Anticipated Shortfall May Force County to Cut Services : Budget: Officials hope the situation isn’t as bad as it looks. But across-the-board reductions are possible.

Ventura County residents could face cutbacks in health care, welfare and other county services next year because of a possible $8.4-million shortage in anticipated revenues, county officials warned this week.

Officials said, however, that they hope the preliminary projections will prove to be too conservative when actual figures from the state budget and local property tax income due the county are available in May.

“We hope we will make the entire shortfall,” said Bert Bigler, manager of budget and administrative services. However, Bigler added, “If we still have a shortfall at that time, we would have to recommend reductions.”

Bigler said it is too early to be specific, but there probably would be a percentage cut in each department’s budget.

The county’s mental health services may be the exception because of a $16-million, four-year state grant to upgrade services.

Chief Administrative Officer Richard Wittenberg reported the budgetary outlook to county supervisors on Tuesday. At his suggestion, the board approved measures to continue cost-savings plans implemented last year.

Wittenberg said the possible shortfall is the kind of dilemma faced by county governments throughout the state. The state requires counties to provide programs such as welfare and health and hospital care for the poor but does not provide adequate funding to pay the bills, he said.

“County finances are essentially captive to the frequent federal and state mandates, political stalemates, allocations priorities and administrative whims,” he told the board in his report. “Your board has very limited control of the county’s future budget destiny.”

For example, Wittenberg cited the county’s receipt of $6.7 million this year in new money from Proposition 99, the tobacco tax initiative. About half of that amount went to private doctors and hospitals. Another $2 million went to pay back the county’s general fund for a loan made earlier to the county medical center.

That loan, Wittenberg said, was for treatment for the poor because of a state decrease in its allocations for the medically indigent last year.

Another problem is that the county’s library system spent its entire reserve of $318,000 to fund 10 new positions last year, and that will leave this year’s budget tight, Bigler said. The library system also wants to build two new facilities at a cost of about $20 million but has no money.

The possible shortfall could also increase the chances that the county will be unable to build a proposed 800-bed jail.

Officials already are having to scale back plans and will settle for a jail half that size to meet their budget constraints. The county now has $41 million in state money for the facility, but an 800-bed jail would cost nearly twice that.

For the county to fund the balance with long-term debt, it would need a means to repay the loan, which it does not have, said Robert Hirtensteiner, assistant to the chief administrative officer.

He said the county is hoping to maintain the status quo with services.

“We’re going to try to hold the line,” he said. “We will try to maintain the current level of services, improve our inefficiencies and cost-effectiveness.”