Despite a long list of budget amendments up for consideration Tuesday night — many aimed at reducing the city’s 2025-26 deficit — the Edmonds City Council ended up delaying a vote on most of them until next week.

After a robust discussion about the ideas presented — from a 10% reduction in city staffing to reducing employees’ work week to 35 hours — the council postponed a vote on each of them until the Tuesday, Nov. 26 council meeting. The reasoning was to wait for the return of Councilmember Will Chen, who was absent due to travel — and City of Edmonds Human Resources Director Jessica Neill Hoyson, who was on vacation.

Some councilmembers pointed out that Chen could break any tie votes that may occur and that HR Director Neill Hoyson could offer her feedback on some of the ideas presented.

In his Oct. 1 budget address, Edmonds Mayor Mike Rosen proposed a combination of staff reductions, job furloughs and revenue-generating ideas to close the city’s projected $13 million budget gap in 2025. City staff was asked to address half that gap with $7 million in budget cuts, which have been presented to the council in recent weeks.

One of the budget-reduction concepts raised Tuesday by Councilmember Susan Paine called for three separate budget amendments: The first would reduce the weekly hours of most city employees (certain staff including wastewater treatment workers, police, courts and department directors would be exempt) from 40 hours to 35 hours weekly. Paine estimated the 35-hour week could save the city $3 million over the biennium although Acting Finance Director Kim Dunscombe said the exact amount of savings was still to be determined. Paine suggested combining this amendment with two others that would cost money: Hiring a consultant to conduct a workforce planning study — at $20,000 — “to establish what is the proper level of staffing based on programs,” and creating a new fund — at $100,000 —  that would “provide a limited source of funds to complete projects which cannot be reasonably worked into a 35-hour work week.”

Councilmember Michelle Dotsch also offered a separate amendment that would reduce funds allocated for salaries and benefits by 10%, but give the city administration responsibility for determining where those cuts would be made. Dotsch estimated that her proposal would save $2.5 million in 2025 and $2.69 million in 2026, based on the strategic outlook general fund expenditures in the mayor’s proposed budget. “This amendment intentionally does not specify staffing/programmatic reductions that would be necessary as a result of this amendment,” Dotsch said. “Rather, those reductions would be best determined by the administration.”

After Dotsch presented her proposal, Paine asked Acting Finance Director Dunscombe how such a 10% reduction would be implemented. Dunscombe replied that she viewed it as setting a target “for us to be able to come back to council with program reductions or eliminations, still using the priority-based budget concept, and we would be able to tell you, or propose to you another staff recommendation that you would be able to vote on if what, whether or not that was a service that you wanted to see a decrease in the number was a target.” She also said that the 2025 budget savings under Dotsch’s proposal would likely be closer to $2.3 million, with additional details factored in.

One by one, the city’s department directors provided their perspectives on the idea of a 10% reduction — which would come on top of earlier cuts the departments have made as part of the current budget process. Parks, Recreation and Human Service Director Angie Feser said one of the likely places her department would have to cut back would be parks maintenance, which would mean no downtown lights, a reduction in collection of litter and trash on Main Street, closing restrooms at Olympic Beach, Brackett’s Landing North and possibly Civic Park, and bringing in portable toilets instead. Response to graffiti, which occurs several times a week, would also be slower. “Our parks and our downtown system would look very different, and I think people would feel less safe here and less comfortable, and I think that would impact our economic development,” she said.

Community, Culture and Economic Development Director Todd Tatum said an additional 10% cut would further reduce his ability “to get any strategic work done,” especially in the areas of business attraction and retention. He also shared his perspective of being in a former job that went through significant staff reductions and that it took several years for the department to recover.

Acting Public Works and Utilities Director Phil Williams added that the discussion about employee staff reductions “has taken the morale of my department — and as I talked to our other directors, I think they would say the same thing — it’s just taken a precipitous nose dive.”

