The Santa Cruz County Supervisors on Tuesday signaled their support for three human-services programs at risk of being cut when the board meets June 10 to hammer out this year’s budget.
Under the current budget proposal, Mental Health Client Action Network (MHCAN) loses its $587,000 annual contract.
MHCAN is a peer-run day center for people with mental illnesses that offers a place to get a meal, take a shower and do laundry and find services such as employment and transportation.
Gemma House serves women recently released from jail. Under the budget proposal, the program would lose its $586,547 annual funding. The downtown outreach worker program, which gets $177,823 in county funding, and lab and radiology services for indigent people, which cost $2 million, would also lose funding.
MHCAN Executive Director Tyler Starkman said that the program serves 50 people per day and frequently has to turn people away. If the program loses its funding, they would have no comparable options.
While Starkman is pleased that the county is looking for ways to preserve the program, he says he is perplexed why MHCAN was considered discretionary, while others were not.
“I’d be devastated,” he said. “People would lose their lives. They would have nowhere to go, and they’d be on the streets and costing a lot more in the jail system or in the emergency hospital system. It’s really short-sighted to think this could save them money.”
During the meeting, as the supervisors heard a grim budget report that is likely to worsen as state and federal officials prepare to release their final financial pictures later this fall, Supervisor Justin Cummings asked staff to look for ways to work with the City of Santa Cruz to help keep the programs alive.
He said he shares those concerns with Santa Cruz city officials.
“I do really have some concerns around the elimination of MHCAN,” he said.
Supervisor Monica Martinez said she is committed to preserving the county’s safety net programs.
“We need to catch people before they fall through the cracks, and I know that MHCAN is one of those programs,” she said.
The supervisors were kicking off a multi-day series of budget hearings during which all of the county’s departments present their financial pictures to the board.
This year bears eerie similarities to those during the 2008 recession, when the county eliminated the Parks and Community Services Department, slashed its infrastructure and roads budget and implemented countywide layoffs, County Administrative Officer Carlos Palacios said.
“Thank goodness, we’re not there yet,” he said. “But I will say that there is a lot of concern about what is happening at the federal and state level.”
Half the county’s $1.2 billion budget, he added, comes from those sources.
“So we are very dependent on what happens in Sacramento and what happens in Washington, D.C.,” he said.
And it is not yet clear what that will be.
The county is watching two pieces of legislation currently taking shape in the nation’s capital.
The budget reconciliation bill, which President Donald Trump has called the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” extends 2017 tax cuts and would require major cuts to Medi-Cal and other safety net programs, including imposing a work requirement more frequent eligibility determinations, and reduces the federal share of Medi-Cal costs at the state level.
Palacios said he expects that bill to pass the Senate and be signed into law by Trump in the fall.
The budget for Fiscal Year 2026 also contains major cuts to the safety net, including 40% to Housing and Urban Development and 26% to Health and Human Services.
Worse, Gov. Gavin Newsom in May proposed $5 billion in cuts to Medi-Cal for this year’s state budget, which will be approved by June 15.
The state budget also includes only “piecemeal” funding for several homeless services, which will further hurt county budgets statewide.
Assistant County Administrative Officer Nicole Coburn said that one in three Medi-Cal enrollees—an estimated 30,000 people—stand to lose coverage under Trump’s budget.
