The Edmonds City Council has approved a 2006 city budget that avoids cuts in service and personnel but acknowledges it can’t stretch far enough to fund ever-increasing demands for essential services.
Approved by a 5-2 vote Nov. 15, with a month to spare before the state-required acceptance date, the $66.4 million (excluding fund balances) budget reflects:
• A 4.8 percent overall decrease over 2005;
• A 3.1 percent increase in the general fund;
• The allowable statutory 1 percent increase in general property taxes (about $81,280);
• Using half of the 3.77 percent available banked capacity (or $142,000) remaining from years the city collected property taxes below allowed levels. The banked-capacity recapture will add $18 per year in property taxes to the owner of a $500,000 home.
All told, the owner of a $500,000 home in Edmonds will pay about $20 more in city taxes, figured Dan Clements, director of administrative services.
Favoring the budget that underwent relatively minor changes between its preliminary and final formats were council members Richard Marin, Peggy Pritchard Olson, Mauri Moore, Dave Orvis and Jeff Wilson. Deanna Dawson and Michael Plunkett dissented, citing, respectively, hesitancy in supporting a budget that reduced revenues without offsetting expenditure cuts, and the need for more discussion on recapturing lower-than-allowable banked capacity.
Mayor Gary Haakenson, who, along with city staff prepared the 2006 financial blueprint, called it a “good-news/bad-news” budget. He pointed out the city’s financial position is stabilized for the coming year, but demands for public safety, transportation improvements and facilities exceed the city’s financial ability to provide for them. The budget, he explained, addresses these realities by offering these basic tenets:
• Make strategic public-safety additions by adding a two-person street-crime unit and one additional police office to increase police presence in the community
• Use the remainder of the city’s unused property tax banked capacity to support the above-mentioned police staffing
• Continue to press on the state level for sales-tax modernization, local-option real-estate excise tax and pension rate increase phase-in
• Forward movement on key economic-development initiatives. Haakenson specifically called out the need for continued progress on Highway 99 development and concentration on redevelopment of neighborhood shopping centers at Firdale Village, Westgate and Five Corners. That, the mayor pointed out, is particularly important given development limitations downtown
The budget contains about $654,000 in program additions. Except for the court security officer, a fire battalion chief, new street-crime unit and the police-officer replacement position, the remaining additions are one-time costs. The most significant one-time additions include a rewriting of the zoning code ($140,000), temporary building inspector ($74,450) and police-vehicle radio replacements ($49,612).
The budget also promotes a fiber-optic technology initiative that eventually will offer high-speed Internet and related services to residents and businesses. It is expected to be a zero-net-cost program with its $175,000 cost in 2006 being offset by outsourced management lease fees.
Before that occurs, Clements said the city’s citizen’s technology committee will forward recommendations to the council, which will decide whether or not to advance the technology plan.
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