Kent mayor proposes hike in city B&O tax to help pay for police

A budget proposal by Kent Mayor Dana Ralph would raise the city’s business and occupation (B&O) tax to pay to hire four new police department positions.

Ralph revealed the plan during her 2025-2026 biennial budget presentation Tuesday evening, Sept. 23 to the City Council.

Ralph said the proposed B&O tax increase is partly in response to the Legislature failing to consider earlier this year a sale tax proposal that would have allowed the council to raise the sales tax to pay for more police without going to city voters. Ralph, who lobbied hard for the measure, said a 3 cents sales tax on each $10 purchase would raise about $12 million per year for the city and allow it to hire 30 to 35 more officers.

“Although this did not make it to the floor of the Legislature for a vote, the need is still there,” Ralph said. “This budget includes a modest increase in our B&O tax to help mitigate some of the immediate needs within our Police Department.”

The mayor wants to hire two sergeants and one officer for patrol and one corrections sergeant for the city jail.

The Police Department is fully staffed to budget at 167 officers, but Ralph said 50 of the officers have a tenure of three years or less, which has increased the responsibility of the sergeants who provide direct supervision, mentoring and development of the officers. The two new sergeant hires would reduce the officer-to-sergeant ratio from 9-to-1 to 5-to-1.

“The current nine officers per sergeant ratio is unrealistic and unsustainable,” Ralph said.

The cost of hiring two sergeants is $503,780 in 2025 and $493,860 in 2026, according to city budget documents. A patrol officer will cost $189,200 in 2025 and $188,750 in 2026. A corrections sergeant will cost $166,490 in 2025 and $169,220 in 2026.

That all adds up to a police department expense of $859,470 in 2025 and $851,830 in 2026 for a total of $1.71 million.

To cover the police department costs, Ralph proposes raising the gross receipts manufacturing rate from 0.001% to 0.00125% to bring in about $845,000 more per year. An adjustment to the gross receipts maximum cap from $20 million to $25 million would bring in another $86,800 per year.

The B&O tax also will go up because of a scheduled jump in the square footage tax approved in 2018 by the council. That hike will produce about $3 million in new revenue in 2025 for the general fund.

B&O tax impact

During a council budget discussion immediately following Ralph’s presentation, Councilmember Bill Boyce asked City Finance Director Paula Painter whether city staff had reached out to the business community about the proposed B&O hike to pay for police.

“We wanted to put this in front of you guys first and get a feel of where you are at as we get an ‘OK’ to start talking to people or an ‘oh my gosh,’ what are you guys doing,” Painter said. “We’d like to get that feel before going out to the business community, but definitely educating our business community and having these conversations are going to be very important.”

Boyce said he would like to see information about how the tax hike could impact businesses. Painter said because of confidentiality rules she couldn’t reveal the impact on specific companies, but could come up with examples without naming businesses.

Ralph agreed with Painter that staff wanted to give the proposal to the council before the business community. The mayor also said while forming the proposal staff discovered lifting the gross receipts cap would be a good way to increase revenue.

“While going through this what was shocking to me is around the cap and some of the really big players. …they’re not paying taxes on a lot of their revenue. …there’s (tax) revenue being left on the table,” Ralph said.

General fund numbers

Mayor Ralph’s proposed budget would increase general fund revenues to $126.69 million in 2025 from $121.14 million in the 2024 adjusted budget, a jump of $5.5 million or 4.6%. The 2026 general fund revenues are budgeted at $128.1 million, which are $1.4 million or 1.1% higher than 2025.

Sales taxes would bring in the most money to the city in 2025 at $32 million, followed by utility taxes at $27 million, B&O taxes at $24.3 million and property taxes at $16.4 million.

The proposal includes using $1.3 million in 2025 and $3.2 million in 2026 from the fund balance in the general fund to help balance the budget so revenues match expenses. The city’s general fund balance sits at $61.8 million in 2024.

“Our reserves are above the required minimums, and this is the kind of use they were intended for,” Ralph said.

Ralph said council and staff agreed with her to propose a status quo budget, which means keeping things pretty much the same.

“You will see this budget does exactly that as well as provides several options for restoration and stabilization,” Ralph said. “It was agreed that any budget request would be accompanied by a revenue stream or expenditure reduction to support it. We also collectively agreed to no new initiatives.”

The proposed increases to the public safety fund would put that budget at $65.7 million in 2025 or 52% of the total general fund budget.

Other highlights

The proposed budget also includes:

• Hiring an assistant city civil attorney in 2026 ($203,360) to help with increasing workload.

• Hiring a probation officer in 2025 ($58,850) to address the increase in probation workload, including mental health and DUI cases.

• Extended Senior Center coordinator job ($121,200) to sustain the current level of operation and service.

• Additional encampment contractor cleanup services ($75,000 per year) rather than using Natural Resources parks staff time, which has devoted the majority of shifts to cleanup rather than other duties. Ten to 15 locations require contracted services for cleaning up.

• Contracted security services ($50,000) to continue a pilot program to supplement parks staff by securing at 28 locations park restroom buildings and parking lots, which has shown a reduction in illicit use, specifically at parking lots in the park system.

• An annual increase of $55,000 for the city’s Spotlight Series as costs climb in order to continue to bring in artists to provide entertainment to residents.

• Extend race and equity coordinator position ($147,950) with use of federal funds remaining from pandemic.

• Hire a floodplain certification engineer ($156,870) to oversee program, a federal requirement.

• $1.5 million capital project to improve 132nd Avenue SE pedestrian access to the planned East Hill North Community Park.

• $300,000 for design of a roundabout at the intersection of 116th Avenue SE and SE 248th Street, which has high congestion during the morning and afternoon commutes.