Thank you, Mayor Marine, for vetoing the councilmanic sales tax. Now let’s turn our attention to other pressing matters facing the city. We need 10% cuts immediately – as I outlined in detail last September and October, both at the dais and in op-eds.
Here is my 20-point plan for Mukilteo:
1. Rollback non-represented salaries to 2023 levels and eliminate 5 non-represented positions.
2. Implement furloughs of 1 week per quarter on all non-represented employees.
3. Use capital leases to purchase priority 1 capital equipment, currently unfunded and with no mechanism to fund them.
4. Privatize Rosehill via a public-private partnership with an entity like the Mukilteo YMCA.
5. Form an RFA with the City of Everett and the Paine Field Fire Department to retain local control, shift this cost off the general fund and provide far higher service levels than currently or historically possible.
6. Eliminate the city administrator position; the city can be managed by a full time mayor. There is no need for a CEO and a COO in a strong-mayor form of government for 21,000 people.
7. Implement performance reviews to ensure good employees are rewarded and less than stellar are weeded out. Raises must be earned.
8. Continually implement city-wide Kaizen events and LEAN process methodologies to systematically identify process efficiencies and improvements in service delivery city-wide.
9. Salvage the waterfront deal with the Port. The Port will not pay us for the land they gave us for free in 2017. This economic engine needs to be started ASAP.
10. Eliminate the plan to build a $40 million parking garage at the waterfront.
11. Alter the Park Master plan and leave the Waterfront parking lot as is. We have no money for elaborate green space expansions.
12. Hire an enforcement officer to uniformly enforce city codes.
13. Hire a meter maid to enforce parking violations, particularly at the Waterfront.
14. Allow AirBNB in Mukilteo, especially in Old Town. This will generate tourism which will create demand for services and possibly future residents.
15. Never spot zone Hawthorne Hall. It must remain residential and cannot house commercial high heat glass operations.
16. Increase height limits to 7-stories in dense zones along major arterials and permit smart density along arterials.
17. Market Mukilteo to attract clean-tech manufacturers to our industrial base and form a clean tech cluster that is an expansion of Everett’s.
18. Annex the entirety of the MUGA to add density in the south, particularly along 148th, while CAPTURING the development along and near 99 and airport road that will come with the light rail expansion. These efforts should be focused on creating housing affordability in these targeted zones.
19. Add a Balanced Budget law mandating that city budgets must limit general fund expenditures to general fund revenues and not rely on fund balances to statutorily balance the budget.
20. Advocate at the state level for the elimination of the 1% cap on property tax increases and revert to 3% as prior to 2001.
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 a member of the board of directors of Dawson Place Child Advocacy Center, the Everett based non profit providing safety, justice and healing to victims of child physical and sexual abuse, assault, and neglect. He also serves as 3-time elected water and wastewater district commissioner.
Mike recently joined USI Insurance Services in their Seattle office as a commercial lines insurance producer following the recent sale of his Farmers Insurance agency in Old Town. He holds a bachelor’s degree in management science and an MBA, both from MIT.
Seeing the City’s ongoing fiscal crisis, Mike’s current focus is to balance our budget and ensure the long term fiscal health of the city by restructuring and optimizing its delivery of services. Mike is also focused on helping to make the City more affordable for residents to support growth and address the affordability crisis of our region.
Mike and his significant other, Alise, live in the Kamiak subdivision of Harbour Pointe with his son, Nehemiah, a senior at Kamiak. Mike also has a daughter, Gabriele, a sophomore at Kamiak, three adult children, and a granddaughter, Cali.
Mike and Alise enjoy partner dancing, exercising, traveling, and spending time with their extended family and friends.
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
10 Responses
Thank you for the remarks. Which 5 positions would you eliminate? You also should be open to salary roll backs and decreasing positions of the represented, during the next contract discussions. Union / Non union both need to shrink, except for public safety (fire/police).
Your list is a good start, minus the property tax cap increase. That’s a bad idea. Property taxes are too high as it is, with increased valuations.
Why shouldn’t fire or police shrink? They are the largest budgeted departments.
