In the fall of 2024, we surveyed Washington’s cities and towns to learn about current city conditions. This year’s city priorities match closely with AWC’s City Legislative Priorities and indicate significant concerns around fiscal security for cities, as well as in public safety, housing, infrastructure and behavioral health.

Here’s a snapshot of what we learned:

Who took the survey?

What we found

General city conditions

Here are the four main takeaways from the 2024 City Conditions Survey (CCS):

Budget crunch for cities intensifies: Washington’s cities and towns consistently innovate and do more with fewer resources, but the cost of providing services is outpacing revenues. One-time federal ARPA funding is running out, and revenue growth is slowing while inflation continues to impact city costs. City finances moved to the top of the list of concerns identified in our survey, coming in at 86%, up from 62% just two years ago.

Infrastructure hurdles persist: Infrastructure funding for provision of basic services—like water and sewer—continues to be a source of major concern for cities. The rising cost of materials, aging systems, regulatory complexity, and rapidly growing populations in many cities are causing a perfect storm of infrastructure needs without sufficient funding sources.

Public safety remains a concern: Cities report an increase in call for service while still having major concerns about recruitment and retention and liability insurance costs increases are impacting budgets.

Housing supply lags: Cities are planning for housing of all types, but they are doubtful about the likelihood of homes being built that are affordable to those earning less than 50% of area median income (AMI) without additional state and federal support. Shelter capacity and affordable options for people with developmental disabilities also represent important stressors on local communities.

Growth, increasing demand for services, workforce recruitment and retention challenges, and continued inflation have all contributed to hard choices for Washington’s cities. A backlog of projects due to underfunding or sweeping of previously reliable funding sources is another compounding factor for cities.

Responding cities shared that their top priorities to focus on in 2025 are:

• City budget and finances—86% of respondents
• Infrastructure—78% of respondents
• Public safety—63% of respondents
• Economic development—54% of respondents
• Transportation—38% of respondents
• Affordable housing—36% of respondents

Sources: 2024 AWC City Conditions Survey, 151 responses
2023 AWC City Conditions Survey, 139 responses
2022 AWC City Conditions Survey, 86 responses

When asked which conditions were of major concern to the community, more than half of survey respondents identified the following:

• Condition of city infrastructure systems—62% of respondents
• Cost of city services—57% of respondents
• Crime, public safety, and the criminal justice system—53% of respondents
• Affordability of housing—51% of respondents

Sources: 2024 AWC City Conditions Survey, 149 responses
2023 AWC City Conditions Survey, 143 responses*
2022 AWC City Conditions Survey, 87 responses

These shifts reveal a troubling trend in city financing and budgets: More and more cities report that revenue isn’t keeping up with the cost of providing services.

Cities’ long-term outlook suggests they expect their funding landscape to worsen. 52% of respondents indicated that they expect to be less able to meet financial needs over the next five years.

In fact, for 2025:

• 61% of respondents indicate revenues are falling short of expenditures
• 29% of respondents indicate revenues are keeping up with expenditures
• 9% of respondents indicate that revenues are exceeding expenditures

A deeper look at the revenue outlook compared to expenditures for responding cities shows this trend clearly.

When asked if increased costs of city services are impacting cities’ 2025 budgets, 93% of responding cities noted that they are dealing with increasing costs. For those respondents, city budgets are being impacted in a variety of areas:

• Infrastructure costs—72% of responding cities
• Liability insurance costs—73% of responding cities
• Cost of living adjustments—65% of responding cities
• Market adjustments for wages—52% of responding cities

91% of respondents reported that the cost of providing services is also a concern in their communities—59% major concern, 32% minor concern).

Many cities went on to share that budget shortfalls are having major impacts on planned actions.

We must address these challenges and provide much-needed fiscal flexibility. This includes changing the arbitrary limit on property tax revenues, because property tax revenues are a major factor in why revenues cannot keep pace with costs.

72% of cities support revising the arbitrary 1% property tax limit to one based on inflation, giving them a better local revenue option to help keep pace with costs of services.

81% of cities also expressed support for increasing state-shared revenues.

Topics of concern for cities

Beyond the overarching messages about fiscal stability within the city landscape, important insights emerged within topics of concern to cities.

Housing

Over the next 20 years, Washington needs nearly 650,000 more homes that are accessible to households that cannot afford market-rate rental or purchase options. The work of cities to plan for more housing capacity will not be enough to ensure affordability—especially for lower-income households—without meaningful action from the state.

86% of respondents are doubtful that planned-for housing under 50% AMI will be built without state or federal subsidy.

Homelessness continues to be a serious concern for cities, including the interface between emergency services and access to behavioral health and other services.

68% of respondents indicate concern with homelessness within their city, with 64% feeling unprepared and 36% somewhat unprepared for the demand for emergency shelter and housing.

With cities in Washington experiencing growth—in some cases, exponential growth—capacity is only one side of their concerns.

86% of respondents identify affordability of housing as a concern in their city.

Need more tools to help develop your housing and homelessness programs? Check out the newly updated housing toolkit from AWC and MRSC.

Transportation

Many cities indicate high levels of concern for their transportation systems—with top priorities in the following areas:

• Funding maintenance and preservation of current assets
• Traffic safety (including bike and pedestrian safety)
• Multimodal infrastructure (including public transit, bike, and pedestrian)

Given the breadth of transportation-related projects on city dockets, we asked cities to identify funding sources they rely on to help pay for transportation projects.

