Supervisors Approve $10B Proposed Budget Following Public Hearing

The Riverside County Board of Supervisors last week approved a $10 billion proposed budget, a 4.2% increase from last year’s budget. The budget, scheduled to be formally adopted June 24, is set to be the county’s first deficit budget in four years.

“We have more requests and need for funding than we have discretionary general fund revenue to pay those things,” County Executive Officer Jeff Van Wagenen said at the June 9 public hearing. “As a result, the executive office is recommending that we use $73 million from our general fund reserves.”

In an effort to limit the amount of reserves spending, Van Wagenen said his office would be recommending a hiring freeze in place for all departments that receive discretionary general fund revenue and all internal support departments with the exception of the departments run by elected officials and those that have to do with social services, health, elections and animal services, which will be able to fill positions to maintain their current staffing levels.

He also said the county would be recommending the use of “just-in-time funding,” which means that departments making requests would not have that money automatically included in their annual budgets, but would rather have that money made available to them as it is needed throughout the fiscal year, which runs July 1 through June 30.

Of the roughly $10 billion in revenue, $2.9 billion comes from state funds, about half of which is passed through from the federal government, and $1.7 billion directly from federal funds, making the county heavily dependent on decisions being made by lawmakers in both Sacramento and Washington, D.C.

“We are really riding the waves that those folks create,” Van Wagenen said, noting that decisions at the state and federal level were just one set of pressures his office was contending with while making the budget. 

Other pressures included rising costs, flattening revenues, an uncertain economic forecast, increased demand for services, the need to address delayed maintenance projects and capital improvement projects coming to fruition.

“What’s the future going to look like? We don’t know,” he said. “We know this: All models are wrong. The goal is to try and make them more right in the near term.”

On the expenses side, $2.8 billion is set to go to health and hospital services, $2.3 billion is set to go to public safety, $2 billion is set to go to human services, $1.2 billion is set to go to public works, $875 million is set to go to internal services and $765 million is set to go to finance and government services.

Also included in the budget were $20 million for the augmentation fund, which is allocated during the budget hearings, $20 million for the contingency fund, which is reserved for emergency board action, and $12.5 million for the Unincorporated Communities Initiative, which the supervisors spend throughout the fiscal year.

The supervisors allocated the full augmentation fund as well as nearly $1.5 million in one-time Prop 172 reserves, specifically set aside for public safety, to cover the costs of certain department requests made during the public hearing.

Of those funds, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office received an additional $1.38 million in augmentation funding to expand its division of victim services and for advanced attorney support paralegals as requested by District Attorney Mike Hestrin. 

Hestrin also requested an additional $7.9 million, which is what he said the department needed in order to maintain its current level of staffing and services. Van Wagenen told the supervisors that this request would be met as needed throughout the fiscal year using “just-in-time funding,” as previously discussed between his and Hestrin’s offices.

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office received an additional $1.15 million in Prop 172 funds to support its Flock camera project with the California Highway Patrol, Riverside Inmate Destination Endeavor (RIDE) program and its CAC Security initiative, at the request of Undersheriff Don Sharp on behalf of Sheriff Chad Bianco. The county will also cover costs associated with new labor agreements through “just-in-time funding.”

The department also requested $53.5 million for Phase 2 and Phase 3 of the John J. Benoit Detention Center, which the supervisors did not fund at Van Wagenen’s suggestion.

The Riverside County Fire Department received an additional $1.86 million in augmentation funding for the office of the fire marshall at the request of Fire Chief Bill Weiser.

The department also requested additional funding for staffing and equipment for Fire Station 106 in Beaumont and future Fire Station 103 in Pourroy, which Van Wagenen said would be covered through “just in time funding.”

“Certainly the Pourroy request is six months out, if not longer,” he said. “The Beaumont request is sooner, but recommend we work with the [fire] department after the adoption of this budget to sort that out.”

The Riverside County Emergency Management Department received an additional $333,000 in augmentation funding for an alert and warning coordinator and an access and functional needs coordinator, which were the only requests made by outgoing Director Bruce Barton.

“We have two state grants, six federal grants, and one local grant, and it’s really within the vein of those grant programs that is driving us to stand here for the first time…and ask for augmentation funds in my tenure,” Barton said. “And it’s really because of the changes that we’re seeing in those grant programs.”

