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.