Budget/Fiscal

According to a recent Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) study, Yolo County has an unauthorized immigrant population of 12,000 which represents roughly 6.2% of the population.

Overall in Yolo County, Latinos represent, according to Yolo County’s website, 26% with Whites accounting for 58% of the population, Asians 10%, and Blacks 2%.

Some of my greatest memories from living in this area are probably the days of going to the Graduate in the early part of the decade when the Kings were going strong and feeling the energy of the packed audience living and dying with every shot the Kings took.

There was that fateful series against the Lakers when, but for a fortuitous bounce of the ball and a clutch three in game four and a foul-filled game 7 that we later found out was due to a referee intentionally throwing the game, the Kings might have won the Western Conference and ultimately the NBA Championship.

Earlier this week, we reported on the layoff of ten sheriff’s deputies from Yolo County.  The question that emerged from that article was based on an earlier editorial by the Sacramento Bee.

The Bee wrote, “Budget-strapped Yolo County  approved the most generous retirement enhancements of any jurisdiction locally, almost doubling benefits for sheriff’s deputies in 2008 and giving non-safety workers a 25 percent pension boost. And those benefits were approved retroactively, meaning that the new, richer formulas were applied to employees’ prior years worked, not just future years – an extraordinary windfall for those workers near retirement age.”

In the end, Supervisor Matt Rexroad was the lone dissenting vote on a motion that would phase out the county’s obligations to pay extra Judicial Benefits within two years. The board voted 4-1 to implement a termination in 2012 as an alternative to the other options already on the table.  On the other hand, without Mr. Rexroad’s dogged advocacy on this issue, it is likely that his colleagues would not have gone even this far.

The compromise solution, if you will, arose out of the staff report’s alternative view which would “provide notice of termination now and to extend the actual termination date to the next election cycle in 2012.”

The California Judges Association has entered a fray between some members of the County Board of Supervisors and Judge David Rosenberg regarding supplemental fees paid by the county to Yolo County Judges, despite the fact that they are state employees rather than county employees.

In a July 14 letter from Michael P. Vicencia, President of the California Judges Association, he wrote, “The California Judges Association wishes to express its concern regarding a June 30,2010 letter sent by your staff to the Judges of the Yolo Superior Court and to the Administrative Office of the Courts, regarding the County’s intention to terminate the payment of county-funded judicial benefits.”

The County Board of Supervisors this week discussed a proposal that would ask Yolo County voters to approve a measure that would raise the sales tax by half a percent to generate somewhere between five and seven million to alleviate struggles at the County level that have produced a twenty million dollar deficit for the coming fiscal year and will lead to a widespread cutback in services ranging from health and mental health to law enforcement.

The Vanguard is certainly sympathetic to the county’s plight particularly in light of the devastating cuts to health care services that will put all county residents at a great health risk.  However, the Vanguard does not believe that this is a feasible plan.

Yolo County is facing huge deficits this year again as it has to cut 21 million from its operating budget.  One of the problems that it faces is a huge amount of lands are preserved for agriculture.  97.2% of its unincorporated land is designated for agricultural use with 416,519 acres of those lands (69% of all acres designated for agricultural use) are in Williamson Act contracts.

As a result of its land use policy and directing urban development into its cities, the county receives the lowest share of property tax in the state and it also receives almost no significant sales tax revenue.