Board of Supervisors — 2014-04-07

♪ Yeah. Yeah.

Good morning, I'd like to call to order the meeting for April 7th for the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors Budget Workshop. Mr. Allen can you please call the roll?

Ms. Farr? Here. Mr Adam? Here Ms Wolfe? Here Mr Carbajal? Here Mr Lavinino?

So that my second grandchild will not feel left out. I actually had another grandchild, that's two in four days so yes. Emmett Knight-Lavinino, so Emmet is carrying on the name. So good for him. Yes, eight pounds five ounces. Yes, drove home from the hospital he is. All right, so we're going to start off with general comment and Supervisor Farr would like to begin.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well before we begin our budget presentations here I wanted to make a few brief comments about what happened in Isla Vista over the weekend. I know that the sheriff is probably going to be wanting to give us a more thorough report in the next day or two but I did want to just say a couple of things. On Saturday night, I did hear from the sheriff via the CEO and representatives of UCSB officials.

And I followed the local news coverage as I think many of us did. I think that first and foremost in my mind, and probably in all of our minds are with the public safety personnel who were injured trying to protect both life and property. And of course any other innocent bystanders who were also hurt. Deltopia and unsponsored events like it need to end. The proliferation of unsponsored events on Facebook where anonymous individuals or groups can promote an event The draw upwards of 15,000 people without the proper mitigations in place has no place in our county and certainly not in Isla Vista either.

As we've seen it, it just invites chaos and unruly disrespectful and unlawful behavior. Additionally, the cost to the taxpayers is exorbitant. Again, I think that the sheriff would be able to confirm but what we have seen at least in the past is that the majority of citations go to people from outside the area. They come into the community and they cause trouble.

They have absolutely no respect, in fact a blatant disregard for our law enforcement personnel and the very tough job they're trying to do. And no respect for the residents of the community, no respect for our public infrastructure with the damage and the desecration that we saw over the weekend. I meet every month with representatives of UCSB, of City College, of the foot patrol, of campus police, of our pertinent county departments for all the day-to-day issues about Isla Vista. But what happens on the weekends presents another level of problems and concern and cost And of course, the unsponsored events create another big higher level that is so difficult to deal with.

We have had and will continue to have meetings with all of the stakeholders, the property owners, all of the groups that I mentioned before. The district attorney's office is involved and we will continue to look for all the different ways that we can to stop these unsponsored events. I have been out there on Halloween just about every year. I have been there on years where there were as many people on the street as there were this last weekend and it is always a situation that is fraught with danger and uncertainty. I think what has changed now is who is coming, again people from the outside who are not there even just to think they're going to party and have fun. But people who are there to cause great harm and disruption I was heartened to hear UCSB student leaders state that a cultural change is needed.

I couldn't agree more and so I will continue to work with them, the Sheriff's Department and all of our county staff, UCSB and city college officials in the community to address the issue. And you can expect that I will be bringing to the board ordinances, whether they are new or they are toughened ordinances that we have on the books to bring this under control. We'll be looking at the streetscape, the circulation in the community particularly on Del Playa and any other solutions that we can think of to get a handle on this but this is absolutely not acceptable. Thank you Mr Chair.

Thank you very much, and we appreciate your leadership. We know you were out there all hours of the night and it's a very tough situation I for one as well would also like to hear from not only the sheriff on this issue but You know, I think I was just like everybody else when you're watching those images disgusting And I'm hoping to hear from the university that any individual that was involved in something like that that caused damage A senseless damage to property, but more importantly injured our officers that were out there trying to protect them.

That those students are dealt with in the most harsh manner that's possible so With that Mr. Allen do we have any public speakers?

No request to speak

No request to speak. All right, we will move then to our way ahead of schedule then, Mona. We're five minutes early. All right, we're on time. 915 budget overview. I'll kick this to the CEO, Ms. Miyasato.

