After almost a year of public input, goal setting, planning and deliberation, the City Council adopted a two-year budget for the City of Redmond at its Tuesday meeting. Budgeting by local governments is where the real work of addressing community concerns starts and why we, the mayor, City Council and staff, focus a lot of time on the budget process we call Budgeting by Priorities.
In our 2017-18 budget, we addressed a wide variety of issues but focused on four key things: reinvesting in our neighborhoods, keeping Redmond green, addressing the growing issues with homelessness and investing more in transportation infrastructure to improve mobility.
We’ve added resources to maintain our parks and utility systems. We’re expanding Redmond’s tree canopy, through our “Green Redmond Partnership” (our community tree planting initiative) and made investments in support of low impact development. We are making the successful “homeless coordinator” pilot program permanent. We now have a dedicated expert that works with people in our community who are struggling and need support to reach stability. Lastly, we increased funding for selected agencies who work with the disadvantaged and are providing more resources to create affordable housing.
We also made some structural changes in our Transportation Improvement Program, increasing traffic impact fees on new development to support funding projects designed to reduce traffic congestion in our downtown and Overlake urban centers. Our investments in new capital projects will not only continue to enhance our transportation and park systems but will provide much needed funding for maintenance of the city’s existing streets and neighborhood sidewalks.
Many of our efforts rely on realignment of city resources. For example, we are moving staff and resources around within city government to create a customer service center and within the police department to enhance our ability to combat property crime. While we added eight new positions to the budget to respond to emerging needs, the ratio of employees to the Redmond population remains at the lowest point for many years. This is also reflected in our “price of Redmond city government” — again at its lowest point in more than 20 years.
The success of the 2017-18 budget process here in Redmond is a result of our solid teamwork approach over the past several years. Our Budgeting by Priorities approach involves the community and leverages a strong partnership among the council, city administration and staff. We heard from more than 800 community members in one form or another about this budget. We challenged each other along the way, but in the end, we came together to create a spending plan for the next two years that will keep pace with growth, preserve the character of our neighborhoods, and continue to make Redmond a place you can be proud to call your home.
For more information drop us a line at council@redmond.gov or visit our budget on our website www.redmond.gov/budget (or http://budget.redmond.gov )
John Stilin is a Redmond City Council member and chair of the Finance, Administration and Communications Committee.
