Palmer Lake’s trustees adopted a 2027 budget on a 4–3 vote on Thursday night. The town administrator said the plan will leave the General Fund about $70,000 short, a figure that counts $160,000 moved into it from two parks accounts. They also amended this year’s budget, 6–1, to cover a General Fund shortfall of $728,289 from reserves.
Trustees Elizabeth Harris and Roger Moseley voted against the 2027 budget, as did Trustee Atis Jurka. Mayor Dennis Stern and Trustees Michael Beeson, Tony Beltran and John Marble voted for it. Before the vote, Reid Wiecks, who chairs the town’s Parks and Trails Commission, asked the board to drop the two transfers, which take $135,000 the town had set aside from parking-kiosk revenue and $25,000 from its Conservation Trust Fund. “It took us three years to accumulate that $135,000,” Wiecks said. Patrick Davidson, the town administrator, said the kiosk money still belongs to the General Fund: “They are earmarked, they are not reserved or dedicated, which means they are fluid and can be moved through accounts.”
The 2027 budget
Davidson’s memo to the Palmer Lake Board of Trustees calls the 2027 plan “a preservation and financial stabilization budget.” Initial work on 2027 found a shortfall of nearly $500,000, the memo says; reorganization, staffing changes and spending cuts brought it to about $35,000. Davidson told trustees on Thursday that a recalculation of property tax sent by El Paso County added about $40,000 to the gap. His memo says the county’s figures of Nov. 9 show a drop of more than $2 million in the town’s assessed valuation.
Resolution 44-2026 appropriates $5,348,238 for the General Fund and $1,094,156 for the water operating fund. The property tax levy is left for a separate vote. The schedule behind the $70,000 figure counts the two one-time transfers as General Fund revenue; without them the gap would be about $230,000, by the Independent’s reading of the town’s draft. Davidson said the trust-fund money is always restricted and that the $25,000 would be used for parks. He said the town plans to replenish the kiosk money “as quickly as possible” from the parking fees it intends to charge at the lake. “I don’t know how many more employees to fire,” he said. “This is the budget you have, and this is what we can do.”
Wiecks told trustees that the board had voted in January, in Resolution 8-2026, to put the kiosk and trust-fund money into two interest-bearing accounts to save for large parks projects, and read from the minutes of the commission’s Oct. 13 meeting an assurance from Davidson that those earmarks would not be used to cover a General Fund shortfall. Wiecks also asked why the kiosk account had grown by only about $4,000 since January, when, by Wiecks’s account, kiosks bring in about $5,000 a month. Davidson did not address that figure on the recording.
Residents should expect “reduced frequency or scope of routine road, culvert, snow-removal, park, and related maintenance,” the memo says, and the town is “moving away from routine preventive maintenance toward deferring noncritical repairs.” Police spending falls to $1,426,082 from $1,713,105 in this year’s budget and fire to $1,004,033 from $1,177,439; the fire department’s part-time and deployment lines go to zero. Davidson said the budget includes no general allowance for inflation, apart from an increase of about 12% for fuel, and does not count on a mill-levy increase or a merger with Monument Fire, which voters could decide no sooner than November 2027.
Moseley said he had about 20 comments on the figures, which Davidson said he had received in writing and answered. Moseley raised one aloud: that the budget shows no repayment to the General Fund of the $500,000 it lent the water fund. A paper transfer between the two, he said, would leave out the quarter of the town not on town water. “I will continue to maintain that point, whether I’m up here or out there,” he said. Davidson said the repayment is an internal transfer, reported in the audit rather than the budget, and that “that payment has been made.”
The town’s published notice had set a public hearing on the budget for this meeting. The mayor did not open one; Wiecks spoke after asking whether comment was allowed, and Stern said, “Go ahead.”
This year’s budget
When trustees adopted the 2026 budget in December 2025, it planned to spend about $507,000 more than the town would take in, the amendment memo says, and it counted on about $382,000 from a land sale that did not happen. The memo now puts the 2026 General Fund shortfall at $728,289, to be covered from reserves, about $222,000 more than the original plan. Resolution 45-2026 cuts the General Fund appropriation to $4,986,018 from $6,337,930, a reduction the resolution attributes to removing the Spruce Mountain Road project and the land sale, neither of which took place this year. On Oct. 22 Davidson had told trustees the year would end $700,000 to $900,000 short (the Independent’s account of that meeting).
The amendment passed 6–1, with Moseley voting no. He said the amended schedule lists the approved 2026 budget as drawing $648,022 from reserves, while the budget trustees adopted, as shown in the town’s September financial statements, drew $503,024. Davidson said he would have to check with the accountant. Moseley also questioned why the schedule shows a dash, rather than the roughly $1.16 million approved, on the Spruce Mountain Road line; Davidson said the town is only passing the grant money through and that it will be spent in 2027.
Earlier, during the consent agenda, Moseley noted that the September statements show the General Fund $268,019 ahead for the year to date, against a budget that planned to draw $503,024 from reserves, and said he found it hard to believe the town had been near bankruptcy. Davidson replied that the September figures do not yet include that month’s sales taxes or some expenses and “provide almost no guidance” for the year’s final numbers or for 2027.
