Merced County, California

Overview

Merced County's audited governmental funds for the year ended June 30, 2025 report $757,949,566 in total revenues and $755,472,780 in total expenditures. The General Fund reports $621,871,085 in revenues and $604,219,574 in expenditures, ending the year at $179,609,578 (down $999,094). Total governmental funds ended at $322,023,418, and the change in net position of governmental activities was $128,619,965. Notably, final budgeted General Fund revenues of $728,521,356 came in $106,650,271 above actuals, driven largely by aid from other governments.

Source: County of Merced Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, FY ended June 30, 2025 (board agenda portal).

At a glance — ACFR, FY ended June 30, 2025

Source: County of Merced Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, FY ended June 30, 2025 (board agenda portal).

Governmental funds — year ended June 30, 2025

Total revenue lines sum exactly to $757,949,566 and total expenditure lines exactly to $755,472,780.

Revenues, total governmental funds.

Expenditures, total governmental funds.

Source: County of Merced ACFR FY 2024-25, Statement of Revenues, Expenditures, and Changes in Fund Balances — Governmental Funds (p. 29).

General Fund — actuals and budget comparison

General Fund revenue lines sum exactly to $621,871,085 and expenditure lines exactly to $604,219,574. The balance walk is exact: beginning $180,608,672 − $999,094 net change = $179,609,578 ending. The budget-and-actual schedule shows final budgeted revenues of $728,521,356 against actuals of $621,871,085 — a −$106,650,271 variance, driven largely by aid from other governmental agencies (actual $380,262,015 vs final budget $469,463,760).

General Fund revenues, actual.

General Fund expenditures, actual.

General Fund balance walk and budget comparison.

Source: County of Merced ACFR FY 2024-25, Governmental Funds statement (p. 29) and General Fund Budget and Actual schedule (p. 31).

Elected officials

The ACFR names the Auditor-Controller below. The Board of Supervisors has five district-elected members, but their names are not shown in the cited ACFR excerpts, so no supervisor names are listed here rather than risking stale names.

Source: County of Merced ACFR FY 2024-25.

Board meetings

The Board of Supervisors meets at 10:00 a.m. two Tuesdays per month in the Board Chambers on the third floor of the Merced County Administration Building, 2222 M Street, Merced.

Next meeting: Tuesday, November 3, 2026, 10:00 a.m.

Merced County Board of Supervisors

Livability — Merced County

Merced County scores 34.4 on the Hometown Numbers Livability Index, ranked #53 of 58 ranked California counties. Violent crime: 527.3 reported violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2024 (FBI Crime Data Explorer; score 25.4, where a higher score means a lower rate). Full rankings: California livability rankings.

Method: percentile rank (count below + 0.5 × count equal) ÷ N × 100, lower-better measures inverted; composite is the mean of available component scores, rounded to 1 decimal; a county needs at least 5 of 7 components or it is unranked, never estimated. Vintages: ACS 2024 5-year (2020–2024) for housing affordability, income, and commute; FBI Crime Data Explorer 2024 for violent crime; County Health Rankings 2025 release for graduation and uninsured. Unemployment (BLS LAUS 2024) is missing for every California county because the BLS public API was unreachable (HTTP 503) on 2026-10-25; composites rest on the other components and will be recomputed if BLS data becomes available.

Housing prices — Merced County

County-level figures for Merced County.

Source: American Community Survey 2024 5-year estimates (2020–2024), tables B25077 (median home value) and B25064 (median gross rent).

Public schools — Merced County

Schools physically located in Merced County.

116 public schools in 22 school districts, from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES EDGE Public School Locations, 2024–25 school year).

1 schools in the NCES 2024–25 locations list for this county are not shown because they are not currently open: Early Education Center (status 7) — temporarily closed (status 6) or scheduled to open within 2 years (status 7) under NCES CCD operational status codes.

School performance (proficiency): district-level proficiency values are published in the federal Ed Data Express tool and are retrievable by CSV export, but they have not yet been added to this page — the export requires a live-browser download (direct requests to the tool are blocked), so no proficiency figures are shown rather than substituted ones. Source for the list: NCES EDGE Public School Locations — Current, 2024–25.

Neighbor comparison

How Merced County’s General Fund spending per resident and fund-balance share compare with adjacent counties, computed from each dashboard’s own published figures.

GF figure: General Fund expenditures, FY 2024-25 actual.

Fund balance: General Fund fund balance, June 30, 2025.

Fresno County: Fund-balance % dashed: fund balance available $89,000,000 is beginning, not ending

Mariposa County: Fund-balance % dashed: no GF ending balance published

San Benito County: Fund-balance % dashed: no GF ending balance published (reserves $7,090,000 + restricted $5,065,000 are capital-component reserves)

Santa Clara County: Fund-balance % dashed: no GF ending balance published

Stanislaus County: Fund-balance % dashed: no GF ending balance published ($72,186,652 funding required is a gap, not ending)

Madera County: No Madera County dashboard in this dataset (no county GF figure exists here); a city dashboard in the county, if any, does not supply a county figure.

Per-capita GF spending = the dashboard’s published General Fund total ÷ county population (ACS 2024 5-year, table B01003). Fund balance % = published GF ending balance ÷ GF total for the same fiscal year unless noted.

— in the fund-balance column means no GF ending balance is published on that dashboard (adopted budgets typically state only a January 1 balance).

Neighbor rows are county figures for the counties adjacent to the home county (U.S. Census Bureau County Adjacency File, 2024; out-of-state neighbors excluded).

Sources & notes

• Only source used for figures: County of Merced, Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for the Fiscal Year ended June 30, 2025 (board agenda portal). ACFR FY 2024-25.
• Sum checks: total revenues exact ($757,949,566); total expenditures exact ($755,472,780); General Fund revenues exact ($621,871,085); General Fund expenditures exact ($604,219,574); General Fund balance walk exact ($179,609,578); total governmental funds walk exact ($322,023,418).
• What is not claimed: no FY 2025-26 Final Budget figures (that book was not retrieved; its $1.12 billion approval is not a page figure); no outstanding-debt total was extracted from the cited statements; supervisor names are not listed because they are not shown in the cited ACFR excerpts.
• Jurisdiction palette: no verified Merced County palette was on file, so this page uses the neutral Hometown Numbers dark-glass theme rather than a county color.

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