County has pockets of both wealthy, poverty

BY Kellie Welty

By Kevin Jeffries
Riverside County Supervisor, First District

Riverside County has pockets of extreme wealth and extreme poverty and everything in between. When you add up the total “assessed valuation” with each Supervisorial District (which includes cities), you’ll see some disparities in wealth concentration.

Kevin Jeffries

While we hear a lot about the poor communities in the desert, the 4th District actually has the highest assessed value in the County, with over $95 billion, almost twice as high as the lowest assessed 5th District, with $55 billion.

The 1st District (of which Canyon Lake is a part) is the second poorest, with just under $60 billion in assessed value. While that sounds like it would produce a lot of tax revenues, the County only gets to keep about 18% of the property taxes it collects, with most of it going to the State and various special districts (including schools).

One of the most disadvantaged (non-city) communities in western Riverside County is Mead Valley, located just outside of the city of Perris. Its rural population is approximately 20,000. When you total up all the property taxes paid by residents and commercial properties, and you deduct the portions shipped off to other government entities, the County is allowed to keep (for sheriff, fire, animal services, code, health and human services, etc.) only about $1.8 million in property taxes to provide all those services to this community. That’s a very small amount, when you consider it costs roughly $2.2 million just to staff and operate a single county fire station (with our contract partners CAL FIRE).

This economic gap plays out in communities across the County. I’ve argued that many of our unincorporated communities are at least 30 years behind the rest of the county in economic growth and job opportunities. It’s going to take continued focus to help those communities become financially sustainable while remaining attractive to those who don’t want wall to wall housing or mega warehouses.

Staying Above the Fray

If you have been watching any of the Tuesday Board of Supervisors’ public meetings over the past year or so, you know that nearly every Tuesday, various groups of citizens attend the meetings to speak their mind.

It’s a constitutionally-protected right to petition our government (at all levels) and the Board takes that right very seriously. The Board protected that right during the worst of the COVID-19 restrictions and was one of the first to immediately re-open the Board meeting chambers to in-person testimony.

Should you watch one of the meetings, you might notice the extremely wide variety of issues that citizens share. As part of that, the Board regularly hears from residents who want us to fix our schools, which is entirely the jurisdiction of locally-elected school boards and the State.

Others demand that the County change mandates, laws or regulations imposed on all of us from the federal or state level (the pecking order of government does not allow that to happen), or to jump into the middle of heated partisan battles.

The County Board is a non-partisan office with its own responsibilities and jurisdictions, and although each Supervisor has his or her own philosophical bent or moral compass to help guide him or her and may have opinions about how other levels of government should operate, the Board tries its best to focus on serving all 2.4 million county residents and stay out of the partisan warfare that has engulfed our state and federal governments.

Temporary Elections Jobs

The Riverside County Registrar of Voters (ROV) has put the call out for 900 new temporary employees. All these positions are to support the ROV for the September recall election. If you have some spare time on your hands, are good at paying attention to detail, and want to help serve the County and State, the ROV needs your help.

For more information on the recall election and these jobs apply at: www.tinyurl.com/TempElectionsJobs

New Boundaries…Someday

The redistricting process is underway…mostly. Nearly every county, city, college board, school board, water board, etc., is required to balance its internal boundaries/districts for elected officials after each census is completed.

They all have very strict state-mandated requirements to adhere to when drafting new boundaries. The problem is that the federal census data (that every agency depends on to help draft new boundaries) has been delayed by several months, putting the entire process way behind schedule.

Anyone seeking to run for elected office in the June Primary of 2022 could be impacted by the delays, simply because you won’t know for sure which ward or elected district you are in until the maps are finalized.

You can learn more about how Riverside County will be drawing its own supervisorial districts this year, upcoming meetings, and express your opinions as to how you wish to be represented and what communities of interest you feel should stay together (or be separated from each other) in these districts here: https://rivco.org/about-county/county-boards-committees-and-commissions/county-redistricting-efforts.