Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper has erased a $30 million deficit in his 2008 spending plan.

How?

"A nickel at a time," Chief of Staff Kelly Brough said Friday.

The budget gap was closed primarily through efficiencies, such as consolidating the city's financial functions under the new chief financial officer, and improved revenue projections.

"Whether we have a budget challenge or not, we expect ourselves to find efficiencies and better ways to do business," Brough said.

"Some of this was starting to work more across departments to find opportunities for those efficiencies," she said. "A lot of times, these aren't huge numbers. But when you add them all together and you really stay diligent about it, we could deliver real money."

The $866 million spending plan is a 3 percent increase over the 2007 budget.

"Our goal was to not shut down services," Brough said. "I don't believe there will be substantive, big ways that people will see it affecting service at all."

Details of the budget proposal will be discussed during hearings with the City Council. The mayor will present his proposal to the council by Sept. 15.

In May, the mayor asked agency and department heads to submit two budget proposals because expenses were projected to grow faster than revenues, creating an estimated $30 million budget gap.

The first was a "base budget" with a 4 percent increase that called for maintaining programs and services at their 2007 levels.

The other allowed for only a 2 percent increase in case the city's more conservative revenue estimates materialized.

Chris Henderson, the city's chief operating officer, said that estimates for sales and use taxes, one of the biggest revenue sources for the city, have remained about the same. But projections for property taxes increased a little bit.

Henderson and Brough said that agency and department heads found ways to maintain services while delivering savings.

"We had some situations where agencies might combine some functions that were similar," Brough said. "Instead of having agencies do those things each, by putting them into one, they could save (a full-time employee position) or they could redeploy that position to do something different."

The spending plan includes $5 million for police salary increases negotiated as part of a three-year contract that was approved Friday night.

"The 2008 budget does not propose any reduction in employee pay and benefits," Brough said.

Fee increases helped close the $30 million budget gap, but only by a fraction, Henderson said.

"Fee increases do not constitute a meaningful portion of the $30 million, not even close," he said.

Bigger paychecks for mayor's Cabinet

Mayor John Hickenlooper is proposing salary increases for eight of his 11 Cabinet members. The increases range from $576 to $10,668 more annually. Here are their current salaries and what's proposed:

• Kevin Patterson

general services manager $115,044 to $115,620

• Nancy Severson

environmental health manager

$107,996 to $115,620

• Kim Bailey

parks and recreation manager $110,423 to $115,620

• Bill Vidal

public works manager

$154,416 to $165,084

• Al LaCabe

safety manager

$136,786 to $143,016

• Roxane White

human services manager $120,137 to $128,424

• Turner West

aviation manager

$151,029 to $161,604

• Peter Park

community planning and development manager $122,951 to $127,728Source: Office Of The Mayor

chacond@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5099

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