The 2024-25 fiscal year budget faced challenges from the start as labor costs continued to outpace revenues. The cost of salaries and benefits were expected to rise by $488 million from last year to the 2024-25 budget. But county officials were able to close the $250 million gap through a series of new revenue sources and reductions.

Still, challenges lie ahead as the county expects the state to cut funding due to its own multi-billion deficit. The county’s healthcare system is also bracing for the impact of Regional Medical Center closing its trauma center and downgrading other life-saving programs.

“We are facing trickle-down impacts from the state and federal levels, along with a private sector actor that is pushing its social responsibilities to the local government,” County Executive James Williams said in a news release. “But, unlike a for-profit business, we must find a way to operate that maintains our commitment and support for the residents who need us most.”

Among the many priorities outlined in the budget are a sizable chunk for seismic improvements in the county’s healthcare system — $40 million at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center and $60 million at Valley Health Center San Jose.

The budget also expands access to mental health services, adds new funding for agricultural worker housing and increases investments in sustainability projects and programs, among other priorities.

Despite it being on the chopping block last month, Special Olympics Northern California was also able to obtain the necessary funding for its operations in Santa Clara County.

Board Presidents Susan Ellenberg said in a statement while she’s “relieved” that the county was able to balance its budget and maintain “service levels for the most vulnerable residents, secure our core budget priorities and protect the jobs of county employees, I don’t believe we are out of the woods.”

“The real test will be in the coming years, so our continued prudence and collaboration in how we steward our residents’ tax dollars will be critical,” Ellenberg said.

The county has projected a $158 million deficit for the 2026-27 fiscal year.

The battle over how to use Measure E dollars — which come from a real estate transfer tax for properties over $2 million — reared its head once again in this year’s budget process as the council worked to close a more-than-$50-million deficit.

The tax, which was passed by voters in 2020 and is expected to generate $50 million in the next year, originally had set spending priorities that dedicated a majority of the money for permanent affordable housing. But last year, in an effort to curb homelessness, Mayor Matt Mahan proposed spending more heavily on interim solutions.

Despite pushback from housing advocates, the council last June moved $12.3 million away from affordable housing to support initiatives like safe parking and tiny homes. Mahan had originally proposed a diversion of $38 million.

On Tuesday evening, the council unanimously approved the 2024-2025 budget, as well as the reallocation of Measure E money that diverts $13.17 million away from extremely low-income housing, $9 million away from low-income housing and $1.37 million away from moderate-income housing to homelessness support programs.

“I think we’ve done a really good job at balancing a lot of different community needs, including some significant new commitments under our storm water permit, but also maintaining a commitment to affordable housing, other strategic investments in core focus areas like public safety, cleaning up our city and attracting investments in jobs and housing more broadly,” Mahan said at the meeting.

The mayor says that some of the diversion of funds — $15 million —  is needed to comply with a state mandate from the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board to clean up San Jose’s waterways by June of 2025. If the city doesn’t make plans to relocate the roughly 500 unhoused people living along the creeks, San Jose officials said it could risk tens of thousands of dollars in daily fines.

Another diversion of funds that were previously allocated for permanent affordable housing troubled many housing advocates and nonprofits, including Destination: Home.

“When the measure was adopted in 2020, the original spending plan called for allocating 90% of the funding to build more affordable housing,” Destination: Home CEO Jennifer Loving said in a letter to the mayor and the council. “Now, just four short years later and after multiple shifts of these dollars to other uses, only 25% of the funding remains for affordable housing production.”

Although the vote to reallocate the funds was unanimous, several members of the council, including Councilmember Peter Ortiz, wanted to ensure that it didn’t set a precedent. Ortiz said that the need to comply with the state mandate around the city’s waterways “twisted our arms and forced us to cough up funding to implement this plan.”

“I want to be clear, the current strategy of prioritizing EIHs (emergency interim housing) over affordable housing isn’t ending the crisis of homelessness — it’s hiding it,” Ortiz said. “Let’s call it what it is: it is a bridge to nowhere.”

