SPOKANE, Wash. – Once the time came for council members to speak about Spokane’s proposed 2024 budget, Council Member Michael Cathcart was straight to the point.
“I don’t love this budget,” he opened, “at all.”
As a “first-class city” under Washington law, Spokane has to present a balanced budget to the state auditor before the first of the year. With Council President Lori Kinnear and Council Member Ryan Oelrich leaving on Tuesday, Monday night’s meeting was the final chance this iteration of the council had to pass the budget.
“We wanted to start earlier, way back when, in January, that’s what other cities do,” Kinnear said. “It gives you a bigger picture, it gives you a head start so you’re not scrambling at the last minute.”
One of the concerns surrounding the budget was filling a reported $20 million hole in the city’s general fund. While the budget is required to be balanced by state law, there are still some issues in the long-run.
The budget will be inherited by Lisa Brown in her first year as Mayor, and she’ll get a much larger say in future budget processes, which the council hopes will go smoother than the budget process in 2024.
“It’s easy to say this budget balances, technically legally it does,” Cathcart said. “But it’s not truly sustainable because when you look at next year, it’s no longer balanced and so to me a balanced budget needs to balance over two years or longer and not just over the single year. We need to make that, I think, a requirement.”
