After months of workshops, Santa Barbara County has approved a new budget of $1.69 billion, which will help the county save as it prepares for possible rough years ahead.

“We have a budget,” Supervisor Laura Capps said to a round of applause from the crowd of county staff and department heads.

The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors met in Santa Barbara on Tuesday to go over the finishing touches of the yearly budget, which will begin in July and run until June 2026. The board heard a proposed version of the budget in April.

The board approved the new budget in a 5-0 vote.

Capps started the meeting by acknowledging the hard choices that the board and department heads had to make because of the drop in revenue.

Even though the county described its budget as status quo, which will continue to fund its departments and projects, the county also announced that the budget will include cuts to social services.

The county’s decision comes as a response to drops in sales revenue and uncertainty in funding from the state and federal government.

The California Legislature adopted a budget this month that predicts a deficit of $12 billion. With the state’s financial issues, the county will be receiving less funding from the state.

The state also made a series of cuts to social services, such as cutting health care to immigrants without legal status. The cut could potentially affect 20% of adults eligible for Medi-Cal and cause a loss of income for county health services.

The county also is expecting the Trump administration to make cuts to education, health, housing and labor programs. The cuts could have effects on the Medi-Cal and CalFresh programs.

Locally, the county has seen rising costs from employee salaries, capital projects, disaster recovery, and medical services at the Northern Branch Jail.

Before approving the budget, the board heard presentations on items that it asked county staff to review during previous budget meetings, including a potential oil and gas phaseout, construction of a park at Vandenberg Village, and changes to the Sheriff’s Office cannabis enforcement.

The board allocated $250,000 for the Community Services Department to work on changes to the county’s oil and gas ordinances. The vote approved the revision in a 3-2 vote, with Fourth District Supervisor Bob Nelson and Fifth District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino voting against it.

On the future park in Vandenberg Village, the board decided to fund the first phase for $426,000. However, Nelson said he would support leaving the second part of phase one on the deferred maintenance for at least another year.

The board has asked that the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office rethink its cannabis enforcement policy.

Sheriff Bill Brown revealed a plan for reallocation of funds that his office had used for cannabis enforcement.

In his proposal, Brown recommended hiring four full-time employees. The four employees would include two for the sheriff’s narcotics team and one community resource deputy, which Brown said would be funded by the City of Carpinteria.

The final spot would feature one employee assigned to tracking down fugitives or people with serious open warrants, which is something Lavagnino has asked for in previous meetings.

The board decided to approve the two full-time employees for the narcotics team. Additionally, the supervisors approved a full-time employee dedicated to warrants for one year.

The supervisors also approved funding to support two additional therapists at the Immigrant Legal Defense Center. The new therapists will provide mental health services to families dealing with the strain of family separation and deportation.

Capps’ plan initially called for three employees, but she reached an agreement with Lavagnino to support two therapists with $240,000 in funding.

In his comments, Lavagnino said that despite the status quo budget, the county is doing well financially. He acknowledged that the county is looking at problems five years down the road but added that it’s doing much better than many other counties in the region.

Lavagnino also said that the county is still spending money, but is saving where it can in order to prepare for the future.

“We’re saving what we need to so that two years from now, three years from now, we’re not having to go and lay off folks,” Lavagnino said. “I’ve been through that before, and it is not fun to sit in this room and try to figure out which awesome service that we provide to the public that we have to cut, that we have to send somebody out the door.”