Community Government Police & Fire

County council recommends approving public safety sales tax proposal

The Pierce County Council on Feb. 18 recommended approving a public safety levy proposal, after nearly two hours of council questions and public comment.

The meeting built on nearly three hours’ worth of discussion and public comment about the levy at a Feb. 9 meeting.

The levy would impose a 0.1% sales tax to fund public safety, including staffing in the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office. About equal numbers of supporters and detractors gave public comment, with slightly more speaking in support of the tax.

The council voted 4-3 to recommend approving the levy, with Republican Councilmembers Dave Morell, Paul Herrera, and Amy Cruver voting against moving it on. Councilmembers Robyn Denson, Jani Hitchen, Rosie Ayala, and Bryan Yambe, all Democrats, voted in favor.

The Feb. 9 and Feb. 18 meetings were special committee-of-the-whole meetings, and the council may only formally approve measures at full council meetings.

The Pierce County Council discusses a public safety sales tax on Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026.

In May 2025, Gov. Bob Ferguson signed a bill that allows local governments to enact a sales tax specifically to fund public safety. The bill also allows local law enforcement to apply for additional grant funding from a $100 million public safety grant fund, which the Criminal Justice Training Commission administers.

Last autumn, the county convened a group to study public safety funding. The group included representatives from the sheriff’s department, the finance department, the prosecuting attorney’s office, and the executive’s office. The group submitted the levy proposal to the council in January.

‘Big push’ coming

During the Wednesday meeting, Morell asked why the county couldn’t simply wait a couple years to implement the tax.

John Lane, the county’s senior counsel, explained that the sheriff’s office will make “a big push” in hiring over the course of the next year. The county needs funds to support that.

But public safety funding involves more than sheriff’s deputies, he continued. The county also faces structural issues within its jails and programs that need ongoing funding.

“If we don’t act now, we’re just really kicking down the road future problems for ourselves,” Lane said. “In terms of all of these current investments where the bills are coming due, when we look at needing to make investments in our infrastructure, those buildings aren’t going to get better with age. We need to start working on that.”

Earlier in the meeting, county finance director Julie Demuth told Morell in response to a different question that the county has put money into its reserves over the last several years, primarily because of vacancies in the sheriff’s department and other public safety offices. It began to draw on those reserves to maintain operations last year.

“We’re not fully closed yet, but we will use between $20-$22 million of our reserves in 2025,” Demuth said. “So this is the first year that we start to see use of our reserves to pay for our ongoing expenses, and that reserve begins to decline over the next several years.”

Grant funds and taxes

The county must apply to the state Department of Revenue by mid-April to implement the new tax starting in July. If the county misses that window, it has to wait until next year to start collecting that tax.

Morell, who represents northeastern Pierce County, also asked whether the county had to pass the tax to get the grant. 

Lane said it does not, but “they kind of go hand-in-hand,” and the state has been “a little slow in getting the grant funding out the door. So, there’s kind of a backlog in that fund … and the Criminal Justice Training Commission is looking to get those funds out as soon as possible now that the grant opportunity has opened itself up.”

Lane said he believes the county is in a good position to win a large portion of that grant money.

At least two people opposed to the levy who spoke in-person on Feb. 9 came back on Feb. 18 to comment further.

But new people appeared, too, to give their thoughts.

Supporters

“I believe our regressive tax system is in need of a complete overhaul,” said Kathy, a recently widowed elder who lives on fixed income. “Having said that, I know you all know that public safety is a top priority for residents across Pierce County, and it currently makes up 75% of our current budget — so it’s taking the money.”

“This proposed justice fund will ensure that we have a reliable source of revenue that isn’t competing with other equally important areas of our budget,” she continued. “Investments in affordable housing and behavioral health are prime examples. I appreciate the oversight included, the public performance dashboard, the justice fund advisory body and clear reporting on how funds are spent and what outcomes are achieved.”

She also encouraged everyone listening to talk to legislators to find other ways to support public safety, instead of through taxes. In the meantime, she said, she supports the proposal.

Dr. Tafona Ervin supports the tax because the “decision before you today is not just about funding, it’s about positioning Pierce County for a stronger future. It’s about investing in stability and coordinated systems and the kind of public safety infrastructure that supports both accountability and community trust.”

