Budgets are moral documents. They reflect the values of a society. What are the values reflected in our budget when we continually dedicate one-third of our budget to the police (in addition to other funding for them)? We need o reallocate funds from the police dept to address the root cause of crimes, not continue the vicious cycle of incarceration.

• Total General Fund Budget Comparison: Think about how much rent assistance (or other housing programs) we could fund with the police budget!

• The city’s total proposed general fund budget for 2022 is $400,645,919 (pg 56 of the City of Colorado Springs Budget). The proposed general fund budget for the police is $126,281,108, or 32% of the total general fund (pg 417 of the Police Budget).

Based on 2018 HUD Fair Market Rents, housing in El Paso County costs $1,141/month or $13,692/year for a single mom with 2 kids. This means that with the police’s general fund budget we could cover housing costs for 9,223 families each year

for every $1 spent on police personnel, the city is spending 53 cents on Fire & OEM personnel, 18 cents on public works personnel, 9 cents on parks, recreation, & cultural services personnel, and only 4 cents on planning & community development personnel.




• Instead of 17 new sworn police officers, we could increase that number to 12 new ARTs, made up of 24 total new positions.

For the cost of 17 new sworn police officers, we could hire 17 new teachers and have $35k of the entry level Community Health EMT’s $41k starting salary.