The Marin/Sonoma Mosquito and Vector Control District will operate under a reduced budget for the 2015-16 fiscal year following the failure of a proposed assessment tax in May that would have raised $3.5 million, over half of which would have gone into a trust fund to pay for post-employment benefits. Though the budget includes a laundry list of cuts to services and equipment, the revised budget—passed unanimously by trustees—does not include any layoffs. Service cuts will mean a decreased collection of ticks and testing for tick-borne diseases such as Lyme, reduced funds for public outreach and the elimination of the district’s sentinel chicken program, by which the district maintains chicken flocks to test for the presence of West Nile virus. “We’re working hard to make our budget balanced and still serve the public at the same time,” said Lee Braun, vice president of the board. Due to the current budget constraints, however, “it’s unlikely [the district will] be able to provide the same services to the public” in the future, he added. According to Mr. Braun, the board has plans to host a workshop in October or November in which trustees will review public comments on the assessment tax. District voters denied the assessment by a narrow margin, in large part due to dissatisfaction with the way in which the district advertised how revenue generated by the tax would have been used. “We plan to look at ourselves and see where we need to improve,” Mr. Braun said. “We want to look at the public comments and learn from them.” Much complaint focused on the glossy color brochure mailed out during the campaign that was meant to impress upon voters the need for the assessment to maintain “baseline” services in the district. That brochure represented a large portion of the vote’s more-than $400,000 cost. “I’ve never seen anything run like this,” Frank Egger, Fairfax’s representative on the board, told the Light last month. “We wasted almost a half-million dollars of taxpayers’ money.”