County aims to hire 699 new full-time employees, battle homelessness
Published in the July 8-21, 2015 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Staff Report
For various public entities in the South Valley region including the city of Morgan Hill, the county of Santa Clara, the Morgan Hill Unified School District, and the Santa Clara Valley Water District, the fiscal year 2015-2016 budget kicked in July 1. Here’s a round-up of how much money is being spent for these various agencies.
On June 17, the Morgan Hill City Council approved the city budget. For Morgan Hill, the citywide expenditure budget amounts to $127.2 million. Expenditures support the city utilities, which includes the delivery of water to residents and businesses and treats the wastewater. The water fund revenue is $8.5 million while expenditures are $9.9 million. The sewer fund revenue is $9.9 million while expenditures are $9.8 million.
Another large expense is attributable to the general fund ($34.5 million), which primarily funds police, fire, parks and street maintenance, economic development, recreation and community services, as well as internal support functions such as finance, human resources, city clerk, and legal services.
The third largest expense is for special revenue funds which include the costs associated with processing building, engineering and planning applications, affordable housing efforts, environmental programs, general plan updates. The City Council has discretion on how to spend $23.1 million of the $34.5 million in general fund revenues. In contrast, non-discretionary funds are funds that are collected and can only be used for that exact purpose, such as Centennial Recreation Center/Aquatics Center membership.
On June 19, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors approved a $5.6 billion budget. This includes all services, operations, capital improvements and reserves. The county’s general fund budget is $2.9 billion. This covers all discretionary and many mandated services. Among expenses, the county will add 699 new full-time employee positions for a total of 16,915 workers.
The county budget also included a $5 million contribution, matched by the Housing Trust of Silicon Valley, to create new affordable housing projects.
Mike Wasserman
“An improved economy enabled us to restore some of the services that had been cut in previous years,” said county supervisor Mike Wasserman, who represents Morgan Hill. “This allows us to continue to provide health care, parks, law enforcement and emergency services for our nearly two million residents. The budget focuses on addressing chronic homelessness, rebuilding service delivery networks and investing in the correctional system to meet the changing nature of county jail due to the implementation of Public Safety Realignment (AB 109). Also funded were a number of new and critical services aimed at the health and safety of the community including additional funding for our animal control services which is something I put forward, based on input received from residents.”
At its June 23 meeting, the Morgan Hill Unified School District’s board of trustees unanimously approved the district’s budget of $78,662,106 in total general fund expenditures and $111,322,175 in all funds expenditures.
Of the MHUSD’s general fund expenditures, salaries including teachers’ salaries, equal $34,182,154, or about 43 percent. A three-year contract provides a five percent pay raise on salaries, raising the first-year teacher salary to $50,365.35 for the 2015-2016 school year compared with $47,967 during the 2014-2015 school year.
The Santa Clara Valley Water District Board of Directors in May adopted a $478 million operating and capital budget. Among the major infrastructure investments in the new budget are $16.5 million to accelerate purified water production to ensure the continued supply of safe, clean water, while averting the potential risk of subsidence (the sinking of land) if the drought continues.
Approximately 58 percent of the SCVWD budget is for operations and debt services. The remaining 42 percent is for capital improvement.
As part of the 2015-2016 budget, $178 million will help deliver Safe, Clean Water and Natural Flood Protection program projects, and implement other efforts including the stream maintenance program.
In total, the budget contains appropriations for 49 capital projects, including:
• Anderson Dam Seismic Retrofit $3.0 million
• Penitencia Delivery/Force Main pipelines project $14.6 million
• Rinconada Water Treatment Plant Reliability Improvement $6.0 million
• Upper Llagas Creek Flood Protection Project $50.3 million
• Wolfe Road Recycled Water Pipeline Project $6.6 million
Revenues are approximately $377.5 million. The $100 million gap between revenues and expenditures is met by debt financing.
