Tacoma expects layoffs, doesn’t fund firefighter program amid ‘dire’ financial situation
Tacoma is expected to cut more than two dozen positions and likely more as the city works toward balancing its budget and grapples with a dire financial outlook posed by expenses outpacing revenues.
The anticipated elimination of roughly 26 positions — most of which are filled — is intended to curb spending by $5.6 million, according to city spokesperson Maria Lee. Another $4.7 million in cuts remains necessary and likely will require further personnel reductions, she said Wednesday.
Lee added that she didn’t have details about who would be affected by the position eliminations, which stemmed from a City Council vote on Tuesday, but layoff notifications would begin in January.
Facing a structural deficit, the City Council on Tuesday evening narrowly passed an amendment to Tacoma’s proposed 2025-26 biennial operating budget that called for $8.9 million in spending decreases to balance the budget.
Its approval, by a 5-3 vote, reversed an October proposal to use $8.9 million in available cash — without dipping into reserves — as part of the city’s efforts to shore up a $24 million shortfall. The proposed general fund budget is $641 million.
In opting to maintain the cash and instead enact spending cuts, some city lawmakers said it gave the city the financial flexibility to address emergent needs in the future, such as police and fire overtime costs.
A second amendment Tuesday that would have restored 16 roving positions in the Tacoma Fire Department, but also necessitated that city officials identify an additional $4.2 million in cuts to pay for it, failed to pass by the same 5-3 margin.
Council members John Hines, Sarah Rumbaugh and Olgy Diaz voted in the minority on both amendments.
Proponents of funding the city’s roving firefighters program, which was enacted this year as a temporary solution to cover shifts for firefighters on unplanned leave, warned that overtime costs would rise without it.
“If you look back at what’s happened with the Fire Department since the pandemic, there’s been more use of ... their PTO, sick leave, and it makes sense because they’re being overworked,” Rumbaugh said before the vote.
The Fire Department’s union publicly appealed to the city to maintain the program and held a press conference Monday alongside state Sen. Steve Conway, D-Tacoma, urging the council to protect what it called essential funding.
“For decades, our Fire Department has been doing more with less, while straining to meet the needs of a growing population,” Allyson Hinzman, president of International Association of Fire Fighters Local 31, said in a statement Monday. “As a result, firefighters and paramedics, as well as our fire rigs, equipment, and even stations are stretched thin and facing a breaking point.”
The majority of city lawmakers were unwilling to enact deeper cuts to continue to fund the program. Speaking from the dais, Diaz said she was “pretty disappointed” that the first amendment had passed.
“I think, at this point, we are facing the scenario where we will either dedicate funds to our firefighters or we will make double the cuts that anyone sitting up here intended to make when they showed up today,” she said.
Roving firefighters will not lose their jobs, the city had previously said. The personnel who filled those roles will be reassigned to other positions within the department, it had said. In response to criticism about reductions in funding, the city noted that the proposed Fire Department budget increased by about 10%.
Council member Kiara Daniels, who warned that 300 city shelter beds were at risk without available funding, said during the meeting that spending cuts would affect general government positions.
The city has 4,300 full-time equivalent positions in its proposed 2025-26 budget.
The budget decisions put into stark view what Council member Joe Bushnell called during Tuesday’s meeting “a really dire financial situation.” Beyond the city spending more money than it was bringing in, there was global economic uncertainty surrounding rising costs and anticipated tariffs from the new presidential administration, he said.
Bushnell also hinted that more staffing reductions would be necessary and that city officials were expected to discuss the matter further in January.
“Every single person in this city is critical, and we already run very lean as a city,” he said. “To lose even one person is devastating, but the reductions that we’re talking about is huge. It’s large. So I’m not going to sugar-coat it.”
This story was originally published December 5, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
