PORT ANGELES — Port Angeles is “financially strong” going into 2019 with a balanced, sustainable budget that maintains healthy reserves, the City Council was told.

The revised $115.4 million total city budget invests in capital projects, personnel and the environment while keeping utility rates affordable, acting Finance Director Sarina Carrizosa said Tuesday.

The council is expected to adopt the final budget after a second public hearing Dec. 4.

Included in the budget is a 0.97 percent total utility rate increase for 2019. The council-approved rate package shows a 5.4 percent increase for residential water customers and no change in electric rates.

City staff used a cost of service analysis to determine the rates with an eye toward ending subsidization among the utilities.

“We worked really hard to make sure we kept our rates affordable,” Carrizosa told the City Council before the first of two public hearings on the draft budget.

“So the 2019 budget includes a less-than-1-percent increase overall for utility rates.”

The budget provides a 2 percent cost of living raise for city employees, adds two Peninsula Communications dispatchers, restructures the information technology and street sweeper functions to achieve cost savings and invests $10.5 million in capital projects, Carrizosa said.

The general fund budget for core services is balanced at $20 million and meets a council directive of having a 25 percent reserve.

If adopted, the general fund reserve balance would remain at $5.1 million, or 25.5 percent, of 2019 expenditures.

The 2019 budget ends a three-year practice of dipping into street fund reserves to balance the street fund budget.

“Just to summarize, the city is financially strong,” Carrizosa said.

Early in the 2019 budget process, city staff identified a $1.2 million budget shortfall, City Manager Nathan West said in a Oct. 23 budget workshop.

The budget was balanced largely by identifying new revenue and re-assessing salaries for 23 vacant positions, West said.

“I think one of the priorities, as communicated by council, was to make sure that we’re balancing that budget without the elimination of any additional core services or programs, recognizing we have already stretched those services so thin at the city and that we’re really wanting to protect those and continue those programs and services moving forward,” West told the council Tuesday.

“I think, too, it was extremely important to staff that we look at focusing needs vs. wants, making sure that we’re recognizing that many of our taxpayers, our ratepayers, are already beyond the limits that their income levels support.

“And it’s very important that we’re respectful of that, that we do a great a great deal of diligence in looking at the budget, making sure that our expenditures are expenditures that are absolutely necessary moving forward,” West added.

During the public hearing, the council was asked if the budget included money for a code enforcement officer.

Mayor Sissi Bruch said the short answer was “not yet.”

West said he was committed to presenting revenue options to the City Council that could support a code enforcement program within the Port Angeles Police Department.

“It is something that we recognize as of highest priority, and it’s something that we’re working diligently on,” West said.

“But we want to make sure when we bring those items forward, they’re items that council will feel comfortable with, for one, but make sure they can be sustained in the long term and not just one-time revenue sources.

“So we want to make sure we do it right,” West added, “and we appreciate the continued patience, but that is our goal, to get some revenue sources that we can depend on for the long term to ensure this very important community issue is taken care of.”

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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56450, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.