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The Mountlake Terrace City Council kicked off its first work/study session of the year with four newly elected councilmembers taking their oaths of office: Incumbents Kyoko Matsumoto Wright (Position 4), Steve Woodard (Position 2) and William Paige Jr. (Position 3), along with newcomer Sam Doyle (Position 1).
The Council also elected Woodard as the new Mountlake Terrace mayor, replacing six-year Mayor Matsumoto Wright. Councilmember Bryan Wahl was reelected as mayor pro tem by a vote of 4-3. Councilmember Erin Murray was also one of the mayor pro tem nominees.
Paige nominated Wahl for Mayor Pro Tem, and Woodard nominated Murray.
Murray received three votes from Doyle, Woodard and herself, while Wahl received four votes from Matsumoto Wright, Sonmore, Paige and himself.
The City Council selects one of its seven members to serve as mayor every two years and mayor pro tem yearly.
Long Term Financial Sustainability Plan
The City Council voted 6-1 to approve an additional $8,000 requested by Baker Tilly – a public sector advising company – for attending one extra meeting that the Mountlake Terrace Fiscal Sustainability Taskforce added to its calendar. Councilmember Laura Sonmore voted no.
The original $99,500 contract, approved in February 2025, covered the City’s long-term financial forecast and model, included six meetings with the taskforce, a presentation to the City Council and a draft implementation action plan. Deputy City Manager Carolyn Hope said the taskforce needed more time to deliberate the recommendations the team was going to make. This would increase the contract total to $107,500.
Sonmore said that she does not believe the scenarios and information in the taskforce materials will meaningfully help balance the city’s budget.
“I think the taskforce should have gotten additional information that would have explained what they were talking about,” Sonmore said. “I did not give an extra $8,000 so we’d be paying over $107,000 of our taxpayers’ money.”
Paige asked Hope what would happen if the Council does not approve the extra $8,000.
“They probably would not be supporting us in the January taskforce meeting,” Hope said. “Some of the work would probably need to be done by City staff.”
“If that scenario happened, in your opinion, how would this get resolved?” Paige asked Sonmore.
“I would suggest that we hold that additional meeting ourselves without the consultant there and have our task force who’s highly capable of summarizing how they feel what the budget should be,” Sonmore said.
“I would say that a big chunk of Baker Tilly’s work is preparing the financial model, updating it with the new data and showing us how the forecast changes in the future,” Hope said. “Our finance director is amazing, and she is buried in about five different audits right now, so she just hasn’t had the capacity to support this work in the way that she might normally be able to if we didn’t have that situation.”
During the Oct. 9 meeting, the Council learned that the City faces a $4.2 million shortfall through 2030 and reserves are projected to fall below minimum levels by 2027.
Baker Tilly Director Steve Toler told the Council that the latest financial forecasts show reserves have been reduced by about $3.2 million following the year-end close.
To close the shortfall, Toler said the City will need about $4 million in new and ongoing strategies by 2027 – about 17% of annual operating costs – and an extra $2.3 million phased in over three years starting in 2030.
Wahl noted the “irony” of asking for more money to fund a Financial Sustainability Taskforce, but he said the City needs to proceed with the amendment. “I do share a lot of the concerns…and there was a reason that put that forward back at the time,” he said. “But I also recognize challenges. I’m looking forward to getting the recommendations from the taskforce and thoroughly vetting that both the public and with the council. We do have significant financial challenges ahead.”
Response to national shootings
In response to a public comment about the shootings in Minnesota and Oregon that involved the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) earlier this week, Councilmember Sam Doyle suggested to Council that the City should make a public statement about the incidents.
“I have seen elected officials, cities, states, nursing organizations in Oregon are making statements condemning what happened yesterday,” she said. “I’m afraid that when incidents like this happen, if you say nothing, you’d be seen as either ignoring it or more complicit.”
Sonmore asked whether making such a statement would set a precedent that every time there is an incident, the Council and the City would issue a statement. She reminded councilmembers that their core job is financial stewardship and City services.
“As much as it saddens me that we have to have this conversation, sooner or later, precedence is going to happen, but I’m already under the impression that we might have already done that,” Woodard said, referring to the City’s public statement about the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
City Manager Jeff Niten said that City staff can draft a statement that is locally focused about how the community here reacts and supports each other rather than a broad national statement. The draft would be presented at the next Council meeting on Jan. 22. There will be no meeting on Jan. 15.
The full meeting can be viewed on the City’s YouTube channel.
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