In the next two months, the Edmonds City Council will have some hard choices to make regarding the 2024-2025 biennial city budget. During his Oct. 1 budget address, Mayor Mike Rosen proposed a combination of staff reductions, job furloughs and revenue-generating ideas to close the city’s projected $13 million budget gap in 2025. Rosen has asked city staff to address half that gap with $7 million in budget cuts.

Larry Vogel and Teresa Wippel of My Edmonds News sat down Monday with Rosen and Acting Finance Director Kim Dunscombe to talk about the budget challenges facing the city. We included questions posed by readers in emails to us, as well as reader comments posted on the website. We are publishing the transcript of the interview below, with minor edits for clarity.

Teresa Wippel: We are going to start with budget fundamentals and how we got here. I’ve heard you say that the way we’re funding city government isn’t working, that our revenue options are limited — compared to cities like Lynnwood with more retail — and the 1% property tax cap just isn’t enough to cover our expenses. You’ve also said that we should be operating like a school district, with the city going out to voters on a regular basis for tax levies. But I’ve heard from people who say —  and I know you’ve heard this too — that the problem is spending, it’s not revenue, and that government needs to live within its means and that we’ve hired too many people without revenue to sustain them. From your perspective, what’s the balance when you look at it, and would you agree with people who say we’ve had a spending problem, or would you attribute it to other factors?

Mike Rosen: I think there are many factors. So one — living within your means. Throughout time, you know, council has determined, here are things we want to provide, and the mayor has just, you know, taken to council things we want to provide, and there are costs to that. And those got approved. So over time, these are services that the city added that were part of a conversation. So throughout time we say, ‘Hey, we need this. We’d like this. The population grows. We need more of this. One example would be, council approved the changes on [Highway] 99 and putting the median there. It was decided in terms of the design that it would have plants in it. Well, that now needs maintenance. So part of it is over evolution, sort of adding to what do we want, and then the costs that come with it. Another is, I would challenge, the premise of living within your means or within your revenue stream. So if you have a revenue stream, if you’re on a fixed income and costs go up, then it’s not as if you’re spending more, it’s what you’re spending on is costing more, and that is a huge part of what has faced not just us, but every home in the city and in the country — that the costs go up and in this case, faster than our revenue stream. Another is defining what is our means. So if you live in Lynnwood, they have revenue streams that provide the opportunity to keep up and/or grow, because they have revenue streams that aren’t as fixed in income as as we [Edmonds] are. So each of those is sort of a separate topic, doing more, costing more, having and sort of keeping up with revenue.

Larry Vogel: Could you expand a little bit on what you said. Lynnwood has streams that that keep up and and the stream gets bigger as costs go up?

Mike Rosen: So sales tax, if you have a big retail opportunity right then, especially in a good economy, and people are buying more that revenue [increases]. In addition to that, there are communities like Shoreline and others who have this sort of philosophy of build, right? So let’s get those real estate excise taxes, which help fund infrastructure, and then you have more people who also provide more revenue. So some communities sort of look at that, too, as as an opportunity. Edmonds has not chosen to go down either of those paths. We’ve made decisions in the past that, in some cases, have benefited others and impacted us. Edmonds could have had the property across from Scott’s Bar and Grill, where there is now a Home Depot and a Costco, and the city made the decision we don’t want those in as a part of Edmonds. That’s not who we are. So that revenue stream that is benefiting another city could have benefited us. The city, a long time ago, said we don’t want gambling. Thirty feet away, across the street [from Edmonds] at 99 is a casino. No judgment. But these are decisions the community has made in the past. So our revenue streams have been somewhat restricted. By the state, we’re restricted to the 1% growth on property taxes, and you might recall when the city unbanked [property taxes] several years, the total impact was $700,000. So even in the scheme of growth and keeping up, that isn’t adequate.

Teresa Wippel: Is one of the solutions to have that regular levy lift? School districts go out every two years, or every four years. Is that what you’re thinking might be a permanent fix, or is that a temporary fix? Or do you know yet?

Mike Rosen: I’d like to frame the whole discussion in the context of what is the city we want, what are our priorities and then coming up with sort of a common metric of what does that mean? Because if somebody says, “I want more parks with amenities,” everybody’s going to hear something different. Some people might say that’s a trail. Some people might say it’s an accessible playground. Some people might say it’s a pool. So identifying and coming up with sort of a common vision of “this is the city we want.” What does success look like in some kind of a consensus way? Then what are we willing to pay for? Then there’s service levels, right? So it’s defining the service level and what we’re willing to pay. In my mind, it starts with that: What is the city we want, and then it’s OK, what does that cost? And then how do we find the different means to pay for it? I think we have been inclined to — I hate to say it this way, but — “oh, there’s a shiny thing.” And we’ve created an opportunity to do those things. And I think that’s another contribution to how we got here.