Chair members of the board, thank you very much. As you know the budget workshops are going to be fluid so some things won't take as much time others may and we'll be doing a seance first.

Do that early because if you turn the lights out that low later the room might empty.

So just that for members of the public watching or To just check back with us on the schedule because the schedule will be fluid this morning. So good morning everyone Today is the first day of budget workshops to discuss the county's budget for the coming year And I wanted to add if I might today is two days short of my four month anniversary with the county so I want to take the time to thank your board for your leadership into making this a smooth transition and And also to thank all the department heads. Department heads have been really wonderful, and department heads and their fiscal staff for being adaptable and flexible and changing the process this year so thank you very much.

We're holding these workshops earlier than in the past to give your board and the public a preview of what will be coming in the next year regarding department objectives. It's also a chance for departments to highlight their accomplishments, their changes to service as well as their needs and challenges ahead before we finalize the recommended budget which we'll be providing to your board in mid-May.

The information you have in your big binders, therefore is incomplete really and are really drafts of the preliminary work plans coming forward. The binder does not include some of the summary schedules you'll also see in the budget which includes all the revenues and expenditures for general fund and non-general fund. These will be included again in the recommended budget and reviewed in June as we've done in the past.

On Wednesday, we'll also provide a review of options regarding maintenance needs and different funding scenarios. Again, my responsibility to you per the County Budget Act is to provide to you a balanced recommended budget in May for your approval in June at which time you can revise, reduce, make additions to that recommended budget. But this week is focused on department budgets work plans and initiatives in the coming year And a chance for you to provide input to the department, ask questions as well as provide input to me. As we finalize the recommended budget and do final budget balancing. No board funding decisions are required and in fact you aren't making any appropriations at this time but just giving general input.

But again no board funding decisions are required at this time. On March 10th, we provided a full overview of the county revenues for general fund and non-general fund and discussed trends. What I'm showing you right here is a slide we showed on March 10th which is our general fund discretionary revenues in our five year forecast. We have not updated this information yet.

Any updates to the March revenues will be presented with the recommended budget and discussed in June, to extent there are any significant changes. At the March presentation we indicated there was discretionary general fund revenue And that it would be expected to increase in coming years at a rate that exceeds the status quo funding level. So on this chart, the blue was showing you what we believed was a projected increase in general fund discretionary revenue. The columns were our general fund status quo budgets and the gray was the difference.

Mona, we have a

question from

Supervisor

Carball. Yes. Mona at some point maybe it's during the public works but it's more like general. It's my understanding our consultant has recalibrated the numbers in terms of certain deferred maintenance or what have you but I guess I'm just wondering if when we're going to have those numbers? Will it be in the public work section?

Chair Supervisor Carbajal, we'll be discussing that on Wednesday when we discuss deferred maintenance needs.

And again I want to keep that make sure that you keep that other slide of the potential impact of Measure M on our county resources which I know you also included as part of our discussion later on as well but I want to make sure we have that big graph for the public to see of how it could impact county resources thank you

Thank you. In March, again we forecasted about $400,000 of unallocated ongoing revenue and the last couple weeks Tom Alvarez our budget director and I have been looking at our numbers and we think that will actually increase to about $700,000 in allocated general fund revenue given some reimbursements that we didn't take into account. Also, it looks like there's an anticipated about $5.5 million of unallocated one time revenue that we can expect in 14-15. I'm sorry?

Can you go over those two numbers one more time?

So earlier we had said there was about 400,000 of ongoing unallocated general fund discretionary revenue. That's been updated to 700. And we believe there is about 5.5 million dollars of unallocated one time revenue in 14- 15. Okay

thank you.

But again, these may change as we review all our numbers in the next few weeks and close out the recommended budget and do final balancing. Supervisor

Wolf. Sorry, thank you. Mr. Chair. I just want to interject a point and that is in A comment first of all my comment is Mona. Thank you for bringing this to us Again and to mr. Alvarez for monitoring the budget and I know you're doing that with mr. Geis and all the departments but I think You know from where we were just A short month ago to where we are now, we see how fluid our budget is.

