This year’s budget process may not be as painful as the 2010 season, but the Bellevue City Council still has some tough decisions ahead.
City officials said at a budget workshop Monday that funds within the general budget are in good shape, with revenue and expense close to matching up, but the seven-year capital fund for construction-type projects is facing an extensive shortfall.
According to city figures, through 2019, the capital fund is approximately $31 million short of projections. Though it is early on in the budget process, city officials suggested the council stretch the capital plan out an extra two years, from 2017 to 2019, and use a $22.3 million contingency to cover the rest of the shortfall.
This would leave an extra $19 million for discretionary projects that come up over the years. This figure is roughly in line with the approximately $73 million available for discretionary spending from 2011 through 2017.
“There will be a lot of tough competition for those dollars among all the city’s departments,” said Planning Director Dan Stroh.
While this short-term issue appears fixable, the question of extensive road projects in the Bel-Red corridor, and the city’s potential $160 million portion of a downtown tunnel for East Link light-rail remains. While much of tunnel expense may come at little cost to the city, the council still may have to come up with $40 million-$60 million to pay for Bellevue’s share of the work.
The council has discussed increasing property tax to pay for all these expenses, and a hypothetical scenario presented Monday involved two 3 percent sales tax increases over the next seven years, with another three increases taking place from 2020 to 2030.
The budget process will continue throughout the year, and it will follow the 2010 Budget One model. This process breaks the budget into categories, rather than departments. Officials characterized the process as a tree, with resources as the roots, internal services as the trunk, benefits to the public as leaves, and the resulting economic development within city borders as the fruit.
Continuing the analogy, council members say they will work throughout the year to make sure the tree yields as much fruit as possible. And, if a branch is sagging, it’s better to just make a clean cut rather than allowing it to drag down the rest of the tree.
“I believe it’s better to eliminate a program when it can’t or shouldn’t be done rather than just funding some of it to keep it going,” said Bellevue Mayor Conrad Lee.
