Two months ago, 29 Spokane city employees learned their jobs could be on the chopping block as the city tried to finish balancing the 2025-2025 budget. By the end of the year, three of them lost their jobs, though at least one was able to move to another position in the city.

The cut positions included civilian planner in the police department, an IT employee and a civilian network administrator in the fire department, according to city spokeswoman Erin Hut.

Twenty-nine people had learned at the end of September that their jobs could be eliminated if the city's finances weren't significantly improved in the coming months, though Mayor Lisa Brown had signaled for months prior that these notices could be coming.

The layoffs were separate from other employees who were laid off earlier in the year, including three communications officials.

In an interview Tuesday, Brown said that voter approval of a sales tax increase in November saved a number of these jobs. The tax will be spent on a variety of investments meant to improve community safety, including hiring seven neighborhood resource officers and replace dated firefighting equipment.

Brown said Tuesday that some of those investments would have been necessary with or without the tax increase, but that if voters had shot down the proposal in November, that money would have had to have come out of the rest of the city's budget, including through a reduction of positions.

Despite limiting the number of outright layoffs, the biennial budget approved Monday did have a net reduction of 23 city positions, primarily by closing vacancies, said Matt Boston, the city's chief financial officer.

"There's been hundreds of positions added to mayors' proposed budgets over the last 10 years, and this is the only budget I've seen in the last decade where positions were actually removed from the budget," Boston said.