San Mateo Grand Jury says County may not be so poor after all

....  "The crux of the jury’s report entitled “An inconvenient truth about the county’s so-called ‘structural deficit’” is ERAF, the money left after schools meet their funding requirements. San Mateo County is one of only three counties statewide that have extra funds and, while the money has come every fiscal year since 2004, Maltbie said it cannot be considered anything beyond one-time amounts.

We're paying Measures A and T taxes anyway,
are we getting our monies worth?

....  If the county actually counted ERAF in its budget calculations, there would be no actual deficit because the extra amount is actually more than the structural deficit, the jury reported. The decrease in unrestricted funds from year to year is not because of the structural deficit but “extraordinary” expenditures like $57 million to buy the Circle Star office buildings and new jail land, the jury report states.

....  Measure T placed a 2.5 percent rental car tax in the unincorporated areas. Measure A increased the county’s sales tax by a half-cent for the next 10 years. The Board of Supervisors is currently in the midst of tentatively allocating the $64 million annually and on Tuesday will consider multi-million dollar requests by private Seton Medical Center in Daly City and SamTrans."   The Daily Journal (San Mateo), Michelle Durand.  "Grand jury questions San Mateo County's budget deficit."  Read article.

"On the same day a grand jury released a report accusing San Mateo County officials of hoarding a stash of extra property tax revenue while crying about budget woes, County Manager John Maltbie lashed out Monday by contending the panel isn't credible. "We don't know how the grand jury came to the conclusion that we've been sitting on money that nobody knew about," Maltbie told The Daily News."   Palo Alto Daily News/Bonnie Eslinger, Staff, 7/22/13.  "San Mateo manager lashes out at grand jury's critical report on spending."  Read article.

Note:  Graphic from  Logophilius blog, "Good old-fashioned networking."

Posted by Kathy Meeh