SAN JOSE
– In times of budget turmoil, a shortfall to the tune of $21.7
million is considered good news.
SAN JOSE – In times of budget turmoil, a shortfall to the tune of $21.7 million is considered good news.
That’s because just weeks ago Santa Clara County officials thought they’d have to balance their books by slicing $30 million from the 2003-04 budget. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to have departments trim expenses to meet the less harsh $21.7 million goal.
County department heads have until the first week of September to submit their cost-cutting plans. Special budget committees will review these proposals before moving them on to the full board for discussion on Oct. 7.
“Nothing is cut yet, that’s just a target,” County spokeswoman Gwendolyn Mitchell said.
The $8.3 million gap is due to recent changes in the state’s budget which was approved this summer. Essentially, county and state officials reviewed the impact of the new budget on Santa Clara County and found the burden to be $6.6 million, not $9.9 million as was originally projected.
The $21.7 million figure is reached when combining the $6.6 million shortfall with the $15.1 million loss in county revenue due to the weak economy.
Among other areas impacted less by the new budget, courts should benefit from revenue from $2 million more in court fees than anticipated and a juvenile justice program slated to lose $1.4 million in 2003-04 is off the budget-cutting hook until 2004-05.
Even though the county budget is more than $3 billion, $21.7 million is not pocket change. Supervisors had already reduced services and used rainy day funds to offset a $156 million shortfall from the 2002-03 budget.
“We’ve already cut back so much and trimmed around the edges,” Mitchell said.
Supervisors could have stuck with its original budget cutting plans by directing county department heads to slice a total of $30 million from their 2003-04 budgets. In that case, the extra $8.3 million would have been put in county reserves to use as rainy day funds.
