In his 2017 budget address to the Edmonds City Council Tuesday night, Mayor Dave Earling noted that much has changed since he prepared his first budget after taking office at the end of 2011.

“The staff and I had to make dramatic reductions as we faced the then, still tough economy coming out of the recession, and the ‘red ink’ in our near future,” Earling said. “With those hard decisions, a slow but improving economy, and several strategic decisions, we have made steady upward financial progress with the help of staff, council, and the business community.”

The city’s revenue picture continues to improve, the mayor said, with 2016 operating revenues projected to be 1.4 percent higher than 2015 actual revenues and the 2017 revenues forecast to be 0.9 percent higher than projected 2016 revenue.

As of the end of September, the city is $139,000 ahead of its record sales tax revenue of 2015, much of it coming from automobile sales and construction. During the past three years Edmonds has added more than $90.7 million in assessed value in new home and commercial construction, with another $39-million-plus projected for 2017, Earling said.

Despite the positive revenue news, the mayor said is he approaching this year’s budget cautiously. “I remind us all we are in the eighth year of what often is a 10-year recovery cycle,” Earling said. “Signals of a slowdown are coming from a variety of levels. Most recently I have heard presentations from the state Office of Financial Management, as well as county and city governments, indicating many of those entities are currently challenged financially.”

Earling also warned that the city is still continuing its contract negotiations with Snohomish County Fire District 1, and that agreement “will have financial implications for our budget.”

As a result, the mayor said the 2017 budget is focused on “pressing needs.” Among them:

– $400,000 to address “serious deferred maintenance” on city-owned buildings.

– $1.1 million to continue work on the city’s street overlay program. The city will also “continue efforts to catch-up on needed important infrastructure deferrals for our water, sewer and stormwater programs,” Earling said, “keeping in mind that the state-mandated stormwater regulations will provide challenges as of the first of the year.”

– One-time expenditures to improve the city’s IT infrastructure; to conduct a housing study in Development Services to identify community housing needs; to move to a paperless court system; to provide local matching dollars for further work on the waterfront at-grade-crossing issue; and for sidewalks.

– Adding the equivalent of four full-time new positions. These include one in the Parks Department for park maintenance and two halftime positions in Development Services to handle “the ever expanding number of planning and construction projects in the city,” Earling said. There will also be two positions in the Police Department: one for police services and the other — in cooperation with the Edmond School District — will be reinstating the school resource officer program for Edmonds-Woodway High School. “We live in volatile times and having our schools safe is an important priority for this community,” Earling said.

– As he has done in past years, the mayor said he is also setting aside $100,000 for councilmembers to use for “special projects you see as important and of great value to the community which have not been included in the budget.”

“Because of the work done and the improvements made over time, Edmonds has become a recognized daytime destination,” Earling said. “It has also become an appealing place for families considering relocating, as witnessed by the number of baby carriages and strollers in the community.

“Over the past few years we have thoughtfully balanced the need to fill open staff positions with the need to catch up on long ignored one time expenditures. We must maintain that balance.”

The budget will be online for public review at the city’s website — www.edmondswa.gov — Wednesday, Oct. 12.