Budget Chair John Avalos
Photo by Luke Thomas
By John Avalos
Editor’s Note: While Mayor Gavin Newsom has the power to not spend money appropriated by the Board of Supervisors, which he has done on numerous occasions, the Board has the power to de-appropriate mayoral budget allocations. Also keep in mind, when Newsom announced his 2009/10 budget, he encouraged the Board to de-approriate allocations as the Board saw fit. With a majority six Progressive supervisors on the Board, there exists the possibility that Newsom’s budget can be recalibrated to equitably protect San Francisco’s social safety net. More than ever before in San Francisco’s history has the need for Progressive solidarity been so critical to saving lives and protecting the most vulnerable from a Mayor more interested in political advancement than representing the interests of the voiceless.
June 13, 2009
As you may have heard, the Budget Committee amended the Mayor’s Interim Budget to move millions dollars from the Police, Fire, and Sheriff Department to a Health and Human Services Stabilization Reserve. This was done in response to a Controller’s office analysis that showed that these 3 departments together received a 35 million dollar general fund increase, while our Health and Human Services departments were cut by 120 million dollars in general fund support.
As District 11 Supervisor, I have seen first hand how the most under-served communities are suffering the brunt of unbalanced and unfair allocations in our budget. Just in the neighborhoods I represent, the Mayor’s budget proposes major cuts that will diminish recreation and park services, senior programs, and devastate much needed community resources for our youth and families. These resources include the Ingleside Community Center, IT Bookman, OMI/Excelsior Beacon Center, Safe Havens, and the Safety Network, the Southeast Children and Family Therapy Center, and Southeast Geriatric Center. The Mayor has also raided funding from the Geneva Office Building. And other districts across the City are facing similar cuts.
Even if it was just an interim budget, as Chair of the Budget Committee, I could not in good conscience approve a document that does not reflect the full needs and values of San Franciscans. Since the Interim Budget is only a one-month budget, this was an opportunity to point out the great imbalance and politically-motivated inequities in the budget being proposed by the Mayor.
For the last 3 months, my committee has had 92 hours of hearings where hundreds of our neighbors shared stories of their hardships in facing lay-offs, foreclosures, loss of health benefits. Those who are lucky to have job, are in desperate need of affordable childcare. With the massive cuts in the state, San Franciscans, are looking to us here in City Hall to make sure that some kind of safety net can remain in place.
Hundreds of San Franciscans came forward to make sure we know what services the City and our community based partners provide that are important to them. We also heard ideas of how we can balance the budget during these difficult times. Almost every speaker spoke of their willingness to make a sacrifice and the need to share the pain. The lowest paid City workers came forward saying that they would rather have their own hours cut than see their co-workers laid off.
During these hearings, I was reminded of the San Francisco value of self-sacrifice and shared responsibility.
As Chair of the Budget Committee, I feel a heavy responsibility to make sure that our City Budget, the most important policy document we adopt, reflects our priorities and reflects who we are. We are a city of working parents, seniors, children and youth who rely on our public health system, community based organizations, recreation and park facilities, and human service programs, especially during these tough times.
The Mayor’s budget did not reflect that. His budget is balanced on the backs of our children, families, and our lowest paid workers. It does not share the pain across the different departments and among the lower paid and higher paid City workers. It does not spread the sacrifice. And most of all, it does not priorities the services and programs that San Franciscans need the most.
Our families are suffering the brunt of the financial crisis, facing lay-offs, and so much uncertainty. Instead of increasing our investment to lifeline services, prevention programs, and departments serving our children and families, these are being severely cut.
While there is certainly a need for emergency response and enforcement services, in times of fiscal constraint and major deficits, it is a better investment to fund programs that prevent the need for Police, Sheriff’s and Fire services.
It is better for our families and certainly less expensive for the City if we are able to:
· Prevent domestic violence through our innovative and proven programs,
· keep kids off the streets by keeping our community centers and parks open, and provide much needed behavioral health programs to avoid more costly police and 911 services.
As the Board of Supervisors dive headlong into the budget balancing process, I look forward to hearing from all of you your feedback and ideas on the tough decisions we will have to make. Below is just one of the articles that cover the work of the Budget committee. I trust that you would remain critical and discerning in reading the headlines in the coming weeks.
Please always feel free to contact my office if you have any questions.
Yours truly,
JOHN AVALOS
The Hunger Site
June 17, 2009 at 5:11 am
Mr. Brooks (see comment above) is proposing a massive increase of revenues. “Revenues” is a nice way of saying more taxes and fees. How on earth is the average family supposed to pay more and more money in this economy? And taxing corporations to the hilt will result in more layoffs or the companies leaving altogether. Why would a company stay in San Francisco when they can do business just down the freeway under better conditions?
Mr. Brooks is relying on the old mantra: “tax the evil corporation and all our troubles will be gone.” How simplistic and outdated. Close tax loopholes? Absolutely. Add more taxes “just because”? Not good policy.
