Amid intense lobbying to restore social-service funding to this year’s budget, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors earmarked $1 million for specific organizations, flouting the city charter.
Author Archives: Kevin Stark
Kevin Stark is a journalist living in San Francisco. Before joining KQED radio in spring 2019, he worked for the Public Press for 10 years, having covered local politics, labor, health care and the environment.
Posted inCity Budget Watchdog, City Hall, Public Safety
Supes on: the budget — ‘There needs to be more dialogue,’ says Maxwell
Sophie Maxwell praises the health department for efficiency and calls the budget policy debate “healthy.”
“The police, that’s the end. Public safety starts in the middle. Public safety starts with education. Public safety starts with health … by the time they get to the police we have failed them.”
Posted inNews
Public defender and children’s services win back funds as revised budget passes in San Francisco
A concerted last-minute campaign by the San Francisco public defender to restore previously cut funds succeeded as the Board of Supervisors passed a revised $6.7 billion budget Tuesday.
The budget was the culmination of months of wrangling among agencies and political factions that pitted, most audibly, social services and public health agencies against public safety to bridge an unprecedented funding gap of more than $400 million.
Winners Tuesday also included public financing of political campaigns, children’s services and the district attorney.
The police department’s top brass, the convention center, the ballet, the opera and a nonprofit theater all lost out, as their budgets were gouged to balance the city’s ledger.
The 9-2 budget vote came after months of adjustments and political trading that left few completely satisfied.
Posted inNews
Fire department OT pay increased amid citywide budget cuts
The San Francisco Fire Department is the only major city division whose overtime pay has grown in the last year -– straining the budget in a season when nearly every department has had to make painful sacrifices to help bridge a $438 million deficit.
And as politicians tussled last month with firefighters and police over more than $80 million in proposed cuts, neither side in the debate focused on what all acknowledge as a worrisome development: the expensive and unrestrained growth of firefighters’ extra pay for working longer hours.
The unparalleled growth can be traced to a series of events. First, overtime spending spiked after voters passed a 2004 proposition requiring 24-hour staffing. Spending continued to climb in 2007, after Mayor Gavin Newsom and the fire union negotiated a large election-year pay increase for fire employees, while instituting a hiring freeze and mandatory overtime. The department said that was the right decision because paying overtime is cheaper than hiring new full-time employees with benefits.
Research and graphic by Mary Catherine Plunkett/The Public Press
The city’s four other large departments — police, sheriff, transportation and public health — all managed to decrease overtime by an average of 21 percent in the last year. And they are slated for 39 percent in further cuts in the next year.
But firefighters racked up $26.4 million in overtime in fiscal year 2008-09, an increase of 14 percent. For the coming year, firefighters foresee a cut in overtime of 18 percent.
Posted inNews
Late-night San Francisco budget plan adds back millions to health and welfare spending
After a month of political jockeying, protests and two days of marathon budget negotiations, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Budget Committee approved a framework budget for the coming fiscal year.
Posted inNews
Mayor restores funding for Tenderloin drop-in center
In a reprieve for San Francisco mental health services, Mayor Gavin Newsom restored funding to the decades-old Tenderloin Self Help Center, a drop-in counseling and service provider, according to Jackie Jenks, executive director of the parent organization, Central City Hospitality House.
Posted inNews
Vote moves $82 million from public safety to public health
In a day of high tensions, as hundreds of San Francisco firefighters and public health activists held loud, competing rallies outside City Hall, the Board of Supervisors Tuesday sent a message to Mayor Gavin Newsom: Let’s rework the budget priorities together.
Posted inNews
Supervisors urge shift of $82 million from cops and fire to health
In a day of protest inside and outside City Hall, the Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Finance Committee shoved a wrench in Mayor Gavin Newsom’s interim budget Wednesday, while nearly 1,000 rallied outside for more equitable cuts to save health services.
Posted inAging, Health, Homelessness
SF budget cuts target behavioral health
Hundreds of San Francisco’s most vulnerable people — the mentally ill, homeless, and seniors among them — will be pushed out of the social services safety net and even further into the margins if proposed cuts to the Department of Public Health go through.
Posted inEnvironment, Food Systems, Utilities
Homeless counseling group first on Health Dept. chopping block
Caduceus Outreach Services could close its doors as early as July 1 due to the crippling budget deficit facing the San Francisco of Department of Public Health.
Caduceus, a 13-year-old SOMA-based nonprofit organization, could lose two-thirds of its budget as a result of the Health Department’s efforts to cope with an unprecedented $163 million deficit. Caduceus, which provides psychiatric counseling to about 100 homeless people, is just one of 104 city-based community program agencies facing the budget ax this summer, as the city tries to deal with a total deficit of $438.1 million.