“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” ― John Adams, The Portable John Adams
To keep the math simple, $140,000 of cuts per year on a $20 million expenditure budget equals 0.70%. This is what some apologists for the incumbent Mukilteo mayor currently running for an unprecedented 4th term have suggested was a laudable accomplishment. Inflation, they cry, was the fault – “Federal” inflation, no less – for his record setting deficits, which have triggered double digit deficits as far as the eye can see. Yet, CPI cannot be blamed when it has been below 3.5% since 2023.
Our Mukilteo has real structural issues that are unaddressed in the adopted budget. The City will exhaust its general fund ending fund balance in 2027, I believe by February 2027. I analyzed all of this and explained all of this numerous times last fall in Council chambers and in the press. I explained the GAP policy and how we were in the most severe level of GAP spending. Angered by the dereliction evidenced by so blatantly ignoring our fiscal policies, I even stated that. What else can you call it?
Now, nine months after my analysis and with campaign season upon us, the same truth “alterers” are busily blaming “inflation”, even though we have a new consensus that my analysis was correct – we were in GAP all along, my calculation was correct and we managed to kick the can down the road by gaslighting the Council into voting 5-2 that transfers are not uses of funds.
It gives me no joy to understand that Mukilteo residents were sold a false bill of goods last fall. And so, I am heartened by the joy in knowing, as the young lad in “Jack & the Beanstalk” sang, that “I fear nothing, when I am in the right”:
“I fear nothing when I am in the right
Who ever pushes me around will find me full of fight
I fear nothing when I do nothing wrong
And so I toddle on my way and sing a merry song
If I believe that I am right
There’s only one thing to be done
I don’t go looking for a fight
But I have never run away from one.”
Mike Dixon, Mukilteo City Councilman
Mike Dixon was elected to a four-year term in 2023. Born and raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands, he has made Mukilteo his home since 2007. Mike is currently a cleantech executive with GM Energy, owns and operates an insurance agency in Old Town, and is a solar farm investor in the Caribbean. Mike is also a three-time elected water sewer commissioner, former president of the Board of the Alderwood Water & Wastewater District, and current commissioner of the Mukilteo Water & Wastewater District. He holds a bachelor’s degree in management science and an MBA, both from MIT.
According to his bio, his council goals are building a cleantech cluster in Mukilteo, developing the waterfront as a commercial and recreational economic hub in the region, marketing Mukilteo as a welcoming and inclusive city, building policy to support the middle class and ensure our city’s sustainability, working collaboratively to ensure strong and robust long term financial planning and annual budgets, and partnering regionally to help Mukilteo remain an inclusive, sustainable, vibrant and growing city.
COMMENTARY DISCLAIMER: The views and comments expressed are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the Lynnwood Times nor any of its affiliate.
Author: Lynnwood Times Contributor
14 Responses
Mr. Dixon’s assessment is misleading. He claims that $140,000 is inconsequential because it is just a small percentage (0.7%) of the overall General Fund $20 million budget. But actually, the $140,000 that the mayor and staff removed from the budget is significant because it represents 5% to 6% of the difference between General Fund revenues and General Fund expenditures.
As for Mr. Dixon’s inflation argument, he deliberately chooses the low years of 2023-2024 and doesn’t mention the much higher inflation for 2022 (8.4%), which makes the 3.5% inflation for 2023 that much greater.
Using https://cpiinflationcalculator.com/ inflation from 2020 to 2024 (a 4-year period) was 20.6%. That’s significant.
Our city’s property tax levy (property tax provides 46% of GF revenues) is limited to a 1% increase per year (or 4.1% for the same 4-year period). If federal inflation had not been so high before 2023, the city’s expenditures would be significantly less in the 2025/2026 budget, and revenues would likely have come closer to matching expenditures through 2026.
Federal-caused inflation prior to 2023 will be a significant factor in every year going forward unless deflation occurs.
For all of Mr. Dixon’s claims about the 2024 budget ending in a deficit, it is likely that after the final audit is completed, 2024 will end in the positive.
My caution to the reader is that Mr. Dixon is not giving you an honest assessment. He is twisting the numbers to work his agenda, which seems to be attacking the mayor, staff, and others on the council.
Tony – two words come to mind in reading your treatise: interesting fantasy.
1. I did not claim 2024 would be a deficit. The budget does. The deficits for 2024, 2025 and 2026 per the adopted 2025-2026 budget is as follows: -$1,138,625, -$1,226,837 and -$3,431,523.
2. Do you realize that prior to the mayor convincing a majority of the council to remove the deficit spending limit, a policy that was invented due to him to curb his prior double digit deficit spending, these deficits would never have been permitted?