And while I've always been a proponent for these workshops or thank you colleagues for letting us move forward with this, It's so important that we also remember the fluidity of our finances at this stage, but also the importance of getting input from our department heads. So that we can combine these two very important pieces of information. And give you as you said not necessarily direction, but some.

Some indication of where we want to go for the budget in June so I just wanted to interject right now how important these budget workshops are even though we do see that the money is fluid and changing and certainly it's positive. It's in a positive direction. So anyway thank you. Thank you Mister.

As to this year, just a reminder we'll be doing a third quarter financial update in May. Mr. Alvarez will be providing that which will include a projection of the year-end closing balance for this current fiscal year by department and fund. And as you recall, we did a second quarter update a few months ago and at that time we estimated we would have a year end of about 2.3 million salary savings.

So what do we see coming in the next year? As we look ahead, there is positive news. Last year at this time departments had proposed $8.2 million in reductions and this year their service level reductions are totaling about 1.2 million. We overall have reduced our reliance on one-time funding and departments have achieved many accomplishments which they'll discuss even though they have fewer resources and will be discussing what they believe would be optimal levels.

Again, we still face some challenges and difficult choices ahead. As you hear from departments there are some common themes. We know that state reform over the last few years have had mixed results for us. Public health funding has been significantly reduced due to realignment, and we are expecting a reduction in AB 109 funding this coming year. We are expecting some positive changes however, in mental health funding there should be an increase in resources due to federal reimbursement rules related to implementation of the Affordable Care Act. But again, there are still challenges for them to fulfill state mandates.

Many departments you'll hear are engaged in software updates and technology changes to improve their processes. Deferred maintenance continues to be a challenge, and we have updated information as I discussed earlier that we'll be providing to you on Wednesday. Given our worst workforce statistics where we told you that almost a quarter of our employee population is likely to retire in the next five years, some departments are looking towards how they will retain employees and also plan for their future.

The leadership project, which is our management classification system, is under review this year by Human Resources and that will continue through next year. And again there continues to be some issues in some departments where expenses will continue to outpace revenues unless there are structural changes or more funding available, which will be discussed. As I said earlier, available revenues will exceed needs and that's always going to be the case for both ongoing and one-time. So managing expectations this year is critical.

We have included all the budget expansion requests from your departments which my office is still reviewing but they're in the binder. As we discussed in March given the scarcity of ongoing resources Requests will be evaluated based on how well they can mitigate risk or avoid costs, as well as whether there are unavoidable necessary increases. And of course identified priorities of your board.

I'm also recommending that funding recommendations that we would be including be contingent upon the outcome of measure M. I was asked what our plan is, should Measure M be approved by voters in June. So I wanted to make sure the board was aware. At the June hearings, I would ask the board to reevaluate or eliminate any recommended restorations that may be in a recommended budget and to decide which are absolutely critical to go forward.

I would seek reduction scenario options from departments by summer and departments were already instructed to begin thinking of possible options. We'd also look to non-general fund sources to see how much we can leverage given federal and state regulations. We would continue to be more aggressive in redirecting existing discretionary grants towards maintenance needs, so for example your board, we have grants in different departments that are discretionary and we would look to seeing how those could be directed more towards maintenance.

We would provide options to your board late summer, early fall and implement by mid-year. Should the board request we could provide information sooner but given the timing of the budget we thought this was an appropriate and prudent plan. So looking ahead to fiscal year 14-15 and beyond, again we have a positive long term outlook but there are still significant needs and challenges.

There's limited capacity for ongoing expansions in 14-15 although there will be some one time revenues. We're looking at revenue generation so again we'll be bringing a TOT increase to your board for the November ballot. We'll be bringing that to you next month. And again just given the uncertainty We're asking to limit new expenditures in 14-15 but consider many of them the following year.

