How to resolve AdBlock issue? LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Less than two months after the Board of Supervisors adopted a “balanced” final budget for the new fiscal year, the Lake County Community Development Department reported a budget deficit and requested a $390,000 loan from the county to pay employee salaries for the next three months.
The department’s Building Division “has realized a significant drop in building permits,” Mireya Turner, director of Community Development Department, or CDD, said at the Board of Supervisors meeting on Nov. 18.
Although the word “deficit” was not said aloud during the meeting, the staff memo stated the division is “currently operating under a budget deficit.”
The CDD brought the loan request to the board two weeks prior to the payroll deadline where the department would not be able to meet without financial aid.
Despite having serious doubts in the department’s ability to pay back, the supervisors voted unanimously to approve the loan request, with Board Chair Eddie Crandell absent.
From July 1 to Nov. 18 — over more than four months of the fiscal year — the CDD Building Division generated $571,565 in permit and service fees. That amounts to just 65.8% of its projected year-to-date revenue of $868,280, leaving it short of covering its $658,425 in expenses to date, including salaries and other expenses.
“We’re just barely in the black as we speak,” said CDD Deputy Administrator Shannon Walker-Smith. “So we’re looking for this loan to ensure that we can cover salaries over the next three months.”
Turner said that the department is still busy with smaller permits, “not so much with the larger ones.”
According to a table provided to supervisors during the meeting — and not beforehand — the Building Division’s originally budgeted revenue for the fiscal year was $2,149,147. The division now anticipates a 20% reduction, lowering projected annual revenue to $1,714,695 and creating a shortfall of $434,452.
The amount of loan requested from the board was $390,000.
While the table does not include any projected adjustments to projected expenses, the CDD staff presenters reported that they had already restricted spending.
“We are pretty much on a spending freeze now, except anything that is dire as we work towards our mid-year adjustment,” said Walker-Smith.
Still, staff said they expect revenue to pick up in the coming months.
“We do anticipate a return to historic norms of permitting in the future, and are confident that we will be able to repay this loan within the fiscal year,” Turner said.
Historically, the Building Division generated $1,798,176 in revenue in 2022-23, $1,966,876 in 2023-24 and $2,048,229 in 2024-25. The current fiscal year’s adjusted projection is now below the 2022-23 level.
Loan payback plan in doubt, strict oversight on CDD finance expected
While the resolution authorizing the loan requires a full payback by Jun. 30, 2026, none of the supervisors seemed to believe in the viability of that plan.
Supervisor Bruno Sabatier said he has “grave concerns” about a repayment plan that depends on future permit revenues.
He brought up the fact that the county is not supposed to “make money off” the rates on county services.
“Your plan to pay back is based on services that have yet to be provided,” said Sabatier. “How are you going to pay back services already rendered with new services that should only pay for the services that are rendered?”
He continued: “Yes, there's always a little bit of fluff involved in our fees to ensure that it pays for the time that staff spends. But to pay back almost $400,000 off the backs of other services — it doesn't sit well with me.”
Supervisor Helen Owen said she was also “worried about the legalities of the collection,” echoing Sabatier’s concerns. Turner said she did not share those concerns.
“Historically, when we do have more permit fees than we have expenses, we've been able to feed funding into reserves. So I'm not concerned as much. I'm not really understanding the legality issue,” Turner said.
The Building Division’s reserve was $78,033 in the 2025-26 final budget, which had already been used.
“The reserves were at an excessive level and so we had been sort of moving them down,” Turner said of the reserve amount. “We just weren't counting on this collection of criteria that have led us to this point.”
Assistant County Administrative Officer Stephen Carter said that the division does not need the board’s approval to use reserves. But by the end of the fiscal year, the division must have at least the reserve amount in cash to balance the books.
Carter said the division is “technically negative $40,000” because of insufficient cash flow.
“I think it's a learning moment, not for the department, but for us,” Sabatier said following Carter’s explanation. “There has to be some flags that if we meet a certain criteria of going down towards being in negatives, that we have to take certain actions before this.”
Despite the concerns, it became clear the supervisors had no practical alternative but to approve the loan.
“Obviously we have to do something; We’ve got to make payroll,” Supervisor Brad Rasmussen said while he didn’t think loan repayment by Jun. 30 was realistic.
Supervisor Jessica Pyska agreed on the necessity to provide the loan. “But I don’t see how we’re going to get paid back,” she said, asking the County Administrative Office for oversight measures on the CDD department finance.
Deputy County Administrative Officer Casey Moreno proposed that the County Administrative Office have “full signature authority” over the CDD — not only the Building Division — for all of their budgets until the loan is fully paid back. Moreno also suggested having monthly or bimonthly budget meetings with the CDD “in order to get them back on track.”