Both Williams and Acting Planning and Development Director Shane Hope asked the council if there would be a way to avoid such drastic cuts prior to looking at other options, pointing to council discussions about an interfund loan along with a possible future levy lid lift as ways to shore up the city’s budget.

“Please take to heart everything they’ve said since the subject did come up,” Rosen added. “I don’t think Director Williams overstated the impact on staff. The service impacts will be significant and felt throughout, right? Permits will be take longer. Business licenses will take longer, code enforcement, snow, property damage, if a pipe breaks on the streets… This is going to impact everything. It doesn’t provide backup when people are on vacation or sick, so there’s no potential redundancy. City Hall will probably not have a receptionist. So it goes on.”

Speaking to the directors’ suggestions about other ways to address the shortfall, Council President Vivian Olson noted that the $7 million in interfund borrowing the city has proposed must be paid back within three years. “$7 million is a lot of money, and to pay it back in three years means that you have that revenue,” she said, pointing also to the uncertainty of other options that have been proposed for raising funds.

Councilmembers discussed the advantages and disadvantages of both Paine’s and Dotsch’s approaches. Paine allowed that her proposal would have to be negotiated with the city’s various labor groups, and thus wouldn’t take effect immediately. Because Dotsch’s proposed 10% cut would involve layoffs rather than reductions in hours, negotiations wouldn’t be required.

Councilmember Jenna Nand spoke favorably about Paine’s proposals, stating they “would give our city workforce, the directors and the council time and leeway to handle the fiscal crisis,” and to “examine how to restructure our workforce and make things work more efficiently without having to try to accomplish it within a two- to three-month period.”

Olson said that while she found Paine’s proposals “intriguing,” the across-the-board 35-hour work week “doesn’t honor the prioritization of what the community really wants us to be delivering on, and it will short change all the programs because there’s less manpower going into all the programs.”

Noting that Chen had proposed an amendment last week to reduce city staff to a 32-hour work week, councilmembers decided to postpone further discussion on all proposed staff reduction amendments to Nov. 26.

In the spirit of ensuring that the council first addressed budget savings before adding expenditures, Nand had proposed that the group consider amendments that cut expenses first. And during the evening, councilmembers did approve reductions to council training and the mayor’s travel. But when Paine made a motion to approve $20,000 for her proposed workforce planning study, Nand pointed out that so far the council had only come up with $7,800 in savings. So Paine’s proposal for a study was also tabled until Nov. 26.

Also tabled until next week was a proposal from Paine to reinstate the Edmonds Police Department’s community engagement/crime prevention officer position, which had been proposed for elimination.

The council finished the evening by going through several staff-proposed amendments. One of them was a correction from Acting Finance Director Dunscombe regarding the reinstatement of dollars in 2026 allocated to fund the arts and culture manager position — currently held by Frances Chapin. Chapin is retiring and her position would be left unfilled in 2025, but Dunscombe explained that it should have been included in the 2026 budget. However, a majority of councilmembers reasoned that since the position is being left vacant, it should remain that way for now — with the idea of revisiting is mid-way through 2025.

The council didn’t get through all of the remaining proposed budget amendments before the meeting ended Tuesday night, but another special meeting has been scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21 to continue discussing those that weren’t postponed to the Nov. 26 meeting.

Also during the Tuesday business meeting, the council heard a report on the transportation element of Edmonds’ 2024 Comprehensive Plan update. The plan is focused on creating a multimodal transportation system aimed at meeting both current and future transportation needs. The council at its Nov. 4 meeting approved the preferred growth alternative as part of the Comprehensive Plan future land use discussion. Next steps include the development of a comprehensive list of transportation projects with preliminary cost estimates. A financial plan detailing project funding will follow, with the final transportation plan expected to be completed by early December 2024.

A proposal to discuss recommendations for the city’s prosecuting attorney services, originally scheduled on Tuesday’s agenda, will occur during a future meeting.

— By Teresa Wippel