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10/31/2006: "New Understandable SJC Budget"

(Si Stephens, Pete Rose & Carolyn Morrison at a budget workshop this month)

The first draft budget put together under the guidance of the new Charter form of government has been published, and has been greeted by rave reviews. The Charter requires the budget to be produced by the Auditor and the new County Administrator. Auditor Si Stephens and Administrator Pete Rose have produced a budget format unlike anything previously seen in the County.

Gone is the large print-out of bar codes and reference numbers followed by row after row of numbers waiting to be identified and interpreted, but for a lay person this can sometimes be seem as only possible if one possesses a guide or a SJC Rosetta stone. What Rose and Stephens have produced is a three ring binder containing a table of contents, and indexed department budgets that begin with an explanation of the mission statement of the department, a short explanation of "What we do", including a synopsis of the departments accomplishments for the current budget year, followed by the goals for the upcoming year.



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More good news: analysis and projections by the Auditor's office indicate that the County -while in some negative debt- is in fairly good shape, but sure enough, there is also the old good news-bad news follow up. Both Stephens and Rose said that the County is moving toward a major short fall in 2007 and forward into the six year forecast. The result will be a need to cut back, and to plan for the future cutbacks that will affect some of the services to county citizens.

As way of example of some of the future impacts to the budget, Rose pointed out that the payroll increase this year was 7%, but is expected to rise to 11% next year, and the health benefit increase will be 4.8%. One shocker was the state mandated increase in the retirement fund, which will be a 3% increase based on total gross wages.

The current draft is, as Rose pointed out, a "work in progress", and as new information is obtained. and numbers adjusted, the final draft that will be presented for a public hearing will, if nothing else, be understandable, and should lend itself to insightful and useful comments from the pubic.