Lower Valley Matters

By: Mike Fong and Laura Solis, Lower Valley Matters

November 1, 2026

Fall means football, pumpkin spice lattes and Halloween for most of us.  But it’s budget season for local elected officials and bureaucrats across the state. As we speak, city governments are busy working on making their budgets balance as required under Washington law. Cities often resort to patching budget holes by using one-time money that can’t be relied on again, deferring necessary expenses into the future, or making cuts to needed services to make the numbers work and just survive another budget season. 

But achieving a structurally-balanced budget means that a city has developed a plan for spending that matches the amount of revenue expected to come in for the year. Toppenish City Manager Adam Vaughn announced on Friday that his preliminary 2027 Budget accomplishes that goal. 

Ahead of Monday’s City Council budget study session, Vaughn shared with Lower Valley Matters that Toppenish has “made a lot of moves and increased revenue where we can, and now are in a great position to be able to respond specifically to the needs that our residents bring to us.”

For the better part of the last ten years, Toppenish, like many cities, has been patching up budget holes in its annual general fund through short-term measures. A city’s general fund is the portion of the budget that provides the most flexible dollars to support city services like police, fire, parks, and roads. Toppenish’s general fund has been stretched thin in recent years by rising costs and diminishing revenues – due in large part to the 1% cap on property tax growth in Washington (discussed in another Lower Valley Matters post here). The general fund is roughly $7.5M of the city’s total $17M overall budget (roughly 44%). The rest, about $9.5M, is associated with “enterprise funds” such as wastewater, water, and solid waste and a few other expenditure areas that are not similarly impacted because the revenues are dedicated for specific purposes.

Vaughn shared that for the last several years, Toppenish accumulated larger-than-normal fund balances from an influx of one-time federal COVID relief funds. But as those dollars were drawn down, the city would eventually have to achieve financial sustainability for its general fund through a combination of structural cuts and revenues. Toppenish has been working towards a general fund structural balance since 2024 and took several measures to get to where it is today. This includes:

• Council approving a .1% criminal justice sales tax increase in April of this year that is expected to generate $120,000 in annual revenues for public safety services;
• Executing an interlocal agreement with Yakima County Fire District 5 to take over fire and emergency medical services to reduce costs of the city sustaining a full-time fire department themselves; and 
• Cuts to positions and programs, including the community swimming pool, other recreation, and maintenance activities related to the city’s infrastructure.

Lower Valley Matters has previously written about how much Toppenish and other area cities rely on utility taxes to support their general funds. That trend continues in Vaughn’s proposed 2027 budget: water and wastewater utility taxes for Toppenish residents will go up from 29% to 33%, but the impact of this 4% increase in taxes on residents is somewhat softened by a 3% rate decrease. Utility taxes will provide an ongoing revenue stream to Toppenish’s general fund while rates go to support usage, operations, and capital expenditures related to running the water and wastewater systems. Overall, this approach will net $197,000 annually for the general fund. Vaughn’s proposed 2027 budget appears to rely at least in part on this utility tax increase to achieve structural balance.

All in all, Vaughn believes this is a significant milestone: “We of course can’t do everything, but our focus is now on what we can do versus making sure we can sustain everything and make cuts to do so.” 

Public hearings on the Toppenish 2027 budget are planned for November 9th with final adoption scheduled for December 14. For more information, click here.