Larry Vogel: You’re saying that defining the city that we want and what it’s going to cost would come before saying, “How much money have we got? What can we do with it?”

Mike Rosen: Yes, in in a perfect world, but sadly, we’re not there. We have to move in a parallel course. So the roof is leaking. You’ve got to fix the roof. You might have wanted to do a remodel, might have wanted to move, might have wanted to do landscaping. But you need a place to sleep, to stay dry. So then there’s, what’s next? What are our plans, and what is that future? And here’s how much money I have if there’s a gap, or if I can anticipate the cost of that gap going up. How do I cover that gap? We absolutely,  positively need is to create a sustainable model, in my opinion. Or otherwise we’re just going to be running laps and doing this over and over and over again. But the roof is leaking, so we’ve gotta fix the roof at the same time, start moving down this path so we never have to do this again.

One possible way is — because this is going to take a while —  we might have to go out to the community to keep up because we don’t have other revenue streams yet to rely on. So that’s the parallel track we’re working on. I think I put 28 [ideas for revenue generation] in front of council. That list is now up to 41 ideas.  What are the other ways we can now find different kinds of revenue streams. In my company, when we went through really hard economic times, I was like, we’re not going to let this happen. So one [model] was to diversify by the services that we offered. Another model was to diversify by the clients we have, and never let one client become more than a specific percentage. Another one was to just diversify by the sectors that we served, and another was to diversify geographically. So if any one of those took a hit, we still had this broad base of security, and during one of the worst economic times that we had, we had the best year we ever had. So in my mind, it’s a similar solution. We [the city] can’t have too many eggs in too few baskets.

Larry Vogel: I’d like to ask something about staff cuts. Losing your job is really, really painful, and I’m wondering if any thought might be given — and I realize it’s probably more of a council decision — to finding ways to redeploy people and perhaps recoup that through longer furloughs, maybe and spread the pain in that way, rather than saying you’re going to lose your job? I’m sorry — it’s a painful question.

Mike Rosen: It’s an appropriate question. These are people who chose a profession, then they chose to do it in government. Then they chose to do that here in Edmonds. They had so many options to make way more money and not live in this kind of risk or under this kind of pressure, under these kinds of spotlights. They had options, and they chose this place. One of our guys who runs the water system…he was all about, “I serve the people of this community. I want to make sure they get fresh water, that they can trust their water, and if something happens in the middle of the night, it’s my job to make sure it’s fixed.” I mean, that is what he is here to do. So it is who they [the employees] are and that they are here to serve. And then the city is in this position of saying, “We’re in this position, and I’m sorry,” and some of this could have been prevented. It is horrible and to live in this place for as long as they have, because of how our budget process works. So the uncertainty is worse than the knowing in many cases.

So to your point, part of the whole process of doing the budget by priorities — when we get this down at some point — that’s one way to prevent this, right? Because we would be making sure that we are staffing at the appropriate levels to do the appropriate things, because this is what the community has come together to say, “This is what is really, really important to us.”  So now we are in this position of a financial crisis, and we do have the benefit of this first sort of phase into budget by priorities. So when you look at this again — terms that I did not invent — but essential services, we could just shut down the parks, because that’s not an essential service. Now, in terms of quality of life, and when you look at what is important to people, right? You saw saw in the survey, quality of life is way up there. It’s huge on why people pick this city. And I believe everybody who lives here, chooses this place, and a lot is about that quality of life. So there’s that balance of essential services and quality of life.

We used the surveys, and we used the rankings and each of the directors had to sit down and do it, and then we made our recommendations, and now it’s up to council to make theirs, so it’s tough. There isn’t a director here who won’t say their their heart and their programs are getting ripped.

Larry Vogel: We’ll shift gears over to my favorite topics, balance sheets. That one over on page 20 of the budget book. You had said in your presentation how we’re going to start building our reserves back up in 2027 and I look at these numbers, and it looks like we’re going to start being insolvent in 2027. What is this assuming and what is it not? Is this assuming that we’re going to go with the RFA [regional fire authority] or the city’s going to keep [the SCF fire contract] money? Is it assuming a levy lift? Is it assuming a big levy lift?

