Everett mayor candidates focus on affordability, city budget in costly race

EVERETT — Four candidates vying to become Everett’s mayor next year see affordability, public safety and economic development as top issues in the election.

As incumbent Cassie Franklin seeks a third term, she faces three challengers in the August primary: Scott Murphy, a former Everett City Council member, Janice Greene, a former Boeing employee who worked in economic development, and Rich Ryan, an IT professional and musician.

At stake is a seat at the helm of Snohomish County’s largest city, overseeing more than 1,200 employees and a $173 million general fund budget. The mayor earns $215,940 per year.

The race, up to this point, has also been an expensive one. All together, the four candidates have raised over $300,000 in campaign contributions as of Thursday, state filing data shows.

Election day is Aug. 5. The top two candidates will advance to the November general election.

Cassie Franklin

Franklin, 53, previously worked as the CEO of Cocoon House, a local housing nonprofit, and served on the Everett City Council for two years before she was elected mayor in 2017.

She’s touted new social worker programs, increases in housing construction and business licenses and a recent drop in crime as successes from her previous terms.

When she took office in 2018, she inherited a structural deficit problem as expenses outpace revenues. For years, the city has needed to close gaps in its general fund: $13.1 million in 2014, $13 million in 2018, $12.6 million in 2024.

Franklin maintains that the city’s current budget issues stem from a lack of revenue, not haphazard spending. She has pointed to spending cuts she made in 2018 and 2020 as prior examples of cost-saving.

Last year, the city put forth a property tax levy lid lift that would have raised the average Everett resident’s property tax bill by about $336 per year, according to a city estimate, in order to fund city services. After voters rejected the levy in August 2024, Franklin cut 31 employees at the city, including the city’s park rangers, while reducing library hours and cutting back on street repair in order to balance the city budget.

“Trust me, if I was working on budget stuff just for my popularity, I wouldn’t have run a property tax levy lift,” Franklin said in a May 30 interview. “That was the right thing to do for Everett. And anyone who says they could balance the budget without additional revenue hasn’t done their homework.”

The city also has less employees per 1,000 residents than it did 10 years ago.

“We have fewer staff everywhere but police, fire, social workers and permitting,” Franklin said. “We’ve made massive reductions while maintaining family wage jobs for the public servants that work for the city.”

Franklin said the 2026 budget will not require staffing cuts because of last year’s reductions, but in the future, the city may need to consider options like a public safety sales tax or regionalization of services like the fire department or library system.

Crime rose in Everett between 2020 and 2022 before trending downward beginning in 2023, according to FBI statistics. To address crime, she previously increased spending on police and implemented social worker programs.

The city’s police department faces a staffing shortage, however. As of March, the city had a total of 20 vacant officer positions, even as the department had hired 91 officers since 2020.

Filling positions in Everett’s police department isn’t a new challenge for the city. Before Franklin took office in 2017, Everett had 18 vacancies in its police department.

It’s not a unique challenge either. The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office has also faced recent recruitment challenges. The state as a whole ranks 51st in the nation in law enforcement staffing, according to law enforcement lobbying groups.

“Had I not added 18 new patrol officer positions in the department, we would be fully staffed,” Franklin said. “But I wanted us to maintain higher staffing levels than comparable cities, because I think our community has asked for that.”

To address the shortage, she would maintain competitive salaries and promote the varied units police officers can serve in to increase recruitment, she said. She also hopes to continue the city’s alternative response programs and encourage neighborhood watch programs.

“It can’t just be police officers all over town or social workers all over town,” she said. “It really takes the entire village.”

Since 2018, the number of homeless individuals inside the city has nearly doubled, according to county data. Franklin said the increase “makes perfect sense” due to the increased numbers of shelters and permanent supportive housing compared to other cities.

She pointed to new programs like alternative response teams, emergency opioid treatments, an expansion of pallet shelters and the implementation of “no sit, no lie” buffer zones as ways she’s addressed the homeless crisis.

Buffer zones make it illegal for people to sit or lie down on city property in certain areas of the city, punishable by fines or jail time. The mayor has implemented four “no sit, no lie” zones since the City Council gave her power to do so in 2023, as civil rights and homeless advocates have spoken out against the practice.