The rising costs have long been a point of contention between the team and the city of Santa Clara, which have quarreled intensely over who should foot the bill. Tensions hit a flashpoint in 2019 when the 49ers sued the city over the disagreement. Finally, in late May, a deal was reached and the 49ers agreed to pay a larger share.

In the past decade, the price tag for public safety for NFL games at Levi’s Stadium has risen sharply from $2.45 million for the Niners’ inaugural season in Santa Clara to $5.7 million for the 2022-23 season when the team petered out one game away from Super Bowl LVII.

The city cites a slew of reasons for the dramatic increase, including the need for additional officer staffing in response to a 2018 safety audit, as well as incidents that required more police intervention. A 2021 agreement between the city and the Santa Clara Police Officers’ Association that will run through 2025 is also a factor, the city said, as it pays officers overtime at a rate of time-and-a-half for non-NFL events at the stadium, but double time for NFL events.

Jeremy Schmidt, president of the officers’ association, defended the double-time pay, contending the department is “understaffed and officers work a considerable amount of overtime providing service to the community first.”

“Working the games exposes the officers to excess danger from large crowds, decreased personal rest and increases time away from family,” he said. “That’s why double time is fair compensation. In many cases officers have been mandated, or forced, to work the events.”

The original deal the city struck with the 49ers more than a decade ago required the team to pay up to $170,000 in public safety costs per game. Anything above that threshold would be reimbursed by the Stadium Authority, a governing body created by the city, via payments from a discretionary fund or in the form of a rent credit.

But from the very start, the threshold, which was supposed to increase 4% annually, didn’t come close to covering the full costs. On Aug. 17, 2014, the 49ers played their first-ever game at Levi’s Stadium against the Denver Broncos. Public safety costs for the preseason game were $199,424 — nearly $30,000 over the threshold, according to city documents. The most expensive game for public safety that season was a Dec. 20 game against the then-San Diego Chargers with a bill of $268,150.

The cost of security for Levi’s Stadium in its inaugural season was $2.4 million. And since then, the numbers have grown with the biggest spike between the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons when the costs jumped from $2.99 million to $5.4 million. Even without fans during the COVID-19 pandemic, public safety still ran up a $887,617 bill in 2020-21.

Under the new deal, the 49ers will now pay up to $360,000 in public safety costs per game. Costs ranged from $433,660 to $570,314 per game for the first nine home games of the 2023-24 season.

Jihad Beauchman, executive vice president and general counsel for the 49ers, said at a recent City Council meeting that they’ve heard the complaints from the city that not enough revenue from the stadium has gone to Santa Clara.

“This system that’s being put in place now is very thoughtfully crafted in a way that achieves that goal,” Beauchman said. “It actually frees up more dollars to go to performance rent by allowing dollars that would have gone to paying for public safety costs to then go from this fund to that so more dollars can go out to the city.”

At $360,000 a game, Beauchman said the 49ers will be doling out more for public safety than any other team in the NFL.

To offset the remaining cost of public safety, the agreement adds a $4 per ticket surcharge to non-NFL events.

Robert Baumann, an economics professor at The College of the Holy Cross who has studied Levi’s Stadium, called it a “minor win” for the city but said that the cost of policing at NFL games is now being passed to people going to concerts or other events at the stadium.

“There’s this third party that wasn’t at the table and that’s the public,” Baumann said of the negotiations.

After reviewing the settlement agreement, Baumann said he was struck by how much the city missed more than a decade ago during original talks and questioned why cities feel they have so little bargaining power with professional sports teams.

“The original sin here is the financing deal, how it was signed 10 plus years ago,” Baumann said.

City Manager Jovan Grogan, for his part, seems to agree. At a recent council meeting, he said it “would be great” if the 49ers agreed to pay the full cost for public safety.

“The challenge with that is the city did not agree to that and the Stadium Authority did not agree to that when they duly entered into agreements over 10 years ago to bring the 49ers from San Francisco to Santa Clara,” he said.

Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor said the high cost of public safety is the reality of living in Silicon Valley and criticized the idea of the city “subsidizing” the team.

