The board is working to fill the county’s forecasted $35.8 million budget gap for the next fiscal year, according to county documents.
At Tuesday’s board meeting, Court Appointed Special Advocates, or CASA urged supervisors to reinstate $80,000 dollars that has supported CASA’s Teen Mentor Program for the past 12 years.
Kirsti Tcherkoyan is a CASA volunteer.
“These kids, they deserve a chance. They deserve to have one of me standing next to them, walking with them, getting them into college,” said Tcherkoyan.
Other organizations and programs that could be impacted, or completely phased out of the budget include: 5 Cities Homeless Coalition, ECHO, The Health Agency program Martha’s Place, The transitional Mental Health Association project Growing Ground Nursery, Family Planning Clinics in Paso Robles and Grover Beach.
Meanwhile, supervisors said that handing down budget decisions that impact county services are extremely difficult.
However, Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg said county staff had carefully analyzed the budget cuts as part of their decision making process.
“We were able to look at really defined amounts of inputs and outputs," said Ortiz-Legg. "Things like that that really help us [to] be able to go back to the community and say, now how can we continue this service but do it in a way that's going to be affordable and sustainable?"
Supervisors voted to accept the budget plan and will consider using reserve funds to make up for the cuts to Health and Human Services, and other potential revenue to support nonprofit services.
The board is scheduled to reconvene for a budget hearing on June 9th.