Spokane city employees learn 30-50 positions may be cut ahead of holidays as another deficit looms

Dozens of Spokane city employees will likely lose their jobs ahead of the holidays as City Hall grapples with a projected $13 million deficit in the 2026 budget.

Mayor Lisa Brown notified employees in a staff-wide email Monday that 30 to 50 positions could be cut, though roughly a third of those will likely be currently vacant positions.

“It’s with a really heavy heart that we’re sending this communication with (staff) about this, but we wanted to separate out the rumors from the reality by giving them the number, and letting them know that about a third of those positions are already vacant, but the remaining impacts will be real,” Brown said in an interview. “And I’m sad about that.”

The city employs more than 2,000 people. Uniformed public safety personnel have been exempted from the pending layoffs. But because police and fire make up nearly 60% of the city’s general fund, these exemptions will deepen the impact on affected departments, Brown acknowledged.

The deficit is contained in the city’s general fund, and many of the city’s positions exist in “enterprise funds” that are largely self-sufficient, relying on service fees such as solid waste and utilities. Still, even some of those enterprise departments may see job loss, city spokeswoman Erin Hut said in a text.

It’s the second time in two years employees have learned their jobs may be at risk, and city leaders expect this time will be significantly more difficult. In 2024, as the city prepared to move from annual to biennial budgets, local leaders were staring down a potential $50 million deficit in 2025-26.

Last summer, 29 employees learned that their jobs may be at risk, but by the time budgets were completed last fall, only three lost theirs. One was rehired elsewhere in the city. The city also negotiated with the police union last year to institute an early retirement incentive, eventually replacing a couple dozen senior officers with new hires for a projected $1.2 million in salary savings.

After months of negotiations and cost-cutting measures, local leaders lauded a budget that appeared to be balanced.

“Given the scale of this challenge, I am pleased to present a $2.5 billion proposed budget in which resources and expenditures are balanced in each calendar year and over the biennium,” Brown wrote last year in her budget proposal.

It appears less likely this year that layoffs will be allayed.

Local leaders dis agree why their 2026 budget projections were off: City Hall pointed to lower-than-expected tax revenue, while Councilman Michael Cathcart and others argued the budget was built on unrealistic expectations. But they do agree that $13 million in adjustments need to be made in the coming weeks. They also agree that the city has largely run out of ways to fill that gap without turning to payroll.

“The only place left to make it up is personnel, unfortunately,” City Council President Betsy Wilkerson said in an interview. “It’s been kind of a damp blanket over city hall because of the uncertainty.”

The council, which is ultimately responsible for approving the city’s budget, is unlikely to have an appetite to try to absorb much of the deficit by dipping into reserves, Wilkerson noted.

The city has faced budget deficits in the tens of millions for each of the last three years and dipped heavily into its savings in 2022 to pass its 2023 budget. The city’s chief financial officer, Matt Boston, has for years pointed to unsustainable contracts with city unions that offered significant raises in the hopes of retaining staff amid a hot job market – raises that outpaced the city’s revenue growth.

Some of those contracts are up for negotiation next year, including with the firefighters union and Local 270 – one of the city’s largest unions, which covers nonuniformed clerical, administrative, labor and mechanical employees.

“We have to emerge out of those negotiations with contracts that reflect our revenue realities,” Brown said. “It needs to be a different outcome this time.”

Meanwhile, it’s uncertain which positions will be cut and what other cost -saving measures remain. The mayor’s office has sent a list of possible positions to the city’s Civil Service Commission for review, which would be whittled down to the eventual 30-50.

The City Council will likely slash its travel budget and is looking at cutting up to three positions in its own office, Wilkerson said.

The council office has 21 positions approved in the 2025-26 budget, including legislative assistants for the council members, managers for various policy areas such as homelessness, their own budget director and a communications director.

The council office has grown significantly from just one full-time staffer in the last two decades, following the transition to the strong-mayor form of government, reportedly prompted largely by friction between the council and the mayor’s office. With a closer relationship between the current mayor and council majority, Wilkerson suggested some of that work could be shared.

“We did not have a good working relationship with the prior (mayoral) administration, so we had to build our own office because that work wasn’t happening,” Wilkerson said. “It wasn’t important under the prior administration. It is under this administration.”

In an interview, Cathcart said he hoped this year’s budget adjustments would have a longer-term impact on the city’s financial health going forward.

“If we’re making cuts in the right positions in the right departments with regards to how it will affect the long-term sustainability of the city, then, yes, I do believe (the city will be in a better position),” he said in an interview.

Still, he expects there will be lingering deficits in coming years and believes the city finds itself in this position because leadership declined to make difficult decisions earlier.

“It’s been multiple years of kicking the can, and I think that responsible parties include at least two mayors and multiple versions of the city council,” he said. “This goes back to the days of COVID where a lot of government money came in and helped with a lot of this … over time, rather than make a lot of these tough decisions, we made use of those funds to fill the gap.”