More than $14 million in funding applications and just around $3.5 million to spare — that's the premise for the Citizens' Advisory Committee on Measure Z Expenditures, a group of residents responsible for recommending who gets a slice of the revenue from a half-percent countywide sales tax for the next fiscal year.
The sales tax, which costs Humboldt County residents a half-cent per dollar spent, is built for "essential services," such as emergency response, crime investigations and mental health services.
The committee, comprised of 12 residents, including 10 voting members and two alternates, will convene this Thursday to officially begin discussing their priorities for where the money should go.
The largest request comes from the county Public Works department, which is asking for just shy of $4 million. Of that, $3 million would go into the department's basic maintenance fund instead of toward a specific plan or project.
Not designating the money would keep the funding flexible, said Public Works Director Tom Mattson.
A surplus, in general, goes back into the county's pool of unallocated sales tax revenue, Mattson said.
The other two largest requests come from the Humboldt County Fire Chief's Association, which is asking for more than $2 million, and an application from both the Eureka Police Department and Humboldt Bay Fire, which have applied for just over $1 million to improve radio communications.
Although the committee is held to state laws that govern how appointed bodies should be open to the public, the way the committee decides things is mostly up to its members, according to several members and county spokesperson Sean Quincey.
"Last year, they had to create their own process for how they were going to recommend for the budget," Quincey said.
New committee members include Hoopa Valley Tribal Councilmember Vivienna Orcutt, the 5th District appointee, and Humboldt Bay Fire Chief Sean Robertson, the county Fire Chiefs' Association representative. Both said they haven't received much direction or training on procedures besides some informational papers.
In past years, the committee organized applications based on how closely they match the language of the sales tax measure and then voted on each request.
The committee's decisions are not final. County staff uses the decisions to inform recommendations to the board of supervisors, which has the final call on how the funding is allocated.
While planning its mid-year budget this past November, the Board of Supervisors directed an extra half-million dollars of unallocated tax revenue to Public Works for what Mattson called much-needed road repair.
Sheriff William Honsal, who attended the November meeting, said decisions come down to the language of the tax and the county's biggest priorities, as well as the right pitch.
More information: The agenda can be found online at https://humboldtgov.org/AgendaCenter/Citizens-Advisory-Committee-on-Measure-Z-25/. Within the agenda, there are links for each individual Measure Z request.