Building on the groundswell of opposition to a possible sale of city property to help address the City of Edmonds’ $21 million budget deficit, a group of residents has launched Keep Edmonds Vibrant.

Group leaders hosted a initial meeting Wednesday night at the Edmonds Library, the first of several planned so that community members can contribute their ideas for addressing the city’s budget crunch. About 30 people attended Wednesday’s event, which included an overview of the group’s “very, very preliminary concept of a citywide coaltion of various stakeholders…all committed to advocating for the continued thriving of this city,” co-organizer Adel Sefrioui said.

The seed for Keep Edmonds Vibrant was planted a few weeks ago, Sefrioui said, “when we heard that the city was entertaining the idea of possibly selling some of its assets as a way to help fix or address its budget crisis. And we looked at each other and said, ‘Whoa, this is the exact opposite of what we think. We think we should be finding new sources of revenue so that we can address structural problems in our budget for the long term. This approach, we thought, was short-term patch — that once the money goes away, well then we’re left with nothing, and you still have a structural mess on our hands.”

Among the properties listed during a recent city council meeting as being considered for future sale were Hummingbird Hill Park, the Frances Anderson Center, the Wade James Theater and the Meadowdale Clubhouse. Organizers created an online petition, “and within 72 hours, it kind of went viral, and we had 7,000 emails sent to councilmembers and the mayor,” Sefrioui said.

A large group of residents crowded into the council chambers April 1 to protest the idea. Then the city council, during its April 15 work session, announced it would be considering a proposal at its April 21 meeting to drop consideration of selling those properties as part of its 2025 Comprehensive Plan update process.

“But our position remains that these assets will always be on the chopping block, always, unless we address the structural issues in our budget, which requires sustained engagement and requires difficult conversations,” Sefrioui told the group Wednesday night. “So our goals as an organization in the immediate term are to identify and pursue specific policy changes that will sustain revenue, and then to identify and advocate for a specific levy amount.”

Sefrioui, who was on the leadership team for the 2024 “ESD Yes for Kids” school levy campaign, was joined Wednesday night by two other Keep Edmonds Vibrant founders — Elise Hill and Mackey Guenther. The group’s fourth founder, Erik Houser, was unable to attend.

The first step during Wednesday’s meeting was for Sefrioui to outline the budget shortfall facing the city that has prompted elected officials to look at ways to raise revenue, and the recommendations of a Blue Ribbon Panel formed by Mayor Mike Rosen to address strategies to address the city’s financial crisis.

While city leaders have implemented some budget cuts already, including staff reductions and a hiring freeze on employees, and are also looking at other options such as deferred maintenance, “they’re not long-term solutions,” Sefrioui said. He shared a slide indicating that Edmonds has 100 fewer employees than comparable-sized cities such as Lynnwood and Puayllup.

“So what we’re saying is, do we want to be at bottom of the barrel in terms of the bare-bones operation, or do we want to continue to thrive and be a place that attracts new families?” he asked. “When we say we need to continue cutting further, where are you going to cut from? We’re already at the bottom of the barrel.”

He also noted that the city is facing a backlog of deferred maintenance, with city-owned buildings in fair-poor or poor-critical condition, according to a recent study. (See graphic below.) “So there’s the idea that we should keep kicking that can down the road until something falls on someone’s head. We don’t think that’s an option that’s appropriate,” he added.

Sefrioui agreed it’s important for the city to cut inefficient spending. “But we also need to generate more revenue,” he said.

The idea behind the initial Wednesday gathering, and for future Keep Edmonds Vibrant meetings (dates and locations are still to be determined) is this, he said: “We should put all the ideas on the table. We’re going to let the people decide. What do they want? Do we want more traffic cameras? Do we want a lot more development, where we have developers paying property taxes instead of us? Do we want to raise sales tax a little bit. These are all options.”

To “right-size” any proposals for generating revenue and cutting expenses in Edmonds, “we must first right-size the city budget,” Sefrioui said. But the first step is for residents to agree “on what kind of Edmonds we desire: both now and in the future.” That leads to an essential question: How much does it cost “to run a thriving and vibrant Edmonds.”

Organization co-founder Elise Hill then asked those attending to break into three groups to discuss three questions, with seven minutes allocated to each:

What makes Edmonds special/what do I love about it?

Where can Edmonds improve?

What am I not willing to give up (e.g. non-negotiables)?

During the group breakouts, participants wrote the answers to these questions on Post-It notes, which were attached to the library conference room window. Answers to what makes Edmonds special ranged from waterfront and mountain views, to light rail access, to parks, to diversity of people, to safety, to being walkable and bikeable, to its commitment to the arts. Areas for improvement — many of which were directed at city government — included words like proactive, strategic, vision, communication, financial management, personal property taxes, parking, transparency, city website, community engagement, better leveraging volunteers, and charging market rate for programs and services.

When is came to the question, “What am I not willing to give up?” answers included neighborhoods, “a real downtown,” the environment, parks, public safety, the Frances Anderson Center, the Edmonds Theater, the Edmonds Arts Festival and “the charm.”

As for next steps, Sefrioui said the organizers will take the group’s responses and populate them into a survey “that will then go out to hundreds, if not thousands, of residents in Edmonds. What’s important is to hear what everybody thinks.” He asked those attending to spread the word about the survey, once completed, to their own network of contacts.

Survey feedback will help develop priorities for addressing ways to raise revenue for the city, he explained. Then the Keep Edmonds Vibrant group plans to engage the city in determining what officials already explored, to determine what’s feasible and what isn’t.

“And then at the very, very end, our goal is to present that to [the city] council,” Sefrioui said. “This is what approximately this many people thought, this is what they’re comfortable with, and this is what we can choose. Whether they [the councilmembers] agree, that’s up to them, but the hope is that everybody’s voices are heard. And the truth is, is what you believe individually may not be what everybody else believes and that’s OK. That’s part of democracy.”

You can see the April 16 PowerPoint presentation here.