Sheriff station in Salida, help for fire districts included in Stanislaus County budget
Stanislaus County approved a final budget for 2021-22 that includes additional hiring and efforts to restore funding for public safety services.
The $1.49 billion budget represents a decrease of $36.6 million from last year.
During a budget session Tuesday, the county unveiled a new mission statement conceived at a leadership retreat two years ago before the COVID pandemic came to dominate the county’s time and energies.
The mission statement, “We Build Community”, reflects an effort to become a community of choice “where people live, work and thrive — a place worthy of calling home.”
The final budget includes a general fund of $412 million for daily operations and public services. About $257 million in revenue this fiscal year, from July 1 to June 30, 2022, can be spent at the board’s discretion. The discretionary revenue is a $4 million increase over last year.
The county spending plan has funding for restoring a sheriff’s office substation in Salida, the county’s largest unincorporated town.
Sheriff Jeff Dirkse said the department plans to open the substation in a temporary office by April 15. Staffing will include a sergeant and five deputies. Officials have not identified the temporary location; a permanent facility will involve future discussions with the Board of Supervisors.
The county budget allows the Sheriff’s Department to add 17 positions for deputies, supervisors, community service officers and operational support.
Going into Tuesday’s meeting, the budget called for allocating $1.2 million in Proposition 172 public safety sales tax to support fire districts that lost revenue to the state’s educational revenue augmentation fund shift (ERAF) years ago. The amount included $800,000 in contributions to fire districts and $400,000 to the fire warden’s office for the countywide response system.
The original plan would have given $485,161 to Stanislaus Consolidated Fire District, $169,557 to Oakdale fire, $77,523 to County fire, $77,523 to Mountain View, $13,196 to Woodland Avenue, $12,491 to Burbank-Paradise, $8,578 to Industrial, $2,194 to Turlock rural and $1,892 to Westport.
Supervisor Buck Condit said public safety money evaporated after ERAF, with public safety services in his supervisorial district (Oakdale-Riverbank) losing $16.7 million since 1995 by his calculation.
Condit proposed a different plan resulting in $1.12 million mostly for larger fire districts to backfill ERAF losses and $120,000 that will go directly to smaller volunteer fire departments.
His motion was approved on a 4-1 vote. Chairman Vito Chiesa was opposed, saying the county was cutting out small volunteer fire departments that survive on minuscule budgets.
In other spending proposed for the fiscal year, the Probation Department will receive funding for equipping officers in the field with body-worn cameras and tasers.
The county Health Services Agency will expand with 15 new positions to establish a COVID-19 unit and support a medical therapy unit.
The budget includes funding for Aging and Veterans Services to provide pandemic support for older residents and another staff member for the Health Insurance Counseling and Advocacy Program office.
The county will delete some vacant positions, resulting in a net increase of 58 full-time employees and raising the total to 4,587, which is 16 below the peak in 2007 right before the nation’s economic crisis. Drastic cuts to the county workforce followed the economic crisis.
