GILROY
– A $3.4 billion draft budget that Santa Clara County Executive
Pete Kutras announced Thursday doesn’t show a rosy fiscal outlook,
but it is not as grim as predicted two months ago.
The county must cut 416-and-a-half full-time positions, but an
early-retirement deal with labor unions is expected to save most of
those people from being laid off.
GILROY – A $3.4 billion draft budget that Santa Clara County Executive Pete Kutras announced Thursday doesn’t show a rosy fiscal outlook, but it is not as grim as predicted two months ago.
The county must cut 416-and-a-half full-time positions, but an early-retirement deal with labor unions is expected to save most of those people from being laid off.
Instead of $238 million in cuts estimated in early March, the county is looking at axing $132 million – although staff are putting an extra $50 million aside to deal with a possible shortfall in funding from the state.
County supervisors begin reviewing Kutras’ draft this afternoon. They will continue in a series of public meetings this week and in mid-June and are scheduled to announce a final budget on June 23.
Basically, each department still has the same cutback target, but some unions – including the county’s largest, SEIU 715, which represents more than 7,000 administrative workers – have negotiated a deal that would provide about a 4-percent pension bonus to all who retire by July 5.
As senior employees retire, they create room at the top, and workers with jobs on the chopping block can shuffle into new posts.
“The more people retire, the more flexibility the departments have,” county budget director Leslie Crowell said.
County staff are uniformly calling the retirement offer “the golden handshake.”
Crowell said 375 employees from the unions have already committed to formal retirement interviews.
“Now they can change their mind, but they think they’re going to do this,” Crowell said.
“They don’t have to give us an answer until just before July 1,” said county Supervisor Don Gage, of Gilroy.
Gage thought the golden handshake is a good strategy since it could save more than 400 people’s jobs. A down side, he admitted, is that it leaves a lot of uncertainty. The county will enter the new fiscal year not knowing who gets laid off and who doesn’t.
“We took a very conservative approach on the budget, so we probably will end up ahead,” Gage said. “If not, we’ve planned for it.”
Health and social services will probably take the biggest hit, Crowell said, since the county is not as legally mandated to provide these as other services. The health, hospital and social services departments are now scheduled to absorb 129 position cuts, plus another 51-and-a-half from public health.
Sheriff Laurie Smith has drafted a “worst-case” plan which would cut 70 deputy sheriff positions, 30 of which are currently vacant, according to sheriff’s spokesperson Deputy Terrance Helm. This would reduce the deputy force by 13.6 percent; there are 515 authorized deputy posts right now, Helm said.
“The biggest thing that we’re facing right now is the unknown, which is the courts,” Helm said. The court budget hasn’t been decided yet, and more than 300 deputies work there.
Peter Crowley covers crime and public safety matters for The Dispatch. He can be reached at 842-6400 x285 or lo***@************ch.com.
