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County Continues Budget Review But Delays Recommending Cuts
In a hearing lasting nearly seven hours Tuesday, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors heard from department officials who didn’t have the opportunity to present budget reports at last week’s lengthy session.
The reports from the remaining department heads — including Alcohol, Drug, and Mental Health Services and the General Services Department — were no less dismal than those delivered by public safety officials a week ago, but after some discussion with County Executive Officer Mike Brown, the supervisors decided to table the budget until March 16.
Facing a $40 million shortfall, the supervisors were in agreement that major budget cuts need to be made, but they were unable to come to a consensus on priorities to recommend to the County Executive Office.
“I can cherry-pick a few things, but it doesn’t feel strategic,” First District Supervisor Salud Carbajal said.
Board chairwoman and Second District Supervisor Janet Wolf said she plans to sit down with Brown to set up a forum allowing all of the supervisors to review each department’s budget individually.
“A lot of people were waiting with baited breath [for our cuts], but it’s better to wait than to make bad recommendations to the County Executive Office,” she said. “We started to go through it department by department, but it became apparent that some of the board members needed more time to look at it.”
A few ideas about how to cut expenditures and raise revenue were discussed Tuesday by the supervisors, including adding parking fees at Goleta Beach and Arroyo Burro Beach, two coastal parks known for free parking.
Carbajal questioned the necessity of having a public information officer for the county, a position he said had been performed by the supervisors’ staff members in years past. Although his position costs the county $230,000 per year, public information officer William Boyer told the board Tuesday that much of that amount goes toward advertising, public service announcements and office supplies.
Even the County Executive Office is feeling the squeeze. Brown said negotiations with the city of Goleta over its revenue neutrality agreement with the county are again heating up. Goleta officials have indicated that the issue needs to be resolved before they can move forward with their plan to detach from the Goleta West Sanitary District.
By far taking the most time in Tuesday’s hearing — about two hours — was a presentation given by Ann Dietrich, director of Alcohol, Drug, and Mental Health Services.
“The big problem we’ve had in an ongoing way is serving people who are indigent,” said Dietrich, estimating that her department spends $3 million to $5 million annually on patients who are neither covered by MediCal nor can afford to pay for services. “It’s a very big draw on our system to continue to serve this volume of indigent people.”
ADMHS faces a $6.6 million budget gap.
Dietrich said ADMHS’s mandate calls for the department to care for MediCal recipients as well as crisis cases, but that the number of crisis cases coming from people who are homeless or unable to pay has gotten high.
Wolf said caring for mentally ill homeless people is the county’s responsibility, while one public commenter said mental health care needs to be raised to the level of public safety. “Mental health problems and drug and alcohol problems are powering public safety problems,” he said.
Highlighting a current backlog of deferred building maintenance, General Services Director Bob Nisbet said cuts will lead to more deferred maintenance and ultimately, higher operations and maintenance costs for the county.
“For those who drive automobiles, you know that if you don’t change the oil, it costs more later. It’s the same concept with buildings,” he said, explaining that 60 percent of his department’s cuts would be directed at building maintenance. General Services cares for 720 buildings throughout the county.
The only agency that reported being “on target” with its budget was the county’s IT Department, but during a drawn-out session of questioning from supervisors, the department’s chief information officer, Sally Nagy, was unable to justify the figures she presented to the board.
“She basically said she couldn’t explain it,” Wolf said.
— Noozhawk staff writer Ben Preston can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Comments
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» on 03.03.10 @ 07:32 PM
The cuts are way over due—Break the unions..Our leaders are puppets of the unions..
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» on 03.04.10 @ 05:35 PM
The ADMHS department with approval of the local BOS does have the discretion under Welfare and Institutions Code Section 5600 to limit the services provided to the uninsured (read: non-Medi-Cal).
As Director Dietrich states, many of these are individuals in crisis, some are those whose illness onset is too recent to qualify for SSI and Medi-Cal benefits.
However, one of the intents of the “Millionaire Tax” or Prop63/MHSA was to use the new moneys to outreach and serve those who have historically been un/underserved—which those with recent illness onset or crisis certainly qualify.
So while the MHSA taxpayer approved Millionaire Tax has gone into some essential and many ideal programs, the BOS should provide oversight and ensure that MHSA programs are matching up to the unmet needs that Prop 63 was intended to fill.
In these trying economic times, is it not possible to reconsider nice programs that were funded, and request that the state approve conversion to programs that are both nice and essential. The state Department of Mental Health is not deaf to the counties and their needs.
We all have cuts we make in bad financial times. We eliminate things we thought we cannot live without. The ADMHS department should be no different.
The department’s job is to design and operate a fiscally sound, safe, effective and efficient operation. It has the blessing of MHSA funds, and more coming in the form of Innovation dollars.
The taxpayer and the community should expect the department to go back, regroup, rethink and develop a budget that is sustainable without the addition of more taxpayer funds.
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