COUNTYWIDE : County Agencies Get $500,000 in Gifts

Orange County should be smiling pretty by now.

Fifteen thousand toothbrushes and 6,000 spools of floss were among the nearly $500,000 in gifts, services and cash donated to county agencies this year, according to a report from the county auditor presented Tuesday to the Board of Supervisors.

Among the more unusual gifts were $2,000 worth of Captain EO T-shirts and toddler toys from Disneyland, $1,330 in free tickets for the opera in Fullerton, five truckloads of dirt and $1,733 worth of men’s and women’s personal hygiene kits from the Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force.

The county’s Social Services Agency collected the most in cash, gifts and services with a total of $175,744. The big winners within that agency were the county’s annual Operation Santa Claus and the Orangewood Children’s Center, both of which serve disadvantaged or abused children.

Fire departments in the county donated 239 bikes to Operation Santa Claus; about half of the remaining donations to social services were contributions of less than $100 from private individuals.

The Sheriff’s Department collected the second most among county agencies. Cash and other contributions to the department totaled $154,293. Most of that came from local construction firms that donated time and supplies to help build Laser Village, a state-of-the-art shooting range that uses lasers to train law enforcers. The Sheriff’s Advisory Council also donated $20,000 worth of pistols and vests for the shooting range.

The report does not include political donations to the supervisors, who submit separate reports to a state political watchdog agency.