Keith Caldwell is already taking a big red marker to his to-do list, given the dire news from Sacramento.

Item one for Caldwell, who begins his first term as a member of the Napa County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, now reads something like this: Do more with less.

“What I’d wanted to accomplish legislatively has changed a little bit based on Sacramento,” Caldwell said, referring to the state budget debacle, which has California billions of dollars in the hole as legislators continue to bicker over a solution.

The formula for how the governor and state lawmakers will try to address the fiscal crisis is uncertain, but Caldwell said, “It will have much more of an impact on county operations than what I would have anticipated.”

And so Caldwell will make his top priority as supervisor finding ways to trim county costs without hurting services, and without draining the county’s substantial reserves, he said.

“There are certainly some ways that you can do some cost-cutting (while) maintaining ... key services,” Caldwell said.

Caldwell said he will look at every county program for possible cuts, but noted that those he considers most critical — and therefore, potentially safest from cuts — are police and fire, and health and human services.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Dec. 1 declared a fiscal emergency, imposing a Jan. 15 deadline on legislators for reaching a budget solution.

Eye on developments

Though the state budget has swooped into Caldwell’s number one slot, the rest of his priorities remain the same, he said, not the least of which is dealing with some potentially historic land use decisions in Napa County.

Two controversial proposals — the mixed-use development at Napa Pipe and the Angwin eco-village — will pick up speed this year. Caldwell, who ran on a platform of slow growth, could prove a key player in both their fates.

“Napa County is such a unique community … I think that you have to balance the developer’s right to propose developments of that scale with (the question), does it meet the needs of the county?” Caldwell said.

He said his greatest concern — more so in Angwin than with Napa Pipe — is “that development (is) consistent with the character of the area.”

Caldwell said he is intrigued by the idea of a land swap involving Napa Pipe and Napa Valley Exposition, giving the owners of the former industrial site an opportunity to build housing in the heart of town while moving the Expo to open space by the river.

He said another idea being bounced around is asking Napa Pipe developers to trade land for the corporate yard near Lincoln and Soscol avenues in Napa or the Caltrans yard on Jefferson Street.

“I think it makes some sense to look at placing those developments within the city in areas that have been underutilized,” Caldwell said.

He expressed dismay at the failure of the city and county of Napa to reach an agreement whereby the city would take on 21 years of housing requirements in exchange for jurisdiction over Napa Pipe.

City and county officials have said the talks failed because there is no legal precedent for such a long-term housing deal.

“From a legislative standpoint, maybe that’s something we need to look at,” Caldwell said, adding that one of his priorities will be to work with state officials to reform the housing allocation system, which he called “old and quite antiquated.”

Caldwell said he would consider seeking legislation either to enable Napa County to participate in long-term housing swaps or a more general reform of the system. He admits, however, that “with the state currently in their budget fiscal crisis, I don’t know that they’ll be willing to look at that.”

Additional priorities, Caldwell said, include addressing the diminishing water supply in the Coombsville area; and, in the short term, his nomination of Matt Pope to the Napa County Planning Commission.

The public is invited to Caldwell’s ceremonial swearing-in today at 5 p.m., in the second floor ballroom of the Hatt Building, 500 Main St., Napa. Napa Superior Court Judge Raymond A. Guadagni will administer the oath of office to Caldwell and supervisors Bill Dodd, who ran unopposed in 2008, and Mark Luce, who topped rival Harry Martin and will be president of the board in 2009.