UKIAH, CA., 6/3/26 — Mendocino County supervisors set aside two days to work through next year’s budget. They finished in one.
On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors reviewed the county’s spending plan for the fiscal year that begins July 1 and voted unanimously to approve the budget recommended by Chief Executive Officer Darcie Antle. The board directed the auditor-controller to prepare the documents for final adoption on June 23.
The county had reserved Wednesday, June 3, as a second day “if necessary.” It wasn’t. The June 3 session was canceled.
A balanced budget — with costs
On paper, the budget is balanced — money going out matches money coming in. To get there, the county draws on about $2.6 million in leftover cash from past years. County officials say that money goes only to one-time costs, such as repairing or replacing a piece of equipment, not the recurring bills that come every year.
The county acknowledges a deeper problem. In her budget message, Antle wrote that the county “has operated under a structural deficit for many years” — its regular costs have run higher than its regular income for a long time. A state review in December described the county’s finances as “strained” and “gradually declining.”
The plan counts on about $106.7 million in the county’s general fund, with roughly $93 million of that going to county departments.
The biggest change the board approved was on the revenue side. The county lowered how much money it expects to take in next year by about $5 million, mostly from property taxes and hotel taxes coming in softer than expected. Day-to-day staffing barely moved — a net loss of one job across the county — though the jail added five corrections officers as it opens a new wing.
The new wing is a behavioral health unit at the county jail, paid for mostly by a $25 million state grant the county was awarded in 2017, plus a $1.1 million county match and $7 million in Measure B money the board added in September 2024. Construction started in February 2024 and was scheduled to wrap in January 2026, years behind an original 2021 target that slipped on the pandemic and rising costs. The five corrections officers the budget adds are tied to bringing the unit online; the county expects to staff it in this fiscal year.
About 95% of the county’s $93 million pays for just two things. Public safety — the sheriff, the jail, the district attorney and probation — take the largest share. General government, the offices that keep the county running, takes most of the rest: the executive office, the assessor, elections, payroll and the like. Together the two account for roughly $88.8 million of the $93 million.
That leaves about $4.2 million, the other 5%, for everything else, including health programs, libraries, parks and public assistance. All of those services couldn’t run on $4.2 million; most of their money comes from outside the general fund, in state and federal dollars tied to each program and spendable only on it.
The split is why the deficit is so hard to close. The general fund is the money the board actually controls, and almost all of it is already committed to public safety and the basic machinery of government. The county can’t trim libraries or health programs to save general-fund money, because those services barely draw on it to begin with, and the outside dollars that pay for them can’t be moved to fill a gap somewhere else. When cuts come, the board’s room to maneuver sits mostly in the same two functions that take up the 95%.
Where the “extra” $2.6 million goes
The $2.6 million isn’t new income. It’s leftover cash — money the county didn’t spend in past years, sitting in savings. The county is using it to help balance next year’s budget, but only on one-time costs: a repair, a piece of equipment, a short contract. By rule, it can’t pay for anything that comes back every year, such as a permanent salary, because once it’s spent, it’s gone.
Most of it goes to a handful of big items. The sheriff’s office and jail get the largest share, about $650,000 — $365,000 for jail projects, $153,000 for jail technology, and the rest for outfitting patrol vehicles, hiring bonuses to lure trained officers from other agencies, and guarding inmates at the hospital. A separate $500,000 keeps a long-running overhaul of the county’s finance and accounting system moving. After that comes $305,000 to repair buildings at the county-owned Little River Airport, $240,000 for work on county property, and $231,000 for a project to keep trash out of storm drains.
The rest is spread thin: $200,000 in short-term contracts for the executive office, $102,000 for environmental health to digitize records and update software, and smaller sums for the museum, the county hiring office, temporary staffing at juvenile hall and a $25,000 fix to the animal shelter’s incinerator. The county made few service cuts this year. The squeeze comes later, when this one-time money runs out, and the costs it covered are still there.
An unhappy union and a request for transparency
Most of the budget passed without debate. Two subjects took up the morning.
