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Jerry Bunin: County Shortsighted in Funding Long-Range Planning
Amid its ongoing budgetary problems, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors should stop spending money on nonessential long-range planning.
It should stop acting as if the local economy is humming along, its budget is flush and the work force is enjoying full employment.
The supervisors should have the courage to face the truth — a 10.4 percent countywide unemployment rate that is the second-highest on record, and a huge budget shortfall because of an anti-business attitude, poor planning and sweetheart deals with county employee unions.
While the county’s budget deficit has grown in the past three years from $15 million to $26 million to $39 million, the board has thrown nearly $4 million on long-range community plans — as if these unincorporated areas actually faced development pressures, when, in fact, we are at an all-time low in terms of development activities.
As the board knows or should know, the notoriously slow county annual growth rate of 0.5 percent has slowed even more. The number of new residential building permits has fallen for seven straight years with the last two hitting record lows. In calendar 2009, building permits were issued for only 22 percent of the homes built in an average year.
Simultaneously, poor decisions by county leaders trapped them into labor contracts that pay their employees too much and give them better benefits and earlier retirement than equivalent private-sector workers. The county then aggravated those errors by trying to pay for them by recklessly increasing private-sector costs, further harming local businesses and government revenues.
Supervisor Doreen Farr recently claimed that paying for community plans and new buildings for county services “is money well spent.” It is never fiscally wise to spend reserves, rainy-day funds or long-term maintenance funds for building moratoriums disguised as long-range planning.
Supervisor Janet Wolf defended spending more money on community plans by claiming that the funds spent already would be wasted unless more was spent. That is not good public policy. At some point, it is obviously wisest to simply follow Will Rogers: “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”
While long-term planning has value, it can be delayed, as compared with public safety, infrastructure maintenance and health care. At all times, but especially during a recession, government should act more like the private sector, cutting nonessential staff and its salaries and benefits and reducing operations to the minimal level needed to survive tough times.
For more than two years, the Home Builders Association of the Central Coast has urged the board not to declare a rezoning moratorium while spending $500,000 for a Goleta Community Plan that covered little usable land. This moratorium has a variety of negative impacts:
» The local economy and the community’s social fabric continue to suffer because of the long-distance commuting of our work force.
» Environmental degradation from greenhouse gas emissions — caused by this commuting — continues to increase.
» Job losses continue for the working class as the moratorium drags on and on.
In the past decade, the county also spent $2 million on a Santa Ynez Community Plan that changed zoning for only 18 housing units. It should not have taken that long or that much money to accomplish so little. Another $1.4 million is targeted at preventing a few dozen homes being built on the Gaviota Coast through another community plan there.
The three components of a vibrant community are a healthy economy, environmentally sound planning and meeting our social needs — including housing. Santa Barbara County has missed all three.
— Jerry Bunin is the government affairs director for the Home Builders Association of the Central Coast. He can be contacted at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or 805.546.0418 x22.
Comments
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» on 03.16.10 @ 09:31 PM
Carbajal Wolf and Farr all terrible union puppets, and thats bad for for the rest of us—40 Million in the red and 150 million in unfunded pensions..
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» on 03.17.10 @ 07:09 AM
Kind of sad to see Jerry Bunin allowing himself to be used in these political attacks, when he knows the issues are much bigger. What about the fact that the OVER-production of homes in the north county leading to the mortgage collapse, and the county now having to pick up the pieces of all of THOSE lives….....
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» on 03.18.10 @ 06:37 AM
Mr.Bunin makes excellent points in every paragraph.
If I were to paraphrase, in my own words, what the best application of government is…I would use the word “protect”.
“Protect” its citizens from harm…police
“Protect” its citizens from hazards…fire
“Protect” its citizens from disasters…reserves for earthquake and tsuanmis
“Protect” its citizens from downturns…in the economy so that services continue.
The BEST government, local, state and federal, that does attend to these things, would ALWAYS place reserves as their priority.
That is the kind of future political leaders that would serve the public well.
Mark King
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» on 03.18.10 @ 09:19 AM
Elected officials just don’t see the world as it is. Start laying of your overpaid over-pensioned employees, that is the best planning you can do for the future. First one to go I would like to see is: Sheriff Brown. I realize he’s elected but, would that he could be fired. He is leading the way trying to waste taxpayer dollars on suicide barriers.
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» on 03.18.10 @ 11:20 AM
Mr. Bunin’s building trades supporters are out of work primarily because Bunin
remained silent in the Clinton-Bush years about all the spec projects promoted
on highly leveraged, borrowed money, for new projects for which there was no
market need, and no customers.
The County is short of money because it is the local arm of State government, and constrained both by a whole slew of unfunded State mandates, a whole slew of State “borrowing” of local revenues, and a whole lot of pension/retirement lock-ins over which it has limited control.
At some point (we hope), the Greenspan-Bush recession will begin to abate, and
the need for new buildings will recover across the County. At that point, each
area will need a modernized, updated Community Plan.
Since Community Plans generally have a life-expectancy of 8-15 years, the
County loses little maintaining its effort to complete them now. Particularly
since - due to the economy - technical consultants often required to polish
them are bidding their services (like Bunin’s friends) at much, much lower
rates than they might have countenanced two or three years ago.
The County budget is highly stressed due to external factors. The County CEO
and Auditor have warned about this for several years. The Supervisors generally
supported their CEO’s and Auditor’s recommendations. The fully allocated cost
of the division Bunin rails against represents only a tiny fraction of the shortfall.
Finger pointing (especially way after the fact of the meltdown crisis) is easy.
Trying to maintain the foundation of solid County government and services, into
the anticipated future needs, is not.
Bunin is a bright, caring guy. But he’s steering off the common sense road here.
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