Mountlake Terrace residents could soon vote on a levy lid lift that would raise property taxes in Mountlake Terrace.
The City Council discussed the option at Tuesday night’s regular meeting.
The levy lid lift recommended by staff would raise property taxes by $0.70 per $1,000 of assessed property value, eventually lowering to $0.25 after four years. That would be $245 for a $350,000 house in the first four years and $87.50 after that.
That money would go into funding ongoing rent at the Interim City Hal, rebuilding the reserve fund and maintaining parks and recreation services, including operation of the swimming pool.
The $0.25 that would not go away after four years would be the portion funding parks and recreation. It would stay until a Metropolitan Park District is created to keep funding specifically directed at parks.
If the levy lid lift goes on the ballot, it will need a simple majority to pass, or 50 percent of votes.
The levy lid lift proposal comes after three previous capital bond measures failed to reach the required 60 percent threshold for approval. Those bills were in April 2012 and April 2013. During voting season for both of those bills, the city emphasized they didn’t have the funding to rent the interim city hall space at the Redstone Corporate Center II beyond July 2014.
There was no new source of income in 2015 and no lowered expenditures, which brought down the reserve funds. The same is true for the beginning of 2016.
Interim City Manager Scott Hugill said these issues are staff’s fault. Former City Manager John Caulfield had recommended getting something to voters in 2014 so the city could start off 2015 knowing what their resources would be.
But city staff never brought the question to City Council in 2014.
“We lost sight of John’s guidance. Really, that’s staff’s fault. We did not bring you financial updates as frequently as we had in the past so you did not see what was developing,” Hugill said. “But with no new revenues to pay the rent in 2015 and no reduction in expenditures to off-set it, we brought down the fund balance.”
Councilwoman Laura Sonmore is upset at the situation.
“We went backwards. We went backwards. This is a temporary fix. We still have to go out for a city hall and we still have to go out for the Pavilion. I’m upset about this state that we’re in,” Sonmore said. “If the $0.70 lift doesn’t pass we’ll be in a world of hurt. Right now I don’t see any other option than for us to put up this lid lift and get off our butts and do our job.”
Councilman Bryan Wahl also has concerns about the levy lid lift.
“The concern is the temporary fix relies on the fact that we will have to come back to the ballot again for a city hall,” Wahl said. “My concern is by putting this on the ballot, we could lose the support we need for a city hall in a timely manner.”
Wahl also has concerns about making cuts to expenditures, knowing that they will need to prepare a two-year budget without knowing if a levy lid lift will pass and knowing voters will expect part of the levy lid lift to go away.
As of last month, the city has spent a total of $2.7 million to rent the Interim city hall space. The fund balance has been brought down to almost nothing in two years.
The city moved out of the old city hall building in 2012 after a ceiling fell in with asbestos.
“It cost I believe $50,000 to $55,000 to clean up the asbestos,” Mayor Pro Tem Rick Ryan said. “It had reached its life.”
The top priority is funding rent for the interim city hall. Second is building up the reserve funds. Third is money for parks. City Council will ultimately decide how much the levy lid lift would be, and could opt to do a $0.45 levy lid lift if they decided not to fund parks.
Those discussions will happen over the next few months.
The city is in a lease contract with Redstone.
Also on Tuesday night, the meeting began with a moment of silence was held to remember Cheryl DeBoer, whose body was found on Sunday afternoon.
Councilwoman Sonmore went to high school with DeBoer. She was with volunteers searching for DeBoer on Saturday.
“There’s been an outpouring of support for her especially from our class,” Sonmore said. “People are extremely scared even though police have released a report saying they have no reason to be. I have had people call me at work saying they will never walk down Mountlake Terrace again and I assured them I hope this is just an incident that won’t affect our city. I know the city is quite shaken from it but I believe our police department will find justice in this.”
–By Natalie Covate
Don’t worry tax payers in MLT, the story about the budget will change again in a month. I have been following the budget saga in the city and it seems Mr. Hugill comes up with excuse after excuse why the budget is so messed up. Read up on the meeting minutes people. One minute Mr. Hugill says the fire department contract is the reason why the city is in the red. The next minute we here the reason is because the city has over estimated their revenue and forced to draw down on their reserves since 2008. Now we here its not the result the fire department, because we had options to pay that bill that weren’t shared with council, or drawing down on reserves. Now it’s because the city can’t afford their luxury accommodations. Mr. Hugill says the city new this in 2012 that it couldn’t afford rent through June of 2014. Please riddle me this batman, if that was the case, why did Mr. Hugill, who was in charge, sign a 5 year extension back in December of 2013 with no opt out clause? Are you kidding me? Mr. Hugill says “staff” is to blame. Really? I see one common denominator that has had their fingers in this since day one. Look in the mirror Mr. Hugill and you will find the blame. I wonder if our council are asking these same questions……..
Before the city comes to voters with a proposal to raise the average homeowners property taxes a whopping $245 per year, they should get their numbers straight concerning the General Fund. Some folks might want to do the math to understand the situation rather than accept the City’s routinely inaccurate representations.
They could start by reconciling the chart presented in the MLTNEWS story of February 19th with the city’s published budget for 2015 and 2016. The chart in the article doesn’t correspond to any of the numbers in that budget. Most notably, “the sky is falling” narrative in the story relies on the large gap between revenues and expenses in 2015 and 2016. That in turn relies on a dramatic decline in revenue of over $1 million between 2014 and 2015.
2015 is now history, yet nothing in the public record has previously suggested actual revenues were so much short of projections. According to the city budget, we are no longer in a recession, yet our revenue supposedly declined by a greater percentage and a greater dollar amount from 2014 to 2015 than from 2008 to 2009. Are we to believe that city staff and council just suddenly realized this on the 19th of February? Some clarification is in order, in terms normal people (voters) can understand.
Mr. Hugill can honorably fall on his sword, but he doesn’t make policy any more than previous unelected city managers did. If the council which has overseen our fiscal descent wants to close an increasingly large credibility gap, they are the ones that need to look in the mirror.