larger view

In the dark of Wednesday morning city of Bakersfield road crews painted new double yellow lines on Harris Road.

Later that day engineer Dave Stringer did a double-take as he drove by the spot, turned around and went back to check what he'd seen.

“I thought it might be the rare and elusive ‘yellow-striped Bakersfield skunk,’” he said.

Check out our story on what he found for a chuckle.

The Kern County Taxpayers' Association and its executive officer Mike Turnipseed — through a new non-profit called the Kern County Taxpayers Education Fund — are pitching a new pro-business leadership training program here in Bakersfield.

The 72-hour course of training — taught by local business luminaries from Joe Drew of Tejon Ranch to retired Aera chief Gene Voiland — is designed to "further develop and enhance the leadershp qualities of individuals who are committed to work with business to solve the region's economic and social problems."

Reading between the lines, ifs fairly obvious that the program is looking for is pro-business people interested in politics who can be quickly cleaned up and prepared for prime time as political candidates.

(Not that that seems like a bad idea. From what we can see so far, next year's 2010 elections could become mostly one candidate cake walks. Not a great thing from my point of view. Democracy loves a good political race.)

But back to Kern Leaders Academy.

The class is small — just eight people will be accepted into the program. Tuition is $1,000 and classes are four hours long twice a week.

I asked Turnipseed, who I regularly enjoy debating when the Board of Supervisors meetings get slow, why he was up to this?

What about Leadership Bakersfield — a well-established training series put on by the Bakersfield Chamber of Commerce?

"This is grad school," Turnipseed told me.

We're at the Kern County Planning Commission meeting preparing to hear the dispute over a concrete crushing plant proposed in an industrial zone north of Hageman Road near Allen Road.

Surrounding neighbors aren't too happy with the idea.

They'll be speaking up as will, I would assume, the applicant who owns the Cal Lowbed business in the area.

Kern County stands to lose $40 million in general use funds if the proposed budget plan from the state gets through the legislature.
Some $13 million of that loss — local gas tax money seized by the state — has been already budgetted by the county.
The other $28.8 million in lost property taxes and Williamson Act funds will put Kern County in a $7 million budget hole — forcing further cuts to services.
State Senator Roy Ashburn takes a swipe at Kern County over its final budget balance from the 2008-2009 fiscal year on the government team’s PoliticsAnyone blog.
He touts cuts in In-Home Supportive Services and Calworks included in the budget.
Department of Human Services Director Pat Cheadle has a different take on the cuts.
She said the changes to Calworks would eventually end services that provide housing, food and clothes to 11,000 Kern County children.
Aging and Adult Services Director Kris Grasty said changes in In-Home Supportive Services will remove cooking, cleaning and basic assistance services that help between 400 and 500 Kern County seniors stay in their homes.

Today's the day. Tomorrow might be the day too. But for now the county's big budget battle day is today.

The county has $21.18 million more money than it expected to have at the end of the 2008-2009 fiscal year. But budget news out of Sacramento indicates that the county stands to lose $28.8 million to the state, which is looking to fix its own broken budget.

That would leave the county budget, if the state budget gets blessed by the Legislature, $7.62 million in the hole.

That's bad news for county department heads who have to make the decision, today, about whether they will fight for more cash from supervisors or take the big hits in the recommended budget and move on.

Here are some of the impacts:

An estimated 217 layoffs.

Libraries are looking at a 41 percent reduction in hours.

The District Attorney will have to slash investigative analysis and slow case review in his crime lab and whack check busters and gang programs.

The Sheriff's department will let around 60 employees go and replace detention deputies in the central receiving jail with new Sheriff's deputies and court deputies.

The fire department will remove one of three fire fighters from remote fire stations — that will not result in layoffs.

In Parks buildings and lawns will be neglected and four recreation building, one community building will be closed. Hours will be reduced at other veterans, senior and community facilities.

The gavel just went down on the evening board of supes agenda.

It's a public hearing on the budget.

We have the detention deputies union here.

The animal folks are here with signs (little green ones) asking the board to support license enforcement.

