Facing deficit, Lake Forest Park debates cuts, taxes and fees
Sunday, November 10, 2024
Facing a $3.1 million budget deficit, the LFP council debated budget cuts taxes and fees. In a four-to-two split, the council voted to hire a consultant to help the city pass a levy
The Lake Forest Park city council Top row: Semra Riddle, Deputy Mayor Lorri Bodi, Jon Lebo, Ellyn Saunders Bottom row: Tracy Furutani, Paula Goode, Larry Goldman |
On November 7, the Lake Forest Park city council held its final public hearings on proposed tax and fee increases and the 2025-2026 budget. In a four-to-two split, the council voted in favor of hiring a consultant to help the city pass a levy lid lift.
Facing a potential $3.1 million budget deficit, the Lake Forest Park city council considered amendments to cut $455,612 from the budget while raising taxes and fees to generate $970,205.
The city also could use $785,121 from the new traffic safety camera fund to pay for police and court clerk salaries. All together, the proposed budget amendments could reduce the deficit to $889,062.
The city says it is facing significant cost increases: insurance is up $109,000 per year, 911 dispatch service will cost $283,560 more per year, the city will pay $150,000 more to jail prisoners per year, public defenders cost $30,000 more per year and a police wage increase will add $100,000 per year in costs.
A table from a city presentation shows proposed budget cuts and revenue increases Lake Forest Park is considering |
The city identified $455,612 in proposed cuts to the budget. To save $202,812, the city might postpone replacing some vehicles in its police and public works fleet (the city’s budget had said it plans to replace seven police vehicles over the next two years).
The city may also cut $220,500 in human resource support spending and another $32,200 in smaller cuts.
In 2024, Lake Forest Park collected $3,473,591 in property taxes but under Washington State law, the city is allowed to increase that amount by only 1% (regardless of the rate of inflation) an increase of $34,736.
In a four-to-two split, the council voted to in favor of hiring a consultant for $96,000 to help the city pass a property tax increase - something that voters haven’t approved in Lake Forest Park in over a decade.
A levy to pay for parks and sidewalks on the 2021 ballot was rejected by over 65% of Lake Forest Park voters and a 2010 property tax levy was rejected by 77.97%.
According to comments made to the council, the consultant would provide press releases, letters to the editor, social media posts, town halls and other activities to educate voters about a proposed property tax increase.
Councilmember Semra Riddle voted in favor of hiring the consultant and said, “I want to utilize this tool that we've been given to educate the community on budget and property taxes. Even if that's all we get out of it. That is just tremendously a major return on whatever amount of money we spend to get to that point.”
Councilmember Jon Lebo spoke against hiring the consultant “I think we're getting a little in front of ourselves…. We do have a budget issue that we need to resolve. And I think that how we present this to our citizens is very important. And what we're presenting to our citizens is that, even before we get a survey… we are going to hire a consultant who's going tell us how to put together a levy lift.”
Instead, Lebo spoke in favor of a citizens committee, “I have advocated many times for a Citizens Financial Stability Committee really to bring along our citizens. And I think if we don't really spend the time of bringing them along as opposed to telling them how they should proceed, we are not going to be successful,” he said.
Another topic of debate was whether the city should charge a new solid waste (garbage) tax to fund a full time Climate Project Coordinator position to implement the goals in the Climate Action Plan the city adopted earlier this year.
According to that plan, two thirds of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the city come from fossil fuel-based air and road transportation and the number one goal in the plan is to cut GHG emissions in the city 50% by 2030 and 95% by 2050.
Kenmore employs a Climate Action Plan Program Manager to administer its Climate Action Plan and Shoreline has a Sustainability Manager and Environmental Program Specialist to drive its Climate Action Plan.
Councilmember Paula Goode questioned the need for a Climate Project Coordinator, “We've heard a lot from our community about the climate action manager and part of me is in support of that. But when I keep thinking about what is the job description, and what will they do? I don't really know what they would do… It seems like a lot of money, for a pretty high paid position. I don't know what their functions would be.”
The city also plans to increase sewer and surface water fees and taxes. The city plans to increase sewer fees by 5% and, according to a presentation shared by the city, increasing sewer taxes by 10% could generate an additional $320,075.
The city plans to increase surface water fees by 15% and could collect an additional $136,330 with a 10% surface water tax increase. Building and permit fees could also increase.
Without cuts and increased revenue the city expects its $9,912,822 general fund to shrink to $6,819,619 by the end of 2026.
But the city expects one fund balance to increase from $289,000 to over $6 million: that fund is the new Traffic Safety fund the city created to collect revenues from the new school walk zone traffic safety cameras on 178th Street by Brookside elementary.