“Everett is addressing homelessness and behavioral health with urgency, care, and accountability,” Franklin wrote in an email. “While no one city can solve this crisis alone, we really are leading regionally with effective, humane solutions.”

To address housing costs, Franklin said she would continue the city’s work to encourage more dense development and increase housing options across the income spectrum. She also emphasized the importance of anti-displacement policies for the Casino Road neighborhood.

To spur economic development, Franklin cited an ongoing stadium project set to be built in the city’s downtown that would host minor league baseball and United Soccer League teams.

The stadium is expected to cost $82 million, according to city staff. Under current plans, the city would not raise taxes or use general fund dollars to build it.

Some residents have raised concerns over the spending, saying it could be used to fund other capital projects in the city, including parks. The city is expected to use about $1.3 million in capital park dollars to help build the stadium, which will include a downtown park in what Franklin called a “park-deficit area.”

Franklin said building the stadium was a rare opportunity to get a return on the city’s initial investment.

“We are choosing this rather than build a different park, right,” Franklin said. “I’d say this is very worthwhile, because through this, at a later date, we will be able to afford to build a new park that we wouldn’t be able to do if we weren’t doing this.”

AquaSox-funded studies have said that a new stadium could spur economic benefits for Everett. Independent researchers, however, have previously found many stadium construction projects have little positive financial impact on cities, although some researchers say the presence of minor league baseball teams can be associated with economic benefits in cities.

Franklin said spending two terms in office facing budget deficits under multiple federal administrations amounted to invaluable experience.

“Of the candidates running, I’m the only one that has run something as large as the city,” Franklin said. “There’s 1,200 employees, multiple business lines, it’s very different from the private sector. This is the public sector in an incredibly complex time.”

As of Thursday, Franklin has raised just under $130,000 in campaign contributions, according to state filings.

Franklin has been endorsed by Everett’s police and fire unions, the longshore union, Everett’s municipal employees union and the Washington Multi-Family Housing Association. She has also been endorsed by U.S. Reps. Suzan DelBene and Rick Larsen, Tulalip Tribes Chairwoman Teri Gobin, Snohomish County Council member Jared Mead and State Reps. Julio Cortes and Lauren Davis, among others.

Janice Greene

Greene, 70, previously worked as a U.S. economic development leader at Boeing, according to her campaign website. She was also the president of the Snohomish County NAACP.

Her top priorities include increasing community input on city decision making, improving economic development and public safety. She sees many of the city’s issues as interconnected problems that all need addressing, she said in a June 24 interview.

“I think there’s a way that we should move towards that collectively, bringing all the people to the table that need to be at the table,” Greene said. “All these things are interconnected, you can’t work one without the other. That’s why I believe it has to be community-centered.”

If elected, Greene would go through the budget “with a fine-tooth comb,” she said, looking for savings. In particular, she wants to see if there’s money that could be moved into the library’s budget to restore its previous hours before budget cuts made last year.

“We can align the structure of the city with the needs of the people,” Greene said.

To spur economic development, she said she would work with local businesses, the Chamber of Commerce and regional groups like the Puget Sound Regional Council to create a strategy for workforce growth. She hopes to attract growing industries, like clean energy and manufacturing, to boost job opportunities.

Greene also said the city needs to attract large businesses along with small ones, and “make sure larger businesses are paying their fair share of taxes,” she said.

To support public safety efforts, Greene said she would “make sure first responders are resourced to meet the demands of the city.”

She also said she would like to expand the city’s social worker programs to increase options to support people undergoing behavioral health crises.

“I think we need to be able to provide treatment to people that need it,” Greene said. “We need to be able to provide some kind of behavioral or psychological assistance to those that need it, and I think that we need to stop lumping everybody into the same category.”

On housing, Greene supports the move toward increased density and middle housing. She would like to see additional options like dorm-style co-housing for workers and said she hopes developers will pay their fair share of infrastructure costs when building new homes. She would bring construction laborers, realtors and developers together for advice, she said.

