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Uploaded: Wednesday, May 4, 2011, 11:26 AM
Supes cut nearly $4.7 million from county budget
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The Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a budget on Tuesday for the 2011-2012 fiscal year that includes $46.9 million in cuts, mainly to funding for public safety.
The cuts come on top of $250 million the county has cut from the budget over the past three years, County Administrator David Twa said.
The new cuts require the elimination 138 positions, including 42 positions from the probation department, 28 from the sheriff's office and 12 from the district attorney's office.
Other cuts include 33 positions eliminated from the conservation and development department, eight from the public defender's office, seven
from the employment and human services department, five from the human resources department, two from the general services department and one from the treasurer-tax collector's office.
Of those 138 positions, however, only 107 were funded this year and not all of them are currently filled.
More than a dozen people, including several department heads and union representatives, spoke at the meeting in opposition to the cuts.
District Attorney Mark Peterson said if he makes the cuts, he would be forced to reduce prosecution of misdemeanor, domestic violence and sex offender registration cases and scrap crime prevention programs.
Although supervisors passed the budget, issues of where the cuts will fall still need to be worked out.
Peterson and Sheriff David Livingston were the only two department heads who declined to provide Twa's office with lists of positions to be cut. That issue will be taken up at a meeting scheduled for June 7.
— Bay City News Service Are you receiving Express, our free daily e-mail edition? See a sample and sign-up for Express.
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Posted by [removed], a resident of another community, on May 4, 2011 at 11:46 am Dear Editor,
With the DA and Sheriff elected against candidates endorsed by Contra Costa aggregate politics, do your readers wonder about the political content in the budget decisions? Can voters have confidence that their choices for DA and Sheriff are being provided appropriate funding and operations support by our supervisors? Should our county grand jury be engaged in investigating the fairness of budgets versus political reprisals?
What questions would your readers ask of supervisors in the matter of budget priorities and where would your readers place public safety in those priorities?
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Posted by Ben, a resident of the Danville neighborhood, on May 4, 2011 at 1:40 pm [removed] sounds like the Hal Bailey guy ... confusing!
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Posted by Julia, a resident of the Alamo neighborhood, on May 6, 2011 at 9:01 am Hey Ben, it's not confusing. It happens all the time. If the political's don't happen to want that specific in place they do the only thing they can do...cut their budget so they can not function properly. Open your eye's, look East it happens everyday back in DC.
Great comment [removed]
Julia from Alamo
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Posted by [removed}, a resident of another community, on May 8, 2011 at 8:50 am Dear Editor,
Did everyone read Lisa Vorderbrueggen's column today?
Obvious actions by DA Peterson and Sheriff Livingston is to force the CCC-BOS to make the cuts in attorneys and deputies and then face that issue in their re-election campaigns. With public safety a number one priority among voters, the result would be large black eye for the three supervisors running for re-election and an exceptional benefit to opposing campaigns.
With communities and neighborhoods throughout Contra Costa now engaged in this loss of public safety, the various neighborhood forums are preparing formal submission, including discovered county documents, for submission to the Grand Jury and requesting an immediate priority consideration of the actions against public safety by the supervisors.
Stay tuned, there is going to be some exceptional results as communities and neighborhoods make their anger with supervisors well know.
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