The Board of Supervisors will hold the budget hearings on the recommended budget beginning at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 8, in the board chambers at the Lake County Courthouse, 255 N. Forbes St., Lakeport.
Copies of the budget are available to community members at the Office of the County Auditor-Controller, second floor of the courthouse.
The supervisors approved a preliminary $185 million budget on June 15 in a 4-1 vote, with Supervisor Anthony Farrington voted no, as Lake County News has reported.
County Administrative Officer Kelly Cox said a lot has changed since the preliminary document went before the board in June, and that will be reflected in the updated budget document he and his staff have produced.
“The final adjustments to the budget that we will be recommending to the board will ensure that the budget remains in balance, and in particular it will be structurally balanced,” he said.
The bottom line number – previously at $185 million – also will change, he said.
Some of the positives that have arisen during the budget process include a slightly better financial outlook for the county, he said.
“We had a significant amount of unanticipated tax revenue at the end of last fiscal year, after the time the recommended budget was prepared,” he said.
That unanticipated revenue came in the form of property tax. Cox initially had estimated that property tax would be down from the previous year by 5 percent. When the final numbers came in over the summer, property tax actually was down by 1.5 percent, he said.
“Additionally, our fund balance carryover from the prior year is significantly higher than earlier projections and federal geothermal royalties were restored,” he said. “That's all good news as far as our budget is concerned.”
Another big positive – no layoffs, said Cox.
In addition, “We won't be recommending increases to operational expenditures but we will be recommending that additional one-time funding be set aside in the budget for some of the board's highest priorities such as road maintenance and water quality-related issues,” he said.
Despite those positives, Cox cautions that the county is still in the midst of challenging financial times.
However, he said he thinks the board and community will be pleased when they have a chance to review staff's recommendations.
The remaining wild card, said Cox, is the state budget process and its potential impact on the county.
“We hoped that we would have a state budget by now, but that's not the case,” he said. “I seriously doubt if we will have a state budget before our county budget is adopted next month.”
If the final budget the state produces has significant impacts on counties, Cox said Lake County might have to go back to the drawing board with its own budget document.
It also could mean that the county will have to provide interim financing for some of its state-funded programs if the state defers payments, he said.
“We're probably in a better position than most counties to be able to do that, but there's a limit to what we can do,” he said.
Cox said he doesn't want to see the county be forced to borrow money.
County staff is working to keep its reserves and contingency funds high enough to be able to handle anything the state throws at them, but he said the county never knows for sure what might happen next with the state.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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