VHCD details new budget and longer-range spending plan
Published 1:30 pm Tuesday, December 16, 2025
Commissioners of Vashon Health Care District have unanimously passed a budget that provides a road map for the district’s revenues, expenses and activities in the coming year and beyond.
The 2026 budget and an accompanying worksheet, posted at vashonhealthcare.org, also includes a worksheet detailing projected program expenses for 2027 and 2028.
As approved at a Nov. 13 meeting, the budget does not call for any increase in the district’s levy, with total revenue of approximately $2 million for the year. Most of that amount comes from its collection of a small fraction — about 4.11% — of islanders’ total property tax bills, with another $110,000 coming from the district’s investment income.
Expenses for 2026 are projected at about $2.7 million, including administrative and operating costs. Administrative line items, totaling approximately $435,000, include salary expenses of just under $200,000 for the district’s three employees — all of whom work at less than full-time positions.
Program expenses, totaling almost $2.3 million in 2026, will notably fund the district’s commitment to support Vashon Island Fire & Rescue’s Mobile Integrated Health (MIH) program; its remaining one-year contract with seven-day-a-week urgent care provider DispatchHealth; and partnerships with agencies including Vashon Youth & Family Services, the DOVE Project and Vashon Senior Center, among others, to support behavioral health and social worker staffing.
With a current cash balance of about $3.3 million, the district plans to use around $600,000 of its reserve fund to help pay for these programs in 2026. The budget projects an ending cash balance of $2.6 million at the end of 2026, with $1 million of that sum still held in reserves.
Key line items
In an email to The Beachcomber, Health Care District superintendent Tim Johnson defined the four key strategic priorities of the district as “sustaining primary care access, addressing behavioral health needs, providing urgent medical care and improving and sustaining healthcare access for vulnerable populations.”
The 2026 budget and broader three-year spending plan, he said, reflects those aims as well as the district’s ongoing need to “adapt to a broad range of current, anticipated, and potential service failures at the local, state and federal level.”
To accomplish that, he said, the plan calls for tapping into some of the the district’s reserves that have previously been held for preservation of primary care, operating reserves and future capital projects.
Even so, the district will still have enough reserves left over for emergencies — “beyond even the extensive scope of possibilities for which the strategic plan had been revised,” according to Johnson.
Highlights of the 2026 budget and projections for expenditures in 2027-2028 include:
• In 2026, funding of approximately $585,000 to seven-day-a-week urgent care provider DispatchHealth. Projected additional costs of about $1.6 million are projected for 2027-28, if the district’s contract with the provider is renewed.
• Authorization and funding for a three-year partnership to expand Vashon Fire & Rescue’s MIH program to support full-time staff positions including a physician assistant, registered nurse and social worker, as well as provide other operational support. In all, Johnson said, Health Care District dollars will amount to a $1.75 million investment in MIH over three years — serving “patients lacking sufficient insurance or other access to health care.” The three-year plan also stipulates contingency funding of another $750,000 for MIH to expand further “in the event of other service failures or needs,” Johnson said.
• $300,000 in 2026 for the local nonprofit DOVE Project to provide a trauma-informed therapist, a therapist for acute needs in youth, a crisis response therapist, some triage management and data collection support, and vouchers that provide access to therapy for those in need. The district’s three-year plan also projects carrying that funding forward in 2027 and 2028.
• Funding to support salaries for intensive case managers working through Vashon Youth & Family Services in cooperation with the Vashon School District and Neighborcare School Clinic — now set to double from one to two full-time positions to help youth and their families access a broad range of healthcare and social services resources.
• The continuation of social worker services provided in partnership with the Vashon Senior Center and an additional $60,000 to expand social or case management services to islanders who are unhoused, housing insecure, or recently housed. The agency or organization to receive this additional $60,000 is presently undecided, Johnson said.
• Tripling the Health Care District’s previous funding for Vashon Youth & Services’ medical voucher program to $60,000 annually. These vouchers can be used by islanders in need of medical care, prescriptions at Vashon Pharmacy and essential ferry travel for off-island appointments.
• $32,000 for a pilot program with Journeymen and Women Hold the Key to create “community circle” projects for four different constituencies: women, men, young men and the housing insecure. These circles, lead by trained facilitators, will operate as channels of communication to foster mental wellness, emotional resilience and belonging across the targeted communities, according Johnson.
Summing up the budget plan, Johnson said it provides for “almost $2.3 million in 2026 programming allocations, and over 7 million dollars in capacity over the next three years, not counting an additional million in deeper emergency reserves — all without raising taxes.”
None of this would have been possible, he said, had the Health Care District board not been “wise enough to set aside reserves over the past four years, and brave enough to rise to the current challenges in a deep and meaningful way.”
