WHATCOM COUNTY, WA (MyBellinghamNow.com) – Whatcom County’s biennial budget narrowly passed at Tuesday night’s vote by the county council.

The council voted 4-3 to approve the finalized 2025-26 budget following over two hours of public comments.

The General Fund that pays for most county executive, legislative and judicial services will total about $140 million each year.

The Road Fund and other services will receive $200 million next year and about $20 million less than that in 2026.

The budget will increase each county tax levy except for the Healthy Children’s Fund by the 1% allowed by state law.

That increase brought a lot of negative reaction, but Councilmember Todd Donovan said the county dug itself into a budgetary hole.

“Unlike other counties, we haven’t taken that one percent until just once or twice recently, so we’ve really put ourselves into a hole for funding,” Donovan said. “We’ve added 10 patrol deputies in the last couple budget cycles without really coming up with how we’re going to fund that, we’ve added positions in the prosecutor’s office without really figuring out how we’re going to fund that.”

Councilmember Mark Stremler voted against the budget and echoed many of the public comments.

“I don’t think that should be the mantra of Whatcom County right now, is to increase services, ” Stremler said. “Actually, I don’t think that’s what a majority of the community wants.”

Other members voting in favor joined County Executive Satpal Sidhu in lamenting that the budget doesn’t increase services while raising taxes.