With passage of the largest budget in recent memory ($1.08 billion), Santa Barbara County is cutting the equivalent of 178 full-time employee positions for the 2017-18 fiscal year.
It wasn’t easy, but with a potential deficit looming, on June 14, the county Board of Supervisors approved about $28.5 million in cuts across county departments such as those in public safety and health and human services in order to balance the budget.
The cost of the county’s contributions to the state’s pension fund increased by $7.3 million for the 2017-18 fiscal year, and is projected to increase by another $8 million per year for the next four or five years, according to a county Executive Office’s report. Departments dependent on state and federal revenue to fund some of their programs suffered worse cuts than other county services. A press release from the county noted that uncertain state and federal revenues and an ongoing demand for increased public safety and mental health funding are challenges that will continue into the next few years.
“The largest reductions affect the processing of state and federally funded benefits, such as CalFresh [food stamps], CalWORKS [cash aid], and Medi-Cal programs within the Department of Social Services,” according to a press release from the county. “The county’s cost of delivering those services is exceeding available revenue from the state and federal governments.”
Even with those reductions to what 2nd District Supervisor Janet Wolf called “human capital,” the county allocated extra dollars to deferred maintenance and roads.
“We cannot take all that money from our safety net and use it for asphalt and nails,” Wolf said during the June 14 hearing. “We’re essentially robbing human infrastructure to pay for capital infrastructure.”
But 1st District Supervisor Das Williams and 3rd District Supervisor Joan Hartmann joined North County supes Peter Adam—who’s pushed the issue since the start of his first term—and Steve Lavagnino in advocating for the importance of maintenance and upkeep, which they said costs less to fix now than it would in the future. Hartmann said a recent trip to the jail really brought things home for her regarding maintenance, adding that the new North County Jail was a necessity for the county.
Adam said the budget package was the least objectionable he’d seen in his time on the board—although, he was also the lone supervisor to vote against passing the budget.
“We have a deeply unsustainable system here … as we are starting to see,” Adam said. “I’m here to make a sustainable system.”
Williams and Hartmann also joined Lavagnino and Adam in stressing that the county did need to rethink the way it looks at potential revenue sources, and the board set aside $85,000 for economic development work. The disagreement is over what exactly will work to create that revenue, working with educators and the private sector to try and pull in higher paying jobs such as tech or being less restrictive with the projects that come before the board.
“We kind of have to get out of our ideologies and realize that we are affecting the most vulnerable people in our county,” Lavagnino said.
This article appears in Jun 22-29, 2017.