BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT
And joining us in studio B this morning, Supervisor Jeff Flores, coming in with some comments on all of this. Thanks for coming in.
Good morning, Mike.
All right, let's start off with what we just heard in there. Uh, one of the people who walked up to the podium and spoke was concerned about the loss of 35 positions. Can you go a little deeper? Touch on the money, the cut, and who's being impacted?
Sure, so, um, we get state money, we get federal money, uh, CD and state money combined $12.5 million to pay for these jobs to pay for these services to protect the public health, uh, both are being cut, so the county has a policy of not uh backfilling those cuts for one-time dollars and so, uh, ultimately we've got to adjust. We have to protect the mission, which is to advance and protect the public health, and we can do just that. We have a $38 million budget. We have over 20. Staff in this department can carry on the mission, and we can do the work despite the cuts. Now I welcome the federal dollars. I welcome the state dollars, but those are going away and so we have to make adjustments.
And so on the medical side, what exactly is being taken off the table?
So what's being taken off the table is a mobile clinic that goes around the county, a clinic in Shafter, and some reduced appointments at the flagship at Mount Vernon. And public health does a credible job. We've got real issues here with asthma, with obesity, with STDs. Uh, we can still focus on all of that, but instead of maybe going waiting for curbside service at, at, uh, outside periphery out out in the county, you might have to come into Mount Vernon instead of having 70 appointments a day, we might have only 30 now, and so we will still serve the public. We'll still do the job, and we will get it done.
I'm sure that the county has already looked through different corners and different areas, and they always talk about money on the shelves. They talked about the reserves out there. Why can't the reserves be used in a situation like this?
Well, we use reserves for, you know, critical emergencies, you know, if the state doesn't pay us, we've got to make payroll. There could be a disaster, there could be a flood, there could be a fire. Those are the emergencies, so to speak. So when state and federal dollars go away for one-time programs, we don't typically take reserves. Money to backfill funds that are no longer coming in. We make budget adjustments, uh, to fill in for that. We could look at measure K. We could look at, uh, creating economic development, more revenue, and what comes to mind is the recent actions we took on oil. Let's unleash the power of Kern County oil. Let's get those revenues in, and we can hire double the staff. If we unleash the power of Kern, we could -- we can do great things.
Where else have you found that you need to tighten the belt?
So, um, with revenue that's down, uh, in oil, well, we've, we've taken certain steps to protect the industry to increase permits. I think the state is listening to us. I think that, uh, I feel very bullish. Have you heard any movement there? Yes, I have. Uh, we're, they're looking at a bill to codify and protect Kern County, to protect our ordinance at the state level because they understand the importance of what we provide to the refining system, to gas prices, to local production, to state production.
So that could be a game changer for revenue. Historically, we've had 65% of valuations of oil. Now we're down to 9% as of last night. That was the latest figure. So we need to get that up. We also need to diversify. We need to look at other economic developments. We need to look at logistics, at aerospace. at AG, at new industries because we have to diversify and we're doing that also.
All right, Jeff Flores, thank you for coming in this morning and sharing your thoughts. Appreciate it.
You bet. Thank you, Mike.
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