By Zach Friend, County Supervisor 2nd District
As the Board of Supervisors considers the 2015 County budget, I wanted to share with you this year’s budget proposals and give you a general overview of the County budget.
The County has been slow to climb out of the Great Recession, in which the County saw significant cuts to programs, staff and reserves. Over the last few years, the Board of Supervisors has slowly begun to restore some of these elements with the 2015 proposed budget having a strong focus on rebuilding our reserves, adding staff to public safety, restoring the Parks Department (in part due to the passage of Measure F by the voters last year) and starting to invest in deferred maintenance caused by multiple years of budget deficits. However, the overall increases in staff are quite modest – equating to a less than 1 percent overall increase in total County staff.
How are these priorities (such as building reserves, adding staff to public safety and parks) determined? Each June the Board of Supervisors votes on a budget for the coming fiscal year. These priorities are generated from requests from County departments and requests from our constituents throughout the year. County staff does a thorough examination of each department’s needs and an analysis of current (and expected) revenue is conducted. Staff then works with the Board of Supervisors to develop a budget. The budget continues to be modified and is eventually adopted after a week of public budget hearings.
Where exactly do our revenues come from that make up the budget? How are our taxes spent?
Nearly 55 percent of all county revenues come from the state and federal government; a much different funding structure than cities. These funds are generally pass-through funds to provide state and federally mandated services. In other words, these funds are not generally available to fix the roads or pay for our Sheriff’s Department.
Approximately 22 percent of the county revenue comes from local taxes. And while property taxes make up about half of that 22 percent, you may be surprised to learn how little of your property tax dollar goes to the County.
For every one dollar the county collects in property taxes, the County is only allowed to keep approximately 13 cents.
So where does the rest of your property tax go to? The largest share, about 57 percent goes to schools while another 17 percent goes to local special districts, cities and the libraries.
What about sales tax?
About 1 percent of local sales tax collected stays within the jurisdiction where it was spent. For example, assuming an 8.25 percent County sales tax here is the breakdown:
5.25 percent goes to the state; 1.25 percent goes to local libraries, the Metro (bus) and regional transportation projects; 0.5 percent is for Prop 172 local public safety mandates, 0.5 percent is for local health and social services which leaves 1 percent to pay for general purposes in the jurisdiction in which the tax was collected.
I know this is a bit complex, but it helps illustrate how small of a percentage of sales tax goes specifically to the County for services such as the Sheriff’s Office.
How Are the 2015 County Funds Spent?
Now let’s look at how the County’s funds are spent this year. Approximately 33 percent is spent on health and sanitation services with another 26 percent spent on human services. Most of these human, health and sanitation expenditures are state and federal government mandates – most recently pass-through funds and requirements associated with the Affordable Care Act.
The largest portion of the county’s discretionary spending is for public protection (Sheriff’s Dept., Probation, County Fire), which is 30 percent. The 2015 budget calls for adding three new Deputy Sheriffs into Patrol and two additional positions (one in Investigations and one in the Civil Program). Only 1 percent of County funding is dedicated to parks and open space, however, this year’s budget adds positions to the Parks Department to help restore core parks services. The remainders of the funds are spent on debt services, general government functions or are held in contingency/reserve. The 2015 budget reserve will increase to just about 8 percent of total revenues with a goal of getting to 10 percent in the coming budget years.
I hope this 2015 County budget primer was helpful. As always, I’d love to hear your budget priorities. Please feel free to call at 454-2200.