Supervisor Pat Loe in running for District 3 reelection
surprised some attendees at the recent Speed Campaign event by
touting how the county has a $20 million reserve. In such difficult
economic times, a state budget crisis and continued cuts by county
leaders in recent years, how could that be?
Supervisor Pat Loe in running for District 3 reelection surprised some attendees at the recent Speed Campaign event by touting how the county has a $20 million reserve. In such difficult economic times, a state budget crisis and continued cuts by county leaders in recent years, how could that be?
As head county administrator Susan Thompson explained this week, it is true that San Benito County will have around $20 million in reserves at the end of the fiscal year.
But only a portion of that amount is discretionary – supervisors are free to spend it how they wish – and a lot of that money also has been allocated toward future projects. In reality, Thompson acknowledged, the county has nearly $14 million in unrestricted funds, which means they can spend it on such things as employee salaries or office supplies, as opposed to a requirement to use the money for specific repairs or capital work.
As Loe noted this week in response to the new figures: “Most of the assigned projects, we can actually redirect at budget time.”
If you also take out the amount already allocated toward such expenditures as future retirement costs and the ongoing general plan update, though, there is slightly more than $5 million in unassigned, unrestricted dollars, according to county figures.
Thompson updated the board Tuesday, about two weeks after the Speed Campaign event hosted by the San Benito Chamber of Commerce involving the nine candidates for contested seats in the June primary. At the speed campaign event, Loe noted to at least one table how the county has that healthy reserve amount.
In a subsequent interview, she said she used a figure from a budget update Thompson gave a year ago. Loe, facing Robert Rivas in the primary next month, had contended after the event that she thought all of those funds were unrestricted.
But since the county used slightly less than $7.9 million in reserves to balance the current budget – as Thompson noted to the board in her presentation this week – the amount in available reserves has dropped.
Subsequently, after Loe’s initial comments, Thompson broke down the latest reserve projections – which include a detailing of restricted and unrestricted amounts, as well as figures for already-allocated dollars. Thompson contended that for a county of this size, the numbers are quite “healthy.”
“When a county of our size can document and show that you have, going into next year, an almost $20.6 million fund balance, it’s pretty darn impressive,” Thompson told supervisors Tuesday.
Added Loe in an interview, “I think we’re in extremely good shape.”
The county administrative officer, meanwhile, explained to the Pinnacle that San Benito at the end of the fiscal year will have about $13.7 million in unrestricted reserve funds. Of those dollars, about $8.56 million has been assigned for specific uses, while the county can reallocate those dollars to other areas. That leaves about $5.2 million that has been left unassigned in the next fiscal year.
Not included in those figures, meanwhile, are funds left from the tobacco settlement many years back. The county is set to have about $8 million at the start of the next fiscal year, but much of that money is allocated toward capital projects, leaving about $882,000 in unassigned funds, according to county projections. Those funds have been highly restricted in use for capital expenses, but over time, more than half of those mandates have expired. About $4.6 million of the $8 million is available for discretionary use and that number gradually will increase.
Tobacco settlement revenue, disbursed to counties years ago, initially was intended to go toward health-related expenditures.