“What they received was really a special deal that no other company gets in Santa Clara, whether it’s a large company like NVIDIA or a small company like Stan’s Donuts,” Gillmor said. “Nobody gets a discount on public safety costs.”

The Caregiver Returnship Program, which county supervisors approved in 2022, aims to tackle an issue that was exacerbated by the pandemic as individuals left the workforce to care for children or other family members. But for those looking to return to work, gaps on a resume pose difficulties in finding employment again.

Data shows that women in particular have been disproportionately impacted as the often leave the workforce to care for their children. A recent report from the U.S. Department of Labor found that in 2023, the labor force participation rate of mothers with children under the age of 18 was 74%, compared to a 94.4% similar rate for fathers.

It’s an issue that Ellenberg, who proposed the initiative, experienced firsthand as a soon-to-be mother in the mid ’90s. At the time, she had only been working as an attorney for three years. When she let her boss know she was pregnant, she was told it would be a “disaster” for her career.

“It left me in a real terrified state of how I would ever go back,” Ellenberg said. “With the law, I think the longer you’re away, the harder it is to come back. By the time I was looking more than 10 years later, my knowledge of the law had stopped in 1994 and I had to look for other opportunities.”

Applications for the program open this week, and the county hopes to place a cohort of 10 individuals into nine-month temporary roles starting this fall.

Staff said the program is modeled after a similar one designed to provide employment opportunities to former foster kids and will offer entry, mid-level and senior positions. After the nine months is up, Staff said the individual can be recommended for a permanent role.

The county is still in the midst of nailing down what positions will be open for the program as it works through its current budget and will be working with the Health and Hospitals Department, the County Executive’s Office, the Social Services Agency and the Technology Services and Solutions Department, Staff said.

Ellenberg called the program “a classic triple win” for a county looking to fill its job vacancies and individuals looking to return to the workforce and their families.

“We’re offering a tremendous opportunities to come back into the workforce, to build skills, to get updates in your particular area of expertise and whether you stay on the county or go somewhere else you’ve got a new solid element on your resume to talk about,” Ellenberg said.

More than 88% percent of the Registered Nurses Professional Association — which represents more than 3,750 nurses in the county-owned Santa Clara Valley Healthcare system — voted to ratify the contract, the union announced over the weekend.

In a statement, RNPA President Susie York said they “set the groundwork for better workplace safety practices” with the new agreement.

“Our new contract is a big step forward for Santa Clara County nurses and the patients we serve,” York said. “We were able to win improvements to our pay and working conditions that will help the County recruit and retain top quality nurses. We also addressed the way nurses are staffed and scheduled in order to ensure that acuity remains a factor in the nurse-to-patient ratio.”

The nurses had previously been without a contract since October, which prompted them in early April to walk off the job in a three-day strike — the first ever for the labor group — with picket lines at the county’s three hospitals: Valley Medical Center and O’Connor Hospital in San Jose and St. Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy. The county’s healthcare system is the second-largest county-owned system in the state with one million patient visits annually.

At the time, County Executive James Williams said the county had to shell out more than $20 million to bring in nearly 1,000 contract nurses that worked around-the-clock shifts during the strike. All of the hospitals and clinics remained open during the strike, but some elective surgeries and non-urgent appointments were rescheduled.

In a statement released Saturday, Williams called the nurses “skilled public servants who take care of the most vulnerable in our community.”

“This agreement with RNPA represents our dedication to providing fair contracts for every staff member in our organization, including our nursing professionals,” he said. “We are proud to have reached this agreement, which upholds the County’s commitment to our hardworking nurses and to deliver excellent care to the community while balancing fiscal realities.”

The new contract includes a 15% raise over the next four years, with a 6.5% raise in 2024. Floating between the county hospitals — one of the nurses’ biggest concerns as different hospitals may have different policies and procedures — will also be off the table.

The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to approve the contract at its next meeting on June 4.

At issue in the latest round of legal entanglements were 2019 and 2020 lawsuits stemming from disagreements over public safety costs for NFL games and reimbursements for food buffets.  Announcing the settlement last week, Santa Clara City Manager Jovan Grogan — who also serves as the executive director of the Stadium Authority — said the city projects the general fund will receive $20 million in revenue from Levi’s Stadium over the next two years because of the deal.

