Omar Boukili

At the Everett City Council Budget Hearing for Admin and Finance on Wednesday, May 27, 2026, Omar Boukili, the City of Everett Chief Administrative Financial Officer, answered questions about budget line items and interdepartmental accounting.

Boukili first addressed the advertising budget. In response to discussion of the line item, he said, “And other advertising,” and explained that the category is broader than legal notices alone. He clarified, “This is supposed to capture all of the advertising needs,” indicating that the budget line is intended to cover advertising across the department rather than a narrow purpose. He further stated that the item is “That’s system wide,” reinforcing that the appropriation applies broadly across city operations.

Boukili also explained the city’s health insurance accounting arrangement with the school department. He described how the city pays the health insurance expense for multiple employee groups and then reallocates a portion of that cost internally. Specifically, he said, “The city pays for all of the health insurance expense for school department employees, city employees, and the city then does a charge back to the school department for the cost of health insurance for school department employees.” His explanation identified the arrangement as a charge-back process in which the city initially covers the expense and then bills the school department for its share.

Across the hearing segment provided, Boukili did not cast any votes and did not take a recorded formal action beyond explaining these budget and accounting practices. His comments focused on clarifying the scope of advertising appropriations and the mechanism used to allocate health insurance costs between the city and the school department.

At the Everett Ways and Means Committee meeting on Monday, April 13, 2026, Omar Boukili, City of Everett Chief Administrative Financial Officer, answered questions on several budget and audit items and explained how the administration intended to move forward on related funding requests.

On the audit matter, Boukili said the city’s former outside auditor was CBIZ and that “the city no longer works with them.” He confirmed the contract was exempt from bidding: “No, it’s exempt.” He said the office is “in the process of reconciling a lot of our different accounts” and acknowledged that there “may incur additional costs from the work that CBIZ had to do.” Boukili described difficulty closing FY24, saying, “I had a very difficult time buttoning up our FY24 audit, that took us five or six months on top of what it should have taken us.” He said the city wanted to keep the FY25 audit moving because “we’re five or six months behind,” and that for the sake of time sensitivity, the city asked for additional funding if council approved it. He confirmed the proposed outside audit amount was “$107,000,” and said the regular annual outside audit covers the city side, the school side, and the retirement board. He also noted the amount appropriated during budget season had been “$105,000.” He said any unused money would “drop to free cash,” and if repurposed for an actual department audit, the administration would communicate with council first.

Boukili also addressed an enterprise fund appropriation. He explained that the request was to move money “from retained earnings into the emergency repairs line, specifically for emergency repairs to water and sewer,” and said unused funds would revert back to the enterprise fund.

On advertising, Boukili said the city would standardize its advertisements so they would “look similar” and use the same format, then split them between the two newspapers through the end of the fiscal year. He added that a different process would be proposed in the FY27 budget. When asked about the budget document, he responded that the committee had cut the request from a recommended $180,000 to $60,000. He clarified: “It’s both,” referring to legal and event advertising. No votes were recorded for Boukili’s items in the extracted meeting data.