There are 13 Cities and 2 Towns in Santa Clara County, California. These are their 2018 revenues per person, their populations, land areas, population densities, and the change in populations from 2000 to 2017.
PermaLink to this post: https://meetingthetwain.blogspot.com/2018/10/santa-clara-county-city-town-revenues.html
The grand sum of the "general fund" city budgets for every city in Santa Clara County is $2.5B. That works out to $1,378/per resident.
Excluding unincorporated areas, the total area of all these cities is 348 sq. mi. (about the size of Dallas - 341 sq. mi.). Total population is 1.8M, between Phoenix (1.6M) and Houston (2.3M). The average population density of all the Santa Clara cities combined is 5,320 residents per sq. mile, greater than San Diego's (4,325/sq.mi.) and less than LA's (8,484).
Data for other cities from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population
Tax Revenue per Resident:
The "General Fund" is the major part of every city's budget. It is the part that it has the most discretion with. There are other funds which must be spent on certain items such as water purification, etc.
The "General Fund" pays for police, libraries, streets and sidewalks. Cities can decide what they want to do with general fund money - more for police and less for libraries or vice-versa. To use any of the money collected in fees (for water electricity, etc.) for that general stuff would violate the law - the fee would essentially be a tax.
For example, San Jose's budget letter notes: "For the City’s many other dedicated funds (e.g., Airport Funds, Housing Funds, Sanitary Sewer Funds, Water Utility Funds), recommended budget actions address various service delivery and infrastructure needs balanced within the available resources for each fund."
San Jose's dedicated "enterprise funds" were $1.8B while capital funds budget was $776M, their general fund was $1.2B, and their capital fund was $777M as seen below (click on image to enlarge to readable size):
 |
| General Fund = 37% of the total budget http://www.sanjoseca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/68436 |
The highest is Palo Alto at well over $3,000 per resident - no surprise there. We saw when we looked at Palo Alto in detail that they had a very high jobs-to-resident level. The employers pay a lot of taxes and don't require many services so lots more money in palo Alto's budget. More here:
https://meetingthetwain.blogspot.com/2018/01/palo-alto-work-live-commute.html
Like San Jose, Palo Alto also has several budget sub-divisions. The total budget was $711M and their "general fund" budget was only 30% of that at $211M. The other funds representing $500M were covered very well in the budget letter as follows:
"Beyond the General Fund, the City’s Enterprise and Other Funds ... maintain and invest in the City’s many service areas including Utilities, the Airport, and parking initiatives. ... The Airport Fund continues to see significant investment in capital improvements through grant funding awarded by the Federal Aviation Administration. ... As noticed previously, a focus on parking operations is anticipated in FY 2019."
From page 12 of the budget transmittal letter found here:
https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/66641
A bit surprising is that Sunnyvale is number two at well over $2,000 per person. Everyone thinks of the big employers like Google )Mountain View) or Apple (Cupertino), but Sunnyvale has a lot of lesser known companies. Santa Clara is close at almost $2,000/resident and Mountain View is above average at almost $1700/resident.
Other than those 4 cities, all other cities are below the average - sometimes well below.
Population of each City or Town:
Here are the total populations of all 15 cities and towns in Santa Clara County:
San Jose is far and away the biggest, with Sunnyvale and Santa Clara a distant second.
Here is the density in people per square mile (land area only) for all the cities and towns in Santa Clara County. "Total" means the total population of all the cities and towns divided by the total area of all those cities. I must point out that about half of the land area of Palo Alto is reserved for tidal marshland or "unbuildable" hill areas reserved for recreation. With that land area subtracted, Palo Alto's density would be about 5600 or roughly double that shown.
C.f., https://meetingthetwain.blogspot.com/2018/01/palo-alto-work-live-commute.html
Campbell and Sunnyvale are essentially tied for first place in density with Santa Clara and Mountain View very similar. San Jose is fourth which is a function of it being so geographically spread out. Since the revenue per resident is well below average, San Jose is straining to provide services for such a large spread out population. They are actually forced to borrow to make their general fund obligations.
Here are the actual numbers for the charts above. Land areas were taken from the Wikipedia article on each city. Populations were from https://www.citypopulation.de/php/usa-california.php?adm2id=06085
The 2018 budget refers only to the general fund for each city.
Click on image to enlarge
General Revenue Fund Document Sources:
San Jose:
http://www.sanjoseca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/68436
Sunnyvale - page 20 of:
https://sunnyvale.ca.gov/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?blobid=25605
Santa Clara - page 3 of:
http://santaclaraca.gov/home/showdocument?id=61024
Mountain View - page 1-6 of:
https://www.mountainview.gov/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?BlobID=26500
Milpitas - page 8 of:
http://www.ci.milpitas.ca.gov/_pdfs/CityofmilpitasFy2018_2019_AdoptedBudget.pdf
Palo Alto - page 14 of:
https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/66641
Cupertino: https://www.cupertino.org/our-city/departments/finance/budget-at-a-glance
Gilroy: https://www.cityofgilroy.org/DocumentCenter/View/7032/Budget-Transmittal-Letter
Morgan Hill: https://www.morgan-hill.ca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/23216/Budget-in-Brief-2018-2020
Campbell - page 4 of:
https://www.ci.campbell.ca.us/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/1122
Sartatoga - page 15 of:
https://www.saratoga.ca.us/DocumentCenter/View/1569/FY-201819-Proposed-Operating--Capital-Summary-Budget-PDF?bidId=
Los Altos - page ii of:
https://www.losaltosca.gov/sites/default/files/fileattachments/finance_and_technology/page/41701/adopted_budget_fy18_and_fy19_final_to_print1.pdf
Los Altos Hills - page 30 of:
https://www.losaltoshills.ca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1929/2017-18-Adopted-Budget-2218?bidId=
Los Gatos - page c-6 of
https://www.losgatosca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/21571/Financial-Summaries?bidId=
Monte Sereno - page 2 of:
http://www.montesereno.org/DocumentCenter/View/1545/Budget-2017-2018
