SPOKANE VALLEY, Wash. – The Spokane Valley City Council was presented their 2025 budget and discussed concerns, including expenses projected to outpace revenues next year.
Revenues are only estimated to increase 1.17% while expenses are set to rise more than 6.3% next year.
Another issue is that sales tax actually saw a decrease this year. Chelsie Taylor the Finance Director with the city of Spokane Valley said sales tax is the largest driver in revenue to their general fund, which would create problems.
“This is something I am watching very closely as about 60% of our general fund comes from sales tax, so I’m interested to see how that is progressing through this year,” Taylor said.
With only a $2,000 difference between projected revenues and expenses as well as desire from the community for more public safety and homeless services, the cities resources are stretched thin.
“The margin of recurring revenues over expenses is very slim. It wouldn’t take much to throw us out of balance there,” Taylor said.
The city already vacated funding from three open positions to save over $200,000 but are proposing to add a coordinator position for public safety.
The 1.5 million one time expenses is for replacement of public safety vehicles and was supposed to be included in the recurring budget. With there not being enough funds in the recurring fund, they had to transfer that spending into ‘one time expenses’.
The city’s spending on public safety is set to increase by nearly 14%, but that will come at a cost to other departments.
“The way that we are able to make this happen is by reducing the 40% of everything not public safety related so this is another example of almost a 5 percent reduction in all other departments,” said John Hohman, Spokane Valley City Manager.
Taylor added that nothing in this budget is final, and there will be three public hearings for the public to comment on this budget and bring their concerns. The first will take place on Sept. 17.