“We believe the Settlement Agreement addresses key concerns and provides a fair and advantageous resolution for the Stadium Authority and Santa Clara residents,” Grogan said. “By settling this dispute and restructuring terms in the original agreements that helped bring the 49ers to Santa Clara, we were able to achieve both immediate and long-term financial benefits for the City of Santa Clara.”

The Santa Clara City Council voted 5-2 to approve the settlement last Monday night, but the council is expected to discuss several amendments to the Levi’s Stadium lease as part of the settlement talks on Tuesday night. Mayor Lisa Gillmor and Councilmember Kathy Watanabe cast the dissenting votes.

The dispute over public safety costs dates back to the early days of the stadium’s lease. Under the original lease, the 49ers were paying $170,000 per game for police, and anything over that threshold was returned to the team in rent credit. But over the years, the cost of policing ballooned, and the city demanded the team foot the entire bill. The new threshold for the 49ers will be $360,000 per game, according to the settlement.

In the news release, the city boasted the deal’s “many benefits” including the reduction in the amount of money the Stadium Authority owes the NFL team — from $22 million to $14.8 million — and the payment of $7.1 million in performance rent.

The city said the deal reduces the Stadium Authority’s “reimbursement obligations by $108,000 per game and adds an additional $4 per ticket surcharge to non-NFL events to help offset the Stadium Authority’s commitment to fund a portion of NFL public safety.”

The settlement also resolved the dispute on who should pay for the cost of food buffets for Stadium Builder’s License holders — individuals who have paid a one-time fee to obtain exclusive rights to purchase 49ers season tickets. The stadium lease states that while the NFL team is responsible for providing certain amenities, like the buffet, at games, the Stadium Authority is ultimately responsible for reimbursing the 49ers.

The settlement acknowledges that the Stadium Authority bears those costs, dating back to 2014. But amendments to the lease, set to be discussed at Tuesday night’s meeting, will have the Stadium Authority paying a fixed cost of $90,000 per game for the buffets for individuals in certain VIP sections.

The NFL team also praised the deal in a statement.

“The approval of this settlement fast tracks $20 million to the City General Fund, and puts an end to all remaining litigation between the 49ers and the Stadium Authority,” said Jihad Beauchman, executive vice president and general counsel for the 49ers. “We look forward to beginning this new phase of collaboration and partnership with the City.”

But not everyone on the council considered the deal a touchdown for the city.

The mayor could not immediately be reached for comment, but in a social media post, she called it a “loan-shark type deal.”

“Anyone saying this Settlement Agreement is good for Santa Clarans is deceiving the public,” Gillmor said. “The money the team claims the City gets requires repayment.”

Watanabe also voiced her opposition on social media last week, stating that “it gives the 49ers a discount on public safety costs and hurts taxpayers and makes the stadium less safe.”

The two-and-a-half-week voter-requested recount in the race to replace U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo kicked off on April 15. The recount of more than 182,000 votes broke a tie between Assemblymember Evan Low and Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian, sending Low into the general election to face former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo. If the recount hadn’t occurred, Liccardo, Low and Simitian would have competed in an unprecedented California congressional three-way November runoff.

The recount was requested by Jonathan Padilla, a former Liccardo mayoral campaign staffer and 2020 and 2024 Biden delegate. Low’s campaign accused Padilla and Liccardo of colluding — an allegation the former mayor denied — and demanded the recount requester “disclose his secret donors so we know who Sam could be beholden to.” Low’s attorneys tried to stop the recount before it even began, alleging that certain recount deadlines were missed.

Bloomberg and Liccardo have been linked politically for several years now. In 2018, Bloomberg Philanthropies accepted San Jose into a two-year program to help the city meet its climate goals when Liccardo was mayor. A year later, Liccardo backed Bloomberg’s 2020 presidential bid and served as the California co-chair for his campaign.