Responding cities of all sizes reported their funding gaps for transportation preservation and maintenance plans, with an average gap of more than $16 million annually.

Washington traffic deaths reached a 33-year high in 2023, and 26% of respondents reported recent increases in traffic-related injuries or fatalities in their jurisdictions.

Infrastructure

The hurdles for other forms of infrastructure are just as daunting. Cities cite the following as primary challenges for traditional infrastructure systems in 2024:

• The impact of inflation on bids and materials costs—71% of respondents
• Age and condition of water and wastewater infrastructure and facilities—65% of respondents
• Challenging federal grant/loan requirements—41% of respondents
• Meeting regulatory requirements—40% of respondents

Cities also face a number of hurdles throughout the procurement and bidding process related to the construction and maintenance of capital assets. Primary among them:

• Materials costs and supply chain challenges
• Length of time involved
• Quality of proposals from lowest responsible bidder
• Soliciting qualified contractors

Cities use a variety of funding sources to implement their projects, including:

• Utility revenue—77% of respondents
• General fund revenue—48% of respondents
• Real Estate Excise Tax—REET revenue—46% of respondents
• Impact fee revenue—39% of respondents
• Direct legislative appropriations—33% of respondents

Take a deeper dive into transportation and infrastructure challenges with the State of the Cities: Washington’s interconnected infrastructure report.

Public safety

Public safety remains a top-tier issue, with several factors impacting cities and towns. Respondents labeled the top five challenges with public safety as:

• Law enforcement recruitment—67%
• Funding—56%
• Law enforcement retention—50%
• State laws and regulations—50%
• Liability insurance costs—41%

77% of respondents expect to increase their public safety spending in 2025. Almost 25% expect to see their spending increase by more than 10%.

Respondents identified property crimes and drug-related crimes as the two categories that have seen the greatest increases.

65% of respondents saw an increase in the number of law enforcement-related calls over the past 12 months.

Behavioral health & human services

Behavioral health is a key topic for cities to contend with—and remains a complex and shifting landscape. In fact, 37% of respondents stated that behavioral health and substance use disorder treatment resources were a major concern for their community, with an additional 40% noting them as concerning.

Cities are working on innovative solutions that acknowledge the many unique Washington communities and their needs. Nonetheless, residents’ expectations are a rising bar, and funding support remains vital across jurisdictions to find effective solutions that work for each community.

32% of responding cities identified increased state funding for community-based crisis response and behavioral health services as one of their top five funding priorities.

Behavioral health improvements also represent a tremendous opportunity for our cities to build partnerships and increase the resilience of our state. Among cities citing a rise in 911 calls, over one-third attributed a portion of the increase in emergency calls to welfare checks and behavioral health crises.

Take a deeper dive into the public safety and behavioral health challenges facing cities with the State of the Cities: Evolving public safety & criminal justice services report.

Workforce

Workforce concerns are still front and center for cities all over the state, particularly as noted in the public safety section.

Some good news: 70% of respondents said that their city has not experienced higher-than-normal resignations or retirements in the last 12 months.

Nonetheless, certain departments are still struggling to fill vacancies:

For a deeper dive into the workforce challenges facing cities, read the State of the Cities: Municipal workforce—The foundation of city services report.

Climate

As the impacts of climate change become increasingly severe and frequent, cities express concerns about both preparedness and their fiscal ability to implement plans and respond to impacts.

Wildfires and flooding from rivers and stormwater are the top two climate impacts responding cities are concerned about.

More than half of responding cities identify wildfires as a concerning impact from a warming climate, ranging from 70% in Eastern Washington to 41% in Western Washington.

Cities and towns are largely proactive in their work on climate action plans and in responding to climate impacts. They’ve stepped up to incorporate climate elements into their growth management plans—even as both growth and climate issues are in constant flux and intricately complex.

Importantly, funding limitations were cited as the number one barrier to implementing climate action plans or responding to climate impacts.

Public records

Finally, cities remain focused on the topic of public records. In just the last 12 months, nearly two in 10 responding cities were party to a public records-related lawsuit. Of those cities, nearly half stated the lawsuit originated from an individual residing outside of their jurisdiction.

It’s tempting to look at the breadth of issues facing cities and give public records a “minor issue” label—but the truth is that the financial impact of these lawsuits varies significantly among cities, with costs in litigation, settlements, and penalties ranging from $35,000 to over $300,000. Given the financial strains already weighing on our city leaders, these are issues worth working to solve.

A quarter of responding cities report spending more than $150,000 annually on public records requests.

Conclusion

This year, 159 cities took the time to share their city story—by the numbers. AWC thanks all the participants in the 2024 City Conditions Survey. Your responses enable AWC to show the city landscape across a range of topics and to provide meaningful data that goes beyond any single place and experience.

We encourage members to use this information when talking about your city’s legislative agenda. Understanding the challenges cities in our state face helps to guide policy and planning—raising all our cities to new heights and making Washington a stronger state.

AWC is committed to supporting all 281 cities and towns in Washington state through our advocacy, training, pooling programs, and peer support opportunities. Thank you to all of our city leaders who contribute their efforts to making this state a place where residents can live, work, and thrive.