How to resolve AdBlock issue? LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The Board of Supervisors approved a $420 million spending plan for fiscal year 2025-2026 at noon on Wednesday, following a day and a half of hearings that began Tuesday morning.
The final budget now totals $419,601,828, up from $397,175,387 in the 2024-25 fiscal year, according to Chief Deputy County Administrative Officer Matthew T. Rothstein.
It also shows an increase of $967,717 from the originally recommended $418,634,111,
Of the total budget, the county's General Fund appropriations rose from the recommended $99,735,475 to the approved $100,518,589 — a difference of approximately $783,114.
The board will hold another public hearing on the final budget, now scheduled for Sep. 23, ahead of the Oct. 2 adoption deadline set by state law.
The recommended budget was approved largely as presented, with several immediate adjustments. The board also requested further discussions and information on a number of projects before finalizing the budget for adoption.
Adjustments approved during the two days of hearings include a $282,000 cut to the originally proposed $422,000 for general maintenance of county facilities. The board also approved additional $400,000 from the Park Reserve Fund — including $300,000 for improvements at Hammond Park and $100,000 to enclose and/or heat the Middletown Public Pool, to extend its seasonal use.
At the request of the Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday, the board also approved an additional $101,114 to replace the fence surrounding the county jail.
The following table shows a summary of budget adjustments at the hearings:
Additionally, Rothstein said discussions on policies and resource allocation considerations that came up during the hearings “could potentially result in adjustments to allocations during the final budget process in September, for example.”
Uncertainties in budgeting, timeline friction
During the course of the budget hearings, several supervisors, county administrators and some department representatives expressed various uncertainties regarding the budget numbers and projects.
For one, the current fiscal year does not end until June 30, requiring the county to rely on projections rather than finalized revenues and expenditures.
Such uncertainties drove some concerns over final budgeting timelines.
Before the hearings ended on Wednesday, Supervisor Helen Owen asked if the final budget hearing on Sep. 23 could be brought to an earlier date, as that date leaves little time — eight days, or effectively five workdays — to review and make any refinement before the Oct. 2 deadline.
“If there's anything to change, it’d just be nice to have a little cushion there, rather than right now we're up against the wall when our deadline is,” Owen said.
Supervisor Bruno Sabatier added that he understood that the board’s calendar was set in December. “But a week is a difficult amount of time to digest the amount of information that is there,” Sabatier said of the five workdays left between the final hearings and the deadline.
“If there's ever a way to allow at least two weeks to be able to go through, have conversations — it's a large amount of material, not just for the Board of Supervisors to be prepared with information and questions to come here, but also for the public to be able to digest,” Sabatier said.
Currently, the “budget book” has 412 pages.
“There's a lot of details in it, and still lots of questions, because it's not exactly a novel,” he said.
Auditor-Controller/County Clerk Jenavive Herrington explained that even after June 30, a “60-day accrual period” will allow the county to continue processing prior-year invoices and revenues, meaning books won’t officially close until Aug. 30.
Herrington said that staff will need the three weeks before Sep. 23 to finalize the numbers.
Owen reiterated that she would like to have an earlier hearing to allow two weeks of review, rather than the current one week.
“I wouldn't know how to accommodate that under current standards, but we can definitely look at it,” Herrignton responded.
Supervisors request ‘deeper dive’ conversations, greater transparency
Several supervisors asked for more information, details and specifics for a number of budget items, which appeared to be insufficient or absent in the current book or presentations.
The board reached a consensus in having further discussions in the coming months before the final hearings, which may lead to more adjustments to the final budget.
Supervisor Sabatier asked for “deeper dive” conversations on various subjects.
Following Deputy County Administrative Officer Casey Moreno’s overview presentation that called this year’s budget “perfectly balanced, " Sabatier said it’s “fluffy” when it came to salary raises and position allocations.
He asked to have “harsh discussion” on a tighter, more realistic budget regarding “how to reduce the position allocation to be realistic, especially after signing a four-year contract with our unions,” Sabatier said.
Last week, the board approved a series of raises for county employees for the next four years where Sabatier was the sole dissenting vote.
Salary increases in the first year alone is $5,206,119.25, assuming all positions are filled, according to Rothstein.
Sabatier also asked for more discussion after Public Works’ presentation about roads and funds that go into it.
“We see huge amounts — $28 million, $30 million — and then we only spend $9 million, and then it just stays there,” he said. “I'd love to have in the future, within the next three months, a deeper dive conversation to make sure that we have a good plan in place and be able to fulfill what the public is expecting us to fulfill.”
Supervisor Jessica Pyska also asked Public Works regarding “what’s scheduled for this summer, what those budget amounts for those projects are anticipated to be,” she said. “We are in construction season, and it's something that we do ask for every year. So I think that level of transparency is something that we've desperately needed on an annual basis.”
Supervisor Owen pointed to the eight-page “Capital Assets List” that has hundreds of items and questioned the fact that every single one of them has a “yes” for “purchase authorized prior to the adopted budget.”
All the items included on the list are “funded mostly by grants or special funding sources,” Moreno said. “We did not include ones that do not have funding.”
“It's usually more appropriate to pull up things that we actually have to fund immediately and then wait for the final to actually fund the rest of the items. No?” Owen said, adding that the county’s former Chief Administrative Officer Kelly Cox had told her so.
Sabatier asked to also include timelines for the capital projects as it would cause confusion to the public who would think “this is everything we’re planning to do this year, when it’s not; it’s what we’ve allocated the funds for some of these projects.”
Lake County News Editor and Publisher Elizabeth Larson asked during public comment about the Lakeside Slide-Hill Road — which is on the Capital Assets List with a “yes” beside its $4.6 million allocation.
“Is that scheduled to take place this year?” Larson asked.
“At this point, I don’t know. I haven’t done a deep-dive into all of them,” said Public Services Director Lars Ewing who also serves as interim director for Public Works. “The ‘yes’ means authorization to spend the money.”
That slide repair project on Hill Road is meant to address a long-running landslide that began at the Lakeside Heights subdivision in north Lakeport in early 2013.
It led to the destruction of numerous homes and, in wet winters, the hillside continues to slide, sometimes blocking Hill Road near the entrance to Sutter Lakeside Hospital. K-rail barriers remain in place to keep dirt from pushing into the roadway.
In December 2017, the county reached a $4.5 million settlement with the Lakeside Heights Homeowners Association and 45 property owners. The county was sued over the property owners’ allegations that it was county water infrastructure that caused the land instability. The settlement was reached while trial in the case was underway.
Last week, the board terminated the department’s former director Glen March with immediate effect. Now the department is in transition under leadership of Ewing and County Administrative Officer Susan Parker.
The county is now seeking a new director for Public Works. The recruitment was open on June 20, three days after the termination.
Email staff reporter Lingzi Chen at