So after you hear from the departments over the next few days, we would be finalizing the recommended budget. It would be released on May 15th. On June 3rd is the election and we would have the budget adoption hearings on June 9th and 11th. And that concludes the overview. Any questions for your board?

Supervisor Carbajal.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Like Supervisor Wolf, as we start this process I just want to thank CEO Miyasato and Mr. Alvarez. You might have only been here four months. But you've really delved into everything, CEO Miyasato and your grasp of the issues. And you're just seamlessly moving forward with our budget process that you've fallen into. Speaks, I think to your skill and the great staff that you have as well to just continue that continuity. And I think this board packet was really well done and I just want to commend you for stepping up and I think putting your best foot forward in helping us as we deal with yet another financial round of decisions for our taxpayers.

And yes, another workshop for Supervisor Wolf. She is the champion of workshops and I think that this is going to be very helpful for everyone so thank you Supervisor Wolf as well.

Thank you. I have a question can we go back to the slide projected general revenue growth? The chart there we go okay so on the changes in the numbers in 14-15 that $400,000 now $700,000 That's correct. Okay, and then going into the next year the 4.4 is now 5.5? Is that correct? Or where's the 55 unallocated general revenue one time dollars? Is that in this year?

That's in this year Chair Lavanina and it's not reflected on this chart so this chart just shows ongoing and so the one-time revenue was the five point five. Okay

very good

But if I could just follow up on that, because are we making any assumptions into the future? So in other words would that 4.4 be increased and subsequently the 6.1 or should we consider those to be static?

The adjustment for the 14-15 was really just to that one year. It was a one time kind of offset so it won't be repeating as we go forward. So the numbers for the out years are going to remain unchanged at this point.

I thought that I understood that the 700000 was ongoing

Chair Levine and board members, I think what Mr. Alvarez says is we noticed an error in our calculation for 14-15 that changed it to 400 to 700 thousand so that error wasn't made in the forecast. Okay very good thank

you. And while we're talking about praise I know I heard from one of my staff that he had Stopped by the office here at a different time and at 845 at night, so Mr. Alvarez leaving the building last week. So we appreciate all the work that's being done here, Supervisor Carbajal.

I also want to extend my thanks to Mr. Geis and his staff. Obviously this is a team effort and I would be remiss if I didn't recognize our auditor and But this is an important hearing because our auditor, Mr. Geisen, his deputy, Mr. Thiel have brought the big guns, Betsy today so you know it's a serious hearing when Betsy's in the room so. All right thank you

and on that 5.5, is there a breakdown of what that 5.4 is or are we going to get into that later?

Yes, we have the detail of that and we can provide that to you okay

very good.

All right so we are Supervisor Adam could we get an updated version of this slide? That might be kind of nice

We could update this slide, it will have one change just to the 14-15 and I think the other element was we were talking about one time. So we'll update the first column of this slide and then provide a separate piece of information that would have one times identified for 14- 15 and 15-16.

Perfect all right so I guess now we would go to the public for if there's any comment on the opening comments? Okay Mr. Caldwell is recognized. You know what? Hold on, I have you. All

right.

There you go.

Chairman Lavinino, members of the board, Amanda Caldwell representing COLAB. As you know, I have taken upon myself over nearly the last 20 years to read the county budget book from cover to cover with regard to this particular exercise. I didn't have time to read any of it because it just came out last week. And I'm not sure how anybody, especially the five of you unless you were staying up all night could have read it either.

It was a heck of a lot of information. I think it's good to get the information out early but Supervisor Carbajal I want to remind you of a promise you made that I think was echoed by everybody on the dais last year that we're going to go back to the division level In the budget that we weren't going to just have a broad scale overview of the department as a whole, but we're going to get dig down to the division. To see what each division was doing how they were staffed their performance measures at that level.

