EVERETT — A community group working to find solutions to the city’s budget crisis made a presentation to the Edmonds City Council on Tuesday.
The group, Keep Edmonds Vibrant, emerged from the controversy surrounding the council’s ideas to sell Frances Anderson Center and Hummingbird Hill Park. The proposals prompted community members to speak at city council meetings and become more active in online spaces.
“That overwhelming reaction made one thing clear: There is a real energy and passion in our community to keep Edmonds vibrant, and so we leaned in and got to work,” co-organizer Adel Sefrioui said.
Sefrioui was joined by Keep Edmonds Vibrant’s other three co-founders, Erik Houser, Elise Hill and Mackey Guenther.
In April, Keep Edmonds Vibrant hosted two focus groups open to the public to brainstorm ways to generate revenue other than property tax increases. The city is mulling a property tax levy lid lift for the November election. Its 2025-26 budget assumed voters would approve a $6 million levy lid lift, but city officials have indicated they may ask for a higher amount.
“As a group of residents concerned about our city’s financial trajectory without long-term sustainable revenue, we believe Edmonds risks becoming less vibrant tomorrow than it is today,” Sefrioui said. “We ground our work in this simple truth: A vibrant city is never complete. It requires continual stewardship and investment.”
For the past month, Keep Edmonds Vibrant has hosted an online conversation, titled “What Should Edmonds Be?”. In the exercise, participants could submit revenue-generating ideas and general visions for the city. Then, participants indicated if they agreed or disagreed with each submission.
Nearly 600 Edmonds residents have completed the exercise. Of those, 92% agreed that the city should maintain its current public amenities, including Frances Anderson Center, parks and Wade James Theatre.
Revenue-generating ideas that received a lot of support included allowing more ground-floor businesses, adding additional school zone speeding cameras, increasing sales tax, annexing unincorporated Esperance, charging for parking downtown and increasing motor vehicle license fees. Most participants were against charging admission fees for public parks and selling city-owned amenities.
“Historically, Edmonds has done a really bad job of seizing opportunities to expand our revenue base, and because of it, we find ourselves in the current position,” Houser said. “We can’t afford to make these mistakes again.”
Keep Edmonds Vibrant recommended that the council increase the property tax levy lid lift to $11.7 million, which would amount to a $52.53 per month increase to the median homeowner’s property tax bill. In addition, the group presented a number of immediate-term revenue-generating ideas totaling $9 million, school zone speeding cameras, hiring a grant writer and increasing the city’s sales tax rate.
Before the presentation began, council member Michelle Dotsch made a motion to remove the item from the meeting agenda. Council member Jenna Nand seconded the motion. Both members cited a lack of consistency in deciding which community groups can give presentations.
“I would encourage the administration to clarify this with the council in regards to the length of time and the procedure for bringing this outside group forward and then invite them back at a future council meeting once we’ve hammered out those internal inconsistencies,” Nand said.
The motion failed by a vote of 5-2, but many council members agreed they should create a consistent rule for community presentations moving forward.
Some council members questioned the group’s data collection methods. Council President Neil Tibbott raised concerns about the statistical validity of the survey. Dotsch questioned the software the group used and how it chose members for its focus group and the survey.
“We just invited people, anyone who could come,” Hill said. “With this survey, we put flyers up everywhere, talked to PTAs, everything to reach as many people as possible. … This is not a statistically valid focus group in any way, shape or form. It was a workshop of people who are interested in helping bring ideas to the city.”
Others commended Keep Edmonds Vibrant for putting the effort into conducting the exercise.
“We as a council have a responsibility to actually learn from how you got the response rate that you got,” council member Chris Eck said. “The nut that I think has been hardest to crack is how to get working families to participate in something like this when they’re so incredibly busy just dealing with everything having to do with their lives.”
The City Council plans to announce a potential levy lid lift number at its meeting on June 3. Keep Edmonds Vibrant will release a full executive summary of the survey’s findings in early June.
“It’s our community that needs to weigh in on this,” Sefrioui said to the council. “So we brought 600 community members with us, just as an additional 600 voices for you to consider, not as the end all be all. It’s just a piece of the conversation, and that’s how we hope you treat it.”
Jenna Peterson: 425-339-3486; jenna.peterson@heraldnet.com; X: @jennarpetersonn.
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