The Town of Parker's proportionate share of the Fire and Police Pension Association net pension liability is zero dollars. Not a small number. Zero. That is the audited figure in the town's 2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, at the 31 December 2024 measurement date GASB 68 requires, against a town proportion of 0.8023806% of the plan. It was zero at the 2023 measurement date too, and in four of the ten years before that Parker carried a net pension asset, including negative $4,281,066 at the 2021 measurement date.
That is half the reason Parker looks unlike every other Colorado municipality here. The other half is structural: most of its workforce is in a plan that cannot accrue an unfunded liability at all.
The 79.8% that cannot go wrong
Every full-time Parker employee who is not a sworn police officer is in a 401(a) defined contribution plan administered by Empower Retirement. The audited note says what that means in one sentence: "There is no liability for benefits under the plan beyond the Town's matching payments."
In 2025 the town contributed $3,789,061 to that plan (audited actual, after applying $144,449 of forfeitures against a $3,933,510 gross contribution). It contributed $961,201 to FPPA for its sworn police in the same year, also audited actual. So 79.8% of Parker's employer retirement spending went into an account that is fully funded the instant the cheque clears. Members put in 8% of compensation; the town matches by class, 10.5% for a town employee up to 20.5% for the town attorney. There were 307 active members, 293 of them in the 10.5% class.
This is not free. Defined contribution is a cash cost that rises with payroll and headcount, and Parker's rose fast: $2,178,677 in 2023, $2,373,394 in 2024, $3,789,061 in 2025, up 73.9% in two years on audited actuals. What it does not do is create a promise the town must fund out of a future budget. The risk sits with the employee. That is the trade.
The police side is where the future cost lives
Parker's sworn officers are in the FPPA Statewide Retirement Plan, a cost-sharing multiple employer defined benefit plan. The town's share of the liability is $0 today. Its contribution rate is not staying where it is.
The employer rate was 8.00% of base salary flat through 2020, then rose half a point a year to 10.50% in 2025. FPPA has announced 11.0% for 2026, and under HB20-1044 it reaches 13.0% employer against 12.0% member in 2030, a combined 25.0% fixed by statute. Parker's audited 2025 contribution of $961,201 against covered payroll of $9,154,294 checks out to exactly 10.50%, and the ten-year schedule shows a contribution deficiency of $0 in every year. The town has never underpaid. Its FPPA cost still went from $430,188 in 2016 to $961,201 in 2025, up 123.4%, on an escalation it does not control.
One caveat belongs with the $0, because "FPPA is 100% funded" gets repeated carelessly. At the 1 January 2026 valuation the plan is 100.0% funded for base benefits only, on the actuarial value of assets, once the COLA reserve is booked as a liability (the Schedule of Funding Progress reads 103.5%). Load the plan's own 2.50% long-term cost-of-living assumption and it is 80.1% funded with a $1,282,674 thousand unfunded liability. That gap is absorbed by retirees through suppressed cost-of-living increases, not by employers through a supplemental bill. It is a plan-level figure across every Colorado FPPA employer, not Parker's. But it is why the $0 describes the town's books rather than the plan's health.
The town is 3.1% of the property tax bill
Parker levies 2.602 mills, unchanged across tax years 2021 through 2025. Every parcel inside town limits pays a common stack of 85.123 mills for tax year 2025, collected in 2026.
| Authority | Mills | Share of the stack |
|---|---|---|
| Douglas County Re-1 School District, including debt service | 45.528 | 53.5% |
| Douglas County Government | 19.774 | 23.2% |
| South Metro Fire Rescue Fire Protection District | 12.250 | 14.4% |
| Douglas Public Library District | 3.519 | 4.1% |
| Town of Parker | 2.602 | 3.1% |
| Urban Drainage and Flood Control, two levies | 1.000 | 1.2% |
| Cherry Creek Basin Water Quality Authority | 0.450 | 0.5% |
| Total | 85.123 |
The town publishes the 3.1% itself, in a pie chart directly beneath that table in its 2026 adopted budget, with the worked example: on a $500,000 home at the tax year 2025 residential assessment rate of 6.25%, the owner pays approximately $81 to the Town of Parker and $2,579 to the other governments common to all Parker taxpayers. Both reconcile to the certified levies to the dollar.
The fire district alone is 4.7 times the town's own levy and sits entirely outside the town budget. South Metro Fire Rescue is an independent district with its own elected board and its own 2026 adopted budget: roughly $303.3 million of total revenue appropriation, about $244.1 million of expenditures excluding interfund transfers, about 82.1% funded by property and specific ownership tax, serving roughly 571,500 residents across three counties. Parker is about 12% of that population, so no Parker-only fire cost can be derived from it. The town operates no fire department and appropriates nothing for fire suppression.
South Metro's levy moved because its voters moved it. On 4 November 2025 they approved Ballot Issue 7A, adding 3.000 mills to the district's 9.250-mill base operating levy, worth about $50.7 million a year. Do not subtract 12.250 minus the 9.290 certified for tax year 2024 and expect 3.000: the 9.290 was 9.250 base plus a 0.040 one-year abatement levy, and the board certified no abatement levy for 2025. The arithmetic that works is 9.250 + 3.000 = 12.250. So the property tax increase a Parker household saw between 2025 and 2026 was the fire district's, in full.
