South Metro Fire Rescue's audited financial report carries a table of direct and overlapping property tax rates for the last ten fiscal years. The row for the City of Greenwood Village reads 2.932 for 2016. It reads 2.932 for 2025. It reads 2.932 for every year in between. Ordinance No. 09, Series of 2025, printed at the back of the city's own 2026 budget book, fixes the levy at 2.932 mills again.
Ten consecutive years, one number, certified by a neighbouring taxing district that has no reason to flatter the city.
What 2.932 mills actually buys
The city states the effect in its own adopted 2026 budget: the levy generates "approximately $185 per $1,000,000 in residential appraised value, and accounts for less than 4% of the total annual property tax payment." Both halves of that sentence matter, and the second half is the one that gets skipped.
Here is the 2025 levy year, collected in 2026, as certified in South Metro Fire Rescue's audited ten-year table. These are direct rates per $1,000 of assessed value, not a complete tax bill for any specific address.
| Taxing entity | 2025 mills |
|---|---|
| Cherry Creek School District #5 | 53.962 |
| Arapahoe County | 15.885 |
| South Metro Fire Rescue | 9.290 |
| City of Greenwood Village | 2.932 |
| Town of Parker (for scale) | 2.602 |
| City of Centennial (for scale) | 5.002 |
| City of Castle Pines (for scale) | 16.500 |
The fire district alone levies 3.2 times what the city does, and none of that money passes through the city budget.
The city is barely a property tax operation
Greenwood Village budgeted $4,275,000 of property tax revenue for 2026 on an adopted, all-funds basis. That is about 6.1% of total revenue, a share the budget prints itself. Sales tax is $41,500,000, which the budget puts at 59.2% of total annual revenue and which works out to 67.1% of General Fund revenue alone. Taxes and special assessments together are 80.9% of the total.
The city sits on 8.3 square miles containing roughly 2,750 businesses, including the Denver Technological Center and Greenwood Plaza. Resident population is 15,485 by the budget's citation of the Census Bureau. The 3.00% city sales tax rate, inside a 7.25% combined rate at the register, is collected largely from people who do not live there. The budget says the quiet part plainly: the reliance on sales tax makes the city "especially reliant upon, and susceptible to patterns in consumer and commercial spending."
Property tax revenue is also falling, not rising. Preliminary total assessed valuation for 2026 is $1,458,282,486, down 4.57% from $1,528,107,126 for 2025. Budgeted property tax revenue drops 5.00% from the 2025 amended figure. A flat mill levy against a shrinking assessed base produces less money, not more.
There is no funded ratio, because there is no defined benefit plan
Most municipal budget stories eventually arrive at a pension funded ratio. This one cannot. Note 9 of the audited 2024 financial statements identifies both city plans as defined contribution arrangements under IRC section 401(a): the Civilian 401(a) Plan, to which the city contributes five percent of eligible compensation, and the Police Pension Plan, to which it contributes fourteen percent. In both, employees are neither required nor permitted to contribute. The audit states there is no liability for benefits beyond the city's contributions.
A search of all 113 pages of that audit turns up no net pension liability, no schedule of changes in net pension liability, no pension required supplementary information and no OPEB liability. Any chart showing Greenwood Village with a pension funded ratio is showing an invented number.
The 2026 adopted retirement lines, city-wide:
| Line | 2026 adopted |
|---|---|
| Employer 401(a) contributions, both plans | $1,955,714 |
| Employer 401(k) matching contributions | $509,155 |
| FPPA Statewide Death and Disability Plan | $257,099 |
The FPPA line is the city's only connection to a defined benefit plan, and it is a payroll-percentage premium for sworn officers rather than a city obligation. FPPA reports that plan at 98.8% funded as of 1 January 2026. Treat that ratio carefully: FPPA does not state on that page whether it is measured on actuarial or market value of assets, and the plan is valued under the aggregate funding method, which by construction sets accrued liability equal to current assets.
Note what this structure does and does not do. It removes the unfunded liability. It does not remove the cost. Employer 401(a) contributions rose from $1,775,184 in audited 2024 actuals to $1,955,714 adopted for 2026, up 10.2% in two years, tracking payroll.
Where the money is going instead
The 2026 adopted General Fund is $55,041,491. All funds, meaning the General Fund plus the Capital Projects Fund of $16,501,900, is $71,543,391. Those are the only two budgeted funds the city operates, and the components sum exactly to the printed total.
The police department is $17,465,078 adopted for 2026, 31.7% of the General Fund and 24.4% of all funds, both derived from printed figures on the same page. Personnel is $14,977,648 of that, 85.8% of the department. The police share of the adopted General Fund has been roughly flat: 32.1% in 2025 adopted, 31.7% in 2026 adopted.
The line that is moving is medical insurance. City-wide it goes $2,836,982 in audited 2024 actuals, to $3,077,016 in the 2025 amended budget, to $3,528,563 adopted for 2026. That is up 24.4% in two years and 14.67% in the last year alone. Police medical insurance alone rose 20.75% in one year, to $1,423,959.
Headcount did not do this. Authorised staffing runs 265.86 FTE in 2024 audited actuals, 268.11 in the 2025 amended budget and 268.74 in the 2026 adopted budget, an increase of 0.63 FTE. Total personnel cost over the same span went from $31,584,521 to $35,175,383, up 11.4%. That is price, not staffing.
