These Olympia programs, including crisis response unit, could be cut without new taxes
The Olympia City Council was presented with four scenarios for closing its $6.5 million budget gap this week, including one in which the city addresses the deficit entirely with personnel and program cuts.
The most significant reduction on the list presented to the council was $1.2 million from the Crisis Response Unit. That would involve eliminating seven full-time positions and reducing service coverage.
According to council documents, the CRU would retain its day shift, eliminate the swing/night shift and the downtown walking unit.
CRU availability would drop from 19 hours a day to 10 hours a day, leaving a 9-hour service gap, primarily during late evenings and nights when crisis calls often occur, according to the document. No dedicated CRU walking downtown reduces support to businesses, their patrons and community members.
The reductions scenario also includes eliminating the Olympia Fire Department’s Basic Life Support program by 16 full-time employees, saving $1 million.
According to the document, closing this program would result in a decrease in response unit level of service, specifically in availability and reliability. Unit response times throughout the city would increase past the current 10 minutes and 23 seconds.
“Unit availability will decrease specifically at Station 2 (on the city’s west side) and Station 4 (east side) by greater than 10%,” the document reads. “This results in slower effective response force performance and degrading outcomes (survivability, property loss).”
This could result in the loss of $2.5 million in revenue, according to the document. Work would likely shift to private providers at a reduced level of service.
The council could also consider fully eliminating its climate program and the three full-time positions associated with it, saving $576,000.
The economic development program could also be fully eliminated, which would save another $554,000 and cut 2.25 full-time positions. Another $477,000 could be saved if the city reduces its communications resources by three full-time positions.
In total, potential reductions would close the $6.5 million gap and eliminate 43.25 positions, plus cancel some contracts.
These reductions assume the City Council doesn’t decide to adopt a Public Safety Sales Tax and increase the Business & Occupation Tax.
The council on Tuesday was mixed on solely adopting the two new revenue sources, or only moving forward with the public safety tax and mixing in some program reductions. City Manager Jay Burney said the goal is to come back Oct. 14 for a study session to get into specific reduction recommendations.
Burney said he asked the finance team to update its 10-year forecast, with the assumption that the $6.5 million gap in 2026 is closed. He said even with that happening, the structural problems in Olympia’s budget remain.
He said by the time the city gets to its 2029 budget discussions, they may need to talk about other options, such as a levy lid lift, more revenues and reductions.
“So I just want to point out that we’ve got work to do to close the budget, but absent any more repairs to the structural problems of our revenues, in particular, we will be back here in the same condition, at some point in time in the future,” Burney said.
This story was originally published October 1, 2025 at 3:01 PM.
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