Supes will meet again May 22 to address eliminations
The county board of supervisors delayed a vote on eliminating the equivalent of nearly 30 full-time employees at the Tuesday meeting.
The budget ad-hoc committee, which includes Supervisors Margie Barrios and Robert Rivas, had recommended cuts of 29.85 through layoffs, reduction in work hours or leaving vacant positions open. The departments affected included the administrative office, county counsel, the auditor’s office, the assessor’s office, the library, the district attorney, the sheriff, probation, gang prevention, and planning and building.
“The day of reckoning has approached and is here,” said Rich Inman, the county administrative officer.
He reviewed the anticipated expenses and revenue for the 2012-13 year: $33 million in expenses with $26 million in income, plus $1 million rolled over from the year before.
With a deficit of $5.1 million, Inman and members of the budget ad-hoc committee have been meeting with department heads and bargaining units to find cost savings.
Inman said after concessions from bargaining units and employees, department cuts and a one-time advance, the committee was left with a $1.4 million gap.
“We’re struggling for every penny,” he said. “We have a $1.4 million problem.”
The members of the budget ad-hoc committee said they had not completed meeting with all the department heads and still welcomed input from departments on other ways to save money aside from the layoffs.
To come up with the percentage each department would have to cut, Inman said they took the net county cost for each section of government then applied that percentage against the deficit. The departments that take a greater chunk of the general fund are those that received the greatest cuts, including the sheriff’s department, the probation department and the district attorney’s office.
Several department heads spoke about how the cuts would impact their work, some with prepared presentations.
Candice Hooper, the district attorney, gave a power point presentation that cited the state constitution to remind the board that providing public safety is one of its primary goals. Though no lay-offs were approved at Tuesday’s meeting, the DA’s office is facing the elimination of two deputy district attorney 1 positions and an office assistant 1.
She said the cuts would mean her office would be “unable to prosecute most misdemeanors. It would become involuntary de-criminalization.”
In 2011, the office had 2,082 cases prosecuted by four attorneys, or an average of 520.5 cases per attorney. She said that did not count juvenile court or long-term cases. If the staff is cut by two attorneys, they will have an average of more than 1,000 cases each for the year.
She encouraged the board not to use a “blanket approach” to cost savings and to look at the work of each department, including mandatory functions, rather than by applying a percentage to the cost-reduction plan.
Sheriff Darren Thompson and Chief Probation Officer Brent Cardall reiterated the same concerns in regards to their own departments. Thompson said the county sheriff’s department is charged with many mandatory services which will become more difficult to conduct if 8 sheriff’s deputies and 3 correctional officers III are eliminated from his department.
One of the mandated duties of the department is to provide civil process, such as serving eviction notices and court orders. Thompson said the duties for the sheriff’s department have gone up 300 percent since the closure of the marshal’s office. He said the process serving has come to take up.
Thompson said the department had seen a decrease from 36 sworn officers in 2008-09 to 27 in 2011-12. He noted that of those officers, eight are paid from sources outside the general fund through special funding streams. The officers responded by more than 12,000 calls and initiated 980 contacts with people, such as through traffic stops.
“Our job is to look at mandated services,” Cardall said. “If we don’t meet them we can be sued. I should not that in juve
we can be sued. I should not that in juvenile hall we have to have the appropriate staff.”
In addition to noting the mandatory services the probation department is obliged to delivery, Cardall also said he would like the supervisors to take into consideration departments that have already trimmed back to save the county money.
Other department heads to voice concerns included Matthew Granger, the county counsel’s office; Nora Conte, the county librarian; Tom Slavich, the county assessor; and Joe Paul Gonzalez, the county auditor.
“As a member of the ad-hoc committee, it has been very difficult to listen to departments and how they will suffer,” Barrios said, of the proposed cuts. “We asked ourselves if these cuts across the board were really the way we want to go.”
She said if they were to approach it in another way, the cuts would be deeper elsewhere in the budget.
Rivas said the ad-hoc committee would continue to meet with department heads to present other potential savings.
“Hopefully we will be able to present a package with alternatives,” he said.
Supervisor Jerry Muenzer asked if the lay-off notices would be the equivalent of school teachers receiving pink slips, with an understanding that their jobs will be available if funding comes in.
Inman said the supervisors would be unlikely to fill the gap without some lay-offs.
“You have a $4 million hole that you are never going to fill without layoffs,” he said.
He explained that the timing was to allow for meetings with the affected employees and to give them a 30-day notice of the lay-off to be effective July 1 so that the county would actualization the full 12-month savings.
Supervisor Anthony Botelho said that he wanted more information before making a decision.
“I will not support it because there are too many other options available and I want to know why the other options weren’t selected,” Botelho said.
A few department heads mentioned the cost of other post retirement benefits to the county and the ad-hoc committee members agreed to look into possible cost savings from lowering the OPEB liabilities.
Supervisor Jaime De La Cruz said that he did not want to approve layoffs until the supervisor had pursued other options. He said last year when layoffs were approved for the sheriff’s department and later retracted when funding came through, it was an emotional experience for employees and their families.
The supervisors approved budget policies for 2012-13, but delayed a decision on the lay-offs to give the ad-hoc committee more time to discuss alternatives. The supervisors will meet again in an evening session on May 22 on the topic.
“It will give us a little more opportunity to meet with other department heads,” Barrios said. “And we can ask the auditor to bring together a professional to see if there is any recourse for benefits (OPEB.) Then we will have something a little more concrete.”
