Clyde Hill News: Residents’ mixed feedback on plans for increased taxes and new fees
City to hold “open house” on budget plans Thursday, May 1st
This week’s newsletter recaps the recent mixed feedback from residents about the administration’s recommendations to address the city’s budget deficit by increasing taxes and creating new fees.
Briefly: it’s not clear how much the residents on the city’s task force agree with and support the plans as presented.
City staff and Mayor Steve Friedman will host an “open house” on Thursday, May 1st at 6PM at City Hall to share progress. Details are available here (link).
Disclaimer: while I am a council member 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. City 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.
The situation and the plan
City expenditures have exceeded revenues since 2020
Link.
No material spending cuts offered
Mayor Friedman has ruled out reductions to non-police city staff. Personnel costs are 61% of the General Fund budget:
Increased taxes, new fees
According to Mayor Friedman, “If you want the bulk of the problem to be solved, you have to find revenue.” (link)
The gist of the plan:
Asking the council to approve a new stormwater utility fee. Details on what residents (as well as Bellevue Christian School, Sacred Heart Church, and Bellevue School District) would pay are not yet available.
Asking voters to approve an approximately 50% city property tax increase. “We will still eventually need to do another levy lid lift1 at some point in time,” (link) according to the city’s finance professional.
Spending the city’s reserves. The city will need to spend $1.7 million of its “rainy day” reserve funds to maintain the city’s current level of expenditure over the next few years without the new taxes and fees. This would appear to be the first time the city will spend reserves for operating expenses.
Last week’s newsletter has more details on the plan as discussed at the meeting: link.
Resident feedback and discussion
Here are some of the themes from the discussions among residents at the April 17th task force meeting.
Clarity
Long-time resident Jay Henningsen summarized the situation, saying that there is “a very short window of time before the city is unsustainable. It runs out of money.” (link)
“The challenge from my perspective,” he continued, is that “there seems to be a lot of inside baseball,” (link) going on to say:
“The last four meetings have really been staff presenting packets to us that aren’t clear… the packet should be self-evident so that a resident could understand this without having to understand that transfer of funds from here to there… because it just makes it seem like you’re hiding the ball.” (link)
Mission: reducing expenses
Fellow long-time resident Wayne Burns offered:
“The original definition of how to solve the deficit… wasn’t by new taxes and fees. It was to figure out how to reduce expenses, how to operate differently, and how to eliminate the deficit that way. And if you couldn’t do that, then — and only then — to go and dip into the residents’ pockets [with] taxes and fees.” (link)
He summarized the effort to date saying:
“We’re just rearranging the deck chairs as the ship goes down because we’re not going to materially impact that [deficit] with those little tweaks.”
Jay Henningsen also noted:
By adding the storm water utility you may slow the decline but you’re still running a deficit and that’s unsustainable.” (link)
Mayor Friedman repeated his point of view on the disagreement:
“cutting people, reducing staff — which is of course the major part of the cost. And that’s where the disagreement seems to obviously comes up. I don’t agree with them and I think we have a revenue problem in the city… that’s the obviously that’s the primary way to do that.” (link)
Councilmember Brad Andonian suggested that “it would make sense to examine” what the city has people doing, continuing that:
“I think we need more of an effort in that direction… I know that cutting services or changing things is a very difficult conversation but I still think we have to at least go down that path… so far I don’t think that that’s been addressed.” (link)
Wayne Burns added that:
“I think you can reduce a head or two and it won’t impact operations. It’s already happened in public works… I think we need to be more aggressive.” (link)
Former councilmember Bruce Dodds, another long-time resident, spoke in support of the tax increase and not cutting any staff. To residents suggesting the possibility of staffing changes, Mr. Dodds said, “I suggest that you spend some time learning how the city operates.” (link)
“I spent five months to learn how the city operates,” Wayne Burns responded.
“Sales pitch” for the tax hike
City Administrator Dean Rohla offered that the levy lid lift “needs a sales pitch” (link).
Echoing previous discussions that the tax increase will likely be presented to the community in terms of public safety and not administrative costs, he commented that “frequent ones [tax increases] that fly [succeed] are related to public safety.” (link)
Jay Henningsen commented that for a levy lid lift to succeed there has to be
“a better story because right now it’s, ‘hey we don’t have enough money, so the only solution we have is to raise taxes. That’s the only solution we have.’” (link)
In the absence of clarity about what city services are at stake, he continued, “people will say why don’t you just cut a head[count] — because we’ve all worked in business.”
This discussion echoed public comments at previous meetings; for example, this one from long-time resident Pat Brzusek:
“We have been out of control in our budget for too long…. I don’t know where we get the concept that we can spend more money than we have. We can’t do that in our homes, in our businesses — it should not be done in our city.” (link)
In a public comment, Jared Wheeler, a resident not on the task force, said
“I wish it [the property tax increase] was on the ballot this year. I wish it was part of the whole who’s running for the three council seats, and everything else, and part of the ballot.” (link)
More resident feedback ahead
The city will hold an open house to discuss the budget situation and plan on Thursday, May 1st at City Hall.
You can also reach your elected officials via email at these addresses:
"Mayor Friedman" <Mayor@clydehill.org>; "Councilmember Wissner-Slivka" <council1@clydehill.org>; "Councilmember Sinwell" <council2@clydehill.org>; "Councilmember Andonian" <council3@clydehill.org>; "Councilmember Olson" <council4@clydehill.org>; "Councilmember Hachamovitch" <council5@clydehill.org>
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Dean Hachamovitch