City Councilwoman Jacquie Sullivan is up asking supervisors to put up "In God We Trust" in the board chambers.

We're talking to Bart Hill of San Joaquin Bank about the local banking corporation's financial situation and plan for the future.

36 investors, most of them citizens of India, will be investing in the local bank in a rescue. The new investors will own a total of 62 percent of the bank. Will bring in $38 million.

But Bart Hill says the investor profile: 11 different families with no family representing more than eight percent of the value. They are not a contingent. They won't own the bank.

Bart Hill said the release of that stock will immediately dilute the value of the company's stock. 

But he said the company's stock, which has plummetted in the last week, needs this to rebound.

"The investors right now are scared in the middle of a recession," Hill said. "The stock is well below its 'true' book value. It is good news for every investor."

Occasionally journalists get things wrong. We're human after all.

I made a mistake in Sunday's story about the economic realities out at Meadows Field airport.

There is no balloon payment built into the William M. Thomas terminal certificates of participation. Payments will not jump from $1 million annually to $5 million annually in 2014, like the story stated. Payments stay at around $1 million a year untl 2024.

Usually we correct these things with a note on A1. We'll do that.

But I wanted to make sure the correct information was out there on the blog as well.

Here's how the wrong info got out there:

We pulled a table from the county's June 30, 2008 Comprehensive Annual Financal Report while researching the airport's finances. We misread the table (pg. 66 for the curious) — mistaking cumulative $5.12 million payments for two five year periods as annual payments.

I didn't catch the mistake, though I had a couple chances. A bit of adding and some common sense would have revealed the "balloon payment" as a mistake. I didn't catch it. Mea Culpa.

Does the airport still face financial challenges? Yes.

Is a balloon payment one of them? Thankfully, No.

I apologize for the mistake.

Big West is up before the supervisors.

The report from county planner Lorelei Oviatt is simple:

Big West is not refining now as owner Flying J is in bankruptcy. The refinery is up for sale. The expansion approval by the board is a significant financial assett to the refinery. If supervisors don't allow an extension of their approval until 2013 the refinery could be harder to sell.

Supes are in the middle of their Tuesday morning presentations.

Congratulations Doris DePriest on her 37 years with the Department of Human Services. Holy cow, that's a lot of years. Enjoy retirement. That's longer than Supervisor Michael Rubio has been alive.

(sorry. old joke. couldn't resist)

It's Child Support Awareness Month in Kern County.

We got some answers today about how the county of Kern's top financial officials could be $36 million wrong in projecting how much cash they'd have when the past fiscal year ended June 30.

Check out the story here.

You could've heard my jaw hit the floor when I opened the spreadsheet from the County Auditor Controller's office.

Kern County's general fund — the one currently birthing an unending stream of layoffs, library cuts, and myriad other service reductions ended the 2008-2009 fiscal year with a positive $52.5 million balance. See the full story here.

Apparently cuts and reductions in department spending have save a lot of cash in the last year.

Let's put this in context: The sheriff needs at least $4 million to keep Lerdo Jail open.

Department of Human Services needs about $3.5 million to keep responding to reports of child abuse and to hunt down and end welfare fraud.

Will they get the cash? You'd think yes. But supervisors and others are saying the county shouldn't start throwing around cash like it's Christmas just yet.

This afternoon should be interesting!

We're on at the board this am.

It looks to be a light agenda...for the morning. The big guns — the budget, Lerdo Jail closures and the Department of Human Services are on this afternoon.

That's not to say there isn't anything happening this morning.

The supes are, right now, declaring Oil Workers' Day in Kern County.

Later the board will take up a more serious issue — the lay off of 11 full-time and 16 part-time library workers and reduction of library hours.

Also, Ray Watson has pulled a request from the fire department to rehire a bunch of big-name retired fire department officials as "extra help" workers.

I'm not sure what Watson wants to talk about.

I'm curious why the department is hiring four battalion chiefs at Step F, one Batt Chief at Step E and Six Fire Chiefs at Steps F and Steps E in the middle of a budget crisis.

Step F is, if I remember correctly, the top pay step for employees. E is right below that.