Several days before the recount began, a pro-Liccardo Super PAC called Neighbors for Results started funneling money into Count the Vote — the Super PAC that funded the recount.

Between April 12 and April 17, Neighbors for Results moved $102,000 to Count the Vote, according to its May campaign finance reports.

Neighbors for Results treasurer Matthew Alvarez said the reason for the shifting of money between PACs was simply a practical matter of expediting payment to the registrars in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, which conducted the recount, by the April 12 deadline.

“When the decision was made to confirm that every legal vote was counted, Neighbors for Results had money on hand while Count the Vote was just getting started,” he said in a statement. “Moving that money provided time for Count the Vote to get up and running and raise its own money from then on. Count the Vote’s donors will be disclosed July 31st, presumably at the same time the special interests who bankrolled the $750,000 independent expenditure campaign for Evan Low will disclose their donors.”

Neighbors for Results spent more than $500,000 in the primary supporting the former mayor and lists only three donors: former NetApp CEO Daniel Warmenhoven, Cypress Semiconductor founder Thurman John Rodgers and Bloomberg.

The former New York City mayor and billionaire philanthropist is the largest donor to the Super PAC, having shelled out $500,000 in February. Warmenhoven gave $50,000, and Rodgers donated $15,000. A source close to the matter said that Bloomberg was never asked to fund the recount and never contributed directly to Count the Vote.

The recount being funded by a Super PAC sparked concerns over transparency in local Democratic Party circles starting with Eshoo herself who called for “full disclosure of the donors.” Eshoo endorsed Simitian in the primary.

As a longtime proponent of full financial transparency and disclosure in political campaigns, last week I called for the full disclosure of the donors and the amounts they’ve contributed to pay for the recount taking place in California’s 16th Congressional District.

— Anna Eshoo for Congress (@Eshoo4Congress) April 19, 2024

Then on May 2, the Santa Clara County Democratic Central Committee passed a resolution asking the Super PAC to reveal its donors immediately instead of waiting until the July deadline.

Chair Bill James said he doesn’t understand why supporters of the recount haven’t published the donors and that the lack of disclosure has hurt “confidence in the voting process and system.”

“What this disclosure shows is why we wanted this information to be made public to begin with — which is that, as suspected, really wealthy outsiders have funded this recount,” James said. “The question we should have as Californians concerned about D16 and the Santa Clara County area is do we want New York billionaires to come in and change the outcome of our elections?”

A campaign spokesperson for Liccardo declined to comment and spokespeople for Bloomberg and Low did not respond to a request for comment.

For the last 14 years, Mathew has competed in all 11 of the sports offered in Santa Clara County. His mom has been coaching five of them — including bowling, floor hockey and swimming — for 13 years.

“One of the things that’s really tough when you have a special-needs child is my son is cognitively aware enough to know what the world is doing around him, and so he always had aspirations of being like everybody else,” said Francavilla. “In middle school, he wanted to play sports, he wanted to be involved in things, and those opportunities just aren’t there.”

Santa Clara County is one of more than 40 member counties in Special Olympics Northern California, which runs from the Oregon border in the north to Tulare County in the south. President and CEO David Solo called Santa Clara County a “model for other counties,” as the Board of Supervisors has allocated funding for the program in recent years that Solo said has helped expand their reach to 1 in 25 residents with disabilities in Silicon Valley.

While it’s not unheard of for counties to designate money for the Special Olympics activities in their area — San Mateo County provides $75,000 per year, for instance — Santa Clara County’s contribution makes up more than half of the organization’s $1.1 million budget designated for the area.

But this year is different. The county is facing a bleak financial picture in the upcoming fiscal year, and whether Special Olympics Northern California will be granted the more than $600,000 in critical funding they have in years past remains to be seen.

Santa Clara County leaders warned last year that their budget deficit could be as high as $250 million for the 2024-25 fiscal year. And while county officials were able to pull together enough dollars through alternative revenue sources and cuts to close the gap, supervisors are still facing tough choices as they comb through the $12.4 billion proposed budget.

Solo and other parents, coaches and athletes in Santa Clara County pleaded with the board last week, asking them to continue funding the Special Olympics.