Mike Rosen: We have to provide a balanced budget, right? That’s the law. So when we look at 2026, council has not yet said, “Yes, we’re going to recommend annexation {into the RFA}.” They have indicated, if we do annexation, we will keep the $6 million but those are two decisions that aren’t formally made. The third variable is, the public gets a say in that one, and they may say yes or no [to the annexation]. But we have to give you a balanced budget in 2026. The next [issue] is, even if [the answer] is yes to all of that, that doesn’t cover the gap. So that means we need to find a way to cover the gap, which, at this point, currently, we’re recommending a levy lift.

Now, there are lots of assumptions. There are over 40 ideas on revenue generation. We can continue to make different kinds of changes in how government operates. So this is a work in progress. If you’re sailing, here’s the boat, here’s the destination, and the wind comes along and you’re off course, and then you you get back on course, and then a wave comes in, you’re off course, and you get back on course, and you’re constantly course correcting, right? That is what we will do. We will course correct based on better information, a better environment. So we will absolutely be course correcting all the way. Because if we can get there faster, cheaper, better, we’re gonna, but [for] this [budget] we had to make some assumptions. And so in this case, the assumption is that, yes, there would be annexation, yes, the $6 million would cover. Then yes, there would be a levy lift.

And then the idea would be in 2026, we would pay back the loan we gave ourselves in 2025 because we have to get through 2025. So 2025 includes the loan, the internal loan. So then in 2026, if people say yes to the annexation, yes to the levy, then in 2026 we would pay back the 2025 loan. And then we’re recommending that there be a 10-year repayment of the reserves. All this is right now a vision, which, in my opinion, isn’t going to look anything like this when we as we get more information. So we had to start. You’ve got to have a plan. How am I going to get from here to there – and then, based on new information and changing conditions, we course correct.

Kim Dunscombe: It’s an income statement on page 20, and you can see in 2025, we made basic assumptions. We are going to need an interfund loan from the utilities to the tune of $7.5 million. In 2026 we made some even bigger assumptions. We assumed annexation into the RFA, [and] that the voters would say yes. You can see that the property taxes go down from the $15 million in 2025 to the $11.6 million in 2026 — that’s the loss of the EMS tax, property tax.

Then likewise, you can also see revenue will change from goods and services. It’s at $4.1 million in 2025 and it goes down to $2.8 million in 2026 — that’s the loss of the EMS transport revenue.

So those are the two revenue pieces that change when we make the assumption that we annex into the RFA. And then the other obvious, large assumption is that we don’t pay the [South County Fire] contract anymore. So on the expense side, you can see that professional services dropped quite a bit in 2026 from 2025.

Those are the three main things or items that were affected in the income statement with that assumption. With the approval of the RFA, the property tax for the EMS goes away as well as the transport fees.

Teresa Wippel: What are the downsides and the upsides of borrowing from our utility funds?

Kim Dunscombe: The upside is it’s a little less expensive and it’s a little more doable. We’re going to pay the interest just like we would to an outside loan, but we’re going to choose to pay the LGIP [the government investment pool] interest rate.

Mike Rosen: This is where our money sits. So our money is collecting interest, and we’re going to pay the same interest it would be collecting.

Teresa Wippel: Is this the money that the city received from bond proceeds?

Kim Dunscombe: No, bond proceeds are restricted. We cannot use those for lending. The utilities are not allowed to loan that to the general fund. They are restricted. We sold those bonds for capital projects in the water and storm fund. We can’t do anything else with that.

Teresa Wippel: So this is utility money you’re getting from taxpayers, then from utility rates?

Kim Dunscombe: It’s in their fund balance, yeah. And so we did the analysis to make sure that they [the utility] had funding available. We looked at what their reserve requirement would be, and then we also considered the money that the utility would need for the next year’s capital. So I took the analysis a step further to make sure that they had their reserves fully funded, as well as the ability to afford next year’s capital projects.

Larry Vogel: Joe Six Pack looks at this and says, “Wait a minute, there’s these huge negative numbers out there. The mayor said we’re going to start building up our reserves again. How are you going to do that if you’re that deep in the hole?”

Kim Dunscombe: The next year, in 2026, we assume, instead of the levy lid lift — which is what the city really needs to have happen — another interfund loan. So you can see in that same line in revenue, another $5 million loan from the utilities in ’26.

