Published: Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Snohomish County budget passes, with a caveat
County councilmen say if the economy worsens, more cuts may be needed.
EVERETT — Snohomish County could make it through 2010 with fewer employee furlough days, no large tax increases and no big changes to services under a proposed budget the County Council passed Monday.
Council Chairman Mike Cooper hailed it as a balanced budget for grim economic times that treats both taxpayers and county employees fairly.
“This budget required tough decisions,” Cooper said.
Cooper and other councilmen cautioned that more cuts could loom in the 2011 budget if the economy gets worse.*
The council's general fund includes about $202.7 million. It gave almost all of the county's 2,700 employees five furlough days, instead of the 15 that County Executive Aaron Reardon had proposed earlier in his budget. That amounts to about a 1.9 percent pay cut under the council version, instead of roughly 5.7 percent cut under the executive's version. Most employees had to take off 10 unpaid days this year.
The council's budget restored more than $300,000 in funding for Washington State University Extension agricultural programs — a third of the total — that Cooper suggested cutting. As a trade-off, the proposed budget took away from the county's reserves for emergency situations, which are millions of dollars lower than recommended levels.
The budget passed 4-1, with all of the Democrats supporting it and only Republican John Koster opposing it. Koster wanted the budget to include cuts in property tax rates and in nonessential county services.
Reardon now will likely have until early December to make a decision about whether to sign or veto it. He didn't say which direction he was leaning on Monday, but voiced strong concerns.
“It's the local-government version of an adjustable-rate mortgage: small payments now with a big balloon payment next year,” Reardon said. “Unfortunately, that means that the county's not out to the soup.”
Reardon said the budget was full of one-time-fixes that just delay the pain until next year — if not sooner. He likened it to the budget Washington's Legislature passed last year; that budget now has to be slashed by another $2.6 billion.
Koster said the council's budget should have lowered the property-tax rates to correspond to negative inflation. Instead of lowering it to just over 99 percent, the county kept it at 100 percent.
“It's going above the what the legal limit is,” he said.
Koster said he had a hard time justifying any increases when the budget includes about $1 million of nonessential services, including the WSU Extension programs that he, like Cooper, voted to cut. Not making hard decisions now could mean coming back next year to ask for more furlough days, Koster said.
Cooper disagreed that the budget raised taxes in any significant amount. Money for conservation futures would go up about $32,000 countywide, which he said would amount to just pennies for the average taxpayer.
A budget amendment proposed Monday would have raised property taxes by $2.1 million countywide. It failed, with Cooper and Sullivan the only supporters.
The council did impose a new $5 per parcel fee, plus five cents per acre, on property to fund the Snohomish Conservation District.**
Also on Monday, the council committed to:
Reducing the salary of all elected leaders by 1.9 percent in line with the cuts that other workers are taking. This has been hard to implement, they said, because a state commission sets their salaries and they don't have direct control over them.
Studying taking the Department of Information Services away from the executive's office and placing it under the auditor's office, to save money and improve efficiency.
Ordering the planning department to develop, by June, a way to cope with reduced revenue from sluggish development and the annexations of county areas into nearby cities.
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465, nhaglund@heraldnet.com.
*Correction, Nov. 24, 2009: This article originally incorrectly stated when potential budget cuts could take place.
**Correction, Nov. 24, 2009: This article originally incorrectly described fees to fund the Snohomish Conservation District.
Council Chairman Mike Cooper hailed it as a balanced budget for grim economic times that treats both taxpayers and county employees fairly.
“This budget required tough decisions,” Cooper said.
Cooper and other councilmen cautioned that more cuts could loom in the 2011 budget if the economy gets worse.*
The council's general fund includes about $202.7 million. It gave almost all of the county's 2,700 employees five furlough days, instead of the 15 that County Executive Aaron Reardon had proposed earlier in his budget. That amounts to about a 1.9 percent pay cut under the council version, instead of roughly 5.7 percent cut under the executive's version. Most employees had to take off 10 unpaid days this year.
The council's budget restored more than $300,000 in funding for Washington State University Extension agricultural programs — a third of the total — that Cooper suggested cutting. As a trade-off, the proposed budget took away from the county's reserves for emergency situations, which are millions of dollars lower than recommended levels.
The budget passed 4-1, with all of the Democrats supporting it and only Republican John Koster opposing it. Koster wanted the budget to include cuts in property tax rates and in nonessential county services.
Reardon now will likely have until early December to make a decision about whether to sign or veto it. He didn't say which direction he was leaning on Monday, but voiced strong concerns.
“It's the local-government version of an adjustable-rate mortgage: small payments now with a big balloon payment next year,” Reardon said. “Unfortunately, that means that the county's not out to the soup.”
Reardon said the budget was full of one-time-fixes that just delay the pain until next year — if not sooner. He likened it to the budget Washington's Legislature passed last year; that budget now has to be slashed by another $2.6 billion.
Koster said the council's budget should have lowered the property-tax rates to correspond to negative inflation. Instead of lowering it to just over 99 percent, the county kept it at 100 percent.
“It's going above the what the legal limit is,” he said.
Koster said he had a hard time justifying any increases when the budget includes about $1 million of nonessential services, including the WSU Extension programs that he, like Cooper, voted to cut. Not making hard decisions now could mean coming back next year to ask for more furlough days, Koster said.
Cooper disagreed that the budget raised taxes in any significant amount. Money for conservation futures would go up about $32,000 countywide, which he said would amount to just pennies for the average taxpayer.
A budget amendment proposed Monday would have raised property taxes by $2.1 million countywide. It failed, with Cooper and Sullivan the only supporters.
The council did impose a new $5 per parcel fee, plus five cents per acre, on property to fund the Snohomish Conservation District.**
Also on Monday, the council committed to:
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465, nhaglund@heraldnet.com.
*Correction, Nov. 24, 2009: This article originally incorrectly stated when potential budget cuts could take place.
**Correction, Nov. 24, 2009: This article originally incorrectly described fees to fund the Snohomish Conservation District.
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