Budget highlights: What's in the Bernalillo County budget?

Next fiscal year’s Bernalillo County budget includes money for new employees and pay increases for more than half the county workforce.

The big picture

Bernalillo County commissioners approved the biennium budget Tuesday, including the planned general fund budgets for fiscal years 2025 and 2026. The county’s fiscal year runs from July through June.

The balanced budget is $1.2 billion for fiscal 2025. The budget has expanded from the current year: the operational budget for fiscal year 2024 totaled $975 million with $402 million in the general fund. The general fund reoccurring budget is $442 million for fiscal 2025, and will be $456 million for fiscal 2026. The non-general fund budget is $319 million for fiscal 2025 and planned at $295 million for fiscal 2026.

The carryover for multiyear projects is $407 million for fiscal 2025.

The county has several initiatives for saving money as costs like insurance premiums and contractual costs are expected to increase, County Manager Julie Morgas Baca said. Those measures include electric vehicles, energy-efficient buildings and consolidation of applications used by the county’s human resources department.

New employees and employee raises

The budget includes funding for 37 new full-time positions. There are new jobs in several county departments, including a policy analyst for the county manager’s office, budgeted at $127,000 for salary and benefits, five senior elections technician positions in the county clerk’s office, and an emergency communications oversight position budgeted at $146,000.

Commissioner Eric Olivas amended the budget to include a dispatch liaison lieutenant for Bernalillo County Fire and Rescue, instead of a regular fire lieutenant. His amendment also removed fire rescue captain and division chief positions to add four new firefighter positions.

The budget also plans for employee raises.

In 2022, the county budget allowed for a 3.5% to 5.5% cost-of-living adjustment, Morgas Baca said. Since then, the county has done market research looking at salaries in 16 cities and counties in the region and human resources has reviewed more than 1,000 county employees’ credentials and experience to see if a pay adjustment is warranted, Morgas Baca said.

Salary adjustments will vary depending on the individual employee, Morgas Baca said. About 170 employees who are paid at market rate already will receive a $5,000 one-time payout, Morgas Baca said, not a salary adjustment.

Over half of the county’s 2,600 employees, 62%, are part of a union. Those employees will receive a 10% salary increase, Morgas Baca said. The details of those increases still have to be worked out with the unions, she said. Executive leadership will not receive pay raises exceeding 10%, Morgas Baca said.

“That’s what Bernalillo does, is service, and if you don’t have employees to provide that service, then we’re doing our constituents a disservice,” Commissioner Walt Benson said.