County budget hearings set to begin Tuesday

Butte Fire, pot industry yield revenue

By Dana M. Nichols dana@calaverasenterprise.com / June 14, 2016

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Calaveras County will likely draw more than $17 million from savings to balance a preliminary budget that county elected leaders will consider this week.

The $140.8 million budget proposed by County Administrative Officer Shirley Ryan reflects the dramatic events of the past year in that it includes roughly $10 million the county will receive in federal reimbursement for Butte Fire-related expenses and $1 million in revenue from fees related to the county’s new regulatory system for the marijuana industry.

At the moment, county officials only estimate that they will receive $123.4 million in new revenue to fund the county government during the 2016-17 fiscal year.

Hearings on the proposed budget begin at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday in the board of supervisors chambers, 891 Mountain Ranch Road, San Andreas. Hearings will continue daily as needed until the board is able to adopt a preliminary budget. Staff have reserved the meeting space through Friday.

The preliminary budget is for a fiscal year that begins on July 1. It will likely have be adjusted, however, as the Calaveras County Tax Assessor, due to the impact of the Butte Fire and staffing cuts over the last eight years, won’t be able to close the property tax roll until July 31. The tax roll, in turn, determines how much property tax revenue the county government can expect to receive. The board of supervisors will then be asked to adopt a final, adjusted budget in September.

The $53.6 million general fund is the portion of the budget over which county supervisors have the most control. It pays for core government services such as law enforcement, administration, maintaining property records and collecting taxes. Other county programs such as road construction and welfare, are largely funded through state and federal grants, giving local officials little control over how the money is spent.

Ryan had ordered directors of the various county departments to prepare “status quo” budgets that assume the departments will receive the same amount of general fund dollars as last year. But because of rising personnel costs, those budgets are status quo only in terms of the dollars departments will receive.

Salaries and employee benefits are projected to increase 9.5 percent. That represents about $3.2 million. Ryan said in her report that she “recognized that a status quo budget would still be difficult for some departments that are already operating with minimum staffing levels and any further reductions could mean the elimination of services to the community …”

Meanwhile, by June 7, county officials say they had already received $131,200 in medical marijuana cultivation registration fees under a program that began in May that regulates the marijuana industry. Officials estimate that program will likely bring in more than $1 million in revenue.

If it does, then the county government will use those funds to hire two sheriff deputies, one sheriff sergeant, two code enforcement officers, a deputy county counsel, an agricultural biologist, an environmental health technician and two land use planners as well as four-wheel-drive vehicles for the deputies and the code enforcers.

If the marijuana industry registration fees fall short of the projection, then county officials could delay filling those positions, according to Ryan’s report.

Other, nonmarijuana-related spending proposed in the budget includes purchasing two four-wheel-drive vehicles for the Assessor’s Office, hiring a deputy probation officer and purchasing two vehicles for the Probation Department, hiring four temporary sheriff trainees and one correctional officer, buying a radio tower repeater for the Sherriff’s Office, and hiring a permit technician and a senior plan examiner for the Planning Department.

The budget also proposes hiring six part time library branch assistants at a cost of $66,030 for all six of them. That cost will be donated by The Friends of the Calaveras County Library. But it means that county employees, rather than volunteers, will maintain operations at the branches.