(The Center Square) – The Spokane City Council passed a resolution Wednesday calling for millions of dollars in additional spending across 2027 and 2028 after filling back-to-back deficits by raising taxes.
The officials approved the 13 budget priorities in the resolution by a 6-1 vote. Councilmember Michael Cathcart voted in opposition due to the lack of identified funding necessary to implement the priorities.
“This proposes a number of [spending] increases without the other side of that, which is: How do we pay for those?” Cathcart said Wednesday, listing some budget pressures the council is already facing.
The resolution comes ahead of a forecast from Mayor Lisa Brown’s administration, which Cathcart has said could reveal another multi-million-dollar deficit. The council majority turned to tax hikes proposed by the mayor to balance a $25 million gap heading into 2025 and then a $13 million hole before 2026.
Notably, city records confirm that the council adopted a $2.6 million deficit last fall heading into 2026.
That March finance report estimated a $1.3 million funding gap for the animal control contract with the county, unfunded staff and software maintenance for the city’s newly established dispatch system, and retroactive labor costs that the officials might have to account for during the next budget negotiations.
“We have not seen a proposed budget as a whole yet,” Councilmember Kate Telis said before voting to pass the resolution. “I just really want to see the whole pie before I figure out how best to split it up.”
Wednesday’s vote set priorities ahead of the 2027-28 budget negotiations over the coming months; it was not a legally binding funding commitment. Budget projections are expected to reach the council in the coming weeks and will provide more direction before Brown releases a preliminary budget this fall.
Projections from last summer suggested that the council could face a $26 million deficit in 2027 and a $31.7 million gap in 2028, for a cumulative general fund shortfall of $57.7 million over the next cycle; still, that figure will likely change in the upcoming forecast and doesn’t account for the new priorities.
“What this resolution says is not going to be the final package,” Councilmember Zack Zappone noted.
“As Councilmember Cathcart said, it’s kind of a Christmas wish list, which is true, but we need to know that Christmas wish list; otherwise Santa can’t ever come and bring anything,” he said before voting.
The new priorities call for increasing support for the courts and public defenders, rebuilding reserves, providing bridge funding for the city libraries, complying with the animal-control contract, expanding crisis outreach, studying the feasibility of a city fire district, returning the utility tax to 20%, relying on conservative revenue assumptions and requiring the city to identify fiscal offsets, among other things.
The resolution does not identify potential cuts or address whether tax hikes are off the table this year.
Based on the 2025-26 budget, the courts, public defender and reserve targets alone could create over $5 million in additional spending. After the $2.3 million library ask and the potential impact of lowering the utility tax rate, the impact could surpass $10 million before accounting for several other priorities.
“We are acutely aware of the urgency of this issue and are actively working to address it, but it is premature to draw firm conclusions until we have fully assessed our options,” Council President Betsy Wilkerson wrote in a statement on Tuesday in response to the $2.3 million library funding request.
Wednesday’s resolution called for providing the Spokane Public Library system with “adequate bridge funding” before SPL asks voters to renew and potentially increase library taxes in the next year or so.
The utility tax rate currently stands at 21.5% after the council adopted temporary increases over the last few years and extended their expiration dates amid ongoing budget shortfalls. It’s scheduled to fall to 21% next year, but the council wants to honor its prior commitments by dropping the rate to 20%.
“The fiscal offsets, those need to be real conversations that are transparent to the community as to where the cuts are coming from,” Wilkerson said Wednesday before voting in support of the priorities.