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Yes, I want to support My MLTnews!“It’s about leadership not communications. What’s required is a leader who’s willing and able to fundamentally change the approach and go through the hard part of doing that.”
— Steve Toler, Baker Tilly municipal financial consultant.
In December 2025, My Neighborhood News Group brought you a series of stories about government finances. Here is another follow-up story on additional ideas generated from that series. If you missed the series, you can begin here: Part 1.
Read our earlier overview on the Mountlake Terrace Financial Sustainability Task Force here.
The idea for Mountlake Terrace’s Financial Sustainability Task Force came, in part, from Baker Tilly and Steve Toler, a consultant for the national firm that specializes in financial advisory and fiscal sustainability practices for municipalities.
The plan called for engaging community stakeholders to provide input to elected officials’ decisions on how to address “fiscal gaps” – that space between revenues and expenses.
Toler spent 40 years in municipal government, 10 years as a municipal consultant and is a CPA by trade. Mountlake Terrace’s Financial Sustainability Plan was his last major project before he officially retires from the firm.
He says this MLT task force was “one of the best”.
“The level of sharing by task force members about their perspectives based on where they are and their experiences in MLT has been outstanding,” Toler said.
“[Task force] members poured themselves into this project, and while most do not come from a municipal finance background, they sought to learn about the challenges and share their ideas that have been compelling to their peers, staff and frankly, to us as facilitators.”
With this experience in general and in our own back yard, here’s his take on past, present and future accountability and public engagement.
What’s changed in city finances
Financial infrastructure has changed and residents have changed.
For decades, cities had enough growth so they could grow their way out of it. “Money problem? No problem. Add a big box store and your financial problems are fixed!” Toler said.
These days, “it is no longer a math problem, it’s a structural problem.”
“[Cities] have to manage more carefully and build out long-term plans that set aside money for, and support of, service expectations, infrastructure or unexpected events,” Toler said. This is different from one-time, stay-at-home COVID, which sucked the life out of sales tax, or American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grants that were short-lived.
Good long-term plans include anticipated unfunded mandates, employee recruitment and retention. Really, there’s no shortage of municipal challenges.
Solution? It starts with a straight-forward reckoning of city finances and plans. He describes the exercise as “What condition are your conditions in.”
Using the right assumptions and data, he asks city leaders simple questions: “How reliable is your plan, how likely is it that your plan will carry the city 10 years the way you expect it to. What is the likelihood you can actually make that happen over and over again (the long-range forecast) even when things don’t go your way.” Then, city leaders show their work and assess its reliability.
And if there’s a gap (and there is always a gap), how is it filled.
Enter: the community.
“Residents are smarter and more in tune [with how the government works]. They are financially astute. The public can handle more honesty than we give them credit for,” Toler said.
“Residents are increasingly diverse and must be represented. That comes from helping your community share their values and be a part of that process, making a real effort to invite, encourage and support all residents.”
Toler said he puts the problem squarely in the middle of the financial sustainability task force and asks: “How are ‘we’ going to solve this?”
It means using all the levers of government. It means discarding programs that don’t serve the public any longer. It means listening to everyone on the task force and getting real about what it’s like to be in their shoes.
For Toler (and Mountlake Terrace) that looks like the task force that showed up for six months, sat through many hours-long meetings, had really difficult conversations and – at the end –came to a consensus on what Mountlake Terrace should do to close the gap.
“One member… she worked in government living paycheck to paycheck,” Toler said. “She talked about how a $40 car tab fee and a quarter-percent increase in sales tax would impact her. We needed to understand what it was like.”
It was a consensus that took into account various perspectives and was defended at the community-facing workshops by every task force member.
“They were all focused on, ‘We need to solve this together because this is our community,’” Toler said.
Does it always work? No. Toler said he worked with one community that didn’t have that ability to see other perspectives. “Diametrically opposed, positional perspectives” is how he described it. They got there eventually. It just took much longer.
His most successful project was in Scott’s Valley, California, where the process showed the city was willing to propose a big jump in sales tax. It passed by a percentage of 70-30 in a public vote… just in time for COVID. But, because the City had its financial plan in place, it was not a disaster. Scott’s Valley officials were so pleased with their soft landing, they created a Steve Toler Day to say thank you.
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