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Supervisors get a $1.6 billion budget
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Ventura County residents will see more sheriff's deputies on the streets and the continuing growth of Santa Paula Hospital if the budget proposed Tuesday by the county executive officer is adopted by the Board of Supervisors.
CEO Johnny Johnston's recommended budget for the year that begins July 1 includes small spending increases for most departments, to keep pace with rising salaries and other costs, and not much to hire new workers or expand programs. Total spending is at $1.6 billion, up 4.5 percent from the current fiscal year. Spending in the general fund would be $875 million, a 4.4 percent increase over this year. "General purpose" spending an even smaller category that represents the money that the County Board of Supervisors directly controls would total $315 million.
"I think it's a very smart budget, because we're starting to put aside funds for some projects we need to do in the future, and we're increasing our reserves," said County Supervisor Linda Parks.
Johnston's proposal will now go before the Board of Supervisors, which will adopt a final budget the week of June 18. County officials who want more money than Johnston proposes for their departments must appeal directly to the board.
The sheriff, district attorney, public defender, fire chief, auditor-controller, public guardian, assessor and director of behavioral health all plan to ask for more. Their requests total $6.74 million.
The county's revenues are at an all-time high, but Johnston has warned the supervisors repeatedly over the past few months that they should be careful with that money. Much of the new revenue is already spoken for, in the form of salary increases that county workers have already started receiving.
The county also needs to set aside more every year, to recover from a budget crunch that squeezed reserve funds down to zero in 2002. And, it must begin to set money aside for an expansion of the Todd Road jail, planned for around 2011.
Santa Paula Hospital, which opened last year, is expected to cost the county $1.8 million in 2007-08 as its startup phase continues. That's $700,000 less than the county Health Care Agency was expecting, according to a report accompanying Johnston's budget proposal.
The Sheriff's Department gets the most funding of any department in Johnston's proposed budget: $132 million, $14.1 million more than it got in the current year's budget.
However, $11.2 million of that new money is needed to cover salary increases that sheriff's deputies and dispatchers are already receiving.
The Sheriff's Department would also get $392,000 for equipment and two deputies to add to the West County gang unit, bringing the unit to six deputies.
Sheriff Bob Brooks has submitted requests for another $3.64 million, which Johnston is recommending against.
Brooks said he'll need $2.8 million to pay for his deputies' overtime, noting that the board had to supplement his budget this year to cover overtime.
"We still have a gap between our projection of overtime and (Johnston's) projections of overtime, and we believe we're underfunded in that regard," Brooks said. "We're going to do what we can to reduce that internally, and we're hoping through the budget process we can reduce it as well."
The rest of the additional funds would be used to bring the gang unit to eight people, Brooks said.
"We used to have a 15-person gang unit, and we completely eliminated that in the last budget crunch (in 2002)," he said. "Now we're slowly starting to build in that capability again, not to the same level, but we still want some surgical force that will deal with issues of gang violence."
One wild card in the 2007-08 budget is the ongoing negotiations between the county and its largest employee union, the Service Employees International Union. The proposed budget assumes that those negotiations will yield annual wage increases of 3 percent to 3.75 percent for most SEIU workers, said Paul Derse, Johnston's budget chief.
SEIU negotiator Letty Alvarez, a community service coordinator in the county Public Health Department, said she thinks some workers deserve bigger raises. The budget proposal is proof that the money is there, she said, and the union will urge the board to move some money from reserves to salaries. "The county is pretty healthy, we have good reserves," Alvarez said. "The county workers are hard workers, and we deserve our share."
Posted by greek1967 on May 30, 2007 at 9:55 a.m. (Suggest removal)
"Much of the new revenue is already spoken for, in the form of salary increases that county workers have already started receiving." This is only true for a few County workers. In order to maintain quality services for the citizens of Ventura County, the CEO and the Board of Supervisors must make it a priority to retain a quality workforce. The citizens of Ventura County deserve this much at the least. The cost of living in this County continues to escalate and the wages of most government workers do not rise at the same rate to meet the cost of living demands. We are now looking at a lose/lose situation. The administrators of the County would be wise to create a win/win situation for all County citizens before it's too late.
