In writing, they call it foreshadowing – events that hint at what’s coming in future chapters. If Monday’s informal discussion on “levels of service” (LOS) is any indication, budget talks are going to be unpleasant this year.

“When times get tough, we have to cut back, and change our levels of service, but we don’t do a good job of finding out what those are,” city administrator Joe Hannan said.

It’s easy to see how many dollars are saved by cutting staff and other elements of the budget, Hannan explained, but exactly how each cut impacts the quality of life in town requires more careful thought.

Right now, the city is spending around $1.5 million more than it’s taking in, finance director Scott James said, and if that trend doesn’t change we will be in the red.

“We have about four years to change our course,” council President Randy Lord said. “We don’t have to do this all in one budget year.”

That’s IF the Emergency Medical Services levy passes, James said.

If not?

“We’ll have just one year to make things right,” he said. “If the levy passes, we’ll use that $560,000 (that’s currently transferred from the general fund to cover the cost of providing EMS) to backfill the hole in the general fund.”

“Looking at LOS is understanding where we get the biggest bang for our buck,” Mayor Joe Marine said.

The council will review LOS in all departments in upcoming work sessions, starting with police Monday night.

Mukilteo enjoys a relatively low crime rate. The challenge for James and the council is to maintain that safety with fewer dollars in coming years.

The police department has already made drastic cuts, and now operates with the bare minimum of staff, commander Chuck Macklin said.

Larger police departments handle about 700 calls per officer annually, according to Macklin. Mukilteo officers handle about 2,000 each in comparison.

“Our police officers don’t spend a lot of time on follow up,” he said. “We have a very lean investigative corps.”

That means the department doesn’t have the manpower to investigate many property crimes, he said.

Burglary, embezzlement and cyber crime, and incidents with higher dollar amounts have a better chance of having an officer assigned, Macklin said.

The city’s evidence room is overflowing, and support staff is working weekends to clear out some of the backlog, Macklin told the council. Ironically, that backlog makes it take even more staff time to get things done.

The department does what it can to stretch its limited dollars, including both sharing resources with neighboring agencies and in crime prevention.

The countywide drug bust that netted some 10,000 pot plants is an example of Mukilteo helping with larger-scale incidents, but the city doesn’t participate in the regional narcotics team or county SWAT team, although most cities of comparable size do.

“We simply don’t have the budget,” Macklin said.

The old adage about an ounce of prevention applies to public safety. Mukilteo’s lone crime prevention officer, Cheol Kang, makes the most of his limited budget to implement such programs as the National Night Out Against Crime, the increasingly popular citizen’s police academy, and several neighborhood watch programs, according to Macklin.

“You can’t quantify crime that doesn’t occur,” he said. “It takes quite a bit of resources to run a citizen’s academy – eight weeks, a lot of officers brought in.”

It’s the perception of safety that police sell, Macklin said.

“We can’t prevent crime from occurring, even if we’re standing right there,” he said. “Working and partnering with the community, empowering the community to take safety in its own hands, that gives residents the strength and confidence to feel safe.”

Training programs and crime prevention are all too often the first to get cut in lean times, Macklin said, but those factors can be a lot more valuable than having just one more officer on the streets looking for crimes in progress.

Should any more police staff be cut, the department won’t be able to maintain its minimum level of coverage, Macklin cautioned.