Community Budget Forum - Special Meeting

Good evening. Welcome to the Stomach County Council Community Budget Forum on October 16. We're gonna call the meeting to order. We'll be taking public comment beginning with in person and then remotely. On Zoom, you can click the hand icon to raise

your hand. If calling by phone, you

can press 9 to raise your hand. Then when called upon, press 6 to unmute. Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak, and please begin your comment with your name and your city of residence. Next is roll call.

Council chair Nering? Here. Vice chair Dunn? Here. Council member Lowe?

Present.

Council member Mead? Council member Peterson?

Here.

Chair, we have four members present.

Okay. Great. Thank you. So our only item this evening is a staff presentation, and then we'll take public comment after that. So I'll turn it over to to you, Jim, to begin with the presentation. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening chairneering, council members for the record, Jim Martin, council staff. This evening, I'd like to provide a high level overview of the twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six biennial budget and modification process. I will also speak about the sources and uses of county dollars with a focus on the general fund. Taxes, mainly sales tax and property taxes, are the core revenues for the county's general fund and account for approximately 66% or $437,000,000 of total general biennial general fund revenues.

The remaining 34% is comprised of fees for licenses and permits, charges for services, intergovernmental revenues, fines and forfeits, and miscellaneous revenues such as investment income. The largest source of general fund revenues is derived from property taxes, representing approximately 33% of total general fund revenues. For each property tax dollar paid, schools receive 62.88¢. Cities and towns receive 7.91¢. Fire districts received 13.12¢.

The county's general fund received 6.13¢. Libraries, hospitals, ports, and parks received 5.75¢, and 4.21¢ is for county roads. Individual property tax bills reflect what's been voted on in particular tax code area area or locations. Sales tax represents 31% of total general fund revenues. The county's current average sales tax rate is 10.5% or $10.50 for every $100 spent on qualified retail purchases.

This $10.50 is distributed to various taxing districts. State Of Washington receives $6.50. The county receives a dollar. Most cities in the county that have levied 10¢ for criminal justice and 10¢ for mental health. Stomach County also now receives 10¢ from the emergency radio system as well as 10¢ to combat homelessness.

Community transit, ever transit systems receives a dollar 20, and regional transit authority or s t three s t three receives a dollar 40. What is a mid biennial modification? In November 2024, Snohomish County adopted its first biennial or two year budget. Now in 2025, council will consider modification request to the biennial budget. Snohomish County code chapter four point two six point one one seven calls for a mid biennium review and modification and limits what the executive can include in their recommendation to changes arising from economic changes of conditions or emerging issues.

Operational changes within departments are not being considered during this process. Simply put, council is not adopting a new budget this year, but we'll be modifying the existing biennial budget. For illustrative purposes, this slide shows where departments are at a specific point in time. I pulled the expenditures to date on October 3, so most of September expenses should be included, but likely not all. As of September 30, we were 37.5% of the way through the biennium, and the chart shows where departments were at that point.

Green indicates departments trending at or below budget, while yellow indicates trending above budget. It should be noted that some departments may have had larger expenditures early in the biennium that maybe account for being above the mark, while others may have larger expenditures planned for later in the biennium. Ennium. Again, this is simply a point in time look to illustrate where departments may be. For the general fund, this chart chart shows the historical trend of revenues and expenditures.

Revenues are the green columns while expenditures are in red. 2025 and 2026 are projected based on the adopted biennial budget. Of the fifteen completed years represented here, three of those years had expenses that were greater than revenues, none since 2014. It should be noted, however, that recent years revenues have been bolstered by onetime injections of COVID stimulus funds as well as the sale of Cathcart. In addition, as shown in the 2025, 2026 projected columns, the adopted biennial budget projects a use of fund balance or expenses being higher than revenue of $48,000,000 in 2025 and $15,700,000 in 2026 for a combined amount of $663,700,000.0.

This slide shows the trend of full time equivalent positions within Snohomish County since 2016. As you can see, general fund FTEs in blue have remained relatively flat for the ten years represented here, while non general fund FTEs have risen most dramatically in 2023 when the health department became a county department. Where does the county's money go? At just over $3,270,000,000 for the biennium, the overall county budget has many other service areas such as public works, which is funded through a portion of property tax allocated to the road fund along with fees. Service water management also funded through fees and grants.

Human services, which in addition to some general fund dollars is funded with a one tenth of 1% sales tax along with multiple federal and state grants. As you can see, the overall county budget is distributed across multiple departments, allowing Snohomish County to service residents in a wide variety of areas. The general fund budget at roughly at roughly $623,100,000 for the biennium contains services provided by the county. Some services are regional available to all Snohomish County residents, such as prosecuting attorney, superior court, corrections, elections, solid waste, and the Evergreen Fair. Other services are provided just to the residents of unincorporated Snohomish County.

These services include service service water management, planning and development services, road maintenance, and the sheriff's office. General funded expenditures are used to provide a variety of services to homos Snohomish County residents, including conservation and natural resources, emergency management, corrections, public health, law enforcement, public defense, courts, and other elected offices such as the assessor, auditor, and treasurer. This slide shows a percentage of the general fund budget appropriated to each area. If members of the public have any questions, comments, or concerns, I'd like to encourage you to send an email to contact .council@snowcoa.org or send a letter to your council member at the listed address. That concludes this year's presentation. I'm happy to address any questions council may have at this point.

Great. Thank you, Jim. Appreciate the presentation. Questions or comments from council members? And I if you're online, you can just unmute yourself. Vice chair Dunn, go ahead.

Is the fund how so on slide seven, the general fund history, it would be helpful to see the fund balance

Okay.

Slide if there's a future presentation. Sure. It's implied, but it's not included as revenue. Right. Right? Okay.

Yeah. It's not a revenue. It's just that's what's in the bank, basically. Right. Okay.

You and then just for the record, our target our budget adoption date?

November 5 is what we're targeting for budget adoption. The first public hearing is scheduled for next week.

Great. Thank you. Alright. Was there any hands online? Any council questions or comments online? Okay. Well, thank you, Jim. Really appreciate the presentation. We'll then open it up for public comment. There's nobody in the room.

Do we

have any hands raised online?

No hands raised.

K. With that, if there's no other questions or comments, we will go ahead and close out and adjourn the meeting. We'll see everybody next week. Thanks.