For scale, the adopted 2026 General Fund divided by 15,485 residents is roughly $3,555 per resident. That number is arithmetic on two published figures, and the denominator is wrong on purpose: the city's own budget attributes infrastructure demand to residents "as well as the City's considerable workforce population." No daytime population count appears in any of the documents, so a defensible per-person figure for Greenwood Village does not exist.
The catch: the city has no fire department
There is no fire department, fire authority payment, fire contract or fire line item anywhere in the Greenwood Village budget. The appropriated departments are Mayor and Council, City Management, City Attorney, Municipal Judge, Finance and Human Resources, Community Development, Police, Parks/Trails/Recreation, and Public Works. Nine departments, no fire, $0.
South Metro Fire Rescue Fire Protection District serves the city and levies its own property tax directly. Its levy sat between 9.250 and 9.319 mills for a decade, and stood at 9.290 mills in the 2025 levy year on the district's own audited table. On 4 November 2025 district voters approved 3.000 additional mills, generating $50.7 million in additional revenue district-wide, effective for property taxes collected beginning in 2026.
So a Greenwood Village homeowner can look at a 2026 property tax bill that is larger than last year's while the city's levy has not moved since 2016, and both facts are true. The increase came from a district the city does not control, does not appropriate for and does not report. The district budgets roughly $244.1 million of expenditures for 2026 across a 287 square mile service area covering fifteen named cities and communities, and no published document allocates any of it to Greenwood Village.
A frozen municipal levy is a real thing and Greenwood Village has one. It is also, at 2.932 mills against a stack that includes 53.962 mills of school district, an increasingly small lever on what a resident actually pays.
Fact-check notes and sources
- City of Greenwood Village, 2026 Annual Operating and Capital Improvement Budget (148 pages, adopted; second reading 3 November 2025, effective 12 November 2025). Source of the 2026 adopted General Fund ($55,041,491), all funds ($71,543,391), Capital Projects Fund ($16,501,900), police ($17,465,078) and police personnel ($14,977,648), all retirement and medical insurance lines, the FTE series, the revenue detail, the assessed valuation history and the population figure. All 2026 figures cited here are adopted, not proposed.
- Ordinance No. 09, Series of 2025, printed at pp. 141 to 143 of that budget book, fixes the General Fund levy at 2.932 mills and states it is "entirely for general operations of the City." A labelling trap travels with it: the ordinance says "for the year 2025," which is the levy year. The revenue funds fiscal 2026.
- A first amended 2026 budget exists. Ordinance No. 04, Series of 2026 raised the General Fund to $55,581,371 and the Capital Projects Fund to $33,247,381, the latter mostly carried-over capital appropriations. Every 2026 figure in this piece is the adopted figure, for comparability.
- The city's own documents disagree on one point. The budget book prints Ordinance No. 08, Series of 2025 as the appropriating ordinance and No. 09 as the mill levy ordinance; Ordinance No. 04, Series of 2026 recites No. 09 as the appropriating ordinance. The adoption dates are not in dispute. No side is taken here.
- City of Greenwood Village, Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for the year ended 31 December 2024 (audited). Source of the defined contribution plan identification, the 5% and 14% employer rates, and the confirmed absence of any net pension liability or OPEB liability.
- South Metro Fire Rescue Fire Protection District, Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, 31 December 2025, statistical section, direct and overlapping property tax rates for the last ten fiscal years. Independent confirmation of the 2.932 mill levy for 2016 through 2025, and the source of the comparison rates in the table above.
- South Metro Fire Rescue, 2026 Budget Report (adopted). Source of the 3.000 additional voter-approved mills, the $50.7 million, the $244.1 million of budgeted expenditures and the 82.1% property tax reliance.
- The 2026 total certified fire levy is deliberately not stated here. Neither district document prints one, and adding 9.290 and 3.000 would be arithmetic against a levy the district recertifies annually. County assessor abstracts for the 2025 levy year collected in 2026 certify 12.250 mills for South Metro Fire Rescue; that certification is the figure to use for a current-year bill, and it does not reconcile cleanly to the district's own ten-year table row for 2025.
- Derived rather than printed: the police share of the General Fund (31.7%) and of all funds (24.4%), sales tax as a share of General Fund revenue (67.1%), the per-resident General Fund figure, and the 3.2x fire-to-city levy ratio. Every input is a printed figure.
- The 2024 adopted budget book is not published. The 2024 adopted figures used here come from the Original Budget column of the audited budgetary comparison schedules, which is a primary audited source but prints no all-funds adopted total.
Related reading
- Colorado and Idaho city budgets: what public safety actually costs: the ten-city comparison this piece is drawn from, including why a "public safety share of the general fund" table is not an efficiency ranking.
- Colorado and Idaho state budgets, from a taxpayer's seat: the state-level layer above the municipal one, including where Medicaid growth is absorbing general fund increases.
- Colorado and Idaho local taxes, visualised: mill levies, sales tax reliance and overlapping district stacks in chart form.
- Pensions in Colorado and Idaho, side by side: funded ratios, discount rates and what the defined contribution cities look like next to the defined benefit ones.
This post is informational, not legal, financial or municipal advisory advice. Budget figures are appropriations as adopted or proposed and change through the year. Mentions of named municipalities, districts and retirement systems are nominative fair use. No affiliation is implied.
