The Roy City Council will enter the 2025 fiscal year with a deficit yet again in its general fund budget, but council members made cuts to reduce the margin by nearly half before adopting it Monday, Dec. 9.
The council unanimously approved the budget with an approximate deficit of $72,000 to $79,000 compared with an originally budgeted shortfall of $144,573. Roy will cut city attorney fees from $60,000 to $20,000, switch medical benefits for city employees to a high deductible plan, cut a part-time assistant city-clerk treasurer position, and cut the cost of living adjustments from 5% to 0%. The city will also budget $600,000 in water capital fund expenditures rather than $1.1 million, and it will not add any positions to city staff. Adjustments to the cost of living cuts will save the city $20,000, and the position cuts will save $11,000.
Switching to the high deductible plan, if legally feasible, will save the city approximately $7,000 to the general fund budget, according to city accountant Tara Dunford. She said the council’s cuts will save somewhere between $65,000 and $72,000 in the general fund budget, and she recommended that any deeper cuts would have to come from staffing or law enforcement as over $351,000 is budgeted for law enforcement out of the city’s $864,000 in expenditures for the year.
Roy Police Chief Paul Antista addressed the council’s repeated inquiries into the city contracting out its police services with Pierce County, but the concept will not realistically save the city money.
Antista said the cost of a regular basic patrol deputy would be $211,370 annually, and a sergeant would cost $230,000. Training for each officer per year costs $188,000, and each police vehicle would cost $88,000, with totals creeping toward $135,000 for outfitting and maintenance.
The police chief told the council that the county would not be as efficient as the current Roy Police Department as the county has a large radius it has to cover, and response times would be significantly delayed compared with the city’s.
To date, approximately 300 entries have come through South Sound 911, with 179 of those being categorized as calls for service in Roy. Out of those 179, Pierce County responded to 31, while 148 of those were handled by the Roy Police Department. Antista also said Roy handles medical rescues and other calls that local fire departments can’t respond to quickly.
In other city news, the council approved the comprehensive plan with minimal comments, although Mayor Pro Tem Yvonne Starks, who stepped in during the meeting for the absent Mayor Kimber Ivy, admitted she had only read about half of the plan. The council agreed that approving the comprehensive plan before the end of the year was important to be able to utilize the city’s $50,000 comprehensive plan grant and that it can make any amendments to it as needed.
