The City of Burien’s budget book considers the past, present, and future while providing a roadmap for what we anticipate our next two years will look like – what we’ll build, the services we’ll provide, and how we’ll get there. It also keeps us accountable and transparent in our stewardship of public funds.
While that roadmap might look a little overwhelming on paper, it tells a pretty interesting story. Even if you’re not a finance expert, learning more about your city’s budget can help you use your voice more effectively to influence city decision-making processes and feel more informed. Read on to find out!
Building the Budget
Developing a city budget is a collaborative process. City staff work together to understand and identify needs, cost savings and efficiencies, organizational changes, and economic conditions. Department directors and managers work closely with the finance director, budget analyst, and city manager to create a draft budget for presentation to the Burien City Council. Over the course of several presentations and public hearings, staff help guide the City Council and community through the draft, answer questions, and listen to feedback.
“Our budget development process is guided by the City’s Strategic Plan and our financial policies,” explained Senior Financial Analyst Kaitlyn Graham. “We always keep those in mind with the decisions we’re making for the proposed budget.”
The City Council adopted the City’s 2025-2026 biennial budget on December 9, 2024. Leading up to its passage, there were presentations at five different council meetings that broke down every section of the budget, three public hearings, and ongoing opportunities for community members to share their comments throughout.
At 166 pages long, the budget can be challenging to digest. Let’s walk through some highlights.
How We Pay for Things
The City’s revenues and expenses are organized into funds. These funds each have a different purpose, which helps us keep things sorted, comply with legal requirements, and forecast trends.
- Operating Funds: These are the funds we use to maintain services, including public safety, pothole repair, park maintenance, human services, summer camps, small business support, and much more. There are two operating funds that support these services, the General Fund and the Street Fund. The General Fund represents at least two-thirds of the entire budget and supports our general operations.
- Capital Project Funds: These are used to account for financial resources required for major construction, infrastructure improvements, and land acquisitions. Currently, the City has three active capital project funds: Parks and General Government, Transportation, and Surface Water Management.
- Special Revenue Funds: These accounts represent specific revenue sources that have restricted expenses due to state, grant, or other legal requirements.
- Reserve Funds: These allow us to better navigate economic uncertainties and maintain essential services. This can include saving up funds for future equipment replacement, capital projects, and the creation and maintenance of public artworks.
- Debt Service Fund: We use these to repay our long-term debts responsibly over time.
- Proprietary Fund: We have one proprietary fund, the Surface Water Management Fund. Fees collected from customers cover the expenses for the maintenance and infrastructure of the storm drain system.
Where the Money Comes From
Revenues are generated from various sources, including taxes, permits, fees, licenses, grants, facility rentals, and intergovernmental revenue.
Most of the General Fund comes from taxes. The largest sources of tax revenue are collected from sales taxes (about one-third), property taxes (nearly a quarter), and utility taxes (about one-tenth).
While you may be familiar with the amount of sales or property tax you pay, those amounts are actually split between multiple levels of government and school districts. The City receives one of the smallest portions of your overall tax payment, which it then stretches considerably to cover the services relied on by Burien community members, such as roads, police, and parks.
When you shop in Burien, you may notice on your receipt that you were charged 10.2% in sales tax. The amount that comes back to the City is only 0.85% – a fraction of one percent. That’s only about eight cents of every dollar of sales tax you pay. The remaining 92 cents go to the state and county governments as well as regional transit agencies.
If you own property in Burien, your property tax rate is about $11.28 for every $1,000 of assessed value. That’s about $6,000 per year for a home worth $539,000 (the average home value in Burien last year). Out of that $11.28, the City of Burien only saw less than 84 cents, or 7%, in 2024.
One critical issue shared by many cities, including Burien, is that the state arbitrarily limits property tax rate growth at only 1% each year, a rate that is vastly outpaced by population growth and inflation (closer to 3%, on average, according to the Consumer Price Index). This imbalance has compounded over the last two decades since the cap was first enacted, resulting in nearly unavoidable structural deficits in City revenue and expenditure models.
According to the Association of Washington Cities, “Cities face complex public safety challenges, escalating costs for aging infrastructure, challenges to recruit and retain employees, and ever-increasing service needs. Cities’ revenues are not keeping up with the costs of goods and services to meet community expectations and priorities [due to this cap].”
The Washington Employment Security Department estimates that in 2001, an average of 80 residents were served for every one staff member. In 2023, that ratio increased to 108 residents per staff member.
“The property tax cap isn’t just a City of Burien issue, but rather it is a city, county, school, and special district issue,” explained Finance Director Casey Headley. “Inflation averaged 5.74% between 2020 and 2024, which only compounded the problem. American Rescue Plan Act funding helped address some of the inflation issues during this time while also providing funding for other one-time costs. However, now that they are spent, we are left to pick up the pieces with this financial structure, which restricts our ability to continue providing services at a functional level. We also have infrastructure that we need to maintain but lack the resources to do so, along with failing infrastructure that is well beyond our financial capabilities to replace.”
Achieving Financial Stability
One of the four priorities outlined in the City’s 2023-2028 Strategic Plan is “Achieving Financial Stability.” This strategic direction was developed in recognition of the need to have a sustainable budget that accounts for future growth in addition to providing the resources required to meet the community’s current level-of-service needs.
The City’s Finance Department has helped lead the way to that goal, instilling the values of accountability, transparency, and efficiency. In 2021, the City refinanced debt bonds to lower interest rates, upgrading the City’s bond rating to its highest level yet, “Aa1”. That rating is based on the City’s demonstrated track record of strong financial reserves, a robust local economy, effective budget management, sound financial policies, and experienced and efficient management. The Finance Department consistently produces audited financial statements with clean opinions (and even some compliments) from the Washington State Auditor’s Office each year.
“A concerted effort was made in the 2025-2026 budget to address systemic deficits affecting long-term operations,” said City Manager Adolfo Bailon. “The city is increasing efficiency in operations and customer service by investing in new technology, upgrading key software systems, and restructuring departments”.
Last May, the City took the first big step toward achieving the strategic goal of implementing council-approved revenue options to help avoid the impending projected deficit.
- Adjustments to Community Development Permit Fees: After careful review, it was discovered that many of the City’s building and planning permitting fees were too low to cover the City’s actual costs. Starting October 1, 2024, some of the fees were adjusted to better reflect costs.
- Water and Sewer Utility Taxes Amendment: The excise tax on water and sewer utilities in Burien increased from 8% to 10% at the beginning of the year. The estimated increase to a single-family residential customer’s monthly bill is about $2.
- Business and Occupation Tax Amendment: The Business and Occupation Tax in Burien increased from 0.1% to 0.2% at the start of 2025. This does not impact small businesses making $200,000 or less. A business making $5 million in annual gross receipts would pay an additional $5,000 in taxes.
Together, these three measures are projected to generate an average of $2.8 million per year, helping eliminate an impending $2.6 million projected annual average deficit if the City maintained existing baseline service levels.
However, without adding a significant new funding source soon, the City would have to make difficult cuts that would impact service levels and create new, complex challenges for an already understaffed team.
To avoid this scenario, the Strategic Plan also directs the City to explore voter-approved revenue options.
“The City must identify new or enhanced revenue sources to address emerging issues and maintain its sound financial health,” said Bailon. “City personnel will work collaboratively with our partners throughout the community to identify current and future needs, and revenue sources to offset increases in costs to general operations”.
We will continue to work on solutions that will allow your City government to continue serving the community in the ways it expects and deserves, but we can’t do this alone. It will take collaboration from all members of the community. Stay connected on City platforms to follow updates and learn more about how your local government works.
