City budgeting and finances continued to be a focus for the Edmonds City Council as it met in committees Tuesday.

The council finance committee — with Will Chen as chair, Jenna Nand as member and Council President Vivian Olson occassionally weighing in — discussed revisions to the draft City of Edmonds financial policy framework that had also been on the committee agenda in May. Among the issues discussed: Whether the city should keep its fund balance reserve at current policy-required levels — 16% of annual operating expenditures along with a contingent reserve fund of 4% — for a total of 20%. And what about the current 12% reserve levels required for the city’s other major operating funds — the water utility and the sewer/wastewater treatment plant fund?

Responding to council questions about the percentages required by other comparable municipalities, Deputy Administrative Services Director Kim Dunscombe cited figures that were higher, lower and about the same, although admitted those were not recent statistics. Councilmembers agreed it would be helpful to do a current survey of surrounding cities, but said that could wait until next year, after the 2024 budget season is over.

Nand said that Edmonds’ 20% reserve cushion “was very helpful” when the city council declared a fiscal emergency last year, and Chen added that he was “very comfortable” with the 20% reserve.

After a debate about next steps, the committee agreed to place the draft financial policy on next week’s council business meeting agenda under “received for filing,” with a memo stating that the draft policy would appear before the full council at a later date for full vetting.

The finance committee also reviewed a proposed July 2024 budget amendment ordinance that Dunscombe said was designed to help the city reach its adopted $2.2 million ending fund balance for 2024. Edmonds Mayor Mike Rosen told the council two weeks ago that the city was struggling to meet that $2.2 million fund balance target due to a combination of unexpected expenses and lower-than-projected revenues.

Dunscombe said the city needs to find an additional $1.2 million to meet that $2.2 million target, and the budget amendments she proposed Tuesday call for shifting the following amounts to the city’s general fund to cover the deficit: the $550,000 remaining in the city’s American Rescue Plan Act fund, which must be spent by the end of 2024; $80,000 in the parking fund, which would support the city’s parking enforcement officer; $408,000 from the city’s building bond fund and a sweep of the $200,000 Edmonds Homelessness Fund.

“These are my suggestions to solve some of our 2024 concerns,” Dunscombe said. “If we want to get ourselves back to the $2.2 [million] adopted ending fund balance, then the administration has been hard at work finding the rest of this $1.2 million.”

Nand immediately replied that she would opposed a move to take money from the city’s homelessness fund. “That money was allocated before I joined the council… and was never spent,” she said. “I have been asking multiple administrations for multiple years to spend this money on the homelessness crisis.”

Nand proposed removing the homelessness fund from the budget amendments prior to sending it to the full council, but Chen said he favored forwarding all of Dunscombe’s recommendations so the council could decide.

Nand reiterated her intent to fight to keep homelessness fund intact. She then directly addressed Mayor Rosen, stating that she hoped the mayor didn’t think she was “beating up on you or your administration” by opposing the homeless fund sweep.

“Thank you for saying that but no need to,” Rosen said. “You are a councilmember and this is your job. You will be facing — I promise you — many more of these kinds of conversations as we go through the budgeting process. It will be incredibly hard to make these kinds of decisions and you as a group will have to come to consensus.

“I am pretty sure at some point that everybody in the city will be disappointed by some of the decisions because these are difficult,” the mayor added.

In another finance-related matter, the council’s public safety-planning-human services-personnel committee, with Chris Eck serving as chair, agreed to forward to next week’s consent agenda a proposal from Mayor Rosen to return the city’s administrative services department to its former structure as a finance department. The administrative services director position, which was held by Dave Turley prior to his departure in April, will revert to the position of finance director, Human Resources Director Jessica Neill Hoyson told the committee. Information technology, which has always been in the finance department, and city clerk and records, which had been moved into the finance department when it became administrative services, would report directly to the mayor. “Finance would focus specifically on finance, and as you know, that is a key thing we are looking at right now,” Neill Hoyson said, adding that the new title doesn’t involve any change in the finance director’s compensation.

The committee also approved a resolution for the consent agenda authorizing the mayor to approve shared leave beyond the city’s existing personnel policies. Under the city’s current policy, employees can donate accrued leave to other employees who need time off — for example, in the case of a family emergency. But the city’s policies don’t cover all situations and this would ensure the mayor can step in when needed so that leave can be shared. There is no cost associated with the resolution, which the city views as a “stop-gap measure” until updated policies can be developed, Neill Hoyson explained.

The parks and public works committee, meanwhile approved city event agreements for the Edmonds Car Show, sponsored by the Edmonds Chamber of Commerce in September, and Oktoberfest, also in September and sponsored by the Rotary Club of Edmonds. Of note this year, the Oktoberfest event will be moving from its former spot at the Frances Anderson Center Playfield to the larger Civic Playfield.

— By Teresa Wippel