Use the form on this page to write customized a letter to the Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors. A draft you can customize is shown on the next page.

You may also co-sign the open letter (full text below) as yourself or an organization you represent.

Care Not Cages • Public Health Is Public Safety • Invest in People

Dear Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors,

We, the undersigned residents, workers, faith communities, and organizations of Santa Cruz County, urge you to adopt a FY 2026–27 budget that reflects our community’s deepest values: care, equity, and dignity for all. Budgets are more than financial plans — they are moral documents that reveal our ethical priorities. Where we choose to spend — and where we choose to cut — tells every resident who we believe deserves safety, health, and a chance to thrive.

We know this is a difficult year. Federal funding cuts are creating real hardship, and hard choices cannot be avoided. But we cannot balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable members of our community. We are asking you to be bold: prioritize people over punishment, and prevention over crisis response. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Public Health Is Public Safety

Real public safety does not come from more incarceration and policing. It comes from healthy, thriving communities where everyone’s basic needs are met. Meeting people’s basic needs — food, housing, healthcare, mental health services, and community connection — is the foundation from which safe, vibrant communities are built.

We want to live in a Santa Cruz County where:

• Everyone has a safe place to sleep and healthy food to eat
• Affordable, effective healthcare is accessible
• Mental health and substance use services are fully funded
• Youth and families are supported by community-based care

Cuts to food assistance, preventive healthcare, and support services will lead to worsened health outcomes, more people in crisis, and greater long-term costs to the county. Preventing crises is both the compassionate choice and the fiscally responsible one.

The Fiscal Case for Investing in People

Investing in community well-being is not just the compassionate choice — it is the fiscally responsible one. Diverting funds from the carceral system and channeling them into community-based solutions is not a radical idea — it is a proven strategy that communities across California and the country have used to foster public safety and healing. The evidence is clear:

• Research consistently shows that every $1 invested in mental health and substance use treatment returns $4–$7 in reduced costs related to incarceration, emergency services, and hospitalization.[1]
• Stable housing, adequate nutrition, and access to mental health care are proven to reduce recidivism, decrease emergency room visits, and lower long-term costs to county systems.
• Communities that have shifted investment from incarceration toward care and prevention have seen measurable reductions in crime, homelessness, and poverty without compromising public safety.
• Here in Santa Cruz County, the General Fund contributes $93 million to carceral departments (Sheriff-Coroner and Probation combined), which is much more than the $54 million the General Fund contributes to all of Health and Human Services combined. Every dollar redirected from excess carceral capacity toward Health Services Agency and Human Services Department programs buys 5.6 times more total community services, because HHS leverages 86 cents of every dollar from federal and state matching funds — compared to just 28 cents for carceral departments.

Jailing people experiencing poverty, mental illness, or addiction does not make our community safer. It makes it more expensive. The most fiscally responsible thing this Board can do is invest in people upstream, before a crisis.

Other Communities Are Showing the Way

This is not theoretical. Communities across the country — including here in California — have already made these shifts, and the results are compelling, here are a few examples:

• Denver’s Supportive Housing Social Impact Bond Initiative invested in permanent housing and wraparound services for chronically homeless residents who had been arrested an average of eight or more times. An independent Urban Institute evaluation found that participants experienced a 40% reduction in arrests, 40% fewer shelter stays, and spent an average of 38 fewer days in jail over three years — while more than half the cost of the housing program was offset by reductions in emergency room visits, shelter use, and jail costs. Denver estimated it had been spending $7.3 million per year on just 250 chronically homeless individuals cycling through the jail, hospital emergency rooms, temporary shelters, and detox centers — money that was largely eliminated by simply providing housing.[3]
• New Mexico implemented pre-trial reform in 2016 greatly reducing the use of cash bail, and state-wide crime rates declined.[4] Santa Clara County implemented pre-trial reform such as text message reminders and providing transportation and other assistance and saw jail populations decrease and court attendance increase.[4.1] California significantly reduced pretrial detention during the pandemic; but post-pandemic many counties (including ours) reversed these policies and jail populations surged though crime rates did not.[4.2] Santa Cruz County has been studying pre-trail reform and should accelerate implementing what it has learned.[4.3] The majority of people in Santa Cruz County’s jail are held pretrial[5], many are health-related, are misdemeanors, or simply cannot afford bail. Much of pre-trial detention just imposes enormous financial and human costs with no public safety benefit.
• California demonstrated that reducing incarceration infrastructure is fiscally sound and safe. By closing unused prison units, it has saved $620 million annually since 2021, with no negative impact on public safety or employment. [6]
• Eugene, Oregon’s CAHOOTS program has dispatched mental health workers and medics instead of police to crisis calls for over 30 years. The program handles 17% of the city’s 911 call volume and saves an estimated $8.5 million per year in public safety and emergency costs — all with a program budget of just $2.1 million annually, compared to $90 million for the combined police budgets it supplements.[2] Santa Cruz County already has a similar program in MCRT (Mobile Crisis Response Team). This is a proven model worth protecting and expanding.

The Imbalance We Are Asking You to Address

The proposed FY 2026–27 budget makes the imbalance between carceral and community spending visible in stark terms. We recognize that this budget was developed under genuine fiscal pressure, and we appreciate the Board’s stated commitment to protecting basic services. But the numbers tell a troubling story about where the burden of austerity is falling.

Carceral departments:

• The General Fund contribution to the Sheriff and Corrections department increased 13% to $80.8 million, with total expenses increased 9% to $124.4 million. This is the county’s single largest General Fund commitment.
• The Probation Department’s General Fund contribution increases 5% to $12 million — even as total expenses fall 5%, meaning the department is becoming more reliant on General Fund dollars, not less.
• Together, Sheriff-Coroner and Probation draw $93 million from the General Fund — more than all of Health and Human Services combined.