Muk can’t even keep staffee at station 24, your the lowest paid fire dept in the area, your, the city has been running the fire dept at levels from 20 yrs ago, it can’t get any smaller. This idea if “retaining control” is a joke. The city has control and that’s why your fire dept is sinking. Your mayor and city council proves everyday they dont know how to run public services. You have no choice except to spend more money. The surrounding cities, RFA and airport already pick up the slack your city has created. Your now taking money from tax payers outside your own city.
So join the RFA
Correct, that’s your only choice. Its the right thing for the service of the citizens. But staffing properly comes at a price. The city has to stop pretending they dont know why staff is leaving and no one is beating down the door to work at your Fire Department.
Do you know what a union is and what they do? Do you understand basic economics? Geez, you’d think someone who prides themselves on knowing more than anyone else about finances including the finance department, would at least have some basic understanding of what these meant in the long and short term. Never mind getting rid of staff, maybe get rid of your position. You want to be mayor so badly but have no idea why people leave this city in a professional capacity. You certainly don’t have what it takes to create a good working environment.
Your response is puzzling to me.
Why do you and others insist on saying I wish to be mayor as some odd method to silence my voice? I’m not running for mayor. Were you aware? Steve Schmalz is. Joe Marine is running for his 4th term. I am not and would not be eligible for 4 more years. Do you think I have some deep stealth plan to plant the seeds today to run in 4 years??? Help me understand your logic.
Are you suggesting that employees will leave if we fail to pay them the highest salaries in the region? I believe people are incentivized to work because they feel their employer is fair, provides a wonderful work environment, provides opportunities for them to do meaningful work and values their contributions. None of this is about money, but about culture. Non-represented salaries refers to those not represented by a collective bargaining organization. Edmonds implemented furloughs. It is advisable to do salary rollbacks instead of reductions in force.
Last, in the private sector, we work with the resources we have and that often times means reducing heads and doing extra work with no raise. In good times, we can share in the spoils. In bad times, like we are in today, unfortunately we have to tighten our belt and save money. Why is this anathema to you?
As Deloris pointed out, a good working environment is key to retaining employees, and salaries are a good part of it. I don’t recall you ever going after the salaries of Mukilteo school teachers, who would like to live in this area. Same goes for the professional staff in the City.
May I suggest that a key reason you continue to receive the wrath of some our residents focuses clearly on your delivery. Your constant criticism of fellow council members and Joe have not endured you to many of us. Your disagreement with them has crossed the line too many times and bordered on outright cynicism when speaking about your differences.
I’m realizing some of this is cultural. I’m from the Caribbean originally. Our politics is very rough and tumble. In the states, discourse here strikes me as passive aggressive. I try to simply speak my truth, so realize and appreciate you may not like my delivery.
I believe the stakes are high.
I get passionate when I see the city enduring $4 million deficits, continuing on with absolutely no plan whatsoever to buy critical equipment for the fire department and public works, while raising salaries 5-10% and coming up with 0.72% in cuts when pressed.
I get passionate when I look at the pay scale of department heads, the lack of any kind of performance review and the unwillingness to revisit the 2022 vote that gave rise to their salary increases.
I’m not sure why you think I should find those alarming facts to be good ones. They make me very angry. As a fiscal conservative, why don’t these facts anger you?
We had a great policy to stop this deficit spending – council waived it because the mayor asked for more flexibility. When the administration realized they were in deficit mode last year because I forced the issue, they invented a new interpretation of the policy, citing it was too confusing and poorly worded to not be misinterpreted. Mind you, it had never been misinterpreted in the prior 16 years of its existence. So this is my frustration trying to hold the government accountable for you and me, which is my sworn duty as your elected representative.
What you may not realize is I am successful in holding the administration accountable. The finances are as precarious as I have been saying since last August. Some people are shouting me down and claiming I have bad intentions. I come to this conservative paper intentionally to inform the right leaning citizens of the facts in hopes that the facts will alarm you and compel you to encourage all the elected representatives to do something about them.
School teachers are outside our purview. That is the school district.
Thanks for a good direct discourse. I enjoy that and respect and appreciate your candor.
See my response to Dixon below.