As Mariposa County government winds down its fiscal year this month, there are too many unknowns to land on a budget for next year with any precision, county leaders said last week.
So the county will essentially rollover the budget and use it as a placeholder for the next three months as it begins some overall belt tightening.
The current estimated budget gap is floating between $2 million and $6 million, said County Administrative Officer Joe Lynch.
Lynch said the FY27 postponement will give the county the “wiggle room” it needs.
The primary uncertainty driving the budget pause are delays in reimbursements from federal and state governments. The county’s Health and Human Service Agency (HHSA) in particular has been effected by the holdups and needs time to balance its funds.
“We’re not doing anything out of the ordinary,” said Leigh Westerlund, the assistant county administrator, who said a budget rollover was standard practice until 2019.
And yet, the budget uncertainty has put in stark relief a bigger and more daunting reckoning: As a quarter-century growth in county government meets an era of shrinking federal grants and entitlements.
In an effort to begin “smart sizing” the number of employees, the county is expected to offer a Voluntary Severance Program (VSP) to winnow the workforce.
Under the proposal, county workers will be offered two months pay or $1,000 for every year of service, whichever is more.
If approved this week by the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors, applications for the buyout will begin June 22 and must be accepted by Aug. 6, the final day of separation.
“The reality is that the current staff size is unsustainable and it is essential that we take a proactive, strategic, collective approach to smart-sizing our workforce,” Lynch wrote in a staff memo.
Population vs. government
Mariposa began this century with about 200 employees serving 17,130 people.
Today, the population estimate is slightly fewer at 16,918, but the payroll has grown to 484 staff with 25 job openings, for a total of 507 funded positions.
That is a 153 percent increase in the county workforce over 25 years.
“It’s the salaries and the benefits that are the poison pill,” said Mariposa County Supervisor Shannon Poe during last week’s budget talks.
While the total population of Mariposa County may not have changed much, the demographics have.
It is a poorer and older population in 2026 in which one-third of the county relies on some kind of service through HHSA.
“We have a huge need in our county for HHSA services. And in trying to meet that need our expense growth has outpaced revenue,” said Westerlund.
In recent years, about 97 percent of HHSA’s budget was paid for b state and federal sources. That makes Mariposa County an outlier. Only four other counties in California can claim they pick up such a small share of the cost of social services.
But that dynamic is quickly changing.
HR 1 comes home
Kristina Keheley, the director of HHSA, estimates the impact from H.R. 1, the so-called ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ is already in the neighborhood of $600,000.
County officials expect much deeper cuts are on the way.
The California State Association of Counties estimates H.R. 1 will result in $9.5 billion in annual “safety net” costs that will trickle down to California’s counties.
Other factors are also in play.
There has been a large turnover in HHSA’s fiscal team, which plays a critical role in obtaining state and federal reimbursements.
The new team is “drinking from a fire hose” as they get up to speed, said Westerlund.
The county had to pick up a larger slice of HHSA’s transportation costs, about $1.6 million, for taking seniors to non-emergency medical appointments and other trips. (See related story) .
CAO Lynch, who previously ran HHSA, said he and director Keheley want to find a way to make the agency largely self-sustaining with state and federal dollars.
“We are firmly committed to make sure we position ourselves to stay away from general funds. And the reason we do it is there are three main users: Sheriff, public works and all the other government services,” Lynch said.
Supervisor Poe suggested there may be limits to what the county can offer if the funding disappears.
“Mariposa will be at the point that its unsustainable to give all these services. I’d like to fund everything, but we can’t keep raising taxes,” he said.
While some funding may be quickly evaporating, the employees who support those services remain.
Seven years ago there were 167 employees in HHSA. Today there are 200, a 33 percent increase.
The number of HHSA employees added in that time is more than the rest of county government combined. For comparison, the Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office added eight employees in that time.
During the budget session last week, Mariposa County Supervisor Jenni Kiser asked a series of questions that spoke to what happens when federal dollars go away.
Short answer: The employees don’t.
Under union contracts, unless the position is specifically tied to a grant, employees cannot be fired simply because a funding source is no longer available.
However, county officials insist that they don’t hire employees based on grant funding but rather use grant funding to pay for existing employees.
Lynch said the Voluntary Severance Program is a response to the larger issue of scaling the workforce for the future and not any particular FY27 budget issue.
Not readable
Supervisor Poe had a different kind of problem with the budget, or more accurately with how a 226-page spreadsheet was laid out.
It wasn’t readable to the general public, he said.
“Folks in Buck Meadows with a ninth grade education” need to understand it, he implored.
“Absolutely, 80 percent of my folks have no idea what we’re doing here,” Poe said in reference to the budget document.
Poe said the spreadsheet needs to be broken down better by department and program, with subtotals for individual departments.
Staff is expected to modify the spreadsheet when the FY27 budget is completed in September.
Responses (0)