La Conner's 2023 budget

Just like that, the La Conner Town Council is four weeks away from approving the 2023 municipal budget. Discussions started in September. Council has already approved $173,260 for tourism promotion, awarding $112,800 to nine groups and sending $60,450 to public works for restroom and landscaping maintenance.

These are the mundane, specific line items in your – if you are a town resident – $6.5 million 2023 expense budget.

At council’s Nov. 8 meeting Mayor Ramon Hayes said, as he does annually, that he is being cautious, saving for coming large ticket infrastructure projects and preparing for an economic downturn with uncertain sales tax revenue. The proposed budget, as it has been for a couple of years, is a deficit budget, with expenditures higher than revenues.

Hayes is right to be cautious, but a municipal budget – or a family budget – places markers on a hoped for and planned future as well as accounting for the certainty of program costs.

The best example of expansive planning is the fire department championing a fire boat and needed equipment upgrades.

The 2023 budget grows to cover these costs.

Still, the budget’s growth is cautious for revenues and liberal for expenditures.

Town staff succeed admirably at controlling costs. Over ten months, this year total costs are at 67%, $1.86 million below the budget.

For revenues, everything is golden, $67,000 over projections, again with two months remaining. The fund balance, a combination of reserves and monies held for planned expenses, is $5.4 million, exceeding projected revenues. Town policy is 20% of the budget.

The annual deficit budget is in some ways a paper exercise, underestimating revenue and over-projecting the year’s expenses. That may be the case again.

That tight framework constrains everyone, council members, residents and staff. The 2020 fund balance was $3.99 million. Revenues grew through the worst of the coronavirus pandemic years and the feds threw in another $260,000.

Money for new sewage treatment plants, water main pipes and road repairs is being set aside. Staff will pursue state and federal grants to supplement those necessary projects.

But saving and counting seed corn can stiffen the neck, hindering looking up at the stars. What are we not hoping for and therefore not planning or pursuing? Last year Council could not grant the new library a dime, maintaining a perfect zero dollar support history.

There is no talk of closing First Street to traffic or having horse drawn carriages shuttling tourists from Marina or school parking lots.

The crisis of poverty this quaint little town suffers from is too little imagination and creativity. It cannot be that Glen Johnson has cornered the market on big ideas. But who else is dreaming of a yet to be realized future?

Robert Browning wrote “ Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?” People wax eloquently about the specialness of La Conner and the Skagit Valley. Perhaps a poet or two needs to be elected or hired to help us weave dreams as the start of realizing the special and specific future we both need and deserve.