MARYSVILLE — Mayor Jon Nehring has proposed a $133.3 million budget for 2017.
That’s up about 17.7 percent from the $109.7 million budget proposal from 2016 .
“There’s definitely more projects in this budget that drive up the expenses, things that we’ve saved for and are moving forward with after several years,” Nehring said.
The increase in spending is possible because the city spent the past five years keeping expenses down and paying down debt.
“Now we’re at the point that we can invest back into the community with some significant projects that we really conceived a few years ago,” Nehring said.
The budget is scheduled to go before the City Council on Monday for a public hearing.
The budget includes the continued development of the waterfront park and trail system connecting to the Qwuloolt Estuary, about $9.9 million in increased street construction funding, and the hiring of two new police officers.
One initiative is the creation of a new Community Services Unit within the Police Department, which would include the police’s animal control officer, code enforcement officers in the city’s community development department and parks security staff, which is largely a volunteer effort now.
“We’ll also have what would be a park ranger unit, for lack of a better term,” Nehring said. It would have seasonal staff trained to keep an eye on parks and public spaces and report any violations to a police officer.
The new unit is designed to aid in the city’s ongoing efforts to reduce drug use, loitering and camping and other street-level issues.
In many ways, it marks an expansion of the city’s cross-departmental efforts to target problem properties and drug houses through coordinated police and code enforcement actions.
“It shouldn’t be interpreted that this will all be handed by police,” Nehring said. “There will still be a whole lot of cross-departmental cooperation in this effort.”
The 2016 budget is part of a two-year $270.1 million proposal. Marysville switched to biennial budgeting in 2015 to make long-range planning easier.
A lot of big projects, such as the Highway 529/I-5 interchange project and the 116th Street project, are already funded for the year.
The $136.8 million 2018 budget would be adjusted as the year progresses. Capital projects for that year which are dependent on grant funding may be adjusted with the availability of grants.
“The good news for us is the major transportation projects like the 116th interchange, the 529 interchange, were fully funded by the Connecting Washington bill passed by the state a year and a half ago. That funding is secure,” Nehring said.
“We’re still optimistic that we’ll continue to get the same level of grants as in the past,” he said.
Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.
Public Hearing
A public hearing on the city budget is scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday at Marysville City Hall, 1049 State Ave.
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