I didn't see it in this and maybe you're gonna get it for June? I don't know. But we want to know if that's going to be the case, because as you well know, the citizens expect you, as their elected officials, to in essence ride herd over some 3,800 county employees who are charged with spending $800 million of their money and who are charged with keeping the public safe.

And keeping our roads built and everything else. So we're looking to you, say well to what degree are you able to do your job? To what degree do you require staff to give you the information to do your job? That's all I do. My job is simply looking over your shoulder. I've not aspired to be a county supervisor. I don't envy the job that you have to do, I understand it's hard but Colab was created and my job was created to look over your shoulder and sometimes they'll look over your shoulder and say they don't have the information they need to do their job. We used to have a breakdown from for instance of workers comp claims by department This is costing you what, 10 to 15 million dollars a year now?

I used to manage work comp. Work comp is usually a morale issue more than it is a safety issue. We want the information in detail all the way down. Not looking through a keyhole and seeing a small little snapshot. We need a panoramic view, and maybe it's not going to happen this week but is it going to happen in June? Thank you.

Supervisor Carball. Thank you Mr Chair. Mr Calderon I know you'd like to albatross me with such a promise. But if you go back and look at the hearing tape, you'll see that I didn't make a promise. What I did say is that I think it would be worthwhile in the future for us to examine how we might be able to in some form, in some process whether it's part of our budget process or as parallel process Where we are able to work with our departments to identify some performance measures.

Division level, I don't think I got into the weeds on the division level but I do think that I have always been a believer in performance measures. I'm not so sure that the previous budgets while they provided more insight and information in this area were all that and a bag of chips. I think we never really developed them in a way that they should have been developed But having said that, I do believe that there is utility in performance measures.

And I still believe not just because Mr. Caldwell got up and said this but that we ought to really examine if there is a process, a parallel process where we might be able it could be a compact so not necessarily the budget but it could be part of the budget process Where we are able to examine. Some of those figures that Mr Caldwell mentioned I think it's worthwhile and- I thought there was a consensus to consider that but I'm not sure that we ever took a formal motion.

And I still believe in that I think. There was once a CEO who Mister Brown who came up with the budget document Came out with a different budget process that didn't really incorporate those performance measures as was done in the past. And the last discussion we had was how can we not lose some maybe more focused, more strategic performance measures that addresses the issue that we just discussed in a way that bridges the new process and the old process? So-

Supervisor Lavanino if I may. Supervisor Carpahal, I agree with you that some of the performance measures under Brown administration were fluff pieces. I agree with that but that's not really what I'm talking about. What you and I remember Supervisor Farr also echoed this last year is there was two to three hundred pages cut out from the budget and they were the division level information. You only had a department overview it didn't give you the division level breakdowns any longer Yes, the performance measures were pretty much missing too. But it's also your ability to overview each division. Like for instance you have public works, you have flood control, there are different divisions within that. Fire department has different divisions and we didn't have the breakdown anymore.

There was 200-300 pages missing and I specifically remember you saying you wanted to see that added back in. Thank you.

You know,

I would like to see all that information. You know, I don't understand exactly how we can go in and find the places that are expensive where we might be able to cut and we may find that things that we thought were more expensive or a better value than You can't find the cuts and fills you know to put it in dirt moving terms unless you can see the map, you know, you have to you have to Take a survey of the whole field and then you find the high spots in the low spots but you can't do that without a map and you know, the the division level accounting is kind of the I don't know how we can prioritize things unless you know what the relative expense.

You know, you need to be able to look at it all in relative terms and say as this board goes along what are their priorities and what are their values? You know make the priorities from that instead of you know just sort of macro level really 50,000 foot elevation of just the departments. You know without as much information as Andy's talking about and so I would support having that and I don't know if anybody else wants to see it but I would like to.

Supervisor Farr?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, Mr. Caldwell, you're right. I did ask for more information but I think for the most part for the budget process, the information that we have before us is good but I think for the board and for certain members of the public like Mr. Caldwell that want to do a deeper dive, I know what the board had a few years ago which then was stopped which I found to be very helpful It was very large. It was very comprehensive.