“We probably all agree that there needs to be some pretty rigid oversight going forward,” said Pyska.
Sabatier said he was concerned that approving the loan will not solve the problem. “So I would like to have a better plan to ensure that we can make you solvent, and also make sure that it gets paid back,” he told CDD staff during the meeting.
On top of the unanimous approval of the loan, the board will further discuss the department’s budget matters, repayment plans and oversight procedures at the board meeting on Dec. 9.
“I feel the need for a more robust plan than what's in front of us,” Sabatier said.
This was not the only internal loan that the county has issued recently.
On Jun. 17, the board approved authorizing a $2 million loan to Behavioral Health requiring repayment within 90 days — a deadline the department ultimately missed.
County documents showed that it was due to cash flow constraints tied to the Medi-Cal intergovernmental transfer process and timing of reimbursements.
On Sep. 16, Behavioral Health Director Elise Jones requested a 180-day extension for their repayment. The board approved it 4-1 with Sabatier the sole dissenting vote.
A ‘perfectly balanced’ county budget in question
At the county’s budget hearing on Jun. 25, Moreno called the recommended 2025-26 budget “perfectly balanced.”
Three months later on Sep. 23 when the Board of Supervisors adopted the final recommended budget, no adjustments were made to the Building Division’s estimated revenues under its Budget Unit 2602 for building and safety.
By Nov. 14 — less than two months after supervisors approved the final budget — the division reported a significant revenue drop and a budget deficit, despite restricting spending.
At the November meeting, Turner told the supervisors that the decline in permitting revenues occurred in 2024 and that recoveries began in 2025.
The timeline of how and when the deficit emerged seemed unclear: When did the drops in permitting revenue actually occur? How has the deficit developed in the department and when did the CDD discover that the department was operating in a deficit? What made a “balanced” budget into a deficit in less than two months?
Lake County News asked the county for comments on the current CDD deficit against the “perfectly balanced” county budget.
“Permit revenues have lagged anticipated levels,” Chief Deputy County Administrative Officer Matthew Rothstein, the administrative office’s spokesperson, said in an email on Nov. 21. “While signs of decreased revenues had previously been observed, the magnitude of the concern came into greater focus very recently, and appropriate responsive action was initiated.”
He said the standard county budget process calls for revenue projections to be revisited at mid-year and that the approved final budget was “balanced.”
“This action in anticipation of mid-year reflects the urgency of the situation,” Rothstein said. “And mid-year budget adjustments will be proposed in consideration of any divergence from projections.”
Lake County News also asked for the specific months when revenue declined and when signs of recovery began.
This question was not answered, and the county’s response did not make clear when the deficit occurred.
Lake County News reached out with the same question again, emphasizing the doubt on why earlier revenue declines — in 2024 as Turner mentioned — did not result in any budget adjustments before the final budget was adopted.
“No further responsive documents are available at this time,” Rothstein said.
Inconsistent narrative on impact of salary increases
While the county did not provide Lake County News with specifics on when revenue drops and the deficit occurred, what happened between the end of September and mid-November that turned a “balanced” final budget into a deficit remains unknown.
What is known is that a multi-million-dollar raise for county staff took effect in July.
On June 17, the Board of Supervisors approved four-year contracts with nine employee groups, resulting in approximately $5,278,704 in raises.
Supervisor Sabatier cast the lone dissenting vote on each of the nine votes. He said that as a result of those raises, the budget wouldn’t be balanced as of July 1, meaning the county already was $5 million in the hole as the new fiscal year started.
At that time, Sabatier said the county has to figure out how to tighten budgets to be more realistic, noting they have been “fluffed.”
Both Turner and Walker-Smith of the CDD brought up the impact of increased salaries on their budgeting and the need for a loan.
“We are requesting this temporary loan because the increase in wages has made it necessary to address this prior to the mid-year budget,” Turner said.
At the same time, “our salaries overall have not exceeded what we expected at this point,” Walker-Smith said.
The staff memo said that the division had only spent 78% of its year-to-date projected expenses on salaries.
Still the raises are playing a part in the department’s budgeting, although vaguely mentioned.
“We do recognize that we're looking at probably a revenue shortfall for this fiscal year overall,” Walker-Smith said. “And we anticipated that with the salary increases that we would have to make a significant adjustment at mid-year.”
In the response to Lake County News, however, Rothstein said the CDD’s need for the loan “reflects revenues that fell short of projections, and not effects of salary increases.”
“Appropriate fiscal and contingency planning were undertaken prior to the board’s approval of salary increases, and mid-year adjustments will be made,” Rothstein said. “Given the late juncture at which agreements were reached and ratified by employee groups, this need of budgetary adjustments is expected.”
Rothstein also confirmed that “no other departments are currently operating or projected to run into deficit at this time.”
Email staff reporter Lingzi Chen at
