver’s money. Each one reads across a whole budget book or report. No single line of it states the finding. Each shows its label, its formula or where it is printed, and the record it rests on. Published .
How to read a finding
Our own reading, with the working shown
A finding reads across a whole public document. No single line of it states the finding. Each one is the work of WorksBetter, and each is dated.
A finding labeled FACT is what a publisher prints, and it says where each figure is printed. A finding labeled CALC is arithmetic on such figures, with the formula shown. A question the record does not yet answer is labeled PENDING. It is left open, never estimated.
Every number in a finding is listed under “The numbers” with its formula or its publisher. Each finding is worked out again from its records whenever this page is rebuilt. A finding we get wrong goes in the corrections log.
Does Denver’s budget book print one total under another’s name?
Denver’s Final 2026 budget book prints five totals that each cover the whole city for one year. One row of its Exhibit 2 is named “General Fund Total Appropriations”. The figure in that row is the General Fund’s estimated expenditures, $1.66B. The appropriation, the money authorized to be spent, is $1.68B. That is $13.25M more. The exhibit’s own footnote says it folds in money the city expects to leave unspent.
So a reader who copies that row under its own label quotes the wrong figure. This site names the quantity each time it prints one of the five.
Total net expenditures, all funds: $5.41B. Exhibit 2. The book calls this one the more accurate picture of what the city spends.
Total expenditures, all funds, before money moving between city funds is taken out: $5.86B. Exhibit 2.
General Fund total appropriations: $1.68B. The General Fund summary, and the sum of every General Fund item in the appropriation ordinance.
General Fund estimated expenditures: $1.66B. The General Fund summary, and Exhibit 2 under the appropriations label.
All appropriated funds less duplications: named in the book’s text. It is not republished here, because the book does not print the arithmetic that reaches it in one place.
Open the General Fund summary and Exhibit 2. Read the total appropriations in the summary, then the row that carries the same name in the exhibit. Subtract the second from the first, then read the exhibit’s footnote.
Limits
The five totals measure different things. None of them is added to another here.
The book’s text keeps some proposal-stage wording about the General Fund. The enacted tables are read, and the tables carry.
How much of Denver’s gross budget is the city paying itself?
Of every $100 in Denver’s gross total for 2026, $7.64 is the city paying itself. It is money one city fund pays another, for a service or as a transfer. Take it out and the total is $5.41B. The book calls that figure the more accurate picture.
City and County share= $685,728,245 ÷ $2,314,333,258
Records
Section XII of the Division of Property Taxation’s annual report: property tax levied in each county, by kind of taxing body. Denver is one city and one county, so its county row is the city.
How much of Denver’s capital money is published project by project?
Less than half. Denver’s capital improvement funds carry $659.9M for 2026. The book lists $269.3M of it project by project, which is 40.8%. The other $390.6M is published only as fund totals, or held as contingency against no project.
Denver Health’s operating agreement pays for jail health care. It carries $21.74M for care at the two jails and $5.42M for prisoner medical services. The book does not say if these sit inside the Sheriff Department’s $174.3M. Until a record says, the three are shown side by side and never added.
Add up the project rows of each capital fund that lists projects, and check each fund against its own printed total. Divide the sum by the book’s total for all capital improvement funds.
Limits
Bond project funds and grant funds are published as fund totals only, so their projects cannot be listed.
Capital in the enterprise funds, most of it the airport, is outside this total.
Also in the public record
Also in the public record already
These are named rather than found. Each is a public record a reader can open, and each line says where it is published. The selection is ours.
The city checkbook
Denver’s payments, by payee, one dataset a year from 2018 to 2025. A payment is cash going out the door, not an appropriation. So no figure on this site divides one by the other.
Published in the City and County of Denver’s open-data catalog, as the yearly Checkbook datasets.
The bond measures Denver voters approved on . The amount is not printed here. The Final 2026 budget book came out before the vote, and the city’s own program page is not yet read and reconciled.
Published in the measures on Denver’s November 2025 ballot. The Final 2026 budget book does not carry them.
The Denver Health dedicated tax fund
A sales and use tax Denver voters dedicated to Denver Health in 2024. It is Denver’s own tax, set by a vote, so the city’s totals count it.