Clearly a document that was probably time consuming to produce and certainly very expensive to print. So not a document that, you know we could probably just have all kinds of copies out there but I have to say You know if there was a department that you you know I really wanted to understand better and especially some of the larger departments. Alcohol drug and mental health public health Sheriff's Department has a number of a lot of employees in a lot of.

And I think it's really important that we have different divisions in it to be able to get that kind of a breakdown as far as how many people in each division, what those positions were, what each division costs as part of their total budget. A lot of that information is in our budget but this was broken down to a deeper level and it was also laid out in a format So I guess that would be my suggestion for what some of us are talking about. And maybe if Supervisor Adam, our staff could show him one of those old cost center analysis to see whether that is something he would find useful.

But I realize it has to be balanced against the time of the staff and those were the days where your department had a lot more people in it so I'm certainly sensitive to that issue but Anyway, I think that that's some of what we're talking about. Mr. Caldwell will

introduce it. Mr Supervisor Carbajal and then Supervisor Wolfe. And I think realistically speaking, I would imagine the answer is that between now and June, that would be very challenging to modify our process in our document. So I do think that once this budget process is done in June CEO Miyasato, Mr. Alvarez and Mr. Geis we explore what that hybrid might look like because certainly the old style like I said wasn't the panacea but it did provide some insight and you know I don't want the document that we had in the past just also to be a busy work document where we're just coming up with a bunch of useless things there's some really good stuff that was in there but there was a lot of useless things as well The question is, what is the most strategic document that can maybe be a hybrid of that would be best for us?

Nothing precludes our staff like my staff. That have gotten extensive training from the auditor at my request to understand our budget system so they could go in there and manipulate and understand those budgets as our staff are supposed to do. My staff have gotten extensive training. In my office and I just, I'm not sure that. So anyways, I think after this budget in June that we examine how the conversation with the board what does that document look like and have that discussion?

CEO Miyasato?

I'm just going

to pass.

CEO Miyasato?

Chair Lavagnino, board members. So we hear those comments and we'll look at what we can do better for next year. I think it is too late for this year but we can provide information if there's specific information you'd like we can provide that to you. There are two improvements that were made in this upcoming years budget and one is in the, we call the D pages which is the text In the back of that, there is a breakdown of positions by program area. So that was a change in response to the board and also we did add performance measures. So listening to the board last year, the departments did include more performance measures in their budget so we asked them to put key performance measures in as well.

And regarding I think you know I've been doing budgeting for 20 years in different organizations and I think what's happened We used to have those big printouts of this what you're saying is that cook those cost center books and as things became More electronic and databases became more sophisticated because the budget changes. The budget also is a fluid document It's the policy plan, but throughout the year your board is making appropriations And so as it changes the staff over time has found it better to have things in an electronic format because it does change and when you print something out There's a balance of making sure you print something out that the public can understand, but also that's accurate. So I think over time as we've had more systems and budgeting systems, that's how it's evolved from having a static document printed to something that's more dynamic.

And I think that's just been the issue that's created this maybe not reluctance but this issue of not having one static big document printed

Very good. And as far as talking about the time frame, yeah I got this a few days ago but we are two and half months ahead of where we were without this document so this is a very good starting point.

Yes? And just for the record Mr. Caldwell, I read my stuff and I'm sure my colleagues read their material too. I can't speak for them but I know I

did. Actually I read all about what the first district accomplished this year which was very impressive. All right, so we are supposed to actually be scheduled for a break. But I think that would be a little bit... Mr. Allen?

Just wanted to point out that we are having a little bit of a problem with the projector and if we did take a short break, we could take a look at it. I

thought that was just me! Okay good. Alright yeah let's let's take a 10 minute break and have you see if you can get that fixed for us. Thank you ♪ ♪

. . ♪ ♪ Hi. ♪ Yeah. ¶. Yeah. ♪

The. ♪ Huh? All right we're going to reconvene our budget workshop. So if you're a supervisor or CEO it would be nice to be here While we're waiting, Mr. Geis you mentioned something to me during the break if you could let everybody know it would be nice about the added information that might be available to the public.

