Special Olympics Northern California at risk of losing more than half its budget in Silicon Valley due to county fiscal woes

Santa Clara County is facing a bleak financial picture for the upcoming fiscal year.

For Leslie Francavilla, the Special Olympics are about more than just sports — it’s a community that she said has given her 35-year-old son, Mathew, the confidence to lead an independent life that she previously wasn’t sure was even possible.

For the last 14 years, Mathew has competed in all 11 of the sports offered in Santa Clara County. His mom has been coaching five of them — including bowling, floor hockey and swimming — for 13 years.

“One of the things that’s really tough when you have a special-needs child is my son is cognitively aware enough to know what the world is doing around him, and so he always had aspirations of being like everybody else,” said Francavilla. “In middle school, he wanted to play sports, he wanted to be involved in things, and those opportunities just aren’t there.”

Santa Clara County is one of more than 40 member counties in Special Olympics Northern California, which runs from the Oregon border in the north to Tulare County in the south. President and CEO David Solo called Santa Clara County a “model for other counties,” as the Board of Supervisors has allocated funding for the program in recent years that Solo said has helped expand their reach to 1 in 25 residents with disabilities in Silicon Valley.

While it’s not unheard of for counties to designate money for the Special Olympics activities in their area — San Mateo County provides $75,000 per year, for instance — Santa Clara County’s contribution makes up more than half of the organization’s $1.1 million budget designated for the area.

But this year is different. The county is facing a bleak financial picture in the upcoming fiscal year, and whether Special Olympics Northern California will be granted the more than $600,000 in critical funding they have in years past remains to be seen.

Santa Clara County leaders warned last year that their budget deficit could be as high as $250 million for the 2024-25 fiscal year. And while county officials were able to pull together enough dollars through alternative revenue sources and cuts to close the gap, supervisors are still facing tough choices as they comb through the $12.4 billion proposed budget.

Solo and other parents, coaches and athletes in Santa Clara County pleaded with the board last week, asking them to continue funding the Special Olympics.

“I think our population is sometimes a forgotten population, and part of it is because they don’t advocate on behalf of themselves, and so I think sometimes they get left out of the equation,” Solo said. “We really are trying to be vocal and make sure that we advocate for them on their behalf.”

While funding for the Special Olympics was left out of the proposed budget released earlier this month, County Executive James Williams said at a meeting last week that the board had put it on a list of items to reconsider in June if there’s money left over.

Board President Susan Ellenberg said she was “very disappointed” to see the funding was cut, but understood the decision as the county is in a tough position financially.

“My lens is first and foremost on maintaining core services, maintaining the services that only the county provides and only the county has funding for,” Ellenberg told The Mercury News. “Then anything beyond that is exciting and wonderful. I want our organization to be a broad support for programs that promote community health and well-being.”

Ellenberg said she believes the board could find the money by shifting funding away from a reserve they have for building inclusive playgrounds. The $5 million in that tranche, she said, could be difficult to spend as it requires matching contributions from the city where they build the playground — something they don’t have at the moment.

“I think it would be a safe and prudent way of getting this money into the community faster and directly supporting our disability community,” she said.

If the county ultimately can’t come up with the funds, Solo said the Northern California Special Olympics group would likely have to reduce the services they provide with their $1.1 million budget in Santa Clara County. They currently have 473 Special Olympics athletes in the county, but statewide data, he said, points to more than 12,000 residents countywide with developmental disabilities.

“There’s a lot more need there that we could fulfill, a lot more opportunity in Santa Clara County,” Solo said.

Those are opportunities that Leslie Francavilla said aren’t found elsewhere — especially for individuals who have already finished school. Once they’ve graduated, she said, many people with disabilities and their families struggle to find a community to call their own. The Special Olympics, she said, fills that void.

“We don’t have anything for our disabled population,” Francavilla said. “This is the one thing that really fits that bill.”