The Riverside County Public Defender’s Office received an additional $1.39 million in augmentation funding to backfill seven positions as well as $318,000 in Prop 172 funding for professional services, at the request of Public Defender Steve Harmon.

“Our budget is truly a stay flat budget request, no staff or in our position increases beyond simply replacing the current vacancies already now in recruitment,” Harmon said of his two funding requests. “No increases in costs beyond our control, no funding of unfilled positions, no mission creep, no frills, no fluff, just enough to keep up.”

The Riverside County Department of Animal Services received an additional $4.82 million in augmentation funding to support foster, rescue and intake to rescue services, a specialized adoption team and media and marketing for adoptions and fosters, as requested by RCDAS Assistant Director Dr. Kimberly Youngberg.

“Our funding requests come in three different themes,” Youngberg said. “One of them is to increase foster rescue and intake to placement support for the animals in our care, we want to rebuild a specialized adoption team so that we can focus specifically on increasing adoptions of the amazing animals that come into our shelter and also for media and marketing, so that we can highlight the amazing animals that come into our shelter.”

Earlier this year, the supervisors adopted a resolution committing to creating a no-kill community where 90% of the animals entering the facility leave alive. That resolution came about a week before the department announced it was at 220% capacity. The department has been working since then to decrease the number of pets at the shelter through a variety of strategies.

The Riverside County Department of Housing and Workforce Solutions received an additional $5 million in augmentation funding to invest in affordable housing, at the request of Director Heidi Marshall.

“When I speak about the development of affordable housing, I’m not speaking merely about constructing and building apartments,” Marshall said. “It’s really about ensuring that our children have a safe place to live, and that our seniors are able to age in place in the very communities that they helped to build, and really, ultimately, for our businesses to have access to a stable workforce that they need.”

That additional funding, Marshall said, would allow the department to unlock additional state and federal dollars, leverage private and other funding and “build a brighter future for hundreds, if not thousands, of families.”

The supervisors also allocated $1 million to the Coachella Valley-based nonprofit Lift to Rise in augmentation funding.

“Today, I make a request on behalf of the organization for the county to make an investment that allows us to expand our work and leverage millions of dollars of resources,” CEO Heather Vaikona said. “This investment will allow us to bring the whole county what we have done successfully in the Fourth District, leverage and draw down greater and private public investment, provide tailored technical assistance to cities and affordable housing developers, expand our network of thousands of residents actively countering NIMBYism… and uncover opportunities for affordable housing not on the county’s radar.”

The remaining $4.22 million was re-allocated to the contingency fund.

Throughout the budget process, Van Wagenen said his office received more than $500 million in department requests, some of which have been fully funded, others that weren’t and some that will be addressed later in the budget year with “just in time funding” as needs arise.

As part of this year’s budget process, the county created a number of opportunities for the public to weigh in, including the creation of a Budget 101 guide to help people better understand where the county’s money comes from and how it’s spent, four in-person community workshops attended by more than 200 people total, one virtual community workshop that at one point had 19,000 people on the call with roughly 500 who stayed from beginning to end and an online survey offered in both English and Spanish.

“We asked the University of California Riverside (UCR) School of Public Policy to partner with us and analyze the results of that survey,” Van Wagenen said. “The purpose of having UCR involved was to have an outside entity review the survey responses and help us break down those results.”

According to the survey results, respondents felt that the county should prioritize the broad categories of public safety, health, human services, public works and community services in that order. When it came to specific initiatives, respondents felt that the county should focus on road maintenance, affordable housing, social assistance programs, law enforcement and mental health services.

When it came to the breakdown of how the county should allocate the budget, respondents said 24% should go to Riverside University Health System (RUHS) and hospital services, 24% for public safety, 20% for human services, 19% for public works and community services and the remaining 13% for fiscal management and administration and internal services.

And while the survey collected input from roughly 24,000 respondents, Van Wagenen noted that there were some shortcomings with the questions asked that could impact the analysis of the data.

“While we asked respondents which supervisorial district they lived in, we didn’t find out any more information from them,” Van Wagenen said. “So, some of these responses are actually from people living in the cities, so one of the things we’ll work on next year is to break that down by ZIP Code, so we have a better idea where these responses come from.”