To help the city’s homeless population, she said she would attempt to coordinate community and faith groups to seek grant funding and expand support programs.

Greene said the city should not spend money on a stadium project as ongoing federal cuts jeopardize social services nationwide.

“Given the situation that we’re in right now and the ever-changing situation every day … I think that whole plan for that stadium needs to be rethought because of the systematic changes that are going to happen,” she said.

As of Thursday, Greene has raised more than $40,000 in campaign contributions, according to state filings.

Greene has been endorsed by State Sens. John Lovick and June Robinson, State Reps. April Berg, Brandy Donaghy and Lillian Ortiz-Self, as well as Snohomish County Council members Strom Peterson and Megan Dunn, among others. She has also been endorsed by a number of local Democratic party districts, as well as the Snohomish County Democratic Central Committee and the local progressive activist group Snohomish County Indivisible.

Scott Murphy

Murphy, 63, was president of Goldfinch Brothers, a glass and glazing company, for more than a decade. He also served on the Everett City Council from 2013 to 2021, spending time as chair of the budget committee.

Ever since he left the council, he’s been concerned about the direction Everett is heading in, he said in a June 2 interview.

The city is in dire financial straits, Murphy said, citing an “unsustainable growth in expenses versus revenue.”

If elected, he said he would eliminate waste, improve city services and modernize operations using a business methodology known as “Lean Six Sigma,” which aims to reduce errors and increase efficiency.

Murphy also said spending on city departments like administrative staff, human resources and communications was too high. Those were areas he could reduce spending to reinstate popular programs like increased library hours and the park rangers, he said.

“When I’m elected mayor, I will roll back some of this spending back to reasonable levels,” Murphy said. “Sure, there needs to be some increase for inflation and whatnot, but I think I can get enough money back that will allow us to become a seven-day-a-week library again.”

Restoring the library’s budget and hiring back the city’s four park rangers would cost just under $1 million, according to city salary schedules.

Murphy said the levy the city put forward last year was rushed and too broad. He didn’t rule out the possibility of going to the voters for a property tax levy lid lift eventually, but he said he would only consider that option after implementing more cuts. He said he would also narrow a levy’s scope to a specific area, like public safety, parks or the library system.

Murphy also said he plans to focus on youth safety, a topic he said was especially important considering the recent stabbing of a 13-year-old walking to an Everett school in January. Since she took office, Franklin has issued two directives related to youth violence prevention — one in 2018 and another in 2025 — but Murphy said those didn’t go far enough.

If elected, Murphy has said he will increase police patrols near schools, increase the amount of school resource officers, create a dedicated youth violence unit, require city departments to submit an annual public safety progress report and require all city citizen committees to include public safety on their regular agenda.

Crime in Everett rose between 2020 and 2022 before declining again, according to FBI statistics.

FBI data from 2024 and 2025 is not yet available, but police have said in recent city committee meetings that this year, Everett is expected to see its lowest crime rates since 2018.

The department cited new Flock Safety cameras and an increase in proactive police staffing as possible reasons for the recent decrease in crime rates, Deputy Chief of Police Jeff Hendrickson said.

Murphy also said that local businesses have been suffering because of crime in the city, citing a Walmart location on Highway 99 that closed in 2023.

“If you’re mayor, and you’re trying to spin a story, you can talk about all the hundreds of new business licences that have signed up, and that has been talked about recently,” Murphy said. “You have to sign up a lot of small businesses to make up for the loss of a Walmart who left because of public safety.”

In 2023, Walmart said it closed the store because it was underperforming financially. Some neighboring businesses, however, did say the store had been plagued by theft, according to The Seattle Times.

Murphy said he would prioritize filling the vacant positions within the city’s police department. He said he would cut red tape for recruitment in the police department and emphasize a city commitment to officer support, training opportunities and community-oriented policing in order to attract police candidates.

On the topic of housing, he said he would encourage redevelopment and growth of all types of housing, including middle housing and apartments.

Murphy said the permitting process in the city is currently too slow. If elected, he would increase staffing in the department, implement standardized processes and give a “customer service attitude” toward builders and homeowners, he said.