3. Do you realize that the ending fund balance in the General Fund is projected to be exhausted in 2027?
4. You don’t yet realize that the one new policy in the forthcoming Long Range Plan is to eliminate the deficit spending limit altogether. Does that trouble you in any way or do facts only matter if my ideology matches yours?
These are serious issues and you are not a serious person if you don’t, won’t or can’t see that.
My caution to the reader is simple. Mr. Damoff is an active member of a local MAGA Republican group called the Friends of Abe. His role is to attend all City meetings weekly to champion MAGA platforms and denigrate things they oppose, such as Diversity Equity & Inclusion and the reading of Land Use Statements. Mr Damoff’s blind allegiance to the incumbent mayor, himself an outspoken MAGA Republican, warps his ability to analyze the issues at hand. Had a Democrat or left leaning independent mayor presided over a double digit deficit budget that bled down the ending fund to zero and bets the entire solvency of the city on implementing street cameras while offering nothing to address fundamendal unfunded requirements for our fire service, Mr. Damoff’s hair would be on fire.
https://city-mukilteo-wa-budget-book.cleargov.com/19146/fund-summaries/general-fund
For those interested in reading the adopted budget of the City of Mukilteo.
Note that the only two councilmembers who voted against this budget were Councilmembers Dixon & Schmalz.
After adding unnecessary spending onto the budget in a last minute amendment that does not face public comments. This is not being honest with the public.
Mike Dixon,
Friends of Abe is for conservatives. All I ask is that those who wish to join lean conservatively. We have a diverse group. Some members hate Trump and some support DEI, that’s fine, you will find a mix of conservative perspectives within the group.
We have never assigned any role to Tony Damoff.
Remember, you were once a member of Friends of Abe and we welcomed you. Many members voted for you.
Do you support our budget? It’s all online. I will be happy to answer questions. Everything I stated about it last fall is accurate. I don’t understand how “conservatives” can be comfortable with double digit deficits, new taxes, new fines and speed cameras as a profit center instead of for public safety. It does not seem intellectually consistent with your stated preferences.
Contrary to what Mr. Dixon thinks, Tony and I do not get any instructions from Friends of Abe or MAGA anybody (lol) about what to say at city council. We are perfectly capable of forming our own opinions and making our own comments, which we do.
It is revealing of what things must be like in his world that he assumes we are given some role. Is someone giving him marching orders?
It is also revealing of Mr. Dixon’s character that when the mayor presented the budget last fall, Mr. Dixon did not simply say, “I have concerns that the ending fund balance at the end of 2026 is too low. What can we do to address that?” Such a comment would have been fully appropriate.
Instead, within days, he sent letters to the two local papers to accuse the mayor of lying and dereliction of duty, which is outrageous.
That was a big sign that Mr. Dixon’s higher priority is finding some means of attacking Joe Marine, rather than working collaboratively to solve the city’s challenges.
Joe Marine is able to work effectively with lots of people, and he is competent enough with budgets to know how to handle the city’s finances. After all, Joe was mayor when the city earned its top bond rating.
Mr. Dixon, on the other hand, immediately and irresponsibly started talking about laying off staff and making drastic cuts. Talk like that could cause talented staff to start looking elsewhere, so it is not harmless.
The mayor and other council members are taking the budget issues seriously. The budget issues are largely caused by inflation, as salary raises in the last few years have had to be much greater than prior to 2020.
If Mr. Dixon truly thought the budget was in such dire straits, it was all the more irresponsible of him to vote for adding unnecessary items to it, as he did.
Tony and I do not have blind allegiance to anyone, including the mayor—but we can see that Joe Marine acts reasonably, while Mike Dixon goes running to the press to backstab colleagues.
Even Mr. Dixon’s comment accusing Tony of not being a serious person is an example of how he treats people. Anyone can watch Tony’s comments at city council meetings over the last several months to assess whether Tony is a serious person.
To be clear, in the many meetings you’ve attended you may have missed that my initial questions with the budget began in May. Then I did a series of questions in July and August followed by extensive back and forth with the city around the Gap calculation. You see, I was very motivated to learn. Can we please agree to disagree on my motives? Let’s just focus on my actions and whether my analysis is correct. I represent all Mukilteans and take that duty very seriously. My job is NOT to work with the mayor to “get things done.” We are a different body of government. My role is to legislate and oversee the Executive branch. I make policy. They execute it. The budget is the primary policy we make. I’m actually doing my job to hold the administration to account and push them to be creative in service delivery. It is definitely my job to ensure that our policies are followed. And they weren’t. I spear headed that. We didn’t have a 5 year forecast for 4 years until I asked for it. In Gap, we didn’t address it until I asked for it.
Also, I qualified my comment with conditions for being deemed unserious. I didn’t say you were. I said if you won’t, don’t or can’t consider the facts, you aren’t.
Have a wonderful day, constituent. It is and remains my pleasure to serve the best interest of all my constituents.
