Dear Friends,

As your County Supervisor, one of the responsibilities I take most seriously is being a careful steward of taxpayer dollars. This funding belongs to our communities and deserves to be reinvested into our neighborhoods for residents’ benefit.

At this week’s Board of Supervisors meeting, our Chief Executive Officer presented the Supervisors with a $38.5 billion budget proposal for the next fiscal year. The recommended budget gets a number of things right. The $12 million to fund an additional Sheriff’s academy is an investment in creating a new generation of deputies and protecting public safety. Additionally, the $15.3 million allocation to the Sheriff’s Department and our County’s Department of Health Services to meet our constitutional obligation to provide mental health services in our jails is a necessity. I was pleased to see both of these included in the budget.

We must harness our County’s spending power to provide essential services and address issues that impact residents each day. The pandemic showed us that we must be prepared at any given moment to meet urgent needs, protect lives, and support public safety.

The budget process is still ongoing and the document will be under careful review and revision in the months to come. We will have budget deliberations in June and formally adopt the budget in October. I encourage you to get involved in the process by tuning into our Board of Supervisors meetings, which you can see at bos.lacounty.gov. Head to ceo.lacounty.gov/budget to check out details about the budget proposal and to watch a short video that explains how the process works.

Thank you for your engagement. These are your dollars and they should work for you.

Best wishes,

Kathryn Barger

Kathryn Barger represents the Fifth District, which includes the Santa Clarita Valley. She has an office in the Santa Clarita Valley at 27441 Tourney Road Suite 120, Valencia, CA 91355. (661) 287-3657.