LAKE COUNTY— High sales tax revenue despite the COVID-19 pandemic was one of the highlights of the 2020-2021 fiscal year budget which the Lake County Board of Supervisors approved amendments to Tuesday.
The county is on track to receive $3.4 million to $3.6 million in sales tax revenue for the fiscal year, compared with $3.2 million received the year prior — and that was one of the county’s most successful years in the past decade when it comes to sales tax, said Stephen Carter, deputy county administrative officer.
“That is actually against the grain compared to a lot of places,” he said.
Bruno Sabatier, chair of the board of supervisors, noted that the county was lucky compared to neighboring Sonoma County and others more reliant on tourism.
The board unanimously approved amendments to the county’s reserves, revenues and staffing, including the addition of library staff so the library could extend its hours and the addition of a deputy sheriff sergeant, to be covered by a grant.
The board also discussed how to spend cannabis tax revenue and gave direction to a committee which will propose some concrete budget adjustments. Those will then come back to the board for consideration.
Sabatier said he wanted to put a cap on the amount put toward salaries because he viewed the funding as temporary, as Schedule 1 drug classifications including marijuana could change under the new Democratic leadership. Supervisor Tina Scott said she agreed on limiting the use of the money for salaries.
Supervisor E.J. Crandell advocated for increasing the amount of funding allocated for the sheriff’s office because of the overwhelming amount of complaints in his district about crime, particularly in the North Shore community. Crandell said he’d like to see allocations closer to 12.5 percent compared to the set rate of 7.5 percent.
Allocations were set at 15 percent for planning, water resources and code enforcement and 12.5 percent and for economic development, housing and risk reduction, for comparison.
The state was expected to release tier designations on Tuesday and Lake County would remain in the purple tier, said Sarah Marikos, county epidemiologist. However, the county has met the metric in order to allow elementary schools to open, said Dr. Gary Pace, the county’s public health officer.
While the county and state was seeing significant improvements in cases, Pace said he was wary about possible impacts of people gathering to watch the Superbowl over the weekend as and the COVID-19 variant first discovered in the UK which is more contagious and potentially more dangerous.
“We’re just getting more information about it, but the thinking is that potentially within six to eight weeks this is going to be the predominant variety in the United States,” he said. “It’s replicating so quickly.”
The county is switching to a drive-through vaccination clinic on Monday, and those with appointments will be contacted, Pace said. As a reminder, appointments are required in order to get a vaccine.
The county had about 500 vaccine doses which would be used up by the end of the day Wednesday, the public health officer said. The county is expecting another 1,000 doses this week but Pace didn’t know exactly when they would be delivered and that potentially appointments would need to be put on pause for a couple days.
“We’re getting it out as quickly as we get it,” he said.
All K-12 teachers and staff have been offered vaccines at this point, Pace said. About 10% of Lake County residents have now received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
The newly formed ethics committee which will serve as an advisory committee to Pace on vaccine distribution — namely who should get the vaccine when — was to meet for the first time later Tuesday. In response to questions from the public, County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson said the committee would decide Tuesday whether it would release the names of its members to the public.
The BOS meets on Tuesdays via zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic. The schedule of future meetings can be found at https://countyoflake.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx.
