Forum: Everett made deep budget cuts; levy lid lift is needed

By Eileen Simmons / Herald Forum

The City of Everett is asking Everett residents for a levy lid lift — Proposition 1 — to maintain and restore services.

I have read several letters to the editor and seen scare-mongering yard signs that suggest if this measure is approved your entire property tax bill would be going up 44 percent. Those against this levy say the city needs to live within its budget and that there are more budget cuts that could be made. I want to encourage you to vote for the levy lid lift.

I have lived in Everett for 26 years and worked for the city for 19 years, first as assistant director and then director of the Everett Public Library. I also served on two structural deficit committees, the first while still an employee and the second as a private citizen. I am currently the president of the Evergreen Arboretum and Gardens, an all-volunteer non-profit that works to make the Arboretum a valuable community asset. During most of those years, the city has been facing a structural deficit. As a private citizen, a city employee, and now a volunteer, I have seen how this deficit affects Everett’s ability to provide needed services to its residents.

When my husband and I moved to Everett, both libraries were open seven days and four nights a week. The library provided bookmobile services to daycares, an outreach van to senior facilities, and employed two local historians. The Parks Department offered an affordable array of indoor and outdoor recreational programs. It operated a swimming pool, an animal farm, and with its horticultural program, it provided attractive, colorful downtown plantings along Mukilteo Boulevard.

The city ran its own senior center, had an active Department of Neighborhoods and a vibrant cultural arts program. Now both bookmobile and outreach van are gone, as is one local historian. The Main Library and Evergreen Branch are only open two nights a week and are closed on Sundays due to staffing cuts. All those parks and recreation programs are gone. The Senior Center is now run by the Volunteers of America. The Office of Neighborhoods and the Cultural Arts Department have been consolidated, with more responsibilities given to fewer people. And these are just the city departments I happen to know the most about.

The City has not asked for a levy lid lift for more than two decades. All the cuts to services and maintenance the City has made over the years have not fixed the problem. The math just doesn’t work. You cannot maintain services with a 1 percent tax increase every year when expenses go up more than that, much less respond effectively to new challenges such as homelessness and drug addiction.

Those against the levy need to be honest with us about what cuts they would make to a budget that is about 75 percent public safety; that’s an old number and I suspect the percentage may be higher now. So voters can decide for themselves if those cuts are acceptable and whether those cuts would actually resolve the structural deficit.

I’m voting for the levy because I want to live in a city that provides more than police and fire. As valuable as those services are, well-maintained quality of life services such as parks, libraries and the arts make Everett a place people might want to visit or invest in.

Eileen Simmons lives in Everett.