Federal Way mayor delivers city budget proposal

Published 6:23 pm Tuesday, October 14, 2014

No layoffs, no cuts and new hires.

Federal Way Mayor Jim Ferrell delivered a structurally balanced budget proposal to City Council on Oct. 7. It’s one that promises to restore the city after many lean years sparked by the Great Recession.

“For the first time in well over a decade, if not more, ongoing operations are now funded, all of them are now funded by ongoing revenues, meaning there is no use of one-time dollars to balance the budget,” Ferrell said at the Council meeting. “This is historic for the budget document.”

The city’s biennial budget reflects $107.6 million with $42.3 million in the General Fund for 2015 and $106.4 million with $45 million in the General Fund for 2016.

Giving much credit to Finance Director Ade’ Ariwoola, Ferrell said he was able to accomplish one of his initial goals as mayor with this budget: Give union and non-union represented city employees a cost of living raise.

“Where city services interact with the public, it’s on a real need basis, so we have been operating on an incredibly lean manner for the past few years and one of the challenges I had when I came on was there had not been a cost of living increase for city employees for six years, and so that’s one of the first things we did,” Ferrell said in an interview, noting that human capital and institutional knowledge are invaluable.

With personnel eating up about 75 percent of operating costs, Ferrell said some of the challenges with the budget included juggling health insurance costs with the limited growth in tax revenue.

Between 2008 and 2012, the city’s workforce decreased from 353.35 full-time employees to 278.4. But this biennial budget considers the 10.32 additional full-time employees from the adjusted 2014 budget with several other additions, bringing the total number of full-time employees to 322.2.

“We’re in the process of putting the meat back on the bones,” Ferrell said.

This budget would allow the Federal Way Police Department to add five officers to the 160-person staff through a Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grant, which will pay 60 percent of four officers’ pay for three years. The department would also receive three new patrol cars.

“The priority of city government is to protect its people and we want to make sure that we get to service levels in which that promise is fulfilled,” Ferrell said. “The philosophy is this: Cops on the street, supervisors in the field. And that’s important, we don’t need people back here at headquarters or City Hall. We need people on the street.”

Ferrell said it’s especially important that the units changed their approach to be more proactive, stating the police substation in the north part of town is an example.

“I’ve asked the chief and he’s delivered on a plan for greater enforcement and emphasis on the north sector where we’ve had some of the violent crime in our community,” he said. “The whole focus of several of our units has changed to be proactive and putting more officers there, with the addition of the COPS grant, really allows us to go in a much more proactive mode.”

The addition would top the commissioned officers at 131 and “we haven’t been in the 130s for quite some time,” Ferrell said.

The biennial budget also incorporates the salary of newly hired Tim Johnson, the Economic Development director and his supporting staff, and the future executive director of the Performing Arts and Conference Center. It recognizes the three full-time employees in the building and planning divisions who were added in 2014 and $200,000 for specialized inspection and plan review in the Community Development Department.

Public Works would receive a new development services manager, a street systems manager, a surface water management inspector and maintenance worker. The budget also calls for a snow and ice brine production and storage facility, which would improve snow removal in the city.

The City Attorney’s Office would be restructured to include a domestic violence advocacy service while the Finance Department would get another full-time employee for various services. And the City Clerk’s Office would bring their full-time employees up to 2.5 from 1.8.

If adopted, the mayor’s budget proposal would help out parks maintenance crews, who are responsible for maintaining more than 30 of the city’s parks.

In partnership with Federal Way Public Schools, the mayor also distributed $700,000 toward Lakota Park at Lakota Middle School in this budget.

“We found an additional $300,000 for Lakota Park and there was already $391,000 leftover from the last budget for development at Lakota Park,” Ferrell said.

According to a city news release, earlier plans to invest in the park by the city and the school district — the park’s co-manager and single biggest park user — were delayed by the Great Recession.

“So it’s really rewarding to say no new taxes, no layoffs and, in fact, we’re adding programs,” Ferrell said.

This budget reiterates the one-time $221,000 deal with King County to keep the Federal Way Public Health Center open temporarily, as well as $2 million for a South 352nd Street improvement project. Nearly $300,000 is slated for new chairs, mattresses and carpeting at Dumas Bay Centre and $15,000 for the Utility Box art project that the Federal Way Arts Commission presented in June.

And after all is funded, the budget proposal still leaves $9 million a year in surplus, which would go in reserve.

In June, the City Council established a policy that set goals for each fund, which ensured each fund has a healthy reserve requirement and that balances above those levels would be available to invest in “essential services.”

A healthy reserve of 17 percent would equate to $7.18 million in 2015 and $7.66 million in 2016. The projected $9 million exceeds requirements, the mayor pointed out at the meeting.

Ferrell said with the help of Ariwoola, the budget proposal is transparent and clear.

“I think you’ve got a special responsibility to make sure that you’re intellectually honest and that money that’s being collected is going there and that’s a public trust issue,” he said.

Ferrell said they’ve eliminated inter-fund transfers, health insurance will be tracked separately and the Traffic Safety Photo Enforcement fund will continue to be maintained as a separate fund, as well as the Utility and Prop. 1 funds.

“The positions that are funded as a result of that come directly from those funds and that has really streamlined the process,” Ferrell said.

The City Council will attend several budget work studies, which are open to the public, before they vote on a biennial budget on Dec. 2.

The upcoming meetings will feature presentations of departmental budgets by directors and be open to public comment.

The proposed 2015-2016 budget and the budget meeting calendar are available at www.cityoffederalway.com/budget.