More cuts at Parks Tacoma? Agency braces for second budget deficit since October
Parks Tacoma is warning of a multimillion-dollar budget deficit in 2026, which could mean a reduction in the agency’s services and staff this summer.
The newest deficit comes after Parks Tacoma in October 2025 announced a round of cuts after facing rising costs and lower than expected revenues. Shon Sylvia, Parks Tacoma’s executive director, said the agency in 2025 faced a roughly $4 million deficit, and he estimated this year’s shortfall to be around $3 million.
He said the deficit results from insufficient oversight of the agency’s changing revenue sources, inadequate philanthropic contributions and a higher-than-expected use of fee waivers and scholarships, among other factors.
“We are moving quickly to adjust our spending plan before our busy summer season begins,” Sylvia wrote to parks employees in an email obtained by The News Tribune. “We are meeting with budget managers to realign revenues and expenditures closer to the amounts that we spent in 2023.”
Parks Tacoma operates as a separate government agency from the city of Tacoma, complete with its own board, budget and revenue sources.
The city of Tacoma is the larger government agency – with roughly 4,000 employees and a $4.7 billion budget, compared to Parks’ roughly 500 employees and $117 million budget. The city of Tacoma also has warned of a budget deficit in the realm of $15 million and recently announced a hiring freeze as part of an effort to mitigate the shortfall. Tacoma Public Schools has also faced recurring budget deficits in recent years, most recently a $30 million shortfall for the 2025-2026 budget.
“We’re sensitive – since other government entities are doing the same [reductions], we’re trying to be really conscious to understand their reductions so that we are not going to certain areas and double-dipping,” Sylvia told The News Tribune.
Parks Tacoma, like some other local government agencies, budgets on a two-year cycle. The agency’s board in December 2024 approved a 2025-2026 biennial budget and later approved a budget amendment to accommodate for the deficit in fall 2025. Sylvia said he anticipates bringing another amendment to the board for its approval in May.
It’s too soon to say exactly what Parks Tacoma will cut back on, he said. It could include cuts to positions, reduced water use and seasonal browning on certain parks, and reduced hours of operation for some of the agency’s programming.
Why another budget shortfall?
Sylvia said several revenue sources have fallen through recently, which the agency failed to account for in its current budget. Some of those revenues include contracts with other local government agencies – like a contract in which the city of Tacoma paid Parks Tacoma to manage its gulches.
The contract had been a longstanding source of revenue, but he said when the city ended its contract, Parks Tacoma forgot to exclude that source of revenue when developing the 2025-2026 budget.
“It was simply a breakdown of communication where that wasn’t translated,” Sylvia said.
Parks Tacoma also receives funding from several nonprofit organizations, like the Tacoma Park Foundation. The agency has in previous years been able to rely on those contributions in its budget, but those have declined as they hosted fewer donor events and as existing donors chose to send their money elsewhere.
Sylvia, who has worked for Parks Tacoma since 1997 and served as its executive director since 2017, said it’s the loss of institutional knowledge that the agency faced when it saw a wave of retirements during and in the wake of the pandemic that have brought the issues to the surface.
“We have a lot of newer folks that perhaps just did not know that that was part of their portfolio. And so coming into it, we were expecting that certain groups understood their responsibilities, we found out going through it that, ‘Hey, no one has that portion of it,’” Sylvia said.
What is Parks Tacoma doing about the budget shortfall?
Parks Tacoma is beginning to form a finance committee to be made up of internal finance staff, board members and other stakeholders who meet monthly to discuss the agency’s financial situation and maintain stronger oversight of the agency’s expenses and revenues.
It’s also starting the process of hiring an internal auditor, which Sylvia said is typical for local government agencies to study and report to agency leadership on where it can become more financially efficient. Sylvia said he anticipates Parks Tacoma could bring in a contractor for the job between April and June.
Parks Tacoma also is evaluating usage levels of various offerings and plans to use that information to guide its approach to making cuts, Sylvia said. The agency is also planning to consolidate its functions under a “shared services” model, he added.
Parks Tacoma has distinct employees in roles like human resources, finance or communications across various departments. Moving to a shared services model would mean an elimination of the siloed departments in favor of a centralized management structure, with only one set of employees working in those realms across the entire organization.
“We feel that that would allow for it not to be so separate, to support the agency as a whole, and to be less decentralized,” he said.
The deficit comes as Parks Tacoma seeks voter approval for a $155 million bond measure in a special election on April 28. The agency has said that the bond won’t directly affect its budget deficit, which is in its operating budget, since the bond would raise funds for the agency’s capital budget, which is separate.
This story was originally published April 14, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