The False Claims Act ruling
Before the item began, Jurka asked whether pending litigation should be discussed in public or in executive session. James Godbold, the town attorney, said the opinion is published and a public record, and that he was only updating the board on its status. He told trustees that the Colorado Court of Appeals had upheld the dismissal of a suit brought against the town under the Colorado False Claims Act by Roger Moseley and Martha Brodzik. The suit, filed in 2025, alleged that the town obtained public money from the state by false claims and then misappropriated it. The court did not decide whether that was so. It held, in an opinion announced Oct. 29, that a town is not a “person” the act allows to be sued, so the district court was right to dismiss. Asked by Beeson whether the underlying allegation survived, Godbold said: “It’s totally dead now.” Moseley stayed on the dais and did not speak during the item.
Other business
Buc-ee’s. The consent agenda, approved by voice vote with no objection heard, again carried a $27,729 check to Buc-ee’s, dated Oct. 15 and described as a reimbursement. This time no trustee asked to hold it. Trustees had held it back on Oct. 22 after Moseley questioned the amount. Asked by Jurka what happens once the company cashes it, Godbold said: “It’s not our money. It’s Buc-ee’s money.” The same vote approved the minutes of the Oct. 22 meetings and a $53,833.38 check to CIRSA, the town’s insurance pool.
The removal hearing. Godbold said the hearing on Moseley’s removal, set for Nov. 16, has been postponed because the town has had trouble retaining an attorney to present its case. The hearing officer is not available until December, he said, and the hearing will probably be held then.
Audit. Trustees approved Resolution 41-2026 by voice vote, on a motion by Harris, engaging Hinkle & Company to audit the town’s 2026 books for $19,200 plus expenses. Davidson said the town had received clean audits for the past two years.
Commission handbooks. Resolutions 42- and 43-2026, adopting handbooks for the Planning Commission and the Parks and Trails Commission, passed by voice vote; Harris voted against the planning handbook. The planning handbook tells commissioners that “the number of public comments for or against an application does not determine legal compliance” and that the town’s master plan “is a planning document, not an independent land-use ordinance.” Moseley asked whether that squared with language in the master plan saying the town “shall” follow certain steps on annexation; Davidson said a master plan is not legally binding unless its provisions are written into the town code.
Asking the town attorney. Godbold proposed that trustees route legal questions through the town administrator, so that his advice reaches the whole board. Beltran said the mayor should share that role. Stern suggested leaving the decision to the board elected on Nov. 3, Godbold agreed, and no action was taken.
The water system. Davidson said the matter of the water taken from the town’s system is with law enforcement and that he could not discuss its details (the Independent’s report). The water was not contaminated, he said, and “remains safe drinking water.”
Public comment. Richard and Lindsay Willan, who are developing the EcoSpa at the town-owned Elephant Rock property, asked why a hearing on their liquor license, which they said had been posted on their gate for this meeting, was not on the agenda. Godbold said the application is still under review and “not ready for approval tonight.” Harris asked that an update be on the next agenda. Amy Hutson asked Davidson to give residents a plain-language summary of the 2027 budget.
Every member of the board attended; Erica Romero, the town clerk, was absent, and trustees appointed Kelly Roy, a management specialist on the town staff, clerk pro tem for the meeting. The meeting ran about an hour and a half before trustees went into executive session on EcoSpa’s development at Elephant Rock and “the Town’s rights and obligations under the PUD.” The stream carried nothing after that. The board will not meet again in November; its next regular meeting is Dec. 10.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage: Palmer Lake Trustees Seek a Budget with No Deficit and Adopt New Rules on Bears and Snow, the Oct. 22 meeting, where the administrator put the 2027 gap at about $500,000 · Palmer Lake Adopts New Board Rules as Its Administrator Warns of a Million-Dollar Shortfall, the Oct. 8 meeting, where the draft 2027 budget was first presented · Kimple and Hutson Win Mayor’s Races as 2B Fails and Killin Unseats Crank, the Nov. 3 results for mayor and trustee · Two Arrested in Alleged Theft of More than 4 Million Gallons of Palmer Lake Water, Nov. 4
Town record: Nov. 12, 2026 agenda and 192-page meeting packet (CivicClerk) · Notice of proposed budget for 2027, Tri-Lakes Tribune, Oct. 28, 2026 (in the packet) · Financial statements through Sept. 30, 2026 (in the packet) · Town budgets page · Meeting video, YouTube
Court record: Moseley v. Town of Palmer Lake, 2026 COA 78 (Colo. App. Oct. 29, 2026), the Colorado Judicial Branch’s published opinion
Methodology
This account is built from the town’s agenda, the 192-page meeting packet and its 43 attachments, 384 pages in all, read in full, and the Independent’s own recording of the town’s live stream of the meeting. The Independent transcribed that recording with automatic speech recognition, an artificial-intelligence tool, not by hand. Such tools make mistakes: they misrender names, garble figures and carry no speaker labels. Names in this article were therefore checked against the agenda and the town’s own record, and every quotation was compared against a second, independent machine transcription of the same passage. Speakers were identified on the town’s video of the meeting. The chair of the Parks and Trails Commission, who did not give a name at the lectern, was identified by comparing that video with the video of the commission’s Oct. 13 meeting and the town’s roster. Budget figures, the resolutions and the court’s holding come from the town’s documents; the $40,000 property-tax change and the 12% fuel increase are as stated aloud. The budget figures are the town’s as of Nov. 12; the resolutions’ exhibits were placeholders in the packet. The town did not stream the executive session, and the recording ends when trustees went into it. Because the transcript was made by AI, a quotation may differ slightly from the words spoken; readers who spot an error can write to [email protected].
Using this reporting? Credit The Monument Independent and link to this article: https://monumentindependent.com/government/palmer-lake-trustees-2027-budget-parks-money-nov-12/. Our guidelines are at Using Our Reporting.