Posted by GuideDog on May 30, 2007 at 2:07 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Does anyone know if and where a copy of the proposed budget may be viewed on the web?
Posted by david on May 30, 2007 at 2:13 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Once again we have a budget that is higher than inflation. I think it is about time the county initiate a zero-based budget process starting with the more expensive departments. I have no doubt that we would find we could do more with what we have- if not a little less.
Posted by Tom_Johnston on May 30, 2007 at 5:14 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Guide Dog, the budget is posted here on the Star website at the top of this article to the left in a little box. Its a big download and a .pdf file so you'll need the Adobe reader. I've been looking at it myself here and there and for 400+ pages it doesn't have a lot of detail, at least in dollars.
One never knows when one might need those "social services" either...ask folks that were impacted by the La Conchita slides, or recent fires (or the possible flooding to follow). You never know when you might lose health insurance or become disabled. It's not just about crime and punishment.
The county rank and file workers are as deserving as anyone of cost of living and other salary increases. Housing is no cheaper nor the cost of gas etc. for county workers. CEO Johnston and department heads got nice double digit increases, sometimes annually. Mr. Johnston does not drive a bulldozer when hills are sliding into homes, and he does not arrest criminals, and he is not a health professional providing direct health care services. The workers do those things, and their hard work deserves compensation increases to keep up with the times.
Posted by venturabob on June 6, 2007 at 12:40 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Wow only a 4.5% increase in the budget! Great job, guys! Just joking, of course, but that's the way most people think. I's a large report with a lot of numbers but not near enough to tell what's really going on. So, why don't we just take one or two segments of it and try to evaluate their efforts. Let's see. Hmm, let's look at the Salaries and Benefits expense. That's something that is about one-fifth of the total budget and should be controllable. Also, let's take a look at what segment has the highest payroll per Full Time Equivalent employee. It's probably the District Attorney's Office, The Public Defender's Office or the County Counsel with all those high priced attorneys. Or maybe the Medical Examiner's Office with those highly technical CSI types. I know! It's the County Executive Office which has high priced executives. Sorry, folks, the little red hats win out again! You know--the guys that get full pay for working 10 days a month, retire at the ripe old age of 50 (or as soon as they can file a disability claim) with a big fat pension, get paid while they watch TV, cook, exercise, sleep, run errands, go out to eat, maintain their toys, etc. Now you got it--The Fire Protection District! Hey! Their Salaries and Benefits are $160,593 per employee! This is a full 58% higher than the average of all of the payrolls! Wow! The Fire Protection District accounts for one third of the Salaries and Benefits budget even though they only have 20% of the employees. Aren't unions great! It would be nice to know what percentage are benefits to determine how much their pay was. But, of course, that's buried.
Let's go on with this department. Services and Supplies increased by 15% last year and another 13% next year for a booming 30% in two years! Is this a budget or a forecast?
Fixed Assets were over budget by 61% this year. Budget Smudget--just keep score. And next year they want 73% more! They have $10.8 million for new fire station construction. In their comments there were 29,812 calls spread amongst 31 stations that operate 365 days per year. That computes to only 2.6 calls per a 24 hour day. You would think that some of the stations would be closed down rather than opening new ones.
And, of course, we haven't gotten to the most ridiculous item in the budget. It's not the fact that they want to add 6 people. It is the fact that they budgeted $600,000 for three new firefighter-paramedics. That's $200,000 each, which is even more than the ridiculous amount of $160,593 above! Come on, folks, these are high school graduates who have firefighter-paramedic training. That's not rocket science. Trust me--I know some of these guys.
Overall, the Fire Protection District budget is 7.9% over last year's estimated actual which exceeds it's budget by 3.6%.
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