“I think our population is sometimes a forgotten population, and part of it is because they don’t advocate on behalf of themselves, and so I think sometimes they get left out of the equation,” Solo said. “We really are trying to be vocal and make sure that we advocate for them on their behalf.”

While funding for the Special Olympics was left out of the proposed budget released earlier this month, County Executive James Williams said at a meeting last week that the board had put it on a list of items to reconsider in June if there’s money left over.

Board President Susan Ellenberg said she was “very disappointed” to see the funding was cut, but understood the decision as the county is in a tough position financially.

“My lens is first and foremost on maintaining core services, maintaining the services that only the county provides and only the county has funding for,” Ellenberg told The Mercury News. “Then anything beyond that is exciting and wonderful. I want our organization to be a broad support for programs that promote community health and well-being.”

Ellenberg said she believes the board could find the money by shifting funding away from a reserve they have for building inclusive playgrounds. The $5 million in that tranche, she said, could be difficult to spend as it requires matching contributions from the city where they build the playground — something they don’t have at the moment.

“I think it would be a safe and prudent way of getting this money into the community faster and directly supporting our disability community,” she said.

If the county ultimately can’t come up with the funds, Solo said the Northern California Special Olympics group would likely have to reduce the services they provide with their $1.1 million budget in Santa Clara County. They currently have 473 Special Olympics athletes in the county, but statewide data, he said, points to more than 12,000 residents countywide with developmental disabilities.

“There’s a lot more need there that we could fulfill, a lot more opportunity in Santa Clara County,” Solo said.

Those are opportunities that Leslie Francavilla said aren’t found elsewhere — especially for individuals who have already finished school. Once they’ve graduated, she said, many people with disabilities and their families struggle to find a community to call their own. The Special Olympics, she said, fills that void.

“We don’t have anything for our disabled population,” Francavilla said. “This is the one thing that really fits that bill.”

The recommended budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year is the first overseen by County Executive James Williams, who took the helm last July as the county worked to close a $120 million deficit on its $11.3 billion budget. Since then, the fiscal uncertainty has continued with officials warning that the growing cost of labor and a slow turnover in property ownership — which has curbed tax revenue — is fueling a dismal financial forecast.

In his budget message, Williams said he had asked county staff to “present as many ideas as they could to generate revenue or otherwise relieve the General Fund, thereby minimizing the service and staff reductions that would otherwise be needed to close the gap.”

New revenues make up roughly half of the $251.3 million in deficit solutions and include fee increases in areas, like the Department of Planning and Development where building permit fees are expected to rise. The county has also made reductions in several spots, including eliminating vacant positions and reducing spending on some services and supply contracts. One county department is expected to sell off vehicles and desk phones that are rarely used.

Despite the challenges, Williams said they “prioritized the preservation of critical safety-net services and programs for the public” that align with the Board of Supervisors’ priorities. These include healthcare access, housing, public safety, criminal justice reform, support for children and families and sustainability.

In a statement, Board President Susan Ellenberg said that preserving core services are “non-negotiable,” but that “everything else is on the table” when it comes to the budget.

“This year, we are working with fewer dollars than we have in nearly a decade, and will have to make real, strategic cuts – cuts that will leave everyone, myself included, frustrated and unhappy,” she said. “It is my goal to get us to a structurally balanced budget that prioritizes what only county government can offer: safety net services for the residents who rely on them.”

Supervisor Otto Lee in a statement said the “recommended budget and deficit are not unexpected, and we recognize that this will be painful for the community. We’ll do our best to avoid layoffs of employees and continue to maintain high quality of vital services.”

Despite finding $251.3 million in change under the county’s couch cushions, Williams warned that the future ahead is still rocky.

“This is the first time in many years that we have had to contend with this magnitude of budget shortfall,” Williams said in the budget message. “While we expect to be structurally stable for the upcoming fiscal year, the reality is that we will continue facing challenging fiscal conditions for the foreseeable future, as shown in the current five-year forecast.”