Health and Human Services:

• The Health Services Agency loses 23 funded positions due to federal cuts to Medi-Cal, behavioral health, and public health programs.
• The Human Services Department loses 25 funded positions as federal pass-through funding for CalFresh and CalWORKs declines. Its General Fund contribution rises 17% — not because the county is investing more, but because federal support is collapsing.
• Together, HSA and HSD draw only $54 million from the General Fund — yet they serve the overwhelming majority of vulnerable residents in our county, and leverage 86 cents of every dollar from federal and state matching funds. Every General Fund dollar cut from HHS eliminates far more total service than a dollar cut anywhere else.

The carceral system consistently avoids the kind of scrutiny applied to health and human services, even as its costs grow and its population declines. We always seem to be able to fund policing, surveillance, and incarceration. The money for healthcare is on the chopping block every year. Our inflated carceral budgets and our underfunded social safety net are directly and causally related. A divest/invest strategy — shifting wasteful spending away from incarceration and toward healthy community investments — is the path to both fiscal sustainability and genuine public safety.

At a time when federal cuts are eliminating access to healthcare, food assistance, and housing support for our most vulnerable residents, Santa Cruz County must hold the line locally. We cannot fill every gap left by Washington, but we can make sure our own choices do not make things worse.

Our Specific Asks

We urge the Board of Supervisors to prioritize the following in the FY 2026–27 budget:

• Protect Health and Human Services from disproportionate cuts. The impacts of budget constraints must be distributed equitably across departments. Health and human services should not bear the heaviest burden while the Sheriff’s budget grows by nearly $10 million.
• Protect food assistance programs. At a time of growing need and federal cuts, local food security must be a priority.
• Fully fund mental health services, behavioral health care, and suicide prevention. The county jail should not function as our largest mental health institution.
• Protect and expand MCRT and other community-based crisis response programs that provide effective, lower-cost alternatives to law enforcement response.
• Invest in housing with behavioral health services as a cost-effective strategy to reduce incarceration for people experiencing housing instability and mental health crises.
• Support the Public Defender's Holistic Defense model, which helps public safety, human dignity and community wellbeing.
• Reduce Juvenile Hall spending and reinvest in community-based youth services. The current budget allocates $9.26 million for Juvenile Hall within the Probation Department, with 31 staff [7] and an average of just 10 youth [8] — a ratio of more than 3-to-1. Reinvest those savings in community-based health and services for youth and their families.
• Reduce the General Fund contribution to the Sheriff and Corrections Department by 10%. Reinvest these savings in non-carceral programs that are producing real, positive outcomes for our community.

Our Community Deserves Better

We cannot arrest, incarcerate, or surveil our way out of poverty, mental illness, or homelessness. Other communities have shown that we can invest toward a place where everyone is safe, healthy, and housed. The choice between care and cages is also a choice between fiscal wisdom and fiscal waste.

The safest neighborhoods are not the ones with the most police. They are the ones with the most community-centered resources. This is a moment of both crisis and opportunity — an opportunity to break from status quo budgeting and make choices that reflect who we truly want to be as a county.

In solidarity,

Undersigned Organizations and Community Members — Santa Cruz County

——————————————————————————————

Organized by Care Not Cages, SURJ Santa Cruz County.

• Budget hearings: June 10 & 11, 2026.
• Sign-on deadline: June 15, 2026.
• Final vote: June 24, 2026.

Citations

[1] White House Council of Economic Advisers. Programs addressing mental health or substance abuse may reduce the cost of crime by $0.92–$3.31 per dollar spent, with a total return of $1.47–$5.27 per taxpayer dollar. Reported at: https://www.elizabethkelleylaw.com/blog/white-house-report-increased-spending-on-inmate-mental-health-reduces-the-cost-of-crime/

[2] White Bird Clinic / CAHOOTS, Eugene, Oregon. Program data, cost figures, and call volume: https://whitebirdclinic.org/what-is-cahoots/ See also CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/05/us/cahoots-replace-police-mental-health-trnd/index.html

[3] Urban Institute / HUD User, 2021: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr-edge-trending-101221.html

[4] Prison Policy Initiative, 2023: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2023/07/06/bail-reform

[4.1] https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/fairness-justice/how-text-messages-can-help-keep-people-out-jail

[4.2] https://capolicylab.org/short-term-impacts-of-bail-policy-on-crime-in-los-angeles/

[4.3] https://govlab.hks.harvard.edu/news/harvard-kennedy-school-government-performance-lab-expands-pretrial-initiative-to-five-jurisdictions/

https://santacruzcountyca.gov/Portals/0/County/prb/pdfs/Annual%20Reports/Pretrial%20Division%20Annual%20Report%202024%20FINAL.pdf

[5] Santa Cruz County civil grand jury https://www.santacruzcountyca.gov/Portals/0/County/GrandJury/GJ2024_final/2024-5_Jails_Report.pdf

[6]California legislative analysts office report https://www.lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4852

[7] Santa Cruz County Proposed FY 2026-27 Budget. Sheriff-Coroner Department: https://www2.santacruzcountyca.gov/CAO/StrategicPlan/Budget/2026-27/dept/37. Probation/Juvenile Hall: https://www2.santacruzcountyca.gov/CAO/StrategicPlan/Budget/2026-27/dept/34

[8] California Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC), Juvenile Detention Profile Survey Dashboard, Q4 2025: https://www.bscc.ca.gov/jdps-dashboard/

[9] Santa Cruz County proposed 2026–27 budget https://www.santacruzcountyca.gov/VisionSantaCruz/Budget.aspx