Edmonds public-safety leadership told council on May 9 that the city’s police staffing and training profile is strained by prior budget reductions and that further cuts would force changes in enforcement priorities.

Key points: Acting Police Chief Sniffen and other public-safety directors said the department will preserve 911 response as a first priority but that less‑urgent services — parking enforcement, animal-control response, certain proactive patrols and low-dollar property crime follow‑up — may be deprioritized if resources fall further.

Training and retention: staff emphasized that training (recruitment, field training, de‑escalation and crisis‑intervention instruction) is both a public‑safety and a retention tool. Cuts to training budgets and professional development increase the risk of workplace injuries, legal claims, and early staff departures; several council members and department leaders linked retention problems to the difficulty of replacing experienced personnel.

Behavioral-health response and social‑worker model: Edmonds currently uses grant funding to embed a social worker with public safety to route people experiencing behavioral-health and homelessness needs into services rather than strictly criminal channels. Staff called that a high‑value, cross‑system approach but cautioned it is grant‑dependent; if grants expire the city would face reduced capacity to divert mental‑health and substance‑use calls away from enforcement.

Enforcement tradeoffs and public expectations: leaders said the city already lacks some capacity for routine code and parking enforcement and that public complaints (graffiti, litter, vegetation overgrowth) may see longer response times. Council members discussed the possibility of setting formal deprioritization policies (for example, not pursuing certain low‑level offenses) but staff and legal advisors said such shifts should be deliberate and publicly debated if used.

Next steps: staff will provide clearer descriptions of potential deprioritization options and related legal questions; council members asked that any public‑facing materials clearly list which services would be cut or maintained in a no‑levy scenario.