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Supervisors hope to preserve boom-time projects

BY JAMES BURGER, Californian staff writer
e-mail: jburger@bakersfield.com | Saturday, Jul 19 2008 12:00 PM

Last Updated: Monday, Jul 21 2008 7:18 AM

When Kern County supervisors meet this week to approve an annual budget, they hope to avoid a distasteful debate:

Will they need to sacrifice their boom-time projects to maintain basic services?

In the past two years, riding the back of great budget years, they’ve spent a fair amount on ambitious program upgrades and cures for social ills.

But now the budget is bad.

A handful of county workers face layoff notices under the proposed spending plan. Libraries hours would be cut. Parks would go without mowing and security lighting. And social service agencies are talking caseload explosion and service slumps.

Supervisors say they don’t need to cut those high-profile spending priorities yet. And now is not the time to do it, said Supervisor Michael Rubio.

“If we make cuts in the specific program areas in which we invested over the last four years, it would be a step back,” he said.

Some past priorities — such as lowering the number of animals euthanized in shelters — have already been de-listed for funding by supervisors.

“If it comes down to a point where we are in a corner and we have to decide between the animal control worker and a social worker, I’m always going to choose the social worker,” Rubio said.

But the county’s financial troubles, and potential revenue grabs by the state, could force supervisors into even more unpleasant choices, he admits.

Kern County’s Department of Human Services, which operates the county foster care and welfare programs, will run with $5 million less funding this year than last — something Director Pat Cheadle says will force existing staff to take on more cases.

“When you have a greater caseload, the possibility for one of these children to fall through the cracks increases,” Rubio said.

But what if supervisors are forced to choose between reducing Human Services caseloads and cutting from the gang violence prevention and intervention programs Rubio championed into reality last year?

Rubio said he would not stop his efforts to preserve and protect both programs.

“If we make sound and just decisions in areas that are not core or fundamental duties of government, then we can prevent cornering ourselves in that position,” he said.

Supervisor Don Maben said the anti-gang push is one of the principal reasons this year’s budget has very little wiggle room.

But he said spending money to fight gangs, and convince children not to join them, is a critical public safety goal that can’t be brushed aside in a bad budget year.

Maben said the county can make the recommended budget work without chopping from county road repair funding or gang intervention or funding for a county compliance and accountability officer.

“So far we’re holding the line,” he said.

And he stood up for the spending the county has done in the past two budget years, even as the cloud of financial troubles loomed.

Everything supervisors have invested in, Maben said, improves residents’ quality of life.

And supervisors point to $48 million in rainy-day funds socked away in the good years as proof they were thinking ahead.

Supervisor Ray Watson said with the exception of the new anti-gang programs, nearly everything supervisors approved was a fix for problems created in past bad-budget times when supervisor diverted cash out of programs to patch up budget gaps.

This year the county will face similar choices, he said.

“There are a lot of strains throughout the county. It’s going to be a gut-wrenching year,” Watson said.