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May 2, 2022 \u2014 The Board of Supervisors will hold a budget workshop on May 3 to prepare for next month\u2019s third quarter budget hearings. \nInflation is up, but revenue seems to be available \u2014 if there were enough staff to collect it.\nSupervisor Ted Williams gave a preview of tomorrow\u2019s meeting. \u201cWe\u2019ve been meeting with each department, and looking at if they have any outside contracts that they can cut, kind of nickels and dimes,\u201d he said. \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t think we\u2019re finding a lot. A lot of those departments already came in with lean budgets. There may be some services that we can halt, but not without a real impact on the services provided to the public.\u201d\nPatrick Hickey, the field representative for Local SEIU 1021, which represents most of the county government\u2019s unionized workers, suspects the situation is not quite so dire, and cautions that more information is needed before making big financial decisions. \u201cWhat their information showed is that the majority of their revenue streams, property taxes, sales taxes, transient occupancy taxes (ToT), are increasing,\u201d he said. \u201cThey're projecting that the cannabis tax may drop significantly. So that\u2019s certainly a concern. But they don\u2019t have a handle on it, as far as we can tell, on the numbers and on the data. They still haven\u2019t released their audit from last year, which normally for counties comes out in the fall. So we really need to have a look at that before we start setting our budget for next year.\u201d Hickey especially wants more detailed information about the reserve funds, which he believes are robust. \nThe county is in negotiations with all its bargaining units, which always advocate for filling vacant positions with qualified people, and paying them a competitive salary to keep them on the job. Hickey listed a few of the departments he thinks could generate revenue if they were fully staffed. \u201cEnvironmental health specialists are a fundraiser for the county, basically,\u201d he said. \u201cPositions in the treasury or tax collector and auditor-controller\u2019s office that make sure that we\u2019re collecting all the funds that are due to the county. A number of those department heads have said they\u2019re not able to necessarily do an effective job at tracking down all the taxes that are due because they don\u2019t have the staff to carry out those assignments.\u201d\nUnion president Julie Beardsley added that some other key positions are funded mostly by state and federal money. \u201cIn behavioral health, there are clinical positions that don't offer a competitive salary, so it\u2019s really really difficult to hire people,\u201d she argued. \u201cIn public health, nurses, social services, social workers.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m actually with the union on this,\u201d Williams said. \u201cI think if we do any hiring, first it should be in the areas that are revenue generating. If there\u2019s money that we\u2019re not collecting, maybe that staff will be more than paid for by the revenue that they\u2019re able to collect.\u201d But he said there is a bit of a general fund match for the state-funded positions. \u201cSome of the non-general fund departments still have a hit on the general fund,\u201d he said. \u201cIt may not be much, but when you have zero dollars to work with, if we\u2019re paying ten or twenty percent of that overhead, we just don\u2019t have it.\u201d He added that the lack of competitive wages results in the county not having \u201ca pool of applicants showing up, eager to take on those jobs. If we were to pay more, that would be out of the county general fund.\u201d And Williams said that if the county raised the wages for an analyst in a mostly state-funded department, it would have to raise the wages for other workers with the same designation in departments that are funded solely by the general fund. \nAt the Board of Supervisors\u2019 meeting on April 19, the board agreed to make paying cannabis taxes a requirement for renewing permits, and to consider lowering the minimum tax rate. Interim treasurer tax collector Julie Forrester said delinquent cannabis taxes hadn\u2019t been pursued, and made some suggestions for how to go about doing that. Williams said the tax collector is elected, and the Board of Supervisors does not direct her how to run her department. \u201cMy personal view is, we need to have a process that doesn\u2019t have finger-pointing,\u201d he opined. \u201cIt needs to be collaborative.\u201d The county doesn\u2019t have exact numbers on how many properties are not on the tax rolls, \u201cbut we know some are. We know some that are charged vacant land rates, versus the tax on a three-bedroom house built in the last decade.\u201d\nThe protocol for updating the tax rolls has not yet been established. And Williams is leery of taking action that could cost people their homes if their living situation involves a zoning violation. \u201cAnd we\u2019re broke,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have less revenue that\u2019s projected for the coming year than we had last year.\u201d\nHickey remains skeptical of the sense of emergency that often characterizes budget discussions. \u201cSo much of these projections that the county\u2019s talking abo...