Bracing for a budget bloodbath on the magnitude of the 2008 Great Recession’s drastic cuts, the board of supervisors spent much of Tuesday, March 3, engaged in a preliminary fiscal fire drill. County administrators hoped to get a clearer idea of what programs the supervisors would most likely fight to protect and what ones they were most willing to gut. Supervisor Bob Nelson summed up the situation, asking, “Do we have to pick which one of our kids we love the most?”
In a nutshell, the supervisors are staring down the double-barrel end of a $66 million deficit. Though it will be spread out over the next five years, it will not be as gradual as that sounds. The next two budget years are by far the worst, accounting for more than $50 million in cuts.
The two departments facing the most violent hits are the bulwark of the county’s social safety net; $25 million is slated to come out of the hides of the Public Health Department and another $28 million from County Social Services…