El Dorado County keeps making cuts; deficit remains
By Kathryn Reed
El Dorado County continues to struggle to create a balanced budget for the 2011-12 fiscal year that begins July 1.
The Board of Supervisors at the weekly meetings seem to have an item related to the budget on most agendas. The shortfall is at about $10.2 million, of which $7 million was predicted. Cuts last fall brought the number down to $7 million.
“The numbers are still swirling” is how one county employee put it.
Like most entities in California, without a state budget it’s hard to definitively go forward. Plus, property tax dollars keep declining which affects revenue projections.
Predictions are no department will be spared. Further personnel and program cuts are likely to bridge the fiscal divide.
Changes have been ongoing. A recent one saw the shift of Mike Applegarth as full-time analyst in the Chief Administrative Office to a full-time air pollution control officer and part-time CAO analyst.
“We also have an analyst assigned as acting IT director and another that continues to manage county purchasing,” Applegarth said.
The economic developer’s position has been eliminated
One area to receive a boost in funding this month was the Film Commission – by $10,000.
Gee, someone only missed the shortfall prediction by 50%. Who is the county paying to make these predictions and why do they continue to pay them? There might be some savings there.
Sounds like the county doesn’t want to make the hard decisions. Property taxes will continue to be cut as the median price in our area continues to decline. Don’t look for an increase in property taxes for many years to come. SLT has done what they need to do for now thanks to Tony the Tiger. How about you EDC? Do we need to hire someone in Placerville who can make the tough decisions?
A boost in the funding for the film commission while experiencing a dramatic budget shortfall (and self-proclaimed, so-called crisis) is an example of why government bureaucrats are incapable of logical, efficient, businesslike, real world, practical, responsible decisions.
I hope all those who want the city dissolved look at this article and reconsider.
What does the film commission do? Seems odd that department is getting an increase in funding while there are major cutbacks elsewhere.
Dryclean, we know the county isn’t MUCH better politically than the city is. But the redundancy is what gripes many of us. We have 3 police depts, 3 fire depts, and extra taxation and different rules (bear boxes/no bear boxes) and an extra whole bunch of people to pay to run a very inefficient little city. Tell me how SLT being incorporated actually benefits the citizens. I’ll listen.
Consolidating services would be more efficient for both our City AND our County! It is amazing that it’s still not being explored (or at least hasn’t been expressed so publicly) by our new City Mgr. The only rationale reason I think that it’s not, is that all the top mgt. working for the multiple depts. wants there to be as many possible openings for their services!
I took note that when I posted previously (multiple times) the need to scale back the amount of money the police and fire depts. consume in our City, some (who you could tell were fireman & policeman!) would vehemently post disagreements with that view. But none of them disagreed, and some even agreed, that consolidating the depts. would be a good thing!
Dog ,I know your witty, but people know the reasons to this too,there is no benefit at this point in time,but the county doesn’t want all our bills and broken pipe dreams,debts.
This town has always squandered your tax money.WE ONLY NEED ONE OF EACH,but it be another law suit,so they do nothing.
If you take a look at consolidating services in the Tahoe basin unde El Dorado County, those services will be at the will of Placerville and not our best interests. Notice how the Board of Supervisors did nothing to protect our interests when Red Hawk was being planned and built.
Yes, the city could be run better and hopefully it will start to be. The new council is leagues better than the old council and hopefully we will start to see some positive changes as the new org. takes place. I’m also hopeful that in the next election we will see two new council members to make the 5 more rounded out and complete and thus avoid the embarrassement that Greggo causes us all. Greggo has to go.
Hopefully the rink and airport will be managed by outside entities and less of a burden on us as well.
snoheather, maybe the below link will give some more info.
http://www.filmtahoe.com/
With regards to SLT police costs, we also have 3 agencies with boats to patrol the lake. We have the SLT police, the county sheriff and the Coast Guard.
What does the city spend on a boat and its’ staff every year?
You’re right dryclean in that Grego has to go. However, if we stay in an independent City, we would not be at the whim of the County! We could do what many Cities do and Contract Out the services! I believe a couple cities in the far more prosperous than Tahoe-San Mateo Co., recently did this.
The County would have to live up to a contact which would presumably maintain certain service standards.
Parker, maybe we should consider having the city do the basin county services.
George Bernard Shaw, the playwright, said there are plays pleasant and unpleasant. In general that sums up life. So what about the topic,city redevelopment? Unpleasant for sure because:
The Redevelopment Agency is broke. In the process of going broke it has created a public debt of $200 million.
