‘Crisis of confidence’: Parks Tacoma eyes more cuts as budget deficit swells
Parks Tacoma’s budget deficit is larger than the agency expected, up to $9 million for the 2025-2026 budget from the total $7 million it previously assumed.
The news comes on the heels of the resignation of longtime executive director Shon Sylvia’s, who is receiving a payout of over $500,000. It also comes as the agency searches for a new interim executive director. Gwen Voelpel, who has been doing the job since Sylvia resigned on April 29, needs to attend to family matters, according to board president Matt Mauer, and can only stay in the role temporarily.
Voelpel was promoted to interim executive director after having served as interim director of business administration and planning for Parks Tacoma since March. According to an email obtained by The News Tribune, Voelpel was supposed to do the latter job in a part-time capacity starting May 8.
Jenna Richardson, the agency’s chief people officer, said at a committee of the whole meeting May 4 that she has reached out to executive search firms to begin the process of finding an interim executive director to replace Voelpel. The thought is that replacement can do the job for six to nine months, Richardson said.
Mauer said at the meeting that he was having “a little crisis of confidence” given the changes in the budget deficit number. John Landergan, a budget administrator at Parks Tacoma, said it took parks staff “a significant amount of time” to analyze the 2025-2026 budget and identify areas of deficit.
“Once we did the more thorough analysis, it’s this much higher number,” Landergan said at the meeting. “I will say, I feel very confident in this figure.”
The turmoil at Parks Tacoma, which came to a head just days after voters approved a $155 million bond measure, means the agency is considering the elimination or significant reduction of beloved programs. Though Parks Tacoma has yet to finalize the cuts and won’t do so until this summer, programs like Beyond the Bell and Teen Late Nights are on the chopping block, parks staff said at the May 4 meeting.
Those after-school programs provide free or low-cost childcare and a safe space for Tacoma youth to be during the summer or after school when they might be more likely to be exposed to gun violence. The need for such a safe space heightened especially after a surge in youth homicides last year.
Board members asked Parks Tacoma staff to explore every avenue possible to preserve the after-school programs in some capacity.
“What I don’t want to see is because of our budget problems, that that program go,” Mauer said. “There’s a lot of programs that are just going to be very painful [to lose] but that one in particular, I think it’s going to be really hard to stomach.”
Parks staff have said there is “simply no way” for the agency to continue programs like Beyond the Bell, which provides free or low-cost after-school programming, in their current form.
“The only other option that preserves [Beyond the Bell] at any level would require a systemwide shutdown of parks, facilities, and programs, while still leaving a $1.46 million structural deficit,” a memo from parks staff reads.
Parks Tacoma has implemented some cuts to mitigate the budget deficit, including the reduction of sprayground operation hours from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The proposals for budget cuts will come to the board for approval in the form of a “budget amendment” at the end of June. The board will hold a public hearing on the matter on May 18.
