Clyde Hill News: Plan for addressing the budget deficit
Also, Clyde Hill welcomes a new police officer; over-65’s outvote other age groups; my Prop 1 mistake
This week’s newsletter offers a brief update about budget plans and meetings.
First, an update about Clyde Hill voters returning their ballots for the November General Election going on right now. You can see that voters over the age of 65 have returned more ballots than the other age groups that King County reports on; the latest results are available here (link).
One more item before our disclaimer: if you find this newsletter useful or interesting, please forward it to your Clyde Hill neighbors and friends. Thank you!
Disclaimer: while I am a councilmember on the Clyde Hill City Council, I write this newsletter in my capacity as an individual resident. Any opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily the position of the City. The information and references here are from public sources. I welcome email responses — and if the topic is about City business I will respond from my City email account.
Getting to a sustainable Budget Plan
Clyde Hill will hold another public meeting related to next year’s budget on Tuesday, November 8th. To make room for this budget discussion, the regular City Council meeting scheduled for the 8th is now scheduled for November 15th.
From the material now available on the website (link), it’s not clear what has changed from the previously published plan. The “Big Picture” one page summary (link) still shows a planned budget deficit of ~$450,000 for 2023 and a projected budget deficit for 2022 of ~$195,000:
The Administrator’s Weekly Update (link) warned that “The [budget] presentation will not be posted until Monday. Any agenda updates will be noticed via email with the changes as applicable.”
One short-term approach to address next year’s planned deficit involves using ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds that the City has in reserves. The City does not expect to receive more ARPA funds in the future.
The plan for a sustainable plan
What’s not clear is the sustainable plan for a balanced budget in the future.
The “plan for a plan” that emerged from Councilmembers Steve Friedman and Bruce Jones pressing the Administration for progress is — more meetings.
A document titled “Proposed Plan for Resolving Future Budget Deficits” (link) describes forming a committee to investigate various options that have been discussed over the last few years.
Typically, the Administration (executive branch) proposes a budget and the Council (legislative branch) reviews and approves it.
It’s not clear why Clyde Hill is where it is right now with respect to its budget deficit or a plan to address it… the budget deficit has been a steady state situation for several years now.
Clyde Hill welcomes new police officer
From the Administrator’s Weekly Report (link):
New Police Officer Recruit:
Please welcome Cameron Hanson as our new Police Officer Recruit. Cameron’s first day was Tuesday, November 1st. Cameron currently resides in Stanwood and will be getting acquainted with Clyde Hill while working in the office until his time at the academy begins in late January. Cameron’s hire returns Clyde Hill to fully staffed in our Police department. Welcome to the Clyde Hill team Cameron!
Current Clyde Hill Police hiring practice alternates between hiring experienced Lateral Officers and Recruits to create a diverse mix of officers. Our most recent hires have been experienced Laterals. In previous eras our testing and recruiting process focused primarily on Recruits.
Prop 1 mea culpa
I messed up in my Clyde Hill Prop 1 coverage and wanted to own up to it and apologize.
There are a lot of signs around Clyde Hill asking you to vote against Prop 1 in order to “Protect your right to vote for Mayor.” I did not investigate this claim as thoroughly as I should have.
For at least the last 35 years of elections, Clyde Hill voters have had only one mayoral candidate to choose from on their ballot.
A resident sent me email with King County election results going back to 1987. While the reporting has gotten prettier over time, they mostly look like this one with only one row to report the Clyde Hill Mayoral Election results:
(In some years, there have been a handful of votes for write-in candidates.)
So, technically this claim is correct: one consequence of Prop 1 passing is that Clyde Hill voters will no longer directly choose a mayor.
(The major consequence of passing Prop 1 will be that the full-time city administrator/manager responsible for running the Clyde Hill will answer to seven elected officials and not just one.)
At the same time, this claim is a bit tenuous because Clyde Hill residents have rarely had a choice of mayoral candidates. There is one exception worth calling out.
In 1975, Clyde Hill got national attention when the mayoral race was declared a tie and settled by a coin toss. You can read about that here (link).
All that said: I apologize for not digging into this claim more thoroughly and sooner.
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Dean Hachamovitch