Financial Sustainability Initiative

Financial Sustainability Graphic

Check out the series of videos created for the financial sustainability initiative!

Read the Final Task Force Financial Sustainability Report Here!

Background
Financial sustainability is critical, allowing the City to meet ongoing and evolving community needs and aspirations over the long-term. Providing basic infrastructure and services that underpin a healthy natural environment, meaningful economic development, and a high quality of life for residents means carefully balancing the community’s ability to generate revenues and to match the cost of services and obligations over the long term.       

The City of Port Townsend is in a solid financial position and has done consistently well in contributing to a high quality of life and providing quality services to its residents and visitors. Even with significant challenges and substantial revenue reductions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the City managed to adapt, innovate and collaborate to sustain operations and to stay within its budgetary constraints. The City is experiencing steady increases in the cost of services while tax revenues are not keeping up. This difference in increasing costs in excess of revenues will result in a steady erosion of services and may not be fully understood by the public who depend on those services. This problem is compounded by the present need to address numerous deferred maintenance projects such as streets, city buildings, parks, and fleet in which limited or no direct revenue is currently available.

It will take many years to craft and adopt sustainable solutions. The longer we delay action, the more likely we are to suffer a major setback and the more difficult the work will be to ensure our financial sustainability well into the future. Underpinning our challenge are fundamental questions: What is our community’s vision? What can our community afford as we build toward that vision?  How are we going to pay for it?  How we navigating making tradeoffs?  What’s fair?

The City of Port Townsend has established a Financial Sustainability Task Force to assist the City with a review of the City’s current financial position and identify options for the future as they consider those questions above. The Task Force began its work at their first meeting on November 18, 2022, and will make a recommendation of long-term financial sustainability options to City Council in mid-2023.

Working closely with the community and our partners will help develop a pathway forward that balances our diverse aspirations with financial realities and prepares us for the future. Doing so also promises to be an opportunity to reset and align expectations, to build strong and lasting partnerships, and to draw our community closer together. 

 

Desired Outcomes
The Financial Sustainability Project will help determine what long-term services our community desires to purchase and how to pay for those services, while creating a balance of revenues and expenditures for lasting financial stability and greater resilience to future economic stresses.

The Task Force will review information and materials regarding municipal budgeting and the City’s current department budgets and service levels. They will then be part of wider community engagement and subsequently provide recommendations to City Council by mid-2023 on potential revenue and expense options to ensure long-term viability of City services.  

 

Financial Sustainability Task Force
As part of the community process, a Task Force has been appointed to help guide the process and to make formal recommendations to the City Council. The Task Force will meet five times between November 2022 and July 2023, and the meetings will be open to the public. Regular updates of their progress will be made at City Council meetings.  Those wishing to make public comment about their work can do so at those meetings.

Stakeholder Meeting Schedule

All scheduled meetings can be found on the Meeting Calendar and meeting agendas and minutes in the records and documents directory.

 

Links to Other Initiatives
The Financial Sustainability Initiative relates to a number of past and current City initiatives. For instance, many of the underlying financial sustainability principles have been trialed in the City’s approach to Banked Capacity (in 2021 and in 2022), the 2023 City Budget, and decisions around spending federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars.  Likewise, a number of community engagement initiatives have future financial implications, including Envision the Golf Course/the future of the Golf Course and Mountain View Campus, Healthier Together/the future of a Community Health and Wellness/Aquatics Center, and the Comprehensive Streets Program.

 

Materials Available for Review

 

How you can engage
We want to hear from as many people as possible. You can provide input and comments at any time through our online form.

 

Other ways to engage include:

 

 

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