Report: Rising costs threaten key Sonoma County services
Document suggests ability to enforce laws, run basic programs at risk
By BLEYS W. ROSE
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 4:30 a.m.

A new long-term blueprint for tackling Sonoma County's toughest issues also creates a framework for making hard and often politically unpalatable decisions.

The plan identifies inadequate tax revenue, demographic changes that increase costs for social services and criminal justice, and worn-out infrastructure such as veterans buildings and roads as crushing demands on the county's $1.2 billion annual budget.

The document, approved Tuesday, warns that the historic practice of making across-the-board reductions in all services will result in shorter hours at county offices, continued deterioration of roads and reduced ability to enforce public health and environmental laws as well as some criminal laws.

The plans lays out a timetable of tough choices: "If one rolls the clock forward five years, we may be required to reduce or eliminate prosecution of certain misdemeanor offenses in order to provide for adequate jail services, or cut park and recreational opportunities for youth to maintain acute alcohol and other drug services, or reduce maintenance on roads that have low use to fund maintenance of roads that have higher use."

County Supervisor Tim Smith, one of architects of the plan, lamented the "mobs" that turned out last week for a combined five hours of public hearings on the light brown apple moth and Russian River gravel mining, but were absent for discussion of the Strategic Plan that he said would have far more impact on their lives.

"We need to do something different and we need to do it soon," Smith said. "This document will help future supervisors winnow out what we should not be doing."

Discussions on Strategic Plan options have raised the possibility that some sort of revenue generation will be sought, but officials say it is too soon to say whether they would mean a county sales tax or property tax increase.

Discussions also have produced suggestions that local residents may have to fund repairs and that senior services may be cut.

Two supervisors not seeking re-election, Smith and Mike Reilly, led the effort to develop and implement the plan.

Assembled through interviews with county officials and supervisors, the plan concluded that the county's ability to provide basic services is threatened by escalating costs that outpace revenues and by competing demands on the annual budget.

You can reach Staff Writer Bleys W. Rose at 521-5431 or [email protected].