EVERETT — Mayor Cassie Franklin has released a balanced $438.8 million budget for 2024 which adds more city staff to accommodate the city’s growing needs, including nine new officers.
The city general fund, which pays for day-to-day expenses, will allocate $166.9 million in spending for 2024.
Improved sales tax revenue is benefitting the bottom line, but it’s offset by $1.16 million in increased jail fee costs and increases in employee wages. The jail fees are because more people are being booked for crimes. The wage increases are to keep the city competitive in the employment market.
The police officers will be grant-funded for 2024 before becoming a city expense in 2026. One police position, called a wellness coordinator, focuses on officers’ mental health.
Balancing the budget required some sacrifices.
Franklin’s budget skips contributing to the police and fire pension fund, and skimps on placing fresh money into its capital improvement fund accounts used for building things in the city.
Everett has a financial structural deficit, where it costs more to run the city than what it receives in income such as taxes. In 2025, on paper that will be $13.1 million in the red without massaging the budget more next year.
The structural deficit is a perennial challenge that the mayor noted becomes more difficult as the city keeps growing. Everett’s nearing 115,000 residents.
The city will need to “deeply consider solutions to get us back on a sustainable path,” Franklin said, and will be talking with the council on ideas later this year. She has been most vocally interested in asking the public for a property tax levy lid lift that increases the city property tax rate above the state’s 1% cap. Property taxes and sales taxes are every city’s two biggest income streams.
Forthcoming for 2024 will be development toward a new park in the Holly Neighborhood — the city won’t reveal where yet — and the new Edgewater Bridge across Mukilteo Boulevard and a new bridge running to the city’s future “EPIC” site which could be public works’ future consolidated campus located near the city’s northern tip.
Franklin cheered the completion of the long-awaited Silver Lake Loop Trail, an off-leash dog space at Jackson Park and new playgrounds at Thornton A. Sullivan and Howarth parks.
The 2024 budget assumes a standard 1% property tax increase. Public hearings on the property tax increase are Oct. 25, Nov. 1 and Nov. 8.
The council will chew over the budget Nov. 8 and Nov. 15 with a final vote Nov. 29.
The council meets at 6:30 p.m. each Wednesday at 3002 Wetmore Ave.
The city is obligated by state law to prepare a balanced budget by year’s end.
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Everett balances budget, mayor to add more police officers
EVERETT — Better-than-predicted economic growth seen this year is helping allow Everett to prepare a balanced city budget for 2024, although it was no cakewalk to get here. Here's what being added and what's being not spent on.
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