San Mateo County, California

Overview

San Mateo County’s FY 2025-26 adopted budget totals $5,497,508,381 across all funds: $4,749,948,154 governmental and $747,560,227 other funds. The General Fund is $4,004,875,924 — nearly three-quarters of the all-funds total. By function, General government is the largest at $1,592,181,561 (driven by Non-Departmental Services of $1,320,134,518), followed by Health and Sanitation at $671,929,756 and Public Protection at $612,262,971. The county’s appropriation limit is $1,121,601,401.

Source: County of San Mateo, Fiscal Year 2025-26 Adopted Budget, Schedules 1, 2, 7, and 8.

At a glance — FY 2025-26 adopted

Source: County of San Mateo, Fiscal Year 2025-26 Adopted Budget.

All funds summary — Schedule 1, FY 2025-26

Governmental funds: fund balance available of $1,886,242,270 plus additional financing sources of $2,863,705,884 equals $4,749,948,154; financing uses of $4,237,872,096 plus increases to obligated balances of $512,076,058 equals the same total — exact. Other funds and all funds reconcile exactly the same way.

Source: County of San Mateo, Fiscal Year 2025-26 Adopted Budget, Schedule 1.

Financing uses by function — Schedule 8, adopted

Function totals sum exactly to the Schedule 8 grand total of $4,047,942,972. That grand total sits $189,929,124 below Schedule 7’s total financing uses of $4,237,872,096; the difference is not itemized in the extracted Schedule 7 lines and is shown here as an unitemized remainder, not assigned to any function.

Largest Schedule 8 activities within the General function: Legislation and Administration $1,359,675,485 (including Non-Departmental Services $1,320,134,518, County Executive’s Office/Clerk of the Board $33,011,088, and Board of Supervisors $6,529,879); Finance $77,306,859; Other General $90,736,854; Counsel $17,952,595; Personnel $25,972,185; Other Protection $20,537,583. Within Public Protection: Detention and Corrections $409,412,679 (including Sheriff’s Office $324,224,723 and Probation $84,570,963), Judicial $94,899,284, Other Protection $69,700,251, Fire Protection $38,250,757.

Source: County of San Mateo, Fiscal Year 2025-26 Adopted Budget, Schedules 7 and 8.

General Fund detail

The General Fund’s financing sources total $4,004,875,924: fund balance available of $1,625,590,539 plus additional financing sources of $2,379,285,385. On the uses side, financing uses of $3,598,803,619 plus increases to obligated balances of $406,072,305 equal the same total — exact. The General Fund’s total fund balance at June 30, 2025 was $1,648,119,840, of which $1,625,590,539 was available after encumbrances of $2,881,271, nonspendable/restricted/committed amounts of $8,112,311, and assigned amounts of $11,535,719.

Source: County of San Mateo, Fiscal Year 2025-26 Adopted Budget, Schedules 1, 2, and 3.

Elected officials

As named in the adoption resolutions in the Adopted Budget book. No contact details are shown because none are given in the cited document.

Source: County of San Mateo, Fiscal Year 2025-26 Adopted Budget, Resolutions No. 081418 and No. 081419.

Board meetings

The Board of Supervisors meets on Tuesdays at 9:00 a.m. in the Board Chambers, 500 County Center, 1st Floor, Redwood City, on dates set by the Board’s adopted calendar — not every Tuesday.

Next meeting: Tuesday, November 3, 2026, 9:00 a.m.

San Mateo County Board of Supervisors meeting calendar (Legistar)

Livability — San Mateo County

San Mateo County scores 58.4 on the Hometown Numbers Livability Index, ranked #13 of 58 ranked California counties. Violent crime: 266.1 reported violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2024 (FBI Crime Data Explorer; score 92.1, 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 — San Mateo County

County-level figures for San Mateo County.

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

Public schools — San Mateo County

Schools physically located in San Mateo County.

175 public schools in 37 school districts, from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES EDGE Public School Locations, 2024–25 school year).

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 San Mateo 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 total financing sources, FY 2025-26 adopted.

Fund-balance % dashed: June 30, 2025 total fund balance $1,648,119,840 is prior-year, not FY 2025-26 ending

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

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

San Francisco County: No San Francisco 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 San Mateo, Fiscal Year 2025-26 Adopted Budget book (December 1, 2025). Adopted Budget book.
• Sum checks: Schedule 1 governmental exact ($4,749,948,154 both sides); other funds exact ($747,560,227 both sides); all funds exact ($5,497,508,381 both sides); General Fund exact ($4,004,875,924 both sides); Schedule 8 functions exact ($4,047,942,972); General function components exact ($1,592,181,561); Public Protection components exact ($612,262,971); Health and Sanitation components exact ($671,929,756); Public Assistance components exact ($584,171,379).
• What is not claimed: the $189,929,124 gap between Schedule 8’s function grand total and Schedule 7’s financing-uses total is not itemized in the extracted lines and is not labeled as contingencies or any other line; the roughly $4.9 billion figure in county news is not used (the book’s $5,497,508,381 governs); no outstanding-debt total is shown from this book.
• Jurisdiction palette: no verified San Mateo 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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