On Tuesday, Nevada County Supervisors adopted the budget for the fiscal year 2025-2026 by a 4-1 vote. The budget totals $415.5 million, a 7.3% increase over the adopted 2024-2025 budget.
The lone No vote, District 2 Supervisor Robb Tucker, offered little substance to explain his opposition. “When I look at the trend, to me pretty much every occurrence, general occurrence, seems negative to the untrained eye. Our expenses are up now, granted our revenues are up too. But revenues are really taxpayer dollars ultimately, whether federal, state or local, so I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing as opposed to private sector [where] it’s a good thing to have more revenue.”
The last county budget that did not pass unanimously was the 2003-2004 budget, with then Supervisor Drew Bedwell prioritizing ideology over service and voting No.
The county’s Chief Fiscal Officer Erin Mettler explained that large one-time expenditures, like bridge construction or replacing systems are offset by grant funding specific to these projects. She also pointed to contingency plans should federal or state grants not materialize. Neither the State nor the federal budget have been finalized at this time.
The increase in services and supplies is due to increased spending related to grants received in the Office of Emergency Services (OES) and Health and Human Services (HHS), according to the county’s budget document.
Additional staffing for additional projects
The projected increase in staffing (24.5 full-time positions) is always subject to the vacancy review process. The largest increases in full-time staff were in the Health and Human Services Agency to support continued rollout of the state’s CalAIM Medi-Cal reform project including payment reform changes in the Behavioral Health department. [source: county budget document]
Staffing and the ensuing unfunded pension liabilities were of concern to the new-ish District 2 Supervisor. “I’m talking about the 24 that we’ve added and the hundreds we’ve added since 2013. I don’t know if myself or the public sees a correlating interest in service from the county.”
To clarify the “hundreds” of employees added:
Total county employees in 2013: 773 (No OES, Recreation, Economic Dev. departments)
Total county employees in 2025: 932
CEO Alison Lehman pointed out, “We now have less staff than in 2007.” She did not go back further in time, but between 2000-2005, Nevada County had over 1,000 employees.
District 4 Supervisor Sue Hoek also commented on the staffing, “I understand what Supervisor Tucker is bringing forward, but I think the management we’ve done and I think there’s different stories to unfunded liability, there’s going to be some changes in the next few years. There’s always ebbs and flows to it. I’m always challenged with who handles that, not at the county but at the CalPERS level. I think we’re doing a good job. I see counties that bonded it out and now they’re paying two payments… I look at staffing, this County produces a lot and we have a lot of unfunded mandates that come in.” Speaking about the budget subcommittee, she thanked Supervisors Swarthout and Hall for this year’s work, adding it is a hard job as she and Supervisor Bullock know from personal experience. She concluded, “I think we’re very fiscally responsible and I am in support of this.”
District 3 Supervisor Lisa Swarthout, who was part of this year’s budget subcommittee, started by thanking the finance team and all the departments who worked on this budget for months, making sure their budget is in alignment with the goals and objectives of the county and fiscally responsible. “I struggle also with adding staff, but after being part of the budget subcommittee and listening to the justification from each department that came in that got additional staff, I’m going to guess that there was requests for probably three or four times as much staffing as what we added. They probably came in with over 100 positions, and we funded 24 I think. Some of those are funded through additional realignment, so it’s not general fund money. It’s a complicated, arduous process. I respect everybody who’s involved. I didn’t agree with everything but you know we are a democracy and we get to vote on, you know, how it all works. Overall, I’m satisfied with the work that we’ve done. The other thing I think is important to understand is that our staff keeps such a great eye on what is happening both locally and at the state and federal level that we have a pretty easy ability to come back and make adjustments to this as we move forward.”
District 1 Supervisor Heidi Hall also thanked everyone who worked on the budget and reminded everyone that “this is actually the county work that we are mandated to do and what we chose to do on top of that. Much of that is coming from the state and the feds, some of it is coming from taxes. It is a big part of our economy here, all these contracts that we fund to do the work we’re mandated to do.
In the end, Supervisors voted unanimously on the appropriations limitation, the staffing resolution passed with a 4-1 vote (Tucker No), the salary resolution passed with a 4-1 vote (Tucker No), the budget commitments and assignments resolution passed with a 4-1 vote (Tucker No), the Proposition 172 allocation passed unanimously and the resolution adopting the Nevada County Fiscal Year 2025-2026 Budget, totaling $415,450,064 passed by a 4-1 vote (Tucker No).
The adopted county budget, policies and capital improvement plans are available here.