By Donna Westfall – September 5, 2017 –

According to County Administrative Officer (CAO), Jay Sarina, the budget process is opened to public hearings because the final budget has to balanced. It can be done through projections or actual changes that will be made.   They look at individual department requests. They look at annual funds like insurance funds like health.  They were at a $1 million deficit.

When they (Board of Supervisors) are talking about the budget, they are talking primarily about the general funds.

There are limited discretionary funds which income comes from:

• Property tax
• Sales tax
• Triple flip – which I never heard of before so I emailed CAO Sarina for an explanation: “In short, its a three part series of revenue shifts by the State of California involving a portion of local sales tax that was utilized to pay off Economic Recovery Bonds approved by voters in 2004. The shift is three parts and included replacing the diverted local sales tax with property taxes shifted from School and Community College Districts. In turn schools received guaranteed education aid under Prop 98. The intent was to ensure local government was kept whole regarding net revenue.”
• TOT = Transient Occupancy Tax

The bulk of it is used for general funds for services.

Every department has mandates, building, planning, engineering, environmental health and code enforcement.

CAO Sarina says, “We’re not looking at surplus money in a typical year.  The cost of business continues to roll.”

The budget approval needs 4 votes from the supervisors, unlike all other items on a typical agenda which can pass with a 3-2 vote.