By Luke Thomas
June 10, 2009 2:39 pm
Just got word that this afternoon’s Budget and Finance Committee meeting, to reconvene at 3:00 pm, will discuss possible cuts to SFFD and SFPD to help balance the city’s $438 million budget deficit.
Mayor Gavin Newsom’s budget currently includes no cuts to either departments while many other departments and workforces are facing layoffs and steep cuts.
The meeting will be televised live on SFGTV.
Luke Thomas
Luke Thomas is a former software developer and computer consultant who proudly hails from London, England. In 2001, Thomas took a yearlong sabbatical to travel and develop a photographic portfolio. Upon his return to the US, Thomas studied photojournalism to pursue a career in journalism. In 2004, Thomas worked for several neighborhood newspapers in San Francisco before accepting a partnership agreement with the SanFranciscoSentinel.com, a news website formerly covering local, state and national politics. In September 2006, Thomas launched FogCityJournal.com. The BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, New York Times, Der Spiegel, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, 7x7, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Bay Guardian and the San Francisco Weekly, among other publications and news outlets, have published his work. Thomas is a member of the Freelance Unit of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, TNG-CWA Local 39521 and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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The Hunger Site
June 13, 2009 at 6:02 pm
This is obviously a no-brainer. But then as so many of the comfortable, elitist, establishment, ‘intellectuals’ and pontificators, especially the Newsom apolgists and brown nosers, are so lacking in this basic biolgical prerequisite for a minimum level of common sense, their reaction is understandable. Listen up you dickheads. If you deprive people of their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which we have been doing to too many for too long ( especially in health and human services). then they will attempt to survive by whatever means necessary. This is Maslov 101. The only sensible solution is to ensure that everybody’s basic needs are met. Unfortunately the comfortable, complacent and disappearing middle class (and right wing nut jobs), have been stuffing themselves with every chicken they could lay their hands on, while too many have had to feed their children stone soup from hungry pots. To increase the power of our police state in this time of crisis; to further criminalize and demonize those who have been suffering for way too long is not only brutal and inhumane, it is also counter productive and just plain dumb. Newsom has been directly and covertly diverting public money and resources to serve his own grandiose and pathetic ambitions ever since he was appointed to the BOS. He claims he received a landslide victory and ‘mandate’ in the recent mayoral race. The reality is that barely 25%, if that, of registered voters cast a vote inb his favor. To be fair, I’m not sure that he, under advice\, and reading from the script of EJ, ever actually used the phrase “man-date”; given the ‘rumors’ of his indiscriminate proclivities, especially when ‘under the influence’, that might have been too charged a phrase, and we all know how particular and parsimonious he is in public pronouncements. But I digress into alliteration and other stuff. He is an opportunistic, self aggrandising, corrupt, shallow and vacuous suit with a sleazy smile and a million dollar war chest, but there is no hair on the chest and his balls are in the grasp of the machine and the money changers. The BOS need to stand up and face the mother fucker down. Show that their cojones are full of fighting blood and not just whipped cream. No more compromise and co-option. Times are tough and gonna get a helluva lot tougher. This dandy dilettante has to be debagged, denounced and defenestrated. Let him go back to waiting tables and conducting wine tastings at his failing restaurants, at least he would be doing an honest days work for his pay, which he has never done since his paymasters appointed him to elected office.
Whadya mean I’ve got an attitude, just a working stiff, just telling it like I see it.
June 12, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Howard, people want city services because they buy into the notion that government can be part of the solution rather than the problem, that is why there are constituencies for government services. The Mayor which you Republicans supported, did not present a budget which shared pain across constituencies, rather made his political opponents pay while not causing much pain for his political allies.
The move that the Budget and Finance Committee made yesterday was one that spreads the pain evenly, as with the transfers of dollars from the SFPD, SFFD and SFSO to public health and rec and park, the recipient departments will still take a hit, just not so large a hit along with the “public safety” departments.
To my mind, public health IS public safety, and is much more effective in keeping us safe than the SFPD.
-marc
June 12, 2009 at 7:55 am
The absolute, completely, and utterly WORST thing the Supervisors can do at this point is balk. As Nate Ballard, Newsom, POA, etc., are starting to frame the debate in the corporate press, the Supervisors need to take the heat calmly, choose their words wisely, and keep pushing their agenda hard.
