LAKE COUNTY >> At a Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, August 28, the board passed a resolution to reduce the number of days that many Lake County department offices would be open to the public from five to four each week, resulting in public access to those departments being limited to Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Although the resolution is temporary, with a reevaluation expected on or before March 10, 2019, Supervisor Jim Steele said Thursday that this kind of change in the government’s operation is likely to continue, though perhaps in a different form. “We have to see if this is the efficient way to handle business,” Steele said.
The departments poised to cut public hours include, according to the resolution: “all County offices located within the Lake County Courthouse” including Public Works and Elections, among others, as well as the Department of Public Services, the District Attorney’s Office, Special Districts, Air Quality Management, and Child Support Services.
In an argument for the necessity of such a resolution to be passed by the board, Huchingson said that Lake County’s “financial condition is dire and continuing to worsen,” and that the county has thus far been “unsuccessful in our pursuit of new revenue streams” to make up for a plethora of financial difficulties caused in part by the Great Recession of 2008 and made worse by recent natural disasters like the Mendocino Complex Fire.
Huchingson said that the “Transient occupancy tax and various other taxes [like] geothermal royalty—everything is off the mark, posing considerable financial challenges.” Wildfires, she said, are “contributing to the loss of over 2,000 homes—nearly 5.5 percent of our housing stock—a severe assault on county property tax revenues, which impact our general fund departments.”
According to Huchingson, the rising minimum wage and comparatively low salaries for Lake County employees caused by Lake County’s slow recovery from the Great Recession have led to an average of “about 20 percent” vacancy rate in county positions. Because of this understaffing, which in one county office was estimated by Huchingson to be as high as 50 percent, “business as usual is no longer an option,” Huchingson said.
In addition to the departments included in the resolution, Huchingson noted that she expected law enforcement, agricultural, and social services department heads to come forward with similar proposals for “partial closures.”
Gail Woodworth, Director of Child Support Services, said that she had wanted to be included in the reduced public hours resolution, citing 30 percent understaffing of her department’s case manager positions. The non-public day would allow her case managers to “touch those cases that we otherwise haven’t been able to.”
Supervisor Moke Simon remarked that when he first learned of it, the vacancy rate “really shocked me,” and went on to say that the county has “understaffed, underpaid” employees.
Sheriff Brian Martin, whose department is not included in the resolution, said that “we in government are in the business of delivering services,” and that the severe understaffing his department is dealing with results in “the nondelivery of services on the street,” citing public concern about this matter. The Sheriff’s Office, according to Martin, currently has 16 deputy sheriff series positions, 18 correctional officer series positions, seven dispatcher positions, and six civilian positions vacant. In the case of the dispatcher positions, seven vacancies represent nearly 50 percent understaffing.
Although Steele said that he expects “things to improve from the standpoint of the government’s business” operations as a result of the resolution, he said Thursday that he is interested in heightening efforts to find more sources of revenue for the county. Steele said he wanted to focus on getting more successful grant applications written, especially in order to improve business opportunities in Lake County. Steele also expressed support for an increase in the county’s sales tax to make salaries for county employees more competitive, on both ends of the pay scale. “You cannot have low leadership salaries,” Steele said.
The resolution will not affect the hours worked by county employees in the affected departments, and will not affect their salaries. “There will be no changes to county employees’ pay,” Steele said.
