LAKEPORT — At the Lake County Board of Supervisors meeting on September 25, the board approved resolutions adopting the final recommended budget for fiscal year 2018–2019, making allocations for new position classifications, cancelling $2 million from the general fund to cover disaster costs, and continuing an “informal hiring freeze” for general fund departments.
Weighing in at $242,988,047, the budget is roughly 5 percent bigger than the previous year’s, and general fund appropriations in the budget are about one third of 1 percent larger than in 2017–2018. Likewise, overall costs for the county are relatively unchanged. Though not present at the meeting, County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson said in a pre-recorded video that the budget was “likely to be the last in a series of years in which county operations and services could be considered business as usual.”
Citing the county’s major financial difficulties, Huchingson said that future years will be even more challenging than the present one, as the county has faced nine natural disasters, 10 years of “stagnant” revenues coupled with increasing minimum wage rates and retirement contributions, and vacancy rates in county departments that often top 20 percent. Calling the short term outlook “bleak,” Huchingson said that the 2018–2019 budget provides “very little additional discretionary revenue to support new positions” and that the county’s ability to take on “new initiatives” would be severely limited in the years to come.
District 3 Supervisor Jim Steele commented: “there’s only one way to go now, and that’s back up in the right direction.” However, significant alterations will be required before the county can come up for air. District 5 Supervisor Rob Brown said that “we can’t be on the mend unless we are able to start making some really bold changes,” and said he does not see “good years for a long time to come.”
Such changes may include cutting allocation of funds for county positions that have remained consistently vacant in recent years. Steele stressed the importance of efforts to “right-size” the government to its income. By cutting funding for unoccupied positions, other employees within a department could see higher pay. “Every department needs to be looked at,” said Brown.
Steele initiated a discussion at the board’s September 18 meeting which focused on the option of consolidating the county’s Auditor-Controller and its Treasurer-Tax Collector into one office, thereby saving on salary costs. Such steps have recently been discussed by other counties in California, including Napa.
Brown said that management positions have remained filled while the county struggles to retain many of its lower-level positions, and suggested making changes to attract people to those positions, including cutting management positions in order to hire more lower-level positions.
Highlighting one positive aspect of Lake County’s familiarity with natural disaster, Steele noted that there are grant dollars which the county “could take advantage of simply because we are a poster child for disaster.” Though he did not mention specific grant opportunities, Steele said that “there have been a lot of offers of help. We are going to go looking at all of those.” Steele said that process would be made visible to the public as it progresses.
However, Brown told the Record-Bee that while grant opportunities are worthwhile, they are not as easy to take advantage of as they may seem. In many cases, Brown said, the county would need to match a percentage of the grant funding offered in order to receive grants. “We don’t have those match dollars,” Brown said.
Steele requested that estimated revenues from cannabis-related fines be added to the budget, as that revenue had not yet been included. All aspects of the budget are subject to change throughout the fiscal year as needed.
