Santa Cruz County, California

Overview

Santa Cruz County’s FY2025-26 adopted budget totals $1,065,023,439 across governmental funds, plus $289,624,208 in other funds (internal service, enterprise, and special districts) on the sources side. Health and Sanitation is the largest governmental function at $307,878,705, followed by Public Protection at $242,511,374 and Public Assistance at $217,205,555. Intergovernmental revenues of $579,470,249 dominate governmental financing sources. The General Fund alone totals $837,630,755 in financing sources, built from $816,248,227 in additional financing sources plus $19,600,461 in available fund balance and $1,782,067 in obligated-balance decreases.

Source: County of Santa Cruz, Adopted Budget, Fiscal Year 2025-26 (State Controller Schedules 1, 2, 5, 7).

At a glance — FY 2025-26 adopted

Source: County of Santa Cruz, Adopted Budget, FY 2025-26 (Schedules 1, 5, 7).

All funds summary, FY 2025-26 adopted

Financing sources by fund group sum exactly to the printed governmental total of $1,065,023,439, and other-funds sources sum exactly to $289,624,208.

The $9,000 gap: the Special Districts row prints $58,935,913 on the uses side, making total other-funds uses $289,633,208 and total all-funds uses $1,354,656,647 — $9,000 above the sources side. The governmental side balances exactly (uses $1,046,811,618 + obligated-fund-balance increases $18,211,821 = $1,065,023,439).

Governmental financing uses by function (adopted): General Government $115,734,145; Public Protection $242,511,374; Public Ways and Facilities $116,401,360; Health and Sanitation $307,878,705; Public Assistance $217,205,555; Education $10,016,886; Recreation and Cultural Services $18,568,640; Debt Services $31,562,005; Reserves −$21,399,381 (a negative reserve use). Those sum to $1,038,479,289; plus appropriations for contingencies $8,332,329 = $1,046,811,618; plus provisions for obligated fund balances $18,211,821 = $1,065,023,439 (exact).

Governmental financing sources by source sum exactly to $1,012,532,831: Taxes $222,076,954; Licenses, Permits and Franchises $17,483,757; Fines, Forfeitures & Assessments $8,566,097; Revenue from Use of Money & Property $13,131,410; Intergovernmental Revenues $579,470,249; Charges for Services $112,191,517; Miscellaneous Revenues $15,601,971; Other Financing Sources $44,010,876. Appropriations limit: $743,154,153; appropriations subject to limit: $313,154,315.

Source: County of Santa Cruz, Adopted Budget, FY 2025-26 (Schedules 1, 2, 5, 7).

General Fund, FY 2025-26 adopted

The General Fund balances exactly on both sides: available fund balance $19,600,461 + decreases to obligated fund balances $1,782,067 + additional financing sources $816,248,227 = total financing sources $837,630,755; financing uses $824,318,801 + increases to obligated fund balances $13,311,954 = $837,630,755.

General Fund taxes total $198,273,000 (Schedule 6 printed total). Largest components: Property Tax — Current Secured (General) $84,512,000; Property Tax in Lieu of VLF $46,701,000; Sales & Use Tax — unincorporated area 1% $13,932,000; Sales-Use Tax — Measure G 1/2 cent $10,723,000; Sales-Use Tax — Measure K 1/2 cent $10,702,000; Transient Occupancy Tax $14,635,000; Residual Distribution $6,860,000. These are the largest lines only, not a full tax breakdown.

Source: County of Santa Cruz, Adopted Budget, FY 2025-26 (Schedules 1, 6).

Elected officials

The county is governed by a five-member elected Board of Supervisors; the current Chair is Monica Martinez (5th District).

Sources: County of Santa Cruz, County Services (Board of Supervisors); Adopted Budget, FY 2025-26 (preface).

Board meetings

The Board of Supervisors meets on Tuesdays at 9:00 a.m., on dates set by the Board’s calendar — not every Tuesday. Meeting locations vary; see the agenda for the location of a given meeting.

County of Santa Cruz Clerk of the Board (agendas and minutes)

No next meeting date is asserted here — see the official agendas for the next scheduled date and location.

Livability — Santa Cruz County

Santa Cruz County scores 53.9 on the Hometown Numbers Livability Index, ranked #19 of 58 ranked California counties. Violent crime: 362.4 reported violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2024 (FBI Crime Data Explorer; score 74.6, 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 — Santa Cruz County

County-level figures for Santa Cruz County.

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

Public schools — Santa Cruz County

Schools physically located in Santa Cruz County.

83 public schools in 19 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 Santa Cruz 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 financing sources, FY 2025-26 adopted.

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

Monterey County: Fund-balance % dashed: no GF ending balance published ($23,456,768 is fund-balance use/gap, 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)

San Mateo County: 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

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

• Sources used: County of Santa Cruz, Adopted Budget, Fiscal Year 2025-26 — State Controller Schedule 1 (All Funds Summary), Schedule 2 (Governmental Funds Summary), Schedule 5 (Additional Financing Sources by Source and Fund), Schedule 6 (Detail of Additional Sources), Schedule 7 (Financing Uses by Function and Fund). Adopted budget book.
• Sum checks: governmental sources by fund group exact; other-funds sources exact; governmental uses by function exact after the negative reserves line; governmental sources by source exact; General Fund both sides exact.
• Basis flags: all figures are FY2025-26 Adopted columns; the all-funds totals carry an unresolved $9,000 sources-versus-uses discrepancy located in the Special Districts row (disclosed, printed totals used); the June 2025 proposed figures ($1.23B / $793.5M) are not used; the reserves line in the function table is negative (−$21,399,381), which is what makes the function table sum to its printed total.
• What is not claimed: no department-level budget-unit detail beyond the function and fund summaries is shown; no enterprise- or internal-service-fund detail beyond the Schedule 1 totals is claimed.
• Jurisdiction palette: no verified Santa Cruz 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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