Shoreline City Council Meeting Monday 10-21-13

Devon Vose Rickabaugh
Photo by Jerry Pickard

Shoreline City Council Meeting Monday 10-21-13

By Devon Vose Rickabaugh

The Shoreline City Council voted to increase Council Members’ salaries from $700 per month to $1000 per month. The Mayor’s salary increases from $850 to $1,250 and Deputy Mayor’s to $1,100. The increases would provide for cost of living which the Council has not received for 16 years. Given state law, the new salaries will not take effect until after Council members are elected/re-elected in November, with the adjustments becoming effective in 2014. Any councilmember not up for election in November will not receive any adjustment in salary until after being reelected in 2015, making those adjustment effective in 2016. Mayor McGlashan said for the amount of work the members do outside of meetings their salaries would probably be less than a dollar an hour. Council member Roberts suggested in the future appointing an independent salary commission to review council salaries and suggest increases. Councilmember Salomon voted against the increase saying he would like to see more of a public process since raising salaries is a sensitive issue.

The Council heard review of city departments’ 2014 budget requests. The focus of the departmental presentations was on any significant changes between the department’s 2013 budget and the 2014 proposed budget of $71,900,115. In addition the presentations indicated how closely tied the budget requests are to Council Goals, City initiatives, and daily services. This will serve to expedite the budget review process and make the best use of the Council meeting time. The proposed 2014 budget has been made available to the public on the City’s website and at City Hall, the Shoreline Police Station, and the Shoreline and Richmond Beach libraries. Staff plans to complete department reviews through the Planning and Community Development Department on October 21. On October 28, the following budget reviews will be conducted before the Council: Public Works, 2014-2019 Capital Improvement Plan, Capital and Operating Surface Water Utility Budgets and a brief description of other funds. Future budget workshops will be held on November 4 and November 18. Public hearings for the 2014 budget will also be held on November 4 and November 18. Adoption of the 2014 property tax levy, budget and capital improvement plan is scheduled for November 25.

Snohomish County Jail services

The city’s Management Analyst John Norris presented many of the department budgets. He showed concern for future costs increases to incarcerate Shoreline prisoners in Snohomish County Jail. Now it costs about half as much to use Snohomish County Jail as to use King County Jail. But  Snohomish County is proposing to cap the number of inmates it will accept from Shoreline and in addition may not take mentally ill combative prisoners. If there are significant numbers of inmates turned away and sent to King County or other jails the cost could increase by a million dollars. Norris stressed there is no way to know what the impact will be yet. Councilmember Hall suggested that the city may need to take a comprehensive look at the cost of providing jail and public defender service through the city with the new police station instead of contracting the services out to other cities.

Councilmember Salomon said he is concerned that jail is an inappropriate place for mentally ill who act out  but there are very limited places to send them so they end up in jail and now “Snohomish County doesn’t want them.”  Salomon said Shoreline can’t be expected to create a place to treat these mentally ill, but “It’s something we have to deal with. I don’t believe we are ever going to be significantly successful in controlling access to guns and mentally ill with guns, bad deal. We need to step up our efforts to provide treatment on a regional level. It makes me angry that everyone wants to wash their hands of this issue.”