The debt service is $8 million a year.To service the debt,the agency uses about $44 million of the City TOT collection a year,so the city general fund suffers a large loss each year.
Lately it has been revealed that some how an additional $5 Million has been taken from the city’s general fund and transferred to the agency. At this time it appears unknown who is responsible for filching from the general fund.
The latter point brings up the question of malfeasance, misconduct by a public official. If the $5 million or part of it was lifted from restricted accounts, then it is a criminal act.
Oversight and accountability. Of course, the City Council/Agency Board is responsible for overseeing the performance of the CITY Manager who is the director of the Redevelopment Agency.
Council oversight of the city manager has been historically been ignored or treated lightly. The record shows spotty council performance at best on the oversight question.
The city manager as redevelopment director has allowed the redevelopment a free hand in conducting a free hand in conducting the agency public business. Thus, the manager was a loose cannon.
So in whose interest have the council. the city manager acted? Public or private? Are we looking at the incompetent or the Criminal? it would be good to know. Without knowing,there, there cannot be trust and confidence in our city government. How unpleasant.
Letter to the editor,Tahoe Trib from Bill Crawford June 13,2003
By any chance was Hal Cole,Judy Brown and Tom Davis aboard? Who was treasure?
Was it incompetent or the criminal as Bill said? What was it outcome? Any one know or care?
Still didn’t hear an actual pro-incorporation argument. Your only objection was that the county didn’t protect SLT from Red Hawk? They fought it for YEARS! And for what? It brings the county lots of money. Why should SLT be dependent on Nevada’s gambling industry for its prosperity anyhow? That makes no sense. We have more to offer than that if we try. The city and its council is a big part of what’s keeping us in our subservient role as a doormat to Stateline!
No argument for incorporation. We should consider contracting their basin services as much as we should consider contracting out to them.
Alex, the problem with the council is the people who elected them as much as the council members themselves. Cole and Davis were re-elected by the voters. So was idiot Greggo. If all the voters who voted them in are ignorant, well thats what the population is then. Do you think those same voters would ever support disbanding the city if they were dumb enough to vote the same incompetent ex-council members in.
As to Crawford, while Bill has many good points, he did not conduct himnself in a professional manner and was not saavy enough to build a consensus. I like him as a watchdog but not as a council member.
Dog as to being doormat to the casinos. I don’t think so. Now that the city no longer funds the LTVA, we basically do nothing for them except forget to collect revenue from all the folks who go through our town to get to the clubs.
Dogwoman – I would like to see SLT go from the doormat to the welcome mat. You never get a second chance for a first impression. Landlords and business owners along the boulevard need to take more pride in their business appearance, offer consistantly better service to the public and then we will all prosper. There’s no better place to be than SLT!
dry,the people of machine politics are those that keep putting machine people like Cole,Davis and Upton back in office.
Now, the county(home of the machine) has Sweeney and Nutting retreading.
The County Council was fired after 14 years because of one vote, thAT supervisor had the man to dinner and gave him the news. He could not go against the machine,another came up to a county council, poked his chest and said “you will do what i tell you” The machine followers keep voting the party line,even when Sweeney pushed thru the Briggs, oops the Bridge to Nowhere (way before Palin)
Bill was not a machine man.He was elected the first time because of his unorthodox letters to the editor.The machine did everything they could to disparage Bill, with rumor mills abounding.In-spite of the machine, he kept being reelected.I truly wish he would have filed with the County Grand Jury.The outcome would depend on who the Foreman and Judge were at the time,ala Smith and Barker, Question, If Bill was part of the machine,would he have made mayor.
Over the years Bill tried and tried to wake up the machinees and Grand Juries, to no avail.The Tahoe Trib has a wealth of material exposing the City and County operations. Funny thing the Placervill Mountain Democrat is part of the machine,sorta kinda the “Fox of Placerville” Plus the fact your Tax Collector is married to the Editor, you may think by her signature she is a man.
Everybody wants some,how about you?
Jobs are gone, people no longer buys (Sales Tax), homes foreclosed, (no longer paying property tax) and home values going down. A 2nd grader can see…money is NOT coming in.
Board of Supervisors gave themselves raises from $55K (2003) to $100K (2009). They dropped it back to $96K. Everyone of them have separate incomes. They do not need the money or benefits.($80K each).
All elected officials just about doubled their salaries and Benefits in the last 10 years (See EDC Budget on line)Joe Harn included.
CAO jumped 400 percent…. That seems to be a good place to start.