Pierce County town will no longer fund popular summer concert series due to budget cuts
.jpg "After 37 years, the Town of Steilacoom will no longer directly fund its popular summer concert series at Pioneer Park in 2025 due to budget cuts, leadership said.")
After 37 years, the Town of Steilacoom will no longer fund its popular summer concert series this year due to budget cuts, the town’s mayor told The News Tribune on Friday.
Last year more than 10,000 people attended the free nine-concert program overlooking Puget Sound at Pioneer Park. It usually runs weekly from the end of June through August. This year, residents will have to raise $40,000 themselves if they want to see the program continue to the same degree. Residents can donate online or mail checks to The Town of Steilacoom at 1030 Roe St., Steilacoom, 98388.
If the town can’t raise the full $40,000, Mayor Dick Muri said the town might have to put on fewer concerts. There will be an open informational meeting at the Town Hall on Sunday from 3-5 p.m. to discuss the vision of the 2025 series.
For decades the approximately $30,000 concert program was funded through the town’s general fund, Muri said. The town had to cut spending this year because its property tax rate — its main source of revenue — is capped at 1% under state law, Muri said.
High inflation rates and rising costs have put pressure on the town to spend less on “non-critical” functions like concerts, Muri said.
“Bottom line is, Steilacoom is a little different than, say, Tacoma and definitely different than DuPont. We don’t have a huge industrial or business space, so we’re even more reliant on property tax,” he said. “That being said, we don’t have a crisis. We have no debt, really good fund balances. But we’re now in deficit-spending mode. We’re small, 6,700 people, [and have] a $200,000 a year annual deficit, which will increase more than likely every year. So where do we make cuts?”
Muri said the town likely would have to delay road-improvement projects and park maintenance in the next few years as a result of the cuts too. Officials will be discussing which roads and parks will be impacted in the future with their six-year transportation plan, he said.
In 2023-2024 the Town Council approved an estimated $14.5 million in expenditures for the biennial general-fund budget and about $13.8 million in expenditures for the general fund in 2025-2026.
‘Now it’s time to come up with solutions’
Marcus Rogers, who has managed and hosted the concert series for 22 years in a row, told The News Tribune on Friday he was confident residents would come together and raise enough money to start the series again.
“Now it’s time to come up with solutions,” he said. “I’m kind of hoping that on Sunday I can really get some of those who may not really understand or agree with what the town has decided to do to embrace this as an opportunity for growth, not look at it as something that’s bad.”
Over the decades Rogers said he’s seen the attachment people have for the concerts and watched them be a draw for families not only in Steilacoom but in Tacoma, Lakewood, Bellevue, Gig Harbor, Lacey, Tumwater and Olympia.
“We can have a better budget now. We can improve our summer concerts if we work together,” Rogers said. “It’s that important, I think, for people to find more unity in things that bring us joy, especially during this time when we’re so divided in so many ways by all the wrong reasons. This is something for us to embrace and own together now. I like the idea that it won’t be something that potentially will be managed by the town. Let’s take the town out of it, and let it be owned by the people.”
This story was originally published January 4, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
