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POSTED: Monday, Oct. 27, 2008

Bellingham mayor's budget would eliminate 13 vacant jobs

Tight spending plan cuts jobs but adds police, other positions

BELLINGHAM - Flattening revenues and severely declining real estate taxes mean a smaller budget proposal from Mayor Dan Pike for this next year, compared to the 2008 adopted budget.

About 13 vacant staff positions are being eliminated from the budget, which totals $281.5 million. That's a decrease of about $12.6 million from the 2008 budget, which was $294.1 million,

The city administration was not able to close the budget gap in the city's reserve; the proposed $7.7 million reserve doesn't meet the council's 12 percent reserve goal.

"The message that we're trying to get out there is that the situation is manageable, but it's challenging," Pike said. "The bottom line is the city's budget trend is going down."

However, the budget has some additions, too.

In bad economic times, cities see an increase in crime, said Chief Administrative Officer David Webster, so the mayor is proposing to create a four-member neighborhood anti-crime team in the Police Department. The team will be "project-oriented" and focus on crimes and nuisances in the neighborhoods, such as a rash of vehicle prowls. Pike said the police department has been at 1997 staffing levels, despite the growing population and geography.

Nearly two positions are being budgeted for the city's new Public Development Authority initiative, which will be the city's real estate development arm for parcels and properties throughout the city. The mayor also wants to set aside $150,000 for Lake Whatcom initiatives, which so far are unspecified.

Waterfront planning would also get a boost, with a total of $764,000 for planning and execution, including 1.5 full-time equivalent positions. That is a decrease of one position from 2008.

However, the city is reducing human services grants to the community by about 10 percent, Pike said. And funding of economic development grants also is being reduced.

Some of that is out of the city's hands, Webster said, and the local government must look back to Washington, D.C., where President Bush's administration cut the Community Block Development Grant program. That could change with a new president, he said.

Pike said the focus on the budget was to be conservative, and to provide something for the council to consider that was "defensible."

He believes that the previous city administration's figures of about a 4.5 percent increase in revenues through 2013 were a bit "optimistic."

Since then, the city has revised those revenue projections down, predicting that sales tax, and more specifically business & occupation taxes, would be flat.

With ever-increasing costs of services, city departments were asked to pare down their budgets. That's happened, Pike said.

The mayor's budget still contains a proposal to not take advantage of a state-law-allowed 1 percent increase in property taxes, though - like the 2009 budget itself - the City Council must still make a decision on that proposal.

The council will do work sessions on the budget through November, and are scheduled to vote on it in mid-December.