One was pay. Workers and their union, Service Employees International Union Local 1021, told the board they were unhappy with the county’s offer of a 1% raise. One employee said an earlier 3% cost-of-living raise was the only reason she could afford a home, and warned that low pay is driving workers out. “You guys want a contract by June 30, you gotta start giving something,” one speaker said. Talks continue.
The other was how transparently the county presents its numbers. Supervisor Maureen Mulheren said budget information is sometimes shown one-sided, pointing to a county report on a possible Ukiah annexation that, she said, counted the revenue the county would lose but not the costs and obligations it would shed.
“When we present only one side of the story, we risk creating a narrative rather than providing an analysis,” she said. Other supervisors discussed paying for an outside, neutral study that both the county and the city could trust.
The June 23 meeting is the real deadline. State law requires counties to adopt a final budget by June 30.
The harder test comes later. The budget works in part because of the one-time $2.6 million, money that does not come back. When it is gone, the county faces deeper cuts — and small departments already running with unfilled jobs will have little left to give.
Just wondering if this article might be a joke. They haven’t balanced the budget and I don’t know how long. They had three sets of books that they never did speak of to let us know why they had three sets of books going and nobody’s head rolled. I honestly don’t trust a single one of you
A 1% raise/COLA is effectively a CUT to county workers’ income.
We all know the official inflation figures are bovine excrement. So, instead of a, say, 5% COLA, the little folks who do the actual work of the county will lose again.
“All the money goes to public safety”- COULD HAVE FOOLED ME! So broke, they don’t even need 2 days to count their funds. “Keeping trash out of storm drains”- You could literally fill a sears catalog sized book full of pictures of the actual FILTH strewn all over this city and county- every river bank, almost every overpass- layers thick of garbage and needles. Who do you think you’re fooling? Whoever you are paying for this job to pick up the garbage needs to be fired because all of Ukiah is a landfill now. I can’t think of ONE time the sheriff office has helped me when I really needed it. In fact, I can think of more times I could have really used their assistance and was in actual danger and they never run out of excuses. Poor, poor county people cant get another raise because they have to give the money to law enforcement *WAAAAAH*… “we need competitive wages to draw in and keep good employees”- THEN WHY ARE SOME OF YOUR COUNTY WORKERS LIVING IN THEIR CARS!?… Every decent person employed by this sorry excuse of a county ought to find better elsewhere and let these idiots sit in the mess they made. I hope chamese cubbison wipes out their entire budget from her lawsuit and they have to turn the county over to the state. I hope the people who caused all this have to stay living here as normal people with no power- having to try and find a way to live and failing at it- just like the people you screwed over (oh, sorry, the people you “served”- because they’re likely entitled and delusional enough to think that’s what they’re doing) There is no way out for mendo now. Only better futures for those who are wise enough to leave. They’ve put too many holes in the boat that they cannot fix while it’s still afloat… They will sacrifice every one of us, one by one, to avoid admitting to, or fixing, anything they’ve done. They’ll cut their own throat before they tell the truth.
I notice the supervisors make no mention of the collapsing land values caused by the end of the pot industry and do not even mention property tax revenue which are sure to decrease. Have seen several properties that sold in the past in the 400,000 dollar range now listed at 90,000 and there are no takers. Get ready some major financial problems in the coming years
I figured the plan was for those in the know to buy up the tax delinquent parcels via tax sales at a discount. I remember reading not long ago that the county was looking to add to peoples tax liens by arguing for the need to clean up parcels. Then the buyer gets cleaned up land and the new lower valuation.
The County will likely have the option to sell the soon to be defunct courthouse, which would be a cost item taken off the books along with sale proceeds which can balance some one time accounting deficits. The county BOS along with the elected heads can consider consolidating county office spaces and do more work from home policies. Technology does exist to do many functions from a home office which P&B already does now. They could sell off some of the unnecessary office buildings to build housing and or expand a nice park setting to the green belt.
Another Idea is to put the county office back into the old courthouse and sell the current campus to developers and use the proceed to update the old courthouse. Then apply a Hybrid work from home for employees.
I’m encouraging my kids to get the hell out of this town so they can live a better life.