June 11, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Here’s a news flash. The “gimme, gimme, gimme” crowd wants more of somebody else’s money.
Well, guess what? We’re ALL broke. Members of the Board of Supervisors should take a 15% pay cut across the lot.
June 11, 2009 at 4:08 pm
HOW THE HELL IS IT NOT CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND GROSS MALFEASENCE FOR ERIC JAYE TO BE ON NEWSOM’S PAYROLL AND REPRESENTING THE FIREFIGHTERS UNION DURING NEGOTIATIONS !!!!
June 11, 2009 at 2:58 pm
It seems that every San Francisco department or function has its own advocacy group(s). For some it’s public safety (police and fire,) for others it’s the schools, or libraries, or parks, or child services, etc, etc, etc. The only way to deal with the current budget is for everyone to set aside their sacred cows and give a little rather than decimating chosen certain departments based simply on ideology.
June 11, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Yesterday’s vote was not on next year’s budget. It was on the interim budget. This is merely a placeholder arrangement until the real budget comes up for consideration.
So what we saw yesterday was shadow play on the part of both the Budget Committee and the Mayor. Each side was striking postures for media consumption on a measure that both sides knew was just a pro-forma stopgap.
Nobody at City Hall is leveling with the voters about the reality of the economic meltdown that lies ahead. In a few months, the city will be faced with a shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars due to the impending insolvency of the state of California.
Moreover, it appears that the national recession could get much worse. Some big banks may be approaching insolvency. Another wave of foreclosures may be about to hit, this time involving businesses, not private households.
If these fears materialize, we will be in another Great Depression. It could be worse than the first Great Depression because the federal government is already at the limits of its indebtedness. At the onset of the first Great Depression, the federal government’s indebtedness was nil.
Both the mayor and the supes should stop the posturing and the shadow play.
It’s time to face up to reality.
June 11, 2009 at 9:34 am
Kudos for finding the additional $80M in cuts for fire and police. But don’t spend this money, make these additional cuts truly cuts in the budget. $80M represents about 1% reduction in city government. I am positive there is much more than that to be cut to increase the efficiency of the delivery of sevices.
June 11, 2009 at 8:51 am
Divide and conquer is how a few manage to manipulate the many. There was nothing equitable about Newsom’s budget which cut or eliminated many services and jobs, while padding others– like police and fire.
What is truly shameful is the conflict that naturally ensues when everyone scrambles for what they are told are limited resources– when what is needed is for city leaders and all concerned citizens to “Hold the Line.” We need to ensure that human services and people take precedence over things–particularly things like redundancies and pet projects of questionable value. We need to demand our money back from the bullies and criminals who blew it (without our permission) in senseless wars, fictitious investments and Ponzi schemes.
Yesterday much was said about “sharing the pain.” What was hardly mentioned was there are many in our city, and country, who have been unfairly bearing the brunt of pain for decades upon decades. They have been treading water so long that they are hardly capable of grasping the token branches thrust at them from a system more attuned to public relations makeovers and hollow razzle dazzle.
June 11, 2009 at 8:36 am
Because crime is down at the moment, it’s only the calm before the storm. Or doctored numbers.
June 11, 2009 at 7:34 am
Looks like the Budget and Finance Committee has cut $82m from Police, Fire and Sheriff proving that public health can trump the illusions that we can pay our way to public safety through lavish salaries and retirements that are not commensurate with the quality of service we are receiving from the public safety agencies.
-marc
June 10, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Jerry,
The overall crime rate has decreased in California, including SF, as the recession has deepened.
Mayor Newsom’s budget for the coming year is 1% higher than last year’s budget. It now stands at $6.6 billion. You call this a lean budget?
The real problem will not come from Newsom but from the state. In a few months, the state of California will be bankrupt. This is the big fat fact that everybody is in denial about.
The state will only survive by adopting massive, unprecedented cuts, the like of which have never been seen before.
The upshot will be a shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars to SF, funding that would otherwise would come from the state, but which will soon be canceled.
That’s why all the theatrics around the present city budget are off target. The current problem will be nothing compared to what will develop in the next few months because of the collapse of the state’s finances.
This is a true catastrophe. There’s not much that anybody can do about it.
June 10, 2009 at 4:50 pm
I can see why the mayor would increase the police and fire departments’ budgets, cause there is going to be an increase in the number of desperate poor people on the streets. Newsom’s budget cuts will create the need for said departments.