Facing a near $18 million budget deficit in Fiscal Year 2027, Stanislaus County’s Community Services Agency – which oversees a variety of social programs – is initiating a partial hiring freeze, cuts to services, and the elimination of 71 vacant job posts, with potential cuts to 67 full-time positions.
CSA – which manages such programs as Child Welfare Services, Adult Protective Services, CalFresh, CalWORKS, Medi-Cal, in-home supportive services, and housing – has a budget of more than $187 million dollars with nearly 1,000 employees.
In early 2025, the county’s Chief Executive Office requested that CSA validate the source of its accumulated fund balance in the Program Services and Support budget to ensure that the county’s general fund hadn’t been over-recognized in prior fiscal years, according to a staff report. The available fund balance as of July 1, 2024, was nearly $32.9 million, and had grown significantly since Fiscal Year 2020, However, due to staff and leadership turnover over the past decade, historical and institutional knowledge and fiscal expertise in the department were lost, and standard accounting reconciliations had not been performed in many of the fiscal years under review.
In January 2026, the department’s fund balance work concluded that it faced a $3.2 million deficit for FY 2026. With escalators, the deficit is projected to be approximately $17.9 million for the upcoming fiscal year. That $17.9 million deficit represents the deficit if the department continues current operations, but according to the report it can be reduced to approximately $13.5 million by reorganizing operations to maximizing allocations: belt tightening.
“There’s going to be real impacts to the community; there’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it,” said Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors chairman Vito Chiesa during the Supervisors’ Aug. 4 meeting. “You heard where they could occur, but they’re going to occur because there is going to be fewer people.”
Impacts to Child Welfare Services and Adult Protective Services (APS) include less child/youth/family supportive services and Social Security advocacy, less assistance and housing for foster youth, less sober living, health, sexual abuse, and respite-care services, less assistance maintaining safe living conditions and avoiding self-neglect, and less help with transportation and legal processes.
CSA considered multiple options to deal with the deficit, including a hiring pause in July 2025, a formal hiring freeze, and eliminating optional vacation cash-outs this past April. In May of this year, CSA eliminated all extra help and part-time positions.
“We looked for opportunities to achieve savings that will have the least impact on the community, on staff, and the county general fund,” said CSA Director Christine Huber, who listed other strategies have been incorporated in the development of the 2027 adopted budget, to balance the budget:
- Maximize federal and state allocation revenue
- Reduce discretionary expenses and operational overhead
- Reduce contracted and supported services and other direct-to-program costs
- Reduce staff development, overtime
- Defer the purchase of vehicles and equipment
“It’s been about six months since this came to light,” said Chiesa. “It’s taken us that long to tear it apart and figure out what’s going on. The natural reaction is the quicker we make changes, the less the impact is going to be. But there are many more things that come up when you’re talking about employees … you have to negotiate with the union. It’s a lot more difficult than in private industry.”
The supervisors voted unanimously to accept the report’s recommendations to balance the budget and mitigate the impacts felt throughout the county.
