County Budget Notes

PROPERTY, SALES AND THE BED TAX are all up from last year. They’ve been steadily increasing since the Great Recession in 2009. That’s probably why official Mendo doesn’t seem worried about a number of significant budget overruns in several departments as reported in last Tuesday’s “mid-year budget report.”

BY MENDO'S flickering lights, checking the budget every six months — well after significant budget problems can get way out of control — is standard practice. Monthly budget status reports have been scrupulously avoided by official Mendo for years. Nobody seems to care much about overruns anyway in these relatively flush days. These latest overruns are on top of other planned large increases in expenses like last year’s across the board pay raises for everybody — cost of living increases, “supplemental pay,” and “longevity pay” — especially including the huge raises the Supervisors gave themselves and their fellow top executives late last year — all of which translate to higher pension costs. Quaint nostalgics will recall the days when elected officials at least gave lip service to the old saw, “Spend public money as carefully as you would spend your own.”

THERE'S also a significant reduction of almost $500k in property tax revenues (probably more by the time the numbers are finalized) due to the loss of several hundreds homes that were burned to the ground in the Redwood Complex fires last October. There have been several other large unplanned expenses too: Fire response and recovery expenses and materials, local share of state and federal debris removal, and an estimated $2.5 million allocated to more such additional costs next year.

Typical of the off-handedness and casual way County overruns are dealt with was this completely (actually incompletely) uninformative summary which purports to explain several of the larger overruns:

BU 2851 Planning and Building Services

–Deficit: $843,068

–Due primarily to a revenue shortfall of $550,520, an increase in Professional Services costs and increases in salaries for certain planning and building staff.

BU 2310 Sheriff – Coroner

– Deficit: $1,091,278

–Due to a variety of unanticipated costs including negotiated salary and wage increases and underfunding concerns expressed by the department during the build of their 2017-18 budget.

BU 2510 Juvenile Hall

– Deficit: $432,126

–Due to the termination of the Lake County contract at the end of the first quarter.

BU 2012 Court Collections

– Deficit: $588,832

–Due primarily to repayment of costs associated with State audit findings and lower than anticipated revenue. The Court Audit by State Controller’s Office resulted in a finding that netted a shortage in the County’s Maintenance of Effort payment to the State, from prior fiscal years, in the amount of $462,605.

Which doesn’t even mention the giant budget deficit in the pot permit program.

* * *

THE BIGGEST BUDGET GAP, as we predicted before it even began, was in the pot permitting program. The County expected about $1.7 million in tax revenues, but only got about $700k. They also estimated to get about $1.1 million in permit fees but only got about $270k. (Don’t forget they’re hiring and spending as if these impossible revenue projections will be realized.) Plus they have to refund $115k for “cottage industry permits” which also wasn’t explained, but probably has to do with denied permits.

NEWLY HIRED POT PROGRAM MANAGER Kelly Overton looks like he’s put his animal rights activism outfit aside in favor of a very button down managerial look.

He’s new, so there’s no point being too hard on him now. But his late Tuesday afternoon explanation of what he’s doing to address the problems in the pot permit program was, in a word, weak — and didn’t even mention the budgetary aspect of it. Mr. Overton seems to have dug deep into one of Peter Drucker’s books on management as he gushed at length about “internal process improvements,” prioritization, customer service, “we speak to people and we listen to people,” “we will meet with local stakeholders,” “system building,” “better communications,” “continuous quality improvement,” “information sharing,” “always be making improvements,” “better use of technology,” “team building,” “we have responded and more improvements will be made.” …

(The closest Overton got to specifics were vague mentions of installing a fast lane at the pot permit checkout counter so that more complicated issues can be discussed off-line without making simpler questions wait. An idea so obvious we can’t believe even needs to be mentioned.) He also mentioned use of the County’s GIS instead of Google Earth for mapping questions and improved methods of scanning documents.

Overton compared his office staff to waiters in a restaurant who have suddenly begun moving around more efficiently since he came aboard. He said he expects to provide more detailed data and trends in the future and identify “internal and external problems.” He’s expects to “soft-launch” (oooh!) three (three!) new social media pages and programs. And more PSAs for people who don’t have internet access. And more working groups to explain the programs. “These things just scratch the surface,” confessed Overton, perhaps beginning to realize that streamlining and tweaking a preposterously overcomplicated program still leaves a preposterously overcomplicated program. “You might not see results,” Overton admitted further, “but it’s going to allow us to address everything related to cannabis.”

NOBODY WANTED to throw cold water on poor Mr. Overton, as the board smiled their usual fake smiles and nodded their fake head-nods and offered their trite statements of appreciation and welcome. But he better put his newbie naivete behind him pretty soon. If not, he’ll find himself going down the same path that Mr. Moreo and Ms. Curry went before him.