A 116% increase in one year
Kern County’s Roads Department spent $78.58 million in fiscal 2024–25, according to the final adopted budget’s actual column. The Board of Supervisors adopted $169.99 million for 2025–26—an increase of $91.40 million, or 116.3%.
Services and supplies rise from $75.99 million to $163.91 million, while capital assets rise from $2.19 million to $5.70 million. Because the department budget carries no salary-and-benefit object in this schedule, readers should not treat the total as a conventional departmental payroll budget.
| Measure | FY 2024–25 actual | FY 2025–26 adopted | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total appropriations | $78.58M | $169.99M | +$91.40M |
| Intergovernmental revenue | $60.81M | $123.57M | +$62.76M |
| Other financing sources | $15.94M | $42.62M | +$26.69M |
| Capital assets | $2.19M | $5.70M | +$3.51M |
Outside revenue carried the expansion
Intergovernmental revenue increased $62.76 million, or 103.2%, and accounts for 68.7% of the total $91.40 million budget increase. Other financing sources grew another $26.69 million. Together, those two categories explain almost all of the planned expansion.
Total budgeted revenue is $167.01 million, compared with $169.99 million in appropriations. The printed net cost is $2.97 million. In the prior actual year, revenue exceeded expenditures by $1.31 million.
More authorization is not the same as more completed roads
The original finding is a financing concentration: the department’s ability to more than double its spending plan depends heavily on transfers and intergovernmental money rather than a comparable rise in fees or local taxes recorded in this unit.
The budget does not list the mileage to be paved, bridges repaired, project delivery dates or individual grant conditions on this summary page. Residents should compare the eventual actual spending and project list with this authorization before officials describe the full $170 million as delivered infrastructure.
Method and limits
The newsroom extracted the Roads Department row in Schedule 8 and the object-level table in Schedule 9, then calculated dollar changes and shares. All displayed figures are rounded from the official totals.
The comparison is budget-to-actual, not budget-to-budget: it shows how the new authority compares with the previous year’s recorded spending. Some apparent growth may therefore represent multi-year project timing, reimbursement cycles or work carried into the new fiscal year.