LAKEPORT, Calif. – After spending hours on Wednesday going through final budget figures, asking questions of staff and hearing from the county's many department heads, the Board of Supervisors ended a daylong budget hearing with a unanimous vote to accept the final budget for 2011-12.
With final adjustments, the new budget's appropriations total $186,069,076, compared to the 2010-11 budget, which totaled $189,759,308.
The board voted 5-0 on two resolutions – one to adopt the budget and the second to establish classifications and positions.
There are 903 positions after final adjustments, with approximately $65,444,695 spent on salaries and benefits, of which just over $41 million is spent on permanent position salaries, according to the final resolution to adopt the budget and information presented during the hearing.
The top five departments in terms of total budget appropriations are Social Services, $42,591,568; Lake County Sheriff-Coroner, $23,342,608; Special Districts, $22,851,414; Public Works/Water Resources, $22,033,194; and Mental Health, $11,629,529, according to County Administrative Officer Kelly Cox.
Wednesday's budget hearing was a day for fine tuning. In June the board had taken the preliminary step of approving the preliminary budget, and since then Cox and his staff had been putting the finishing touches on the final document.
Indeed, for Cox and his staff, budgeting is a yearlong process of continuous fine tuning. It's not very long after a final budget is approved that work begins on the midyear budget review, and then at the start of the calendar year and through the spring crafting the coming fiscal year's budget is a priority.
Cox began the hearing Wednesday morning with a budget overview, which was attended by about two dozen people, most of them county department heads.
Despite challenges including “sluggish” national and state economies, the budget Cox presented was, once again structurally sound and keeps Lake County debt free, which Board Chair Jim Comstock called “exceptional” in the current economic times.
Three goals were kept in mind when crafting the budget, Cox said: developing a responsible, sustainable budget and budget plan to enable the the county to maintain both long-term and short-term solvency; minimizing or avoiding negative impacts on public service levels, and improving service when possible; and preserving the county's general reserve, increasing it when feasible. Cox said all of those goals were achieved in the new document.
Lake County has avoided layoffs by designating certain positions in previous budgets as “at risk” and eliminating them through attrition, after employees leave for other jobs or retirement.
Cox said department heads are being encouraged to fill vacancies by accepting transfers from other departments and in-house recruitments in order to limit new employees joining the county workforce.
Cox noted during his presentation that the preliminary budget had expected a 5-percent reduction in property tax revenues, but the final assessor's roll showed only a 1.32-percent decline, a benefit to the budget.
In last fiscal year's preliminary budget Cox had take a similar conservative approach in estimating property tax revenue, which that time also had turned out better than expected.
A pie chart Cox presented showed that the county's top five revenue sources in the new fiscal year included the state, 29 percent; fund balances and revenues, 18 percent; taxes, 15 percent; federal government, 14 percent; and charges for services, 9 percent.
Another chart showed that social services accounts for 22 percent of the new budget's appropriations, followed by criminal justice, 20 percent; public works, roads, airport, flood and lakebed, 13 percent; water, sewer and lighting, 13 percent; and health services, 9 percent.
Cox went over a financial breakdown of some key budget components, including professional and specialized service contracts, $10,782,369; utilities, $3,579,539; buildings and grounds maintenance, $1,993,911; office supplies, $616,208; communications (telephones and cell phones), $576,986; food, $403,900; equipment maintenance, $1,942,475; portion of employee health insurance paid by the county, $7,176,624; opt out benefit program, $205,200; overtime and holiday pay, $1,062,210; employer's share of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), $5,581,863; PERS employee share paid by county, $2,714,083; extra help salaries, $1,974,913.
When the board later began working its way through each of the budget units, nearly all votes were unanimous in support of staff's final numbers.
Only one vote wasn't unanimous – when Supervisor Anthony Farrington voted against a $995,000 appropriation to put toward a possible future acquisition of Kelseyville's Gard Street School, which is being considered for a location for several county departments. In order to pay for it, the county is considering selling its building on Main Street which is now inhabited by Special Districts.
Cox said at this point in time he and his staff aren't at a point where they can recommend the board move forward with the purchase.
Farrington, who had opposed the plan when Supervisor Rob Brown brought it forward earlier this year, told the board, “I'm never going to support this,” adding that it didn't feel it was the best expenditure or that it was a good use of staff's time to explore it.
In addition to the Gard Street proposal, there are numerous other capital and improvement projects the budget includes funding for this year.
Those include the new Middletown Library; improvements to Special Districts sewer and water facilities, including a pipeline project in Clearlake, water system upgrades in Spring Valley and in north Lakeport; a spay-neuter clinic for Lake County Animal Care and Control; new information technology equipment; a sheriff's substation in the Hidden Valley-Middletown area; renovations to Mental Health's Clearlake facility; the Middle Creek restoration area; and $1.3 million set aside for lake-related issues.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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