This doesn’t solve our problem. The only way we get out of where we’re at is to either again, do another $7 million drastic cut that we did to propose this budget in ’25 for ’26. This clearly shows that we only have a couple options going forward. This model isn’t sustainable, and that’s exactly what the strategic forecast shows.

Mike Rosen: All that is just validating this. We’ve got to fix it. We can’t do this one year at a time. And to compound it,  you also have seen in my in the presentations, all the things we haven’t been doing and the impact of those things having been kicked down the road and kicked down the road. The maintenance on our buildings, the road maintenance.

Larry Vogel: Let’s talk about how much of a levy lift we would need under various scenarios — single year, multiple year.

Kim Dunscombe: That’s what is the other complicating part about assuming a levy lift in ’26. If we were going to go there in the proposed budget, we would have had to have made a lot of assumptions, and so I figured we could probably do a levy lid lift. So there’s annuals, there’s multi years. You could just get yourself solvent. You could ask for all the other things that the mayor has been saying we aren’t doing. So there were a lot more questions that we needed to have answered to be able to put that into the proposed budget. Honestly, time just ran out on us to be able to answer a lot of those questions, which is why we went with this [interfund] loan scenario. Besides, [this also shows] the public that this isn’t sustainable. We only have a couple options to get ourselves out of [not] being above water and/or cutting our services like we did, to get to ’25. So in 26, that’s why we have the loan there. If we wanted to do a levy lid lift, I think we would need about $9 million to make ourselves solvent. Seven and a half [million] of that would be to pay back the loan, which is what the mayor was talking about earlier today. And the other amount, obviously, is to just fix and get ourselves out of the water in ’26. It doesn’t necessarily set us on some great path going forward.

Teresa Wippel: There has been this ongoing kind of narrative since you appointed the volunteers for the Blue Ribbon Panel, hired [financial consultant] Mike Bailey and all of that, that you you want to just move forward, that you’re not going to point fingers, that no one person or group is responsible for the city’s financial situation. But people are pointing fingers, and they’re asking questions. Can we define this as kind of a long-term problem of not having this process of budgeting by priorities and just kind of going for the bright, shiny things, as you said, or can we say there was really some overspending going on during the Mike Nelson years, for example? Where does the truth lie in all of that?

Mike Rosen: I stand by that. No one thing, no one year, no one person got us to all of this. So I can point to, you know, the state for some of this, I can certainly, you know, council certainly had had a role in this. The mayor had a role in this. I mean, look at the other cities in the state  — to say Mike Nelson caused that? This is something that all cities are going through. Do I believe some of this could have been prevented? Absolutely, absolutely — that that we have been kicking things down the road troubles me. These are huge investments. These are things that that taxpayers have paid for and and we aren’t even maintaining them. That troubles me, that when you invest in something and you know it has ongoing costs, and you don’t sort of build that into the process of what’s the life cost of this decision, that that is preventable, that that you would use one-time money for things that have ongoing costs. So there are decisions that were made. Every year, including this one, [a perfectly balanced] budget was approved that exceeded revenues, and then it was amended further into the hole. Now, some of those [decisions] are, the roof leaks, and sometimes you have to make changes. But man, that trend. So that’s been going on for a while. The not maintaining things has been going on for a long time.

So, yeah, you can point to the council for some of this. You can point to the mayor for some of this. You can point to the city for some, the state for some of this, the county for some of this. And some of it was well intended. Police should have body cameras — probably a really good thing, but those cost money. And then now for the public records requests and going through that, there is a cost to it. The state is considering changing the case loads for defense attorneys that will impact everybody in the state, as the zoning changes will have impacts on our ability to fund the infrastructure needs. Holding us at 1% [property tax] has an impact.

Larry Vogel: Let’s talk about the Regional Fire Authority and the council’s decision to retain that money that the city has been collecting to use for other things. Some people have said it feels like a double tax.

Mike Rosen: So when Kim referenced our utility rates right, restricted funds, and we have other funds that people pay into and they are restricted to a single use. It’s not like, here’s what parks cost. And so in the property tax, we say this is restricted to this. If we close the park, we’re going to rebate, right? It isn’t restricted like that. It isn’t funneled. You pay taxes. Here are our expenses. So one of the expenses you have been paying for is our contract for fire service. It does not change so it wasn’t a restricted fund and I would push back a little on that characterization, that, yes, you are paying taxes and part of the services you’re paying for are that contract. You would have to then argue that every other thing you get has a single stream of money tied to your property tax. The reality, in my opinion, is we have a problem. So if, if we stay on this path that Kim has described in terms of how we just sort of get back to even, this doesn’t get us, you know, on a good path. It just gives us back to even. If that $6 million was refunded, then that ask, that levy lift — it now is going to try to recover that $6 million-plus that we just talked about. The need doesn’t change. So rather than giving it [the $6 million] back to you and coming back in November and saying, “OK now we need that again,” the council is saying, “Let’s take this and then ask, ask residents to help us with the gap.”

