11/22/2025
Everett’s Path to Financial Freedom: A Modern Investment Strategy for a Stronger Future
A Long-Form Policy Blueprint
By Dr. Bill Wheeler
Everett is a city with extraordinary potential — a major aerospace center, a gateway to the Pacific, and a diverse, resilient community. Yet for more than a decade, our financial reality has been the same: recurring deficits, rising taxes, fee hikes, deferred maintenance, reduced services, and emergency “fixes” that solve nothing.
Our city’s budget problem is not a failure of our people, our workers, or our potential.
It is a failure of structure — a financial model trapped in the past.
For years, Everett has functioned as a tax-dependent government whose survival relies almost entirely on property taxes, sales taxes, utility taxes, and fees. This system creates two outcomes, both harmful:
1. Residents are constantly asked to pay more, even as wages stagnate and costs rise.
2. The city never builds wealth, meaning deficits keep returning, no matter how many cuts are made.
Simply put: Everett is stuck in a 20th-century funding model while the world has moved on.
It’s time for Everett to adopt a strategy that reflects today’s economic realities — one that builds wealth rather than consuming it.
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1. The Core Proposal: The Everett Public Investment & Prosperity Fund (EPIPF)
This plan establishes a city-managed investment fund designed to create long-term, stable revenue through diversified financial investments — the same proven strategies used by many of the
world’s most financially successful public entities.
This is not speculative or risky. It is a disciplined, regulated, transparent model based on:
• The Alaska Permanent Fund
• The Texas Permanent School Fund
• Washington’s own investment pool (LGIP)
• Major municipal pension systems
• International sovereign wealth funds like Norway’s
These funds generate billions in annual returns, reduce dependence on taxation, and stabilize governments for generations.
Everett can do the same.
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2. How the Fund Works
The EPIPF would be seeded using existing revenue streams — no tax increases, no additional burden on residents.
Initial capital would come from:
• Long-term leases of city-owned property
• Revenue from the redevelopment of underutilized land
• A share of revenue from major public-private partnerships
• Operational savings identified through independent audits
• Surpluses from strong revenue years
• Strategic monetization of non-essential assets
• Voluntary contributions from philanthropic partners or institutional investors
Once funded, the EPIPF would invest in:
• Broad-market ETFs
• Municipal and federal bonds
• Stable long-term equities
• Infrastructure ETFs
• Lower-risk diversified funds
These are the same tools used by conservative institutional investors across the country.
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3. Safeguards and Oversight
A public investment fund must be transparent and protected. The EPIPF would include:
• Independent financial oversight board
• Quarterly public reporting
• Annual third-party audits
• Legally defined risk tolerances
• Strict rules prevent the use of the fund for political agendas
• Separation from the city’s operating budget
• A requirement that only returns — not principal — may be used for city services
This ensures long-term stability and prevents misuse.
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4. What This Achieves
With consistent investing and disciplined management, the EPIPF would allow Everett to:
✔ Reduce reliance on property taxes
A growing portion of city revenue would come from returns, not extraction.
✔ Build multi-generational financial strength
Everett would finally grow wealth instead of living year-to-year.
✔ Avoid future deficits
Market-based returns create predictable, sustainable revenue streams that stabilize budgets.
✔ Improve services without raising costs
Better infrastructure, public safety, and housing solutions become achievable without burdening residents.
✔ Make Everett competitive and future-ready
A city with its own investment fund attracts talent, business, development, and opportunity.
This approach replaces the endless cycle of taxes and cuts with a financially mature model used globally by successful governments.
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5. Why Everett Must Make This Change Now
Everett cannot continue patching shortfalls with tax increases and hoping for different results. Our structural deficit will not disappear through traditional budgeting.
Every year we delay, residents pay more — and receive less.
But if Everett begins investing today, within 5 to 10 years, the city could generate millions in annual returns. Within a generation, Everett could fully transform its financial landscape.
Everett deserves leadership that:
• Thinks long-term
• Builds wealth rather than consuming it
• Defends taxpayers instead of exploiting them
• Uses modern tools instead of outdated methods
• Understands how real markets work
• Has the courage to break from failed traditions
This plan does exactly that.