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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 5, 2022
City of Kenmore Communications
communications@kenmorewa.gov
425-398-8900
Kenmore, WA - On Monday evening, Kenmore City Manager Rob Karlinsey presented a proposed city budget for the upcoming biennium, 2023-2024. The proposed two-year budget maintains core and basic city services while allocating resources to advance the City Council’s top priorities.
“We are a financially stable city with healthy reserves and a triple-A bond rating,” Karlinsey said, “and we have some really important work funded in this upcoming budget.”
The proposed budget includes funding for the new maintenance costs of three new park expansions: Log Boom Park (completed in mid 2022), ƛ'ax̌wadis (Tl' awh-ah-dees) Park, and Twin Springs Park. Funding for new landscape and sidewalk maintenance for the new Walkways & Waterways improvements on 68th Avenue and Juanita Drive is also included in the proposed two-year budget.
The City Council’s top priorities will see resources allocated toward them, including environmental sustainability; affordable housing; pedestrian and bicycle safety; and diversity, equity, and inclusion. The proposed budget includes technical assistance funding for the City to keep an eye on the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency’s permitting process for the asphalt plant on Bothell Way. Funding to join the community court in Shoreline is also part of the proposed budget. Community court takes a more restorative and rehabilitative approach for nonviolent misdemeanants who voluntarily participate. Expanding Kenmore’s portion of the regional “RADAR” program from weekday coverage to seven-day-a-week coverage is part of the proposed budget. RADAR deploys mental health professionals to assist with mental health-related police calls.
The City also plans to implement several temporary programs from one-time federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding, including grants for a homelessness response pilot program, catch-up learning and childcare support, human services, and business assistance. Half of the city’s ARPA funds are committed to help construct a 100-unit complex for low income residents at the northwest corner of 67th Avenue and Bothell Way.
The next two-year budget will likely face some financial headwinds, including high inflation near 10% without a corresponding growth in revenues. The City’s largest source of revenue is property tax, which does not keep pace with inflation. State law prohibits total property tax collections from growing by more than one percent per year, not including new property tax from new construction. The City may use “banked” one percent property tax increases that were not taken in prior years. The City Manager is proposing to use a portion of this banked capacity and is recommending a 3.3% increase in the City’s portion of property tax collections in 2023, which follows the Financial Sustainability Plan that the City Council adopted in the fall of 2020.
The City’s Financial Sustainability Plan recognizes that the City’s relatively flat revenue growth would not keep up with the cost of doing business. As a result, the Plan called for a series of cuts in expenditures as well as new revenues to keep the City’s budget balanced for the foreseeable future. The proposed 2023-2024 budget continues to implement what was scheduled in the Financial Sustainability Plan, including a 6% surface water utility tax in 2023 and a 5% admissions tax in 2024.
The City Manager’s budget also proposes several new positions to “right-size” the organization so that city staff can keep pace with increasing growth and workload demands. The full details of the preliminary 2023-2023 budget can be found here. A recording of Monday's reading of the City Manager’s budget message can be found here.
“Given inflation, flat revenues, and other challenges, this was one of the more difficult budgets I’ve worked on,” said City Manager Rob Karlinsey. “But at the same time, I’m excited for all of the really cool things we plan to accomplish over the next two years if the City Council adopts this budget. We look forward to helping the City Council with their budget deliberations in the coming weeks.”
The City Council will be discussing the preliminary 2023-2024 budget for the next several weeks starting this coming Monday, October 10, with adoption of the budget tentatively scheduled for November 21, 2022.
View the City of Kenmore Preliminary 2023-2024 Biennium Budget and past budget documents at www.kenmorewa.gov/budget
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