Cloverdale is joining a growing group of cities closed for business on Fridays. The Friday closures of Cloverdale City Hall will begin March 2, part of a series of cost-cutting measures approved by the City Council to offset the latest dip in general fund revenues.

Facing $8.3 million in potential cuts in the upcoming school year, Santa Rosa City Schools officials are considering putting a tax measure before voters in November. “We are at a point of almost desperation,” school board member Tad Wakefield said. Would you pay more to fund local schools?

Sonoma County government faces its fourth consecutive year of budget reductions, with a projected $10.4 million general fund deficit in the coming 2012-2013 fiscal year, county officials said Tuesday. Increasing county costs, including rising salary and benefit expenses, have continued to outpace flat or declining revenues. “We are not going to get out of this mess without permanent change in our budgeting. And that’s going to mean permanent reductions in our pay and/or our pensions,” Supervisor Mike McGuire said.

Daniel A. Drummond, executive director of the Sonoma County Taxpayers’ Association, says Gov. Jerry Brown is presenting voters with a false choice: increase taxes or cut schools. He says the governor and the media are complicit in seeking to create a sense of fear by focusing on threatened cuts to high-profile services such as education and parks, or services to the poor and disabled. Instead, Drummond says, we should confront the real problems before us. What do you think?

Local government officials express horror, warning of ‘carnage’ to budgets, delays for critical community projects and setbacks for economic recovery efforts.
School officials are encouraged, expecting to enjoy a larger slice of the property-tax pie.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s hastily released state budget proposal would slash local health and human services programs while tying the fate of school funding to a proposed tax measure he wants on the November ballot. Whether the measure makes it to the ballot, and whether voters will approve it remains uncertain, leaving Sonoma County school districts again facing the prospect of building two budgets.

Agencies across Sonoma County were scrambling Tuesday to determine the impact of the $1 billion in statewide cuts Gov. Jerry Brown announced as part of his latest bid to balance the state’s budget. The range of public services affected includes programs for the ailing and developmentally disabled, fees charged to the county for housing violent juvenile offenders and support for higher education.

Gary Plass is the new mayor of Healdsburg. He assumes the post at a challenging time, as the city’s deficit has deepened and it seeks to wrest concessions from employee groups. “We have to do something. It’s not sustainable at this point,” Plass said.

Sugarloaf Ridge State Park shut down entirely this week for the winter, a first in the park’s 47-year history and another troubling sign of the crisis enveloping California’s beleaguered parks system. Parks officials said they are uncertain whether Sugarloaf can be reopened in the spring, or whether budget problems will force them to keep the popular 4,000-acre park east of Kenwood shut.

The recession has increased demand in Sonoma County for court-appointed lawyers at a time when the public defender’s office is short-handed. Retirements and a round of layoffs have reduced the number of lawyers available to serve indigent clients to the lowest level in years. “People can’t afford to hire private counsel,” Public Defender John Abrahams said. “And we are short-handed.”