Budget Hearings Today -- Recap > Rexroad.com

Today the budget hearings went from 0900 until just before 1700.

Some would say that this is a status quo budget but the increase is about 8%. I think that is significant.

The county staff often discuss the county as a $300 million organization. It is that big in terms of the whole budget but unlike the City of Woodland much of the money is just distributed by the county to individuals.

If you want more information on the budget I encourage you to look at the county website. Look in the lower left hand corner. You will have more information than you ever wanted. Pat Leary is the Deputy CAO for the County. She is excellent and proved it again today with the budget stuff she and her teeam put together. It was really well done.

From my notes and memory....

County Assessor Joel Butler reqeusted more staff for his department. He was going to have four more people assigned to his office but wanted more. He is going to work some things out with the CAO.

When we went into General Services most of the comments were about buldings and fleet services. The county does not do a very good job right now managing the fleet of vehicles it controls. That is about to change.

We are budgeting $73,517 to hold a special election in February 2008. What a waste.

The IT budget did not generate much discussion except from Helen Thomson. She wanted to put another body in there. That may happen later but not now. IT blocked 4,521,233 spam e-mails last year.

Woodland has a City Library but the other parts of the county have county library services. We do spend some General Fund money here but I am ok with that. I don't think it helps Woodland but I am not going to be that territorial.

The County has given the Yolo County Hostorical Museum $10,000 annually for years. I was determined to put this number at $50,000 this year. We got "up to $50,000" but we need to work out some things. I am thankful my fellow Supervisors were willing to help here.

I asked a question about the use of overtime for Probation but it was more about how the county uses it as a whole. Some organizations kills themselves by abusing overtime. Don Meyer and others made me comfortable with this.

Health and Human Services in the County accounts for expenditures of $124 million. That is a big chuck of change.

Alcohol, Drug, and Mental Health accounts for $30 million of the $124 million in HHS. This program has been beaten up in a big way over the last few years. The budget is being increased by more than $5 million from last year. For the most part, we need to get our ducks in a row here.

Employment and Social Services accounts for $72 million of the $124 million. Lots of this money just passes right on to people in forms of assistance. My worry in these programs is that we are using General Fund monies to make some of these programs whole this year. We are starting down a slippery slope by doing that.

The Health Department accounts for expenditures of $22 million -- also out of the $124 million.

I can't think of one place where any of these budgets actually changed as a result of the conversation. One of the points I asked about was the services provided to illegal immigrants. I was told they account for 50% of the caseload and 30% of the expenditures. There was no chance that three votes were there to change this in any way.

This was justified as a moral decision that was the right thing to do and preventative medicine. I am not so sure. Yolo County is spending millions of dollars taking care of people that it is not required to take care of. This budget document is a reflection of what three votes of the board values and this is service that is not mandated. Not all counties do this.

Planning and public works has a budget of $36 million.

Duane Chamberlain and I both noticed that not a single dollar of general fund dollars was spent on roads. Not one. That does not reflect my values.

We then passed a couple key motions that were kind of outside the budget.

1) Up to $50,000 for the Gibson Mansion.

2) We supported the Yolo County Visitors Bureau to the tune of $60,000 even though staff recommended that it be $25,000.

3) Then we voted 3-2 (Rexroad and Chamberlain no) to allocate $100,000 to fund the Needle Exchange Program. I still argue this is not an exchange. It is a give away program that does not require the drug user to turn anything in. We were told we would get details about the program. We still don't have them. I am glad Duane joined me this time.

Did staff do an excellet job on this budget? Absolutely.

Is it the budget that I would have written? Not even close.

Did I accomplish my objective of calmly pointing out my differences on some items and still accomplish something for Woodland? I think so.

In the end we have the political reality of Yolo County. Lemonade!

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