Why 85.123 and not 90.894
A total of 90.894 mills also circulates for Parker, and it is a real certified figure. It is 85.123 plus Parker Water and Sanitation District's 5.771 mills, and that district appears in only 47 of the 118 certified tax districts inside town limits. 90.894 is the exact total for just 12 of them. Use it as the denominator and the town's share reads 2.9%, computed against a base most Parker parcels do not pay.
There is no single Parker property tax bill. Across the 118 districts, certified totals for tax year 2025 run from 85.123 to 210.035 mills, because metropolitan districts stack on top in many neighbourhoods. Hess Ranch Metropolitan District 5 alone adds 82.702 mills, pushing the town's share of that bill to roughly 1.2%. 85.123 is the only figure defensible as the floor every parcel pays.
What the town actually spends
Parker adopted its 2026 budget on 17 November 2025. General Fund appropriated expenditures are $82,923,247; all-funds appropriated expenditures are $173,416,859. The town publicises "$183.3 million," which is all-funds budgeted revenue, not appropriation; the $9,919,603 difference appears in the Budget in Brief as a slice labelled "Future Expenditures 5.4%."
The Police Department's 2026 appropriation is $29,663,534 from all sources. Net of grants, intergovernmental revenue (largely a contract to provide dispatch and forensic services for the City of Lone Tree), fees and fines, General Fund tax support is $26,877,822, or 32.41% of the General Fund appropriation. On the gross basis it is 35.77%. Police went $24,603,485 (2024 adopted) to $27,462,786 (2025) to $29,663,534 (2026), up 20.6% in two years. That 32.41% looks low next to Aurora or Boise for one reason: fire is not in it.
Parker is a sales tax town. Sales and use tax is 69.7% of General Fund revenue as the town prints it, excluding penalties and interest, or 70.52% on the all-in line in its own fund summary. General property tax contributes $3,802,915 of $86,586,741, 4.4%. And the steepest-rising line in the budget is not pension. It is employee health: the partially self-funded Medical Benefits Fund went from $3,396,529 in 2022 actual expenditures to $4,861,803 in 2024 actual, and is budgeted at $6,260,600 for 2026, 84.3% above the 2022 actual.
Fact-check notes and sources
- Town of Parker 2026 Annual Budget (adopted 17 November 2025, calendar fiscal year). Source of the appropriations, police figures, sales tax shares, the Medical Benefits Fund, and the mill levy table with the 85.123 total and the 3.1% pie chart at p. 240. Every 2026 figure here is adopted, not proposed.
- Town of Parker 2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (year ended 31 December 2025). Source of every pension figure. The $0 proportionate share carries a 31 December 2024 measurement date, one year stale by design under GASB 68. The $3,789,061 and $961,201 contributions are audited 2025 actuals, not budget figures; Parker publishes no separate 2026 FPPA line, because pension cost sits inside each department's salary and benefits line.
- FPPA Statewide Retirement Plan Actuarial Valuation, 1 January 2026. Source of the 100.0% base-benefit funded ratio on the actuarial value of assets and the 80.1% / $1,282,674 thousand figure under the 2.50% COLA assumption. Both are plan-level, not Parker-specific.
- Douglas County Assessor, 2025 Tax Districts and Mill Levies and the Arapahoe County 2025 Abstract of Assessments and Levies, both certifying South Metro at 12.250 mills. Vintage matters: tax year 2025, collected in 2026. The 118-district range of 85.123 to 210.035 mills is from the Douglas County report.
- South Metro Fire Rescue 2026 Budget Report and FY2025 ACFR, for Ballot Issue 7A, the $50.7 million and the $303.3 million total revenue appropriation. The district's fund-level tables are embedded images, so only its narrative figures are cited. South Metro's own pension position is not examined here and no contrast with Parker's is asserted.
- Two population figures exist and are not averaged. The budget book prints 68,086 with no stated source or vintage; the Budget in Brief prints 66,704, from the Colorado State Demography Office through 1 July 2024. No per-capita figure here uses either.
- One unreconciled item. The General Fund "Public Safety" function total is $32,062,483, but Police ($29,663,534) plus Municipal Court ($477,188) accounts for $30,140,722. The remaining $1,921,761 is not attributed to a named department and is not guessed at.
Related reading
- Colorado and Idaho city budgets: what public safety actually costs: the ten-city comparison, including why Parker's 32.4% and Boise's 50.9% are not measuring the same thing.
- Colorado vs Idaho public pensions, visualised: PERA, PERSI and FPPA funded ratios on matched bases, including the COLA-assumption trap.
- Local taxes in Colorado and Idaho: mill levies, overlapping districts and where a municipal levy sits in a homeowner's bill.
- Colorado and Idaho state budgets, from the taxpayer's side: the general fund and Medicaid picture sitting above these municipal numbers.
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.
