Monterey County, California

Overview

Monterey County's FY 2025-26 adopted budget appropriates $2,225,986,519 across all funds against revenues of $2,139,022,899, a gap of $86,963,620 covered from fund balance — consistent with the board record's summary of about $2.23 billion in appropriations, about $2.10 billion in revenues, and $87 million of fund balance. The General Fund (fund 1001) accounts for $971,145,889 of expenditures against $947,689,121 of revenues. The budget was adopted June 17, 2025, on a 4-1 vote.

Source: County of Monterey FY 2026-27 Recommended Budget book, Fund Analysis schedules, Adopted Budget 2025-26 column.

At a glance — FY 2025-26 adopted

Source: County of Monterey FY 2026-27 Recommended Budget book, Fund Analysis schedules.

All funds — expenditures by fund, FY 2025-26 adopted

The ten largest funds below sum to $2,101,001,265. The remaining $124,985,254 — community service areas, special districts, internal service funds, and smaller funds — is shown as a computed residual so the table sums exactly to the book's grand total of $2,225,986,519.

All-funds revenues in the same adopted column total $2,139,022,899, so expenditures exceed revenues by $86,963,620, the fund-balance use noted above.

Source: County of Monterey FY 2026-27 Recommended Budget book, Analysis of Expenditures by Fund and Analysis of Revenue by Fund (All Funds), Adopted Budget 2025-26 column.

General Fund — FY 2025-26 adopted

Source: County of Monterey FY 2026-27 Recommended Budget book, Fund Analysis, fund 1001, Adopted Budget 2025-26 column.

Positions

The FY 2026-27 Recommended Budget supports 5,700.8 positions, a decrease of 111.1 (−2%) from the current year. That implies 5,811.9 positions for FY 2025-26. This figure is disclosed as derived from the later book's comparison, not taken from a standalone FY 2025-26 adopted-budget position table.

Source: County of Monterey FY 2026-27 Recommended Budget book, position comparison.

Livability — Monterey County

Monterey County scores 41.9 on the Hometown Numbers Livability Index, ranked #45 of 58 ranked California counties. Violent crime: 437.4 reported violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2024 (FBI Crime Data Explorer; score 55.3, 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 — Monterey County

County-level figures for Monterey County.

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

Public schools — Monterey County

Schools physically located in Monterey County.

150 public schools in 35 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: Buckhorn Early Learning 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 Monterey 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 (1001) expenditures, FY 2025-26 adopted.

Fund-balance % dashed: no GF ending balance published ($23,456,768 is fund-balance use/gap, not ending)

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

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

Santa Cruz County: Fund-balance % dashed: available fund balance $19,600,461 is beginning, not ending

Kings County: No Kings 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.

San Luis Obispo County: No San Luis Obispo 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: County of Monterey FY 2026-27 Recommended Budget book, Adopted Budget 2025-26 columns. Read the budget book.
• Sum checks: all-funds expenditures $2,225,986,519 − revenues $2,139,022,899 = $86,963,620 fund-balance use; General Fund $971,145,889 − $947,689,121 = $23,456,768; the ten listed funds ($2,101,001,265) + computed residual ($124,985,254) = $2,225,986,519 exactly.
• Disclosed, not smoothed: (1) basis is the Adopted FY 2025-26 column of the FY 2026-27 Recommended Budget book — the standalone FY 2025-26 adopted book was not isolated; (2) positions (5,811.9) are derived, not from an adopted position table; (3) no outstanding debt total is claimed.
• Fiscal-year label: FY 2025-26 (July 1, 2025–June 30, 2026); adopted June 17, 2025 (4-1 vote).
• Jurisdiction palette: no verified Monterey 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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