Belt tightening, staffing woes at stake in Sonoma County Supervisors consider next budget
The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors will have to reconcile some recommended belt-tightening with clear interest in shoring up beleaguered departments and public infrastructure as they debate this week the county’s proposed $2.19 billion budget.
Hearings on the next budget begin Tuesday morning, as the five elected leaders at the helm of the North Bay’s largest local government seek to patch up the county’s strained 4,000-member workforce while curbing some of its pandemic-era spending.
The proposed 2023-24 budget represents about a 2.2% decrease from the $2.24 billion spending plan adopted for the fiscal year that ends June 30.
It is made up of the $406 million general fund, which supports criminal justice and administrative departments and most discretionary spending, and $1.79 billion from other sources.
“This year is really a year when we’re investing in our core services, investing in our workforce,” said Peter Bruland, deputy county administrator.
The county’s budget team, led by County Administrator Christina Rivera, is confronting what they called a “tight” budget year, driven partly by economic uncertainty due to persistent inflation and high interest rates.
“I encourage the board to limit additional resources programming to efforts that maintain core county services,” Rivera wrote in the county’s budget proposal.
Inflation, high interest rates and declining revenue from property taxes, which make up the majority of the county’s general fund revenue, have contributed to the emphasis on core services.
Property taxes in the upcoming year are projected to yield a 4.25% increase over the current year, down from the 6.4% increase seen in 2022-23.
With slowing property sales and other diminished revenue streams, forecasts show an $11.1 million projected deficit in fiscal year 2024-25, according to the county’s budget book.
Given that outlook, Rivera urged the board to “pause the number of new projects and/or initiatives, so that staff can concentrate on delivering critical services to our community.”
The county provides its mandated core services through various departments, including its criminal justice wing, law enforcement oversight office, and health and human services, which manage state programs like CalFresh, the food benefit program, at the local level.
The day-to-day fiscal management of those departments — there are more than two dozen across county government, plus several standalone agencies — rests with their appointed managers.
But final decisions about spending fall to the Board of Supervisors and some of its members have indicated support for bolstering the county’s criminal justice wing — particularly the Sheriff’s Office and Probation Department, two of the many departments beset by staffing woes.
Supervisors also have shown interest in investing what funds are available in infrastructure, including the county’s road repair program and its bike lane network.
Shoring up workforce
The job vacancy rate across the county’s 28 departments has hovered at 12% since last year when department heads and employees raised alarms over a shrinking workforce and unmanageable workload. County data shows the vacancy rate has been steadily growing since 2020 when the vacancy rate was 9.43%.
Supervisors David Rabbitt, James Gore and Lynda Hopkins have highlighted their interest in aiding the county’s criminal justice and public safety departments in the weeks leading up to budget hearings.
Hopkins called the needs of the Sheriff’s Office, Public Defender and Registrar of Voters “critical.”
“The amount of mandatory overtime the deputies are being required to fill is unsustainable,” Hopkins said. “We need to build back to a more sustainable level in the Sheriff’s Office going forward.”
Recent contract negotiations amplified employees’ calls for support.
The county has finalized contracts with at least four groups of represented employees, awarding annual raises and salary hikes to achieve equity — moves that union and county officials said aligned local pay rates with those of comparable employers.
The new contracts, however, will drive up the county’s payroll costs. Salaries and benefits in the recommended budget total about $739.1 million, a roughly 2.13% increase over the $723.5 million salaries and benefits total in the current budget.
With some contracts still pending, the county has set aside a little over $12 million to absorb the extra cost of pay and benefits, Bruland said.
“We are confident this budget reflects the full cost of labor agreements,” he added.
Investing one-time funds
Beyond individual requests from departments, much of the board’s deliberations will look at how to spend $44 million in one-time funds — pots of money that are not recurring annual sources.
“When we talk about one-time funding we’re talking about essentially money that is in our hands,” Bruland said. “It’s the money we’ve already saved from this year.”
The $44 million on hand this year is a notably large sum, Bruland said, with higher than expected payroll savings due to slow recruitment and poor retention.
Rivera’s office has made spending recommendations for $36.7 million of the one-time funding.
Proposed projects include $5.18 million for relocation of the public health lab and morgue off Chanate Road, $7.67 million for the Tierra de Rosas project in Roseland and $336,881 for Henry 1, the Sheriff’s Office helicopter.
Tierra de Rosas is the long-awaited housing and retail complex intended to convert the largely vacant shopping center at the heart of Roseland into 175 mixed-income apartments with retail shops, a community building and a public plaza.
Supervisor Chris Coursey has been vocal in calling for more support for the project since becoming the area’s representative following redistricting linked to the 2020 Census. He said he was glad to see a recommendation to provide additional funding.
“That’s my number one priority,” Coursey said regarding how to spend the one-time funds. “We’ll go from there.”
About $7.67 million of the one-time funds are without spending recommendations from Rivera’s office.
Coursey, Hopkins, Rabbitt and Supervisor Susan Gorin have also said they were interested in exploring infrastructure investments.
For Gorin, Hopkins and Coursey that includes long-envisioned bike and pedestrian pathways that have lingered on the drawing board, in some cases for decades.
“We’re investing in our roads. We also need to think about our climate futures and invest in those systems,” Gorin said.
Last year, the board divided some one-time monies between funding buckets for water, housing and community infrastructure. Looking to the upcoming deliberations, Rabbitt urged the board to “put everything on the table at once and prioritize.”
“There’s been too many times when we’ve put aside buckets of money,” Rabbitt said. “Well-meaning, certainly worthy causes, but now you have several large buckets and is that still the priority going forward?”
Supervisor James Gore did not respond to requests for comment by deadline Friday evening.
You can reach Staff Writer Emma Murphy at 707-521-5228 or emma.murphy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MurphReports.
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