As part of its annual budget process, Riverside County officials are asking residents how they would allocate the county’s budget in an online survey in an effort to increase public participation in the budget process.
“This survey is one of the parts of the strategy to get earlier feedback, more robust feedback, so that we can incorporate it into our recommended budget,” County Executive Officer Jeff Van Wagenen said. “We have done a community needs survey in the past, most recently in 2020 and 2021 as part of our Unincorporated Communities Initiative, but we’ve never done a true public budget priorities survey, and that’s what this is.”
The survey starts out by asking participants which service categories and initiatives are most important to them before diving in deeper to better understand what survey takers believe are the top public works and utility needs in their communities.
It ends by asking participants how they would allocate the county’s budget across six service categories — health, human services, public safety, public works and community services, internal services and fiscal management and administration.
The survey, which will remain open until March and is available in both English and Spanish, also asks for demographic information, including in which district the survey participant lives. After the survey closes, Van Wagenen said the county will hold community meetings throughout the five supervisorial districts.
Stay up to date with the latest from The Record. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter today!
“In late March and April, we’ll have community meetings where we go to a meeting in each of the five supervisorial districts and do a public in person meeting, or potentially a telephone town hall, depending on the needs of the community,” he said. “[We’ll] provide sort of a County Budget 101, and then get the feedback from everybody.”
That information will then be used to help the county figure out how to allocate funding for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts July 1 and runs through June 30, 2026.
“Oftentimes, there are more requests for funding than there is funding to meet the need,” Van Wagenen said. “And so we have to go through that process and make certain decisions about what we recommend to the board, and this survey will help us identify what those priorities are for them.”
Along with the survey and community workshops, the board of supervisors will hold budget hearings in June in which each department will make its case for funding for the upcoming year. The budget, which includes local, state and federal funding, is generally adopted at the last meeting in June.
Van Wagenen said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the county’s budget for the upcoming year, even with a number of challenges facing the county, including increasing cost pressures, flattening revenues and uncertainties about state and federal funding.
“We are in a better position than other jurisdictions across the state,” he said. “When I talk to my colleagues, some of them are having greater challenges than we’re having.”
The Riverside Record is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet providing Riverside County with high-quality journalism free of charge. We’re able to do this because of the generous donations of supporters like you!