Kern’s Community-Project Results Fell Short for a Second Year. Shafter’s Exit Adds a Deadline.

Lower targets, lower reported reach

Kern County planned for federally funded public-facility and infrastructure work to benefit 22,310 people during the fiscal year that ended June 30. Its draft performance report records 3,415 — 15.3 percent of the annual target. That result follows a different set of projects in the preceding year that reached 18.7 percent of their target. The two reports establish a repeated gap between the county’s promised annual reach and its reported results; they do not establish that individual residents were denied a service. This analysis concerns Kern’s urban-county CDBG program, not the separate City of Bakersfield program or all infrastructure spending in the county.

The shortfall is visible when the county’s final spending plan is put beside its subsequent performance table. The 2025–26 plan assigned a $3,762,730 CDBG funding entry to the broader public facilities, improvements and services goal and set the 22,310-person infrastructure target. The draft CAPER — the county’s annual report to HUD — records 3,415 against that same indicator. The difference is 18,895 people in a planning measure that can count the population benefiting from an area improvement, rather than individual visits or distinct customers.

The preceding final report listed an annual target of 69,565 and an outcome of 12,975. Both the target and reported outcome were lower in the new year: the target fell 67.9 percent, while the outcome fell 73.7 percent. Those figures should not be treated as a controlled test of the same projects. The new report begins a new five-year planning cycle, and project completion can move benefits between years. But lowering the annual target did not close the county’s reported performance gap.

Less spending before Shafter’s departure

Spending also declined. The base CDBG resource table reports $3,149,722 spent in 2025–26, compared with $4,597,158 in 2024–25 — a decrease of 31.5 percent. Available resources in those tables fell much less, from $4,696,185 to $4,476,861, or 4.7 percent. Separate pandemic-era CDBG and HOME-ARP expenditures appear elsewhere in the reports and are excluded from this like-for-like comparison. Expenditure timing alone cannot show whether a project is delayed or whether money was wasted.

Shafter makes the timing question more immediate. The draft says the city elected to leave the county program beginning with the 2027–28 annual action plan. Yet the county reports only $907.19 in CDBG expenditure in Shafter during 2025–26, compared with $18,386.82 a year earlier. The newer amount is about 0.03 percent of the county’s base CDBG expenditure total. It measures that year’s reported spending, not Shafter’s entire allocation, contractual commitments or lifetime project cost.

What the pending project establishes

The county offers an explanation in its published report: participating cities have projects nearing construction, when their allocated resources are expected to be spent. It also identifies Shafter’s departure as a reason to complete projects and use its remaining allocations. A separate September 29 Board of Supervisors agenda proposed a $665,273 agreement for Rodriguez Park multipurpose-field and retention-basin improvements in Shafter. The accompanying packet includes certified September 1 Shafter council minutes approving the funding agreement subject to its final legal form. Those documents show a concrete project moving through approval; the records reviewed here do not verify a subsequent county vote, construction start or completion.

The county’s consolidated plan makes its oversight obligation explicit: it monitors contracts and uses desk reviews, site visits and inspections for capital improvements. The next test is therefore measurable — whether later reports turn the proposed park agreement and the other near-construction projects into completed activities and reported beneficiaries. The 2025–26 report reviewed for this story remains labeled a draft on the planning department’s public document page. Its figures should be checked against a final submission when one is posted. No new agency comment was requested; the explanation here is drawn from the county’s published records.