BCHD Fleecing ... why does BCHD charge SO MUCH to spend our money?

BCHD charges a 37% overhead fee to spend taxpayer money

Every dollar that BCHD spends comes from District taxpayers or public assets. Each year we pay property taxes and BCHD collects rent and lease payments from our public purchased land and facilities. So why do we pay BCHD a 37% fee to spend our own money? Wouldn't public health be far better served by direct grants to local health providers instead of laundering our money through BCHD's high cost operation?

BCHD's 2022-23 budget showed total spending of just under $15 million. That's a distribution of $10.5 million at a BCHD internal cost of $4.3 million in overhead expenses. Those overheads are $2.3 million for the executive payroll to the CEO and his directors and $2 million for administrative and general (A&G) expenses. Seems like a really high BCHD fee, doesn't it? Surely the three cities that own and fund BCHD could distribute more of that $15M if they simply used their own staff and cut out the BCHD middleman.

BCHD's 13 executives only manage 58 full time employees between them. That means we taxpayers pay $39,725 to each executive per employee that they manage. Many of those employees don't even make that much each year, so we're being forced by BCHD to pay their executives more to manage an employee than the employee herself makes! Another way to look at the high cost of the BCHD executives is that $2.3 million of executives each manages only $800,000 worth of net funds distribution. Do we really need $2.3 million of executive overhead to distribute $10.5 million each year? No we don't, just look at Peninsula Health Care District that is much more efficient and larger than BCHD.

Peninsula is in the bay area and has just over $27 million in its 2022-23 budget compared to BCHD's just under $15 million. And Peninsula does that with only 6 executives (not BCHD's 13 executives) and a total executive payroll of $967,134.81 (not BCHD's $2.3 million). Peninsula pays a mere 3.7% of its total budget to its executives, while BCHD fleeces us for 18%. BCHD doesn't have a revenue problem; BCHD has a spending problem. BCHD is top heavy, overstaffed with executives, and overpaid. You only have to look at Peninsula Health Care District to see that. Maybe we can hire their CEO Cheryl Fama and bring her philosophy of spending money on the community instead of District executives. All the supporting data is available at StopBCHD.com