This is not a good situation, and it’s not pleasant. We don’t want change but we want things to be better. We have been trying to remind people of the reality of [the 1% property tax] — trying desperately to find revenue streams other than property tax. But the other [reality] is that of each property tax dollar, [the city receives] 14 cents. So when people talk about my property taxes keep going up, it’s because you said you wanted better education, because you wanted regional transportation. But in terms of the city’s impact on that, we are 14 cents on that dollar. And then the same with the sales tax. We’re less than a penny of that 10 and a half cents that you’re paying when you spend $1.

Teresa Wippel: There were 46 unfunded positions listed as part of your budget proposal — were those reflected in the draft budget?

Kim Dunscombe: I own that — just not being clear about the positions that were unfunded. And so I have put together a table of unfunded positions. It actually separates out those that are 100% funded by a general fund, and those that are allocated amongst all the funds. It also separates out vacant positions from those that have somebody in the seat right now, and it shows their salaries and benefits for ’25 and ’26. (See PDF of Excel spreadsheet to see full list.)

Mike Rosen: There is also this [point] — and one can argue it passionately — if they’re [the positions are] are unfunded, why don’t you get them off the org chart — just eliminate them? And it is me who is intentionally resisting that.  We’re going to budget by priorities. We’re headed in a direction to do and fund those things. But it is a reminder of, at some point, the city said they made a conscious decision: This is important work, and we need a person here to do that work. So having that position open and on the org chart says this is what we’re not doing.

And I guess I would take the opportunity to talk about professional services. I’m a fan of professional services, and I’ll tell you why: because sometimes you want somebody who has a real specialty. Mike Bailey [who was brought in as a financial consultant earlier this year] has worked for hundreds of governments all over the country, the national organizations write policies based on his words. Could I afford to have Mike Bailey on staff? Probably not. Can I hire him for for a few hours, exploit the heck out of him and then say, “Now, go away”? Absolutely. That’s a better use of money, better talent, shorter term, not paying for benefits all this time, right? Use them, exploit them, send them on their way. I love professional services,

Kim Dunscombe: May I just add one thing to the unfunding conversation? I don’t want people to now think we can just bring people back. We would have to come to council with a budget amendment and go through a very transparent process to be able to bring those FTE’s back and employ those positions. I don’t want it to seem like we can, just now willy nilly go back and bring people into those seats.

Larry Vogel: Following up on what we were talking about with the positions. In your presentation, you had that  slide where you quoted all sorts of ideas for how we can generate revenue. Can you attach some kind of revenue amount to these ideas, paying for parking part, the usage fees, allowing gambling?

Mike Rosen: No, and in some ways, that was intentional for a number of reasons. One, this whole process of getting this budget done by Oct. 1 was truly a Herculean effort. We have to solve this problem in the short term and long term, and that means on the revenue side, we we cannot save our way out of this. There is no other side to that discussion. We need to find additional revenue streams. [The slide about revenue ideas] was to illustrate, here are some concepts. I know, and I said it at the time, some of these are not going to be popular, and we don’t have to do them all. So now we’re going through the process of looking at them through a number of different lenses and continuing to grow the list, as I shared. One of the lenses is who has authority to make the decision. So like us collecting the credit card fees. We do it in some cases, but not in every case. So I have the authority to do that. [For] other things, it has to go through the council. And for still other things, the voters have to vote on it. We’re going through that because that also would suggest, what could we start now, and what [would be] a process to go through council. Then we’re looking at, there’s sort of the filter of potential revenue. Might this generate a lot of revenue?

What can we do now? What what could be next? What kind of revenue would it be? Might there be ways to mitigate the impact [of revenue generation]? As an example, let’s say we did do parking meters or some kind of parking costs. Residents might say, wait a minute. “I want to  go shopping.” Well, maybe we give them a pass. Maybe residents don’t pay parking, or they get a favorable rate, or something, right? We can mitigate concerns about all sorts of stuff.

So that list [of revenue ideas], it now has columns, and we’re starting to populate the columns. I’ve been talking with council president about creating a work session with council to see what in their mind, if they were to create priorities as a council for us to get you know started on as well. What do they have sort of a willingness to do and try.