To address homelessness, he said he would support increasing low-barrier housing to help get individuals off the street and access services, as well as working with service providers to strengthen outreach. He said he would also eliminate “unsanctioned encampments and RV parking in parks, on streets and in alleys,” he wrote in a June release.

In that release, he said Franklin’s record on homelessness was a “failure” due to the increase in homeless individuals in the city through her terms in office.

Murphy also said economic development would be a priority for him in order to help balance the city budget.

Under Franklin’s administration, the department’s size at the city has nearly doubled over the past four years due to an increase in grant-funded positions. But the city also reduced the department’s director from a full-time position to part-time as part of budget cuts last year.

“I would reinstate the economic development director position to being full-time, and I would look to find additional resources in our budget to enhance that department,” Murphy said. “I believe that’s got to be a huge part of our strategy to get out of this problem. We have to have a balanced approach to our budget, because I’ve never been able to figure out how to cut my way to prosperity.”

Regarding the city’s stadium project, he said it lacked transparency because the city has not released a profit-and-loss statement to show the expenses and revenues of the proposed facility.

“I’m a huge AquaSox fan. I’m not opposed to what we’re doing, but we should get more transparency real quick, real soon, before we go spend any more money,” Murphy said. “Because if it doesn’t work, let’s not go spend another $5 million researching it.”

Murphy has raised more than $135,000 in campaign contributions as of Thursday, state records show.

Murphy has been endorsed by former Everett mayor Ed Hansen, Everett City Council member Judy Tuohy, Snohomish County Council member Sam Low, and former Everett City Council member Brenda Stonecipher, among others. He has also been endorsed by Everett’s local transit union, electrical workers union and painter’s union.

Rich Ryan

Ryan, 44, is an IT professional and a musician. As a renter, his top priority is housing affordability, he said.

More than half of the residents in the city are renters. If elected, he would attempt to build city public housing, as well as purchasing privately owned apartments for public use, he said. He also said the city should cap the amount of profits that “corporate landlords” could earn, defined as companies that own more than 10 to 20 units in the city. Ryan also said the city should implement a vacancy tax.

There are just over 3,200 vacant housing units in Everett, according to census data from 2023, the most recent year available. About 1,300 of those of those are available for rent.

“Rent’s doubled in the last six years,” Ryan said. “What happens if it doubles again? We’re going to be in big trouble. That’s the big part of my platform is taking on these corporate landlords, giving renters relief around here.”

To fund the public housing project, he said he would work to expand Paine Field to bring in more major airlines and lean on the city’s arts scene to bring visitors into the city. The city does not have jurisdiction over the airport, but he said he would work with the county executive, county council and airport commission to make sure the city “has a real seat at the table,” he wrote in an email.

He also said there is “lots of waste in city hall.” He said he would audit the city because its financial information is not transparent, he said.

“I just have a funny feeling that when we get really transparent with this stuff, there’s going to be a lot of money we’re going to be able to save,” Ryan said.

Everett’s budget documents have repeatedly received clean audits from the state and received state awards.

To address public safety, Ryan said he would reallocate the funds set aside for the city’s current police department vacancies and use those to pay for social workers. He also said the city needs to build a mental health facility and permanent housing shelter to support people on the street who need assistance. To get the funding for the projects, he said a focus on arts in the city and expansion of the airport would fund them as well.

“You keep asking how we’re going to afford it, but how can we afford not to do this stuff?” Ryan said. “I would rather see our community $13 million in debt and actually doing something for people in this community.”

Ryan also said he would lower the mayor’s salary, which is set by an independent salary commission. He said if elected, he would donate a quarter of his salary and ask the commission to tie the mayor’s salary to the median income in the city.

Ryan opted to run a mini reporting campaign, meaning he does not have file contribution and expenditure reports, but cannot raise or spend more than $7,000 on his campaign, including the more than $2,000 filing fee. His campaign website lists no endorsements.

Correction: A previous version of this article said Walmart cited underperforming sales as the reason for the company closing its Highway 99 store in 2023. The company said the store was “underperforming financially,” but did not specify sales as the reason for closing.

Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.