“We cannot expect better outcomes without being willing to resource the systems that make those outcomes possible,” she continued. “Passing this proposal signals that Pierce County is willing to take a balanced forward-looking approach, one that recognizes complexity of public safety while committing to long-term stability for its residents. I urge the council to think about its future in the next 10 years, 20 years, and 30 years, and what this Justice Fund can do to help right-size the deficits that we have today while being dependent on state and federal resources that don’t seem very stable for us now.”

Opponents

Levy detractor Katy Cornell of Gig Harbor said she doesn’t think the tax will fix the real problem. Cornell is one of two Republican challengers running for a 26th Legislative District House seat held by Adison Richards, a Democrat.

“If we increase taxes … that’s going to increase the budget expenses of the county and of the cities, so your budget is not going to go up in costs — but the other side of that is then your revenue is going to go down because families like mine, with three kids, are cutting costs everywhere we can,” Cornell said. “We’re choosing to do date nights at home. We’re choosing to repair our shoes instead of going and buying shoes. And so if we decrease our spending, it decreases your revenue. And so then we’re back into the same cycle that we are in today.”

She said her family will not shop in Tacoma if the county implements the tax. Businesses, she said, will have to factor in the tax as an increase in their costs, and turn that cost over to consumers.

Cornell predicted that “we’ll be sitting here with the same problem” in a year and that even as she and her family will feel the tax increase, those who live in poverty already will feel it more.

“I’m [from] a middle-class family, but the people that we’re working to help and protect the most, people that are actually suffering the most in poverty are going to be affected by this tax the most,” she said. “This tax will hurt the poor. It’s going to hurt the most vulnerable that you’re here to serve, and it will actually not actually fix the problem. If I thought it would fix the problem, if I thought that increasing taxes would help, then I would be all for it.”

Stacie Snuffin, a Republican who lives in unincorporated Pierce County, said that while she supports the sheriff’s department and its deputies, she opposes the tax.

“When you look past the talking points, this ordinance doesn’t actually fix the problems the Sheriff’s Office is facing. The funding for the sheriff is mostly one-time items — equipment, technology, a swap vehicle and a one-time $5,000 retention payment,” Snuffin said. “None of that solves long-term staffing shortages, patrol coverage, response times or the ongoing challenges inside the jail. Those issues don’t disappear after one budget cycle.”

She also highlighted that the sales tax doesn’t have a “sunset,” and didn’t think it had any “real public oversight.”

“What concerns me the most is the governance issue. Under the Pierce County Charter, the sheriff is an independently elected official, accountable directly to voters, not to the executive or county administrators,” she continued. “Yet this ordinance request by the county executive allows funding from this new tax to be withheld based on compliance determinations made by the finance department. That may be called accountability, but in practice, it creates financial leverage over an elected sheriff. That’s a real shift in power and isn’t being clearly explained to the public.”

County compliance

County Senior Policy Analyst Andrea Kelley later clarified in an email to Gig Harbor Now that “[e]ligibility requirements (or ‘compliance determinations’) for either the grant or tax authorization are the same, are mandated by statute and not Pierce County Finance Department.”

“The Sheriff’s Office has made internal changes and believes that the county will be compliant with requirements moving forward,” she wrote. “Any funding that would be withheld based on compliance determinations would be done at the state level.”

She also said that, in addition to regular audits, the legislation requires the county finance department to annually report to the Washington State Association of Counties detailing how the county the tax revenue.

Undersheriff Cynthia Farjado told councilmembers at the Feb. 9 meeting that she and Sheriff Keith Swank — who was one of the levy proposal group members — “had very frank conversations” about supporting the sales tax and applying for the grant. She said that the office had to make several changes to qualify for the grant.

“We’re very hopeful that we’ll be the first agency that gets a letter with no negative input that we clear 100% because we’ve put so much work into being very, very mindful of the application process,” Farjado said.

She said that the technological improvements that would come with the additional money “affects my detectives, my deputies significantly,” and that “we frankly realized what we need to actually protect the citizens. And this goes back to the community, our efficiency and being able to do our job reflects what the community gets from service for us.”

The Pierce County Council will take up the levy proposal at its March 3 meeting at 3 p.m.