Kent City Council looks at ways to spend extra funds

With extra money in the city budget for the first time in several years, the Kent City Council plans to spend some of it.

The council is considering hiring six more police officers, replacing the Wilson Playfields synthetic turf and paying a consultant to help bring more retail businesses, such as a Costco, to town.

Council members also might add a city jail corrections officer and an administrative assistant to the police chief.

Tom Brubaker, city interim chief administrative officer, told the council there’s about $1.9 million extra for next year with revenues exceeding expenses. That extra is on top of the cash set aside in a reserve fund of $4.4 million and a contingency fund of $1.5 million for unanticipated costs.

“We have $1.9 million but we have a lot of staffing needs, capital needs and debt,” Brubaker said.

Brubaker added that although 2013 has been a good year even with conservative forecasting the city would spend more than its brings in over the next four years.

“In a good year we take in more than we spend,” Brubaker said. “In a bad year we won’t. So long term the general pattern is we have a structural imbalance. Right now, we’re doing a little better.”

The council adopted its first two-year budget in December 2012, rather than voting each year on a budget. The decisions this year are adjustments to the 2013-14 budget.

Mayor Suzette Cooke recommended six more police officers as well as spending $500,000 toward replacing the synthetic turf at Wilson Playfields, a popular soccer, baseball and softball complex along 132nd Avenue Southeast. The cost is to replace the turf is estimated at about $1.5 million, said Jeff Watling, city parks director. The rest of the funds for the turf replacement next year would come out of the capital projects fund.

“We can use the existing budget and still build it but if we do that we would take away from other capital projects,” said Brubaker, who added other parks needs include new playground equipment and other general upkeep projects.

Councilwoman Jamie Perry requested a specific list of park projects.

“If there are things we can put off for a year, put them off,” Perry said as far as whether to spend $500,000 of the extra funds on Wilson Playfields.

Brubaker said he would provide specifics about the other park projects at the Dec. 10 council workshop.

Ben Wolters, city economic and community development director, requested $60,000 to hire a consultant for recruitment and retention of retail businesses.

“We want to bring in some expertise to see if in fact we are doing everything we can and if there is something we can do differently,” Wolters said. “We need to recruit more big-box retail. When I compare our community with others, we’re short especially for a city of 120,000 people. We don’t have a Costco. We don’t have a number of big boxes out there. We want to know what more we can do to better position ourselves.”

A Costco store would bring in an estimated $600,000 a year in sales tax revenue to the city, Wolters said.

“Our residents are leaving the city to shop retail and we desperately need to increase our tax base,” Brubaker said.

Wolters said part of the consultant money also would be spent to encourage companies with warehouses in Kent to open retail outlets at their locations.

“Some jurisdictions around the country have had success in doing that,” Wolters said. “Certainly, we could try to figure that out ourselves, but we’d like to have a little help.”

A majority of the council favored hiring a consultant to increase retail sales.

“We have always been focused on manufacturing, warehousing and distribution,” Perry said. “We have never focused on retail sales. Now we are realizing we have to do that. This is a one-time expenditure. We’re not looking at keeping somebody on staff forever but to give us the expertise to allow our staff to keep that work going.”

Councilman Bill Boyce proposed adding a corrections officer and a police administrative assistant, which would replace a position cut last year. The cost of the two positions would be about $185,000.

“At our jail we are pretty much at bare bones,” Boyce said. “We have an administrative assistant sitting at the counter dealing with criminals and that’s not part of their job description. And they (jail officers) are working massive overtime.”

Perry said she wanted to know if hiring a new corrections officer would offset the overtime costs. City staff did not yet have specifics about the overtime costs but is expected to present them at the Dec. 10 council workshop or when the council’s Operations Committee is expected to discuss the budget changes at its Dec. 3 meeting.

The city budget is available online at http://kentwa.gov/Budget.aspx.