If there are more taxes to be levied we should leave that up to the federal government.
The only way to solve this budget mess it to realize that we, as a city, simply can’t afford to pay for everything. Sounds harsh but it’s true.
June 15, 2009 at 12:48 pm
One problem the city faces is the disjointed efforts of non-profits and city agencies who perform the same services, but together form a web of red tape and inefficiency that bleeds city money. Do the following organizations provide similar services that the City or other non-profits also provide? The non-profits Mr Avalos mentioned; Ingleside Community Center, IT Bookman, OMI/Excelsior Beacon Center, Safe Havens, and the Safety Network, the Southeast Children and Family Therapy Center, and Southeast Geriatric Center are examples of mulitiple users of city funds. The City needs to look for more efficient ways to provide these services, just like they need to do a better job with police, fire and public safety. $6.6 Billion is more than enough money for the City and County of SF. 27,000 employees are more than we need. SOMEBODY in City Hall must have the guts to say NO, instead of MORE MORE MORE. I recommend keeping all of Newsom’s cuts, and adding the $82M of cuts to police and fire on top of that. Or freeze spending based on prior year’s budget. And by the way, Mr Avalos, hopefully the pension obligations of the city employees will not bankrupt the City before you are termed out.
June 13, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Oh — I forgot to mention — Avalos for Mayor!
June 13, 2009 at 7:51 pm
*Cough* Cough* Marc* Cough* I’m looking in your direction *Cough*
June 13, 2009 at 7:50 pm
“While Mayor Gavin Newsom has the power to not spend money appropriated by the Board of Supervisors, which he has done on numerous occasions, the Board has the power to de-appropriate mayoral budget allocations.”
This is what confuses me and perhaps someone reading FJC could clarify: can’t the Newsom administration de facto find a way to weasel around this and appropriate the budget in any way it sees fit? And even if it is barred from this option (which I find hard to believe), what if Newsom still simply refuses to spend the money that the Board establishes for the social safety net? Is all that money going to just sit and gather dust somewhere?
In addition, doesn’t it take 8 Supervisors to come up with a half-way decent budget? I doubt that Dufty and Maxwell will have the courage to do what’s right.
June 13, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Good Small First Step – But Critical & Massive New Deal Style Spending -Must- Enter This Discussion
Thanks to you John, Chris Daly, and President Chiu for leading this budget revolt and reorganization, but I have to say, it’s not anywhere near enough.
‘Sharing The Pain’, and ‘increased revenues’, will help slow the bleeding, but it will do nothing to solve the deep crisis that we are in, and the even deeper crisis approaching as the State cuts all remaining community supports beneath the bone.
San Francisco, as a City, must immediately engage in the same sort of massive revenue increase and infrastructure building project that occurred under the national Franklin Roosevelt administration in the 1930s.
To do otherwise would invite a total collapse of the San Francisco community and economy.
The Board must act very rapidly to vastly increase revenues and revenue bonding by hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars in order to immediately build projects like Clean Power SF, as well as a universally accessible and free 24/7 citywide mass transit web, which together will replace nearly all of our fossil fuel use and almost all of our personal automobile use over the next few decades. This move is critical to both halting the climate crisis and creating thousands of green jobs in San Francisco.
Likewise, the City must engage in similar revenue generation and spending to build a a much larger and more comprehensive public health care and housing infrastructure, and to also build out a universal citywide publicly owned fiber optic communications network; the latter which will enable our community to compete with the substandard overpriced monopolistic private communications providers like Comcast and AT&T, giving citizens -real- and cheap universal public access to quality communications and media, eliminating the digital divide, and providing critical competitiveness that local businesses (especially in information and media production) must gain immediately in order to compete in a cutthroat global economy.
And there are myriad other such needed massive increases in programs for the arts, local organic gardening and vegetable production, full free public education, ending incarceration of nonviolent citizens in favor of treatment and job supports, restoring historic buildings and neighborhoods, taking local community and neighborhood control of Redevelopment projects, etc. which would all generate tens of thousands of jobs and redeemed lives if we just get cracking on raising the revenues and starting the projects now.
We absolutely must stop simply tinkering around the edges of reducing the pain and bleeding, and instead lift this economy up into a green new deal renaissance.
There are large numbers of multi-millionaires, billionaires and more importantly multi-billion dollar corporations in San Francisco who have been increasing their wealth hundreds of percentage points over the sinking incomes of local workers and small businesses for decades. It is time for our city government and all San Franciscans to take back a huge portion of that stolen wealth and rebuild our city, for the good of all; including those short sighted millionaires and billionaires who are foolishly unable to see past the bottom lines on their quarterly balance sheets, to the fact that even their own well being and personal self worth will be greatly diminished if we don’t engage in such a revolutionary green new deal era for our community immediately.
Eric Brooks