An early look at Skagit County’s preliminary $338.7 million budget for 2025 includes a proposed 1% property tax increase to combat inflation and the decrease in COVID-19 funding.
The increase is projected to cost the owner of a $520,000 home between $6.27 and $12.62 per year, depending on location, according to a county budget memo.
Expenses are projected to grow 4.8% over this year, a rise the county budget memo attributes to inflation. The memo also notes “minimal sustainable growth in revenues.”
This year was the county’s last to commit the $25 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds it received in 2021, county Administrator Trisha Logue wrote in an email.
“Current ARPA funded staff, projects and services no longer have a dedicated funding source to replace ARPA,” the memo says, “yet the needs of people we serve have not decreased and the demand for services has increased in many areas.”
The budget memo notes the county will continue funding a number of line items once backed by COVID-19 recovery dollars, including the North Star Initiative, a partnership between local governments, service providers and first responders addressing homelessness and behavioral health in the county.
The county has plans to expand that project, which will be funded by its Behavioral Health Sales Tax moving forward, according to the budget memo.
Part of that initiative, the county’s 48-bed Stabilization, Treatment and Recovery Center in Sedro-Woolley, is set to open in late 2025, said Jennifer Johnson, the county’s deputy administrator, at a budget presentation Monday morning, Nov. 18.
First responders will be able to take people in a behavioral health crisis to the center for treatment.
The county is also putting more money into the Crisis Response Team, in which mental health professionals accompany sheriff’s deputies on emergency calls. Next year, the budget will fund a sergeant to manage the program, four deputies and five clinicians, Johnson said at the presentation.
Program staff will look into placing a mental health clinician in the Skagit 911 dispatch center and starting the program in Anacortes “to create a system wide model that fills critical gaps,” according to the memo.
A new courthouse and moving the county prosecuting attorney’s office are among the county’s additional priorities next year, the memo says, mentioning the county is investing in capital projects to deal with the problem of aging government-owned buildings.
Non-unionized county employees will get a 3% cost of living raise next year. The memo says the budget “continues to align investments to support our workforce, critical infrastructure, the health of our community, emergency preparedness and response, technology, cyber-security and the preservation of natural resources.”
The county and local cities are working with the state to figure out how to fund Skagit’s drug task force sustainably, the budget memo says.
After Monday’s budget presentation, County Commissioner Ron Wesen stressed that a large portion of the budget goes toward the criminal legal system.
“Yes, the county has a lot of funding coming in,” he said, “but there’s not a lot of discretionary funding.”
County Commissioner Peter Browning praised staff for budgeting efficiently without creating a “use it or lose it” system, which he said leads to people trying to spend as much money as they can for fear of decreased funding the following year.
“That’s probably accounted for a lot of government waste in other places,” he said.
Gerry Douglas, 82, attended the presentation hoping to hear more about senior services in the county. In particular, as president of the Mount Vernon Senior Center’s board, she wanted to know if county staff had a plan for dealing with the center’s deteriorating building.
“The senior center issue has been around for many years and it’s not been resolved in any way,” she said. “And I see other buildings being built and services being increased in various areas, but it seems like there’s very little said about senior services.”
Johnson approached Douglas after the presentation and told her staff can set up a public meeting with the commissioners to talk about the senior center.
The Skagit Board of County Commissioners will hold a public hearing on the budget at 10 a.m. Dec. 2 in the Commissioner’s Hearing Room at 1800 Continental Pl. in Mount Vernon. The budget could be adopted as soon as Dec. 9.
Sophia Gates covers rural Whatcom and Skagit counties. She is a Washington State Murrow Fellow whose work is underwritten by taxpayers and available outside CDN's paywall. Reach her at sophiagates@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 131.
