The Weld County Court House in Greeley, where commissioners gave the 2027 budget first-reading approval.Photo: Clynnwersch, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Weld County commissioners gave first-reading approval Nov. 9 to a 2027 budget ordinance, with a second reading scheduled later this month. A county public notice lists Ordinance No. 263, titled as summarizing expenditures and revenues for each fund and adopting a budget for the calendar year beginning Jan. 1, 2027, and says the next reading is Nov. 23 at 9 a.m. The notice does not include a dollar total. The NoCo Herald, writing from that day’s meeting, reported that commissioners approved on first reading a $660,839,450 budget that keeps a 6.082 mill levy credit in place.
According to the Herald, budget manager Jennifer Offtley told the board the county prepared the 2027 plan without cutting services and that leaving the credit in effect would reduce property-tax collections by 3.7 percent. The county’s own staff directory spells her name Jennifer Oftelie. She said property tax was budgeted at $303,110,979, about $12 million less than the county planned to collect by the end of 2026, the Herald reported, and that the county also expects about $580 million in revenue. Offtley said TABOR would allow collections to rise by growth plus inflation, which she put at about 6 percent for 2027, while the county charter allows a 5 percent annual increase in property tax.
Elected officials and department heads kept their budgets flat, Offtley said, a choice the county described as making room for its facilities master plan and public-works capital work. Commissioner Kevin Ross said the county has asked for steady, no-growth budgets for several years running and called a 3 percent reduction in operating expenses a significant effort given the county’s growth. The budget has not yet been finally adopted; the official notice points only to the Nov. 23 reading.
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