Incidentally, is funding our DEI commission $5000 a year and using an existing fund source other than the general fund to fund water apparatus for EMS water based rescues “unnecessary?” They may be to you as your weekly public comment provided each week since January 2022 at every City forum (Council meetings and various monthly commission meetings) includes a statement denigrating the land use statement which was authored by our Federally recognized tribal neighbor and our DEI commission. It is your right to do so, but the intensity of your commitment to repeating this message for well over two years belies your strongly held animus for DEI.
The DEI commission is the lone city commission tasked with outreach; it rightly and uniquely requires funding to execute its city chartered function.
https://www.codepublishing.com/WA/Mukilteo/#!/Mukilteo02/Mukilteo0248.html#2.48
Mukilteo Municipal Code 2.48.040 Section F reads, “The commission is empowered to advise and make recommendations to the mayor and city council, and as appropriate to other boards and commissions on such matters as may be specifically referred to the commission by the mayor or city council, including, but not limited to:
A. Serve as a commission for city government and the community by providing information, education, and communication that facilitates understanding of diversity and to celebrate and respect individual differences.
B. Recommend to the mayor and city council diversity opportunities to promote programs, and provide guidance to assure an accessible, safe, welcoming, and inclusive government and community.
C. Recommend to the mayor and city council effective strategies for public engagement, removing barriers, and increasing access to city services for our city’s diverse population.
D. Support, challenge, and guide government and the community to eliminate and prevent all forms of discrimination and racism.
E. Facilitate the building of relationships with underserved and underrepresented communities and serving as trusted messengers to the community at large.
F. The commission shall deliver an annual report to the city council in written and oral form each year, when appropriate, to begin at least one year after the commission begins its work, and during other times as directed by the mayor or council.”
This is the law of the City and empowers the commission to facilitate community outreach by messaging them and engaging them. No other commission is empowered by code to provide outreach; rather they are designed to receive input and officiate over public commentary input – not execute external messaging and engagement. Some of the ways the DEI Commission has undertaken this work has been through surveys, book fairs and participating in the annual Lighthouse Festival Parade. To accomplish that unique mission, they require some modest funding as they are all volunteer. To suggest they raise money is odd; we don’t ask the city to make donations for other City mandated services like Fire or Police, so I don’t see the logic of asking for donations to provide this City mandated service.
The DEI Commission serves the critical function of bridging the gap between any underrepresented groups in Mukilteo, which includes ethnic and religious minorities, those with alternative lifestyles, the infirmed, the elderly, those living with special needs and the indigent, and the policy makers. In addition, utilizing the DEI Commission was voted one of the 3 short term priorities of the council in its strategic retreat in 2024. To then leave the Commission unfunded was a mistake which I motioned to correct and the Council voted to adopt. I thank them for supporting that mandate.
Do you still think a City codified commission uniquely tasked with outreach is unnecessary? Or do you object to the water apparatus requested for water rescue following the marine death of a visitor last fall? I’d like to ensure I understand how you define “unnecessary” as it certainly differs from my definition.
Last, lets revisit the bond rating which the mayor has often claimed credit for. Council approves budgets; not mayors. The Council maintained strong reserves for the City and did not operate in deficit prior to 2008. The municipal debt credit rating is based, in large part, on the financials, which you can thank those Councils for. If the debt credit rating agency were to rate the City today, it would not provide a good debt credit rating. As a city, we failed 3 levies so obviously cannot reasonably be expected to leverage our taxing authority; our reserves are rather weak and forecasted to be exhausted in less than 15 months; and our current budget reflects a double digit deficit in its general fund. No municipal rating agency would view any of that favorably. And I say that as a former municipal finance professional, not a layperson.
Oh – the inflation canard. Salaries are not tied to inflation. They are negotiated collectively. For non-represented, they are established at will. You may recall I asked several times to roll back un-represented salaries to 2023 levels. They didn’t. Those are decisions that could have been made. What’s irresponsible is to fold your hands and pretend to be in charge while letting the water simply fill your hole ridden boat. Responsible action is to plug the hole. Every other city furloughed employees, executed reductions and took other significant actions. The state did the same. We did not. I believe we need to take responsible action now while we still have some reserves and not wait and gamble our future to the point where we are forced to do so. Course correction today will be far less painful than the course correction required tomorrow.
Incidentally, while it is a mayor’s right to attend the strategy meetings with our attorney who negotiates our collective bargaining agreements, which represent 80% of our personnel costs, themselves 75% of our general fund expenditures, Mayor Gregerson attended them regularly. Mayor Marine attended none of them. Do you think that was a good way to manage the “inflation” as you call it?
Mayor Marine did not attend any of the collective bargaining negotiations. He allowed the city administrator to do so alone. Again, do you think that was a responsible way to manage your single largest cost driver in a deficit budget?