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James Geluso, please trust me (and the City staff) on this.

Currently, under an interlocal agreement between the City of Olympia and the Olympia Metropolitan Parks District, the City is obligated to appropriate 11% of property tax revenues to Parks. This is highly unusual, but was a compromise made when the MPD was created to ensure that the City would NOT divert money away from parks, ensuring that the additional taxes collected by the MPD would indeed be ADDITIONAL funds for parks. The parks advocates insisted on this or would not support the passage of the MPD measure.

The creation of the RFA would transfer $1.00 of the City property tax authority to the RFA. The City property tax revenues would decline by almost half (with the RFA getting exactly that amount). Because the City would have less property tax, the obligation to commit 11% of property tax to parks would be 11% of a much smaller number.

I estimated this (based on the 2022 budget data) that Parks would lose about $765,000 per year.

The City Finance Director came before the city Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee recently, with a more detailed analysis than I had prepared. That analysis is based on the projected 2023 budget. It estimates the loss to parks to be $1.3 million. You can see that on the Presentation on this agenda item, in the PRAC meeting of Thursday, October 20. Slide 8 shows this calculation in the lower right hand corner. That can be accessed at the following link.

http://olympia.legistar.com/gateway.aspx?M=F&ID=9b3e6180-216d-479d-824a-132999a16f13.pdf

It is indeed unique that Olympia has dedicated "11% of the general fund" to Parks. The RFA would greatly reduce the revenues to the "general fund" because almost half of the property tax that now goes to the "general fund" would instead go directly to the RFA. The general fund would be smaller, but fire expenditures from the general fund would be zero. The net result is that Parks loses money, but the other general fund agencies (Police, Planning, Public Works, and City Manager, would have MORE money available.

It would be easy for the City Council to fix. The City Manager acknowledges that this would reduce parks funding. The city Finance Director acknowledges that this would reduce parks funding. The Finance Director estimates than changing the "11%" commitment to a "13%" commitment would keep parks funding whole.