Public safety, health and quality of life proposed as top priorities for Council’s 2009 budget deliberations

Executive directed to examine specific budget areas for efficiencies

Challenged with a projected $70 million shortfall in the general fund, members of the budget leadership team of the Metropolitan King County Council today declared public safety, health and quality of life to be their first priorities for funding in a 2009 County budget, and identified some preliminary areas for budgetary efficiency.

“The Council is focused on tackling this giant general fund deficit in a way that minimizes the pain for citizens and cuts to critical services they rely on,” said Councilmember Larry Phillips, Chair of the 2009 Budget Review and Adoption Committee. “As this motion establishes, with a $70 million budget deficit, it’s more important than ever to prioritize, identify core services, and think creatively about how to close the gap.”

“The County faces a significant budget challenge in 2009, and we must prioritize core services,” said Councilmember Bob Ferguson, chair of the Operating Budget, Fiscal Management and Select Issues Committee. “This legislation identifies ways the County can protect funding for public safety and health and preserve our citizen’s quality of life.”

“King County has an obligation to provide local government services to those who live outside of incorporated cities,” said Councilmember Kathy Lambert, who represents District 3 in northeast King County. “For 368,000 citizens, we are their city council and the direct provider of police, roads and land-use services. After hearing from many of our residents in unincorporated areas, I am committed to ensuring our budget puts a priority on funding adequate service levels to protect public safety and health for those who depend on King County.”

“Tough budget times do not allow us to go easy on criminal activity,” said Councilmember Jane Hague, Vice-Chair of the Capital Budget Committee. “It is essential to make public safety the highest priority.”

Under a proposed motion introduced today by Councilmembers Phillips, Ferguson, Lambert and Hague, the Council would call upon the County Executive to examine the following specific areas in his budget proposal:

• Annexations: Refocusing the $8 million in reserves that remain of funds set aside for the King County Annexation Initiative to those potential annexation areas that are actively being considered by local cities and redirecting remaining funds towards public safety services in the urban unincorporated areas After four years and more than $2 million in operations and staffing costs, only two of the largest urban unincorporated areas have successfully annexed, resulting in only minimal savings to the County.

• Property Holdings: Evaluation of all real property owned by the general fund for the feasibility of selling them.

• Capital Project Prioritization: Analyze all County capital improvement projects and the need for continuing with them in relation to the provision of core County services.

• Animal Welfare: Ensure that the proposed 2009 budget conforms to the operational master plan for the provision of sustainable and timely humane animal welfare services by King County and partner agencies.

• Fees: Highlight any fees for service that return less to the County than the cost of providing that service.

• Business Relations and Economic Development (BRED): Examine those services of this office that do not pay for themselves from revenues outside the general fund.

• Jail Beds: Balance the number of inmates in King County jails who are being held by the State with the needs of local cities, with the ultimate goal of maximizing the value of taxpayer dollars by increasing the number of spaces available to cities contracting with the county.

• Unfunded State Mandates: Provide a list of all unfunded mandates from the state of Washington that continue to shift the financial burden to county governments, and what it now costs the County to provide them, so that the Council as part of its budget review can develop strategies for challenging or eliminating them.

• Internal Services: Enable separately-elected officials to determine what level of overhead services they wish to pay for and receive, such as janitorial services, fleet maintenance or computer support, in order to free up more of their budgets toward public services, such as police patrols.

The proposed motion sets the Council’s intent through its budget deliberations to:

• Declare the protection of public safety, health and enhancing the quality of life to be its top priority, and that before reducing funding in those areas it would look first to reduce or eliminate services deemed non-essential and use a prudent portion of existing reserves to preserve essential services in the short term,

• Encourage County government to become more entrepreneurial and seek partnerships with both public and private sector partners that allow the county to leverage additional resources for funding essential services, and

• Develop a sustainable budget in the long term by looking beyond departmental cuts and focusing on policy and programmatic changes that would make a difference in the County’s overall costs of doing business.

The proposed motion also calls upon the Governor and state Legislature to permanently address the structural funding gap facing all counties in Washington state by authorizing expanded types of revenues for local jurisdictions that provide for sufficient growth to meet rising annual costs and have the flexibility of helping to fund basic public services.

The motion was referred to both the Capital Budget Committee and the Operating Budget Committee, which are scheduled to consider it at a special joint meeting this Wednesday, July 30 for action by the full Council on August 4.

The County Executive is scheduled to transmit his 2009 Executive Proposed Budget to the Council on October 13.