Chairman Lavinino and members of the board I just wanted Remind the board that when we made these budget changes to summarize at budget program level, we really didn't get rid of the details in the budget. We still have financial data at the financial program level that rolls to the budget program level. We can also look at our data by organization, we can look at it by project, we can look at it by activity and we can look at it by area. So our goal when we revised the budget book was to try and get more of the We just never got back to.

Here's what we think that the lower level of detail look like and here's how we can get the public to access it. So it's still a project we haven't forgotten about, we just haven't got to it. Okay.

All right so we will move forward then with the next phase which is departmental budgets policy and executive. Ms. Miyasato?

Chair Lavaney, new board members thank you. And before I begin I do want to do another round of thank yous because I was remiss To first of all thank the auditor staff. My transition has been made exponentially better because of Mr. Bob Geis, Theo Filotti and Betsy Schaefer in working with us on this so thank you very much as well as the staff in the CEO's office our budget staff led by Tom Alvarez, Richard Morgantini, Joe Toney, Yetta Christensen and John J. Singh we're a small but mighty team so thank you very much as well.

So the Board of Supervisors do you want to get the lights Mike? So

that's a loaded question.

The Board of Supervisors has an op. Has an operating budget of $2.9 million this year, there's some money set aside for capital for a copier to replace something in Santa Maria. Mostly general fund, 2.9 million. FTEs are 21.5 and actually there was new information provided to us that didn't make it into this but it will be in the recommended budget that will go down to 21 FTE.

There is use of one time fund balance this year and I'll explain why. There are no service level reductions and no expansion requests. This next slide just shows percentage of general fund versus others. So again, the board's budget is based on a general fund contribution and this year we'll be using some fun balance. This next slide just shows a five-year summary of the general fund contribution. And as you can see, it's been pretty stable. It looks like there have been dramatic changes just because of the scale of the graph. But it's been holding pretty steady. Any increases have really been because of salaries and benefit increases over the last few years.

This is a summary of one time. The board offices have not had to use any one-time funding this year because of increases in some variable costs, we're going to be using fund balance to cover those costs and that's related to increased utility costs, some IT costs and a big increase in general liability costs that are spread throughout the departments and this is the board share of that.

Here's the staffing summary. So again, it shows 21.5 FTE. This chart will change as I mentioned. So in this current fiscal year, District 4 went from four FTEs to 3.5 and next year they plan to fill the vacant .5 FTE with no increase in budget. In addition, District 2 has alerted us that it'll be decreasing its component of staff from four to 3 point five in 14-15 so you'll see a net result of 21 FTE in the coming year.

So here are some of the accomplishments that we've highlighted. There were many produced by the board, but we chose a few to highlight. One was the completion of the new Koyama Valley Library and Family Resource Center. Many board members advocated for additional safety improvements in Highway 154. Through the board's leadership, we were able to retain three community assets in Isla Vista from the former redevelopment project.

There has been more emphasis and focus now on deferred maintenance of county assets roads and facilities. And we've initiated an exploration of inpatient mental health beds working with Marion Medical Center in Santa Maria. Some objectives in the next couple of years from one of the board offices, one is to maintain the long-term fiscal health of the county. And last year I might add that the board was able to increase the strategic reserve by $4.2 million and during the downturn that's a pretty impressive feat given the reductions that were also being made.

The board has remained engaged and it continues to be in working on public safety realignment with the 109 implementation There's been leadership on the board and continue to be next year working with businesses in revenue generation but also to enhance, look toward a economic development strategy. The board continues to prioritize public safety and making sure that the community is safe as well as protecting safety net services for those who are most vulnerable in our community.