The county predicts that the deficit could rise to $158 million in the 2026-27 fiscal year, partially due to rising labor and operating costs that are expected to outpace revenues. The Santa Clara Valley Healthcare system alone is projected to have operating costs that grow 8% in the upcoming fiscal year compared to last year’s adopted budget.

The issue could be further compounded by cuts made at the state level. California is currently facing a multi-billion dollar deficit and county officials are bracing for the impact.

In 2021, Santa Clara County responded by approving the Food Systems Work Plan Report: a strategy to build a stronger food economy in the region, tackle food insecurity and increase agricultural opportunities for local farmers, among other goals.

In December 2023, the county hired Cayce Hill as its first ever food systems manager to oversee the growing body of work. Before coming to the county, Hill served as the executive director for Veggielution — an East San Jose nonprofit that runs an urban farm at Emma Prusch Farm Park.

Q: What does a food systems manager do?

A: My primary responsibility is to address gaps, identify opportunities and improve coordination in the countywide food system. More specifically, it is to provide leadership and implement the goals of the county of Santa Clara’s work plan. That work plan is the county’s north star, it is my north star. There’s lots of listening and lot of learning right now to think about how I’m going to implement the goals of the work plan.

Q: What is a food system?

A: We can think of food systems as everything that’s involved in the production, aggregation, distribution, retail and ultimately end of life — hopefully cycling right back into production — of food. It’s the way that we grow our food, it’s how and where we aggregate it, it’s who grows the food, who cooks it, where we purchase it and what we do with all the food that we unfortunately don’t end up eating that’s produced. Many people think of food system as farm to table. It comes to a farm and if we’re lucky we know the farmer who grew it, we purchase it and we cook it or we eat at a restaurant. If we are thinking beyond that we also think of the food that goes through a charitable food response to others in the community.

My hope is that in my role I’ll really be able to raise up a much more expansive view of food systems which is not just about who grew it or cooked it or served it — but more about can those people afford to live here, can they breathe clean air here, can they find high quality jobs here that support their family and a dignified life here? There are many examples of how those issues are really being addressed within and by our county, which is why I’m really excited to be here. It’s very complex. Raising that awareness of what a food system is and the role that we all play in our food system is probably the biggest and best challenge I have in this new role.

Q: How do you interact with local businesses and nonprofits?

A: Local nonprofits and local businesses are huge partners to the county of Santa Clara. I think in particular because they have such a deep understanding and are so close to the needs of the community and know much more directly what the community aspires to and what the community needs. The county of Santa Clara at every turn partners with nonprofits and local businesses. I would say hands down we couldn’t be as effective without the partnerships of local nonprofits and businesses.

Q: What are the biggest challenges in your new role?

A: We too often think of food systems, and rightly so it is a huge part of food systems work, but we think of it primarily as direct emergency or charitable food response, getting it as fast as possible to as many people as we can. That will always be central to it, but I think the challenge and opportunity we have in front of us is to really think about what it is in our food system that isn’t working that leads to many people being insecure.

Hunger is a system of poverty. When we think about food systems now I think our challenge is, and I think we’ll rise to it, is to fully understand how food systems connect to affordability of housing, how it connects to our environmental sustainability, how it connects to the way we purchase goods within the county. That connectivity has not been part of the conversation I think for a long time and that’s really contributed to the vulnerability of our food system, frankly. Not just in our county, but across the nation. Those who were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, they suffered from the vulnerability in our food system. The opportunity to better connect this work and to find the intersection of this work and other areas of impact, I think, is the biggest challenge.

CAYCE HILL PROFILE

Company: Santa Clara County

Role: Food Systems Manager

Age: 49

Birthplace: Austin, TX

Current City: San Jose

Education: Bachelor of Science at Trinity University and Master of Public Administration at the NYU Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service

FIVE FACTS ABOUT CAYCE HILL

1. I have a rescue duck at home named Olive.
2. This is my first job in local government.
3. I attended culinary school in Japan.
4. I’ve never met a vegetable I didn’t like except for cooked carrots.
5. I’m really good at memorizing song lyrics and stringing Christmas tree lights.