Teresa Wippel: There has been an idea floated that the city could save money if it contracted with another agency for police services, like how Shoreline contracts with King County Sheriff’s Office and some other cities in Snohomish County contract with Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office. Is there an advantage to Edmonds having its own police department? And if so, why doesn’t that logic also apply to us having our own fire department?

Mike Rosen: Let me talk about fire first. Did I mention we’re having a cash flow problem? So imagine if we decided we’re gonna rebuild our own fire station. We’ve got to hire people and we’ve got to buy stuff. So let’s say that takes a couple years, if we’re lucky. So now I have to spend money to do those things, to start buying stuff and hiring people and getting all of that ready. While I’m writing those checks, they aren’t doing anything. So I have to still contract [with South County Fire]. So now I’m still paying a contract, and then I have to hire all of these people too and buy all of this stuff, and it’s still going to cost the public more. We can’t do it for what we’re paying now, so I still have this ongoing cash flow problem, but now I just added this huge [expense] — the checkbook is empty. I can’t write the check to do those things, so maybe, if we were to go down that road, and if we could do these, I got to believe that to break even, it’s somewhere like in 30 years from now. So it might make sense at some point. Timing and need maybe line up, but opportunity sure doesn’t in the scheme of having the ability to pay for it.

The concept [of contracting for police services] is not police specific. So in my in my opinion, that’s the right thought process for everything we do. Edmonds has a striping machine for our streets. Not every city does. Should we have a police analyst? Not every city does. Does it make sense for us all to have our own HR departments doing recruiting? If we wanted to be a contract city, is that the best option? Or should we talk to other cities about creating a South County Police Department? What about parks, parks maintenance, facility management? In my opinion, those are all things on the table. We have amazing fleet guys who can run really big equipment and [also take care of] little stuff, and does every city? Could we pool our our fleet work? So the concept being insert function here, and then, does it make sense? One of the very first things I did was say, should we outsource the courts? Does this make sense that that we’re doing in our own court system? So I am all into what other models make sense and I am agnostic to to the solutions personally. We need to make sure people are getting the services they want at the level they want. But then how do we guarantee that service and do it for the best possible cost we can.

Larry Vogel: Can you clarify levy lift assumptions that some community members are asking about, in terms of how much we will need to get us out of the red and whether voters would be willing to accept it?

Mike Rosen: Again, it’s what is the conversation that we need to have? Say voters say no to the [South County Fire] annexation. So now we have to go to the levy lift, because our only option is to now contract, assuming that South County will, and they said they would, if that happens. So now we have to write the check for fire, and we’re still need to get out of this gap. So what if they say no to that [the levy lid lift]? So that number is a point in time and built on assumptions and all that is going to change if they say no to this, to the annexation or council doesn’t put the $6 million on the table. That number doesn’t matter if they say no to both the annexation and the levy lift. Then we are in a whole different world. And we need to start coming up with, what is that plan B? What is that plan C? And we started that process so that we can help individuals in the community understand, here’s what happens. And the same with council. If the community says no, which they get to do, here’s what that means.

If you look at patterns in time, we don’t want to be the person raising taxes, so let’s not raise property tax. Now, imagine if that [property tax increase] had been compounded over time. So it wasn’t a big number, but it would have been a bigger, bigger number if they’d taken the 1% every year, because the next 1% would have built on top of that, right? The not maintaining these buildings or any of our facilities, is a way to say, I’m not going to raise taxes. And what I’m going to say to the public is, look at all this stuff you get. I didn’t raise taxes. But what they [officials] aren’t saying is, here’s what I’m not doing to [not raise taxes]. So I fear that an appropriate [reason for] why the public is pissed is, “Come on, somebody knew, right? These were all choices, and we weren’t brought into the conversation.” And we’re saying that ends today. So we’re going to have that conversation. We’re going to let you know, here’s what’s not being done, here’s what doing this will cost, here’s what we can do to try to fix it, and it’s all choices. But what’s not going to be a choice anymore, is that we’re not going to have this conversation, because I think that’s also a big part of how we got here. We have not been straight with consumers.”

Have your own questions for the mayor and finance director? The Edmonds City Council is holding a public hearing on the budget Tuesday, Oct. 29, and the audience is invited to ask questions.

Following a question, Rosen or Dunscombe will respond. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in council chambers, 250 5th Ave. N., Edmonds. Learn more here.

— By Teresa Wippel and Larry Vogel