| Supervisor
Cox Ruffles a Few Feathers During Chamber Presentation
Dave Cox, Sacramento
County Supervisor, District 4, spoke at the Fair Oaks Chamber of Commerce
luncheon, Thursday, April 17, and caused a bit of a stir among members
of the audience.
Most attendees of the luncheon support the supervisor,
but several chamber members raised their eyebrows at comments made by Cox
during his 30-minute presentation.
In response to the County's responsibility to provide
more social services for, Cox mentioned that he was not in favor of the
pressure being put upon the County budget for social services, because
"The kinds of people who need those services are hard to retrain,
and, well, let's face it, most them are not the kind of people that you
want working for you. They are not model employees."
Responding to questions about the budget, Cox said
that he does not believe that Sacramento County needs to raise taxes to
increase revenue. "We have pots of money in cookie jars," Cox
said. "We just don't have the money in the right cookie jars."
Cox stated that the County has too many mandates
from State and Federal legislation, and that, out of a $1.2 million budget,
$322 million goes to law and justice departments (jails, the District Attorney.
Sixty percent of the budget, roughly $727 million, goes to human and social
services. According to Cox, $102 million goes to "everything else."
Of the "everything else," Cox said that 125,000 people in Sacramento
County receive some form of social services aid.
Of the "have-not" departments, the County
Supervisor included law enforcement and animal control. Several attendees
of the luncheon, who are Clover Club and Natoma Roberts Club 4-H leaders,
were dissatisfied with Cox's glossing over of the cuts in County funding
for 4-H, and other children's programs.
"He talks like it's the County's fault,"
said one of the 4-H leaders. "He forgot to mention that, to Fair Oaks,
Dave Cox is the County. He should be doing something about the money going
to our kids."
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