Last fall, Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers asked League President Lisa Utter for a representative on a new Fiscal Sustainability Task Force. League member Nick Maxwell, who brings experience as a City of Seattle Finance Economist; King County Finance Department Healthcare Statistician; and University of Washington, Bothell, Assistant Professor, was selected to be on the committee. The task force was convened to look at long-term finance issues as well as to suggest short-term moves to address the budget deficit. The task force included a broad representation of members from organizations across the county.
Nick has been providing periodic updates to Lisa, who provides reports to the board. The Task Force has released its final report, which you can read
here. This article was written by Nick and provides an explanation of the systemic problem that governments in Washington state face. He will be the speaker at our April Membership meetings and will be available to give his perspective of what he’s learned from being on the committee.
Snohomish County Fiscal Sustainability Task Force’s Plan to Combat Revenue Shortfall
By Nick Maxwell
LWVSC representative on the Snohomish County Fiscal Sustainability Task Force
Snohomish County is struggling. Like many local governments and school districts in Washington state, what Snohomish County can pay for with property taxes has been reduced about 2% every year since 2000 because of inflation. In 2025, Snohomish County collected $111 million from property taxes. That is $70 million less than what property tax revenues would have been had they kept pace with inflation since 2000.
In the meantime, many Snohomish County homeowners - especially vulnerable seniors - have struggled with annual property tax jumps of 10% or more.
With these facts in mind, the Fiscal Sustainability Task Force recommended a handful of short-term revenue opportunities. Most were regressive because, unfortunately, short-term progressive tax solutions are not available.
The long-term solution is to fix our broken property tax system. The first task is supporting local government levies. The current law allows local governments to raise taxes only if voters approve additional levies. To maintain current services, voters have to approve levies to cover the 2% annual cuts in inflation-adjusted revenues.
The second task is to adjust Washington tax policy to account for inflation. Local tax revenue should be capped at the annual social security COLA increase plus 1%.
The last task is to address the problem of low-income homeowners who struggle to pay their property taxes but cannot refinance. The additional taxes they face as their homes get more valuable are small compared to their homes’ increasing value. A loan program to help them cover the tax increases could help. When they do sell their home, the cost of paying off the property tax loan would be small compared to their home’s increased value.
The Fiscal Sustainability Task Force hopes that its representatives will encourage their organizations to advocate for levies to protect local government services. The county can get levies on the ballot, but county staff cannot advocate one way or the other, so they depend on citizen groups to push for levy approval.