Thumbnail photo by Paul Critz
Three weeks after supervisors approved a recommended budget that included a $9.6 million deficit, Del Norte County’s top administrative officials proposed a temporary freeze in hiring for general fund positions.
It’s a step the Board unanimously agreed to on Tuesday, but District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey said it won’t be enough to close the budget gap.
Starkey referenced the staff report County Administrative Officer Neal Lopez submitted, which stated that there were 31 vacant positions within the general fund, each yielding about $81,000 in savings per pay period. She noted that if the hiring freeze lasted for a year, Del Norte County would still have a $7.4 million budget deficit.
“My concern within this request, the 31 positions were not identified,” she said. “What departments are going to be impacted the most? How are we going to alleviate these really hard-to-fill positions — what if somebody comes along? If this was approved by the CAO, the auditor as well as the HR director, does it have to be unanimous, is there a process by which department heads could bring this forward in an appeal process? All these things I feel should have been addressed in the Board report.”
Lopez brought the proposed hiring freeze to the Board of Supervisors at a time when he and his budget team are conducting a second round of meetings with department heads. A list of potential cuts and savings will come to county supervisors at a series of workshops in August, he said.
Starkey voted against the recommended budget three of her colleagues approved on June 23 that allowed the county to continue to operate past July 1. According to the June 23 staff report Lopez and Auditor-Controller Clint Schaad presented, the total recommended budget was about $301.34 million with a general fund budget of about $52.9 million.
In their staff report, Lopez said implementing the changes the county’s compensation and organizational structure analysis called for as well as rising retirement and healthcare costs contributed to the deficit. The county administrative officer called the deficit one of the largest he’s seen in his career.
In addition to approving the recommended budget, the Board of Supervisors disallowed 2025-26 budget transfers that involves moving money designated for salaries and benefits to another expenditure category.
On Tuesday, in addition to approving the temporary hiring freeze, the Board’s decision also authorized Lopez, Schaad and the county human resources director to consider general fund employee requisitions on a case-by-case basis.
Lopez also noted that there were salary savings associated with the ending fund balance from the 2025-26 budget. The temporary hiring freeze he and his budget team were proposing on Tuesday would be future salary savings, he said.
The item will come back to the Board of Supervisors for consideration before the final budget is approved in September.
District 3 Supervisor Chris Howard, who was absent on June 23, acknowledged Starkey’s concerns, but said Del Norte needed an operating budget. Still, he said he was disappointed with some of the department heads and “their approach to this budget season that has caused this (deficit) to occur.”
“Some of that stuff is pretty unrealistic,” Howard said of the budget requests that were included this year. “People got to have respect for the system and what is generated by our tax dollars here in Del Norte County.”
District 5 Supervisor Dean Wilson, however, reiterated a statement he made on June 23, stating that he and his colleagues took “dramatic efforts” to make salaries more market competitive. In a conversation with KFUG Community Radio’s Heather Polen following Tuesday’s meeting, Wilson said those efforts increased the county’s operational costs by about 8%. In addition to increasing salaries, the cost of providing benefits as well as having workers compensation insurance also rose, he said.
Meanwhile, there’s a gap between those increased costs and the tax revenue Del Norte County takes in, Wilson said.
“We have to find a way to fill those gaps,” he said. “Those are the hard choices because it is going to impact services. If we cut positions, that impacts the services we provide to our community. Where we cut, how we cut, that is going to be the hard choice the Board is required to make whether it is to one organization or to another.”
Even though the Board of Supervisors chose to freeze several positions, the county will still be on the hook for retirement and workers compensation costs, Wilson said. But it will help stabilize the county’s finances until the Board of Supervisors does address those difficult decisions, he said.
Starkey, however, noted that if freezing 31 vacant positions saves about $81,000 per pay period each, the total amount saved by the time she and her colleagues consider the final budget will be about $500,000.
“This solution, while it is one solution, it’s not the overall solution,” she said. “I’m going to approve this, but I want to make sure that the budget team as well as the community knows that we are looking at this seriously and we’re really going to have to find better solutions than a just a hiring freeze.”