The city is keeping revenue from the old cameras and the new cameras separate because a new state law requires the city to now spend funds on traffic safety improvements after paying operating costs (the city was previously allowed to deposit the revenue into the general fund).
The city transferred $150,000 from the traffic safety fund to the transportation fund for traffic calming but the city’s budget does not specify which traffic safety projects will be funded with the millions of dollars of revenue it expects to collect each year from the cameras. The city estimates those cameras will generate $8 million from fines over the next two years.
The city plans to spend $702,500 from the traffic safety fund revenue to cover 7% of the salaries and benefits for its police department to pay for a patrol officer and to cover the cost of having officers review each ticket.
Previously, Washington State law required automated traffic camera citations to be reviewed by police officers, but the new state law now allows cities to use civilian employees to review the tickets to reduce costs.
The city will also use $82,580 from the traffic safety fund to pay for new court clerks to handle the additional work load caused by thousands of citations per month.
The Lake Forest Park city council plans to vote on the final amended budget on Thursday, November 14 and is asking residents to provide input to solve the shortfalls in a survey at LFPcommunitysurvey.com.
14 comments:
Why don’t you folks run LFP like a business would have to. If you don’t have all of the funds you desire, make those tough decisions instead of rushing to do the easy things and add more taxes on the folks. Thank goodness for Tim Eyman!
Tariffs will solve it
Lobby Olympia and get the law changed so fines from traffic cameras can be used for the general budget. Cameras don't require benefits like humans do - and they will slow down speeding drivers, as well as those making prohibited turns, not stopping for school busses, etc. Win/win
LFP City Council: "We don't have sufficient funding for the next two years, so let's hire a new position to work on climate change (we don't know what they will do), and spend $96k on a consultant so maybe people will give us more of their money to spend. Oh, and we're going to raise your taxes on every discretionary source we can."
Did I get that right? Awful.
I know that I'm eager to vote for higher taxes when my elected officials waste money on a Climate Project Coordinator position, create a speed trap in the community that's intended to ensnare even slow drivers, and spend $96,000 needlessly on a PR effort.
The proposed 2 year budget predicts a $3million deficit in the General Fund but it predicts only a $530,000 reduction in the actual total of all the different funds. If the City can do so legally it should allocate a greater percentage of the $8million generated by the traffic cameras towards costs of police because our police do indeed spend a good portion of their time and efforts performing traffic safety. And I agree that the public won't like to learn the City proposes a new Climate Plan Coordinator position when trying to reduce expenses.
Yes - let's redirect camera revenue away from its intendedd purpose so we don't have to make any hard choices and live within our means. And, the Mayor and City Council can continue to add more positions/costs to the LFP budget.
If speed cameras are supposed to be about changing behavior (reducing speeding), shouldn't revenues from those decline over time? Aren't people going to slow down and not get citations? So, why would you rely on them for ongoing general fund expenses? Or, are they really not about changing behavior and simply a new revenue generator?
Here's a cost cutting proposal: get rid of the Mayor-Council form of government, and go to a Council-Manager form of government. Reduce Council from seven seats to five.. We already have a City Manager. We have way too much governance cost for a town of 12k people.
If you think the additions to this budget are a lot, just wait until they build that fancy waterfront park - that's going to cost a bunch of new/extra money to maintain properly.
How is LFP only collecting around 3.4 million a year of property tax when there are about 13,000 population? That’s about $260 per person …
The Climate Project Coordinator position and any other open positions are the first things that should be cut. The budget isn't balanced, and now is not the time to expand the government. Also, climate change isn't something that individual small city governments should be working on in the first place. It's a global matter that requires the cooperation of global leaders. The City needs to be focused on City issues - police, utilities, parks, roads, building permits, zoning, code enforcement, etc.
I believe the City receives only 8% of what we pay in property taxes. The majority goes to our state, county, schools, districts.
Anonymous @ 11:26 AM: Median home value in LFP is about $900k. I picked a random house assessed around that amount and looked at the property taxes. Property tax was around $8500 and about $600 went to the city. Multiply that by 5500 homes and you get $3.3M. I think people overestimate how much of their property taxes are going to the city.
As a resident, I find the waste of money for Climate irritating. We live in a dense forest with natural waterways around us. Then they want to try to transition to Solar and remove natural gas, that's insane. Most of us couldn't install solar even if we wanted to and keep the 52% tree canopy. We have yearly windstorms that take the power out. Natural gas is the best way to have backup energy in that case. We do live in Lake Forest Dark after all.
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