Public Speaks Out on Ways for County to Pare Its Budget

A rosier-than-expected economy and unexpected savings had already lopped $5 million from a projected $17.8-million budget gap when county supervisors sat for final budget hearings Monday.

But the first advice on how to ratchet down the remaining $12.8-million deficit in next year’s budget did not come from a county auditor, executive or politician.

It came from Ventura Fernandez, a 66-year-old cement worker from Oxnard.

Too much spent on pricey hotels, credit cards, pension plans and executive salaries, he said. Too much money being spent by a county bureaucracy that’s supposed to be broke.

“You’re spending too much money you don’t have,” Fernandez told the five elected officials and a room full of top-level county managers. “It’s just crazy. There’s one thing we learned on the farm: You can’t spend any more money than you have.”

Later that evening, residents packed the chambers to address the board. Many offered passionate speeches about the need to shield services for the mentally ill and social workers who try to protect abused and neglected children.

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Others argued that a county ordinance keeping public safety agencies immune from budget reductions places too great a burden on other agencies to shoulder the cuts.

Jennifer Green-Stan, a former county child social worker who quit her job last year, implored the board to treat Children’s Protective Services as a public safety agency and protect it too from cuts.

“I can’t think of a more vulnerable group than [children],” she said.

Carolyn Gyurkovitz, president of the Ventura County Foster Parent Assn., said protective services for children have been decimated by budget cuts in recent years, and social workers can’t keep up with the demands.

“Year after year, we face the same issue while other departments continue to get budget increases,” she said. “If things continue along, you can plan on dissolving child protective services completely in the not-too-distant future and giving their budget to the Police Department, because they will need it to take care of the community when the children . . . grow up.”

Although the board spent much of Monday morning reviewing its budget options, supervisors agreed to wait until after the evening of public testimony before making any final decisions.

Deliberations on the county’s $870-million spending plan for next year will continue daily until the board adopts a final budget. The board, which could adopt a budget as soon as today, hopes to have a spending plan in place by July 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year.

With the county auditor and chief administrator calling for the panel to drop its historic reliance on reserves to balance the budget, the board is faced with the need for sharp cutbacks. Reserves have plunged from $39.9 million in 1993 to $18 million today.

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The practice of tapping reserves recently resulted in a lowering of the county’s bond rating and will make it more costly for the county to borrow money in the future.

Supervisors have indicated that they will look to some combination of direct program cuts, income-generating proposals and across-the-board cuts. Plans also may include an employee furlough with no pay over four days between Christmas and the new year.

“It’s not nice, it’s not fun, but if we don’t do it, I think we’re going to find ourselves in big trouble,” Supervisor Judy Mikels said of the board’s commitment to scale back spending. The budget picture, however, has improved.

At the beginning of last week, county officials were projecting a nearly $18-million deficit. By Wednesday, officials said yearlong belt-tightening and other budget-saving efforts had created some $3.77 million in unanticipated savings.

And last Thursday, Chief Administrative Officer Lin Koester decided that his property tax projections had been too conservative amid a healthy state economy that has seen sales tax receipts rising and unemployment dropping.

Koester, in turn, has increased property tax revenue estimates in the budget by $1.2 million to reflect expected increases in assessed property values.

But with a $12.8-million deficit still facing the supervisors--and anywhere from an $8-million to $10-million gap already being predicted for the following year--supervisors are searching for ways to reduce spending without slashing services and the county’s employee roster.

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Supervisor Susan K. Lacey cautioned her colleagues to see past the numbers, noting that the county’s mission is to care for the region’s poor and medically uninsured.

“If we get to our bottom line this year by making the cuts so deep in some agencies that they can’t provide services, we will eventually not have a central system of government,” she said. “We have to make the cuts. There are monies there to do them. But it’s not just the bottom line.”

The board spent much of Monday morning reviewing a list of strategies to close the gap, including a $1.8-million savings proposal to close down county government and furlough most employees over four work days between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Other suggestions include increasing the county’s $79.50-per-hour fee to process planning permit applications, scaling back new employee salaries and benefits by $1.8 million and a long-range proposal to consider selling or leasing some of the 900 parcels of land owned by county government.