“San Francisco’s budget shortfall is much worse than originally projected, making this year’s financial outlook comparable to the city’s fiscal condition after the 2000 dot-com bust and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Controller Ben Rosenfield said Monday.
Rosenfield’s office projects a shortfall in this year’s budget of $90 million to $125 million, up significantly from the $70 million it had projected weeks ago. Just months ago, the Board of Supervisors approved this year’s $6.6 billion budget, which already included $350 million in cuts to jobs and services.
The situation is so dire that city workers almost certainly will face layoffs, health programs are likely to be downsized even more and parking meters could be erected in city parks.
There’s simply not enough money coming in to pay for everything, largely because fewer sales of large office buildings means fewer tax dollars and fewer shoppers means less sales tax money for the city.”
∙ S.F. budget faces larger shortfall than thought [SFGate]
Remind me, exactly what is it we get for our $10,000/resident budget?
$10,000 for every man, woman and child in the city? It is mind boggling when you put it that way. 30, 40 or 50 thousnd dollars per year for some families.
Everyone, get out and vote today.
It might be interesting to note that at our part time residence in a private community in Palm Desert, $10,000 a year is about what the club charges as a yearly assessment for community utilities, landscaping, SECURITY STAFF, clubhouse operations including concierge, swim center, golf course, gym and tennis courts, street paving and repairs, etc. etc.
The budget actually looks like it’s $8600/resident and not $10k. assuming $6.6B budget and 2007 census 764976 residents.
but weren’t many posters recently saying that the census vastly underreports SF population? (when they were asking for state or federal money)
That said, $8600/resident is nothing to sneeze at. good thing San Franciscans are so rich (or so I keep hearing on Socketsite)
The city needs to slash the budget and they need to use a chainsaw. Out of control spending and taxing has gone on for way too long – and now the well is dry. Does anyone think that they are getting a fair deal for their $8,600? The problem is that Newsom and his bloated staff and the pathetic board of supervisors are the least capable people in the state to solve this crisis (except maybe for Ron Dellums). Is this the government we deserve?
I have two suggestions:
1) reduce the salary of the top 10% city employees (i.e., Gavin’s frat boys’ network)
2) cut in half the number of disabled parking permits issued, therefore increasing the parking meter revenues. I have never seen such brazen abuse of a privilege reserved for a few truly deserving citizens
any others…?
asiagoSF … agree with your first point, but don’t just trim salaries, cut positions, especially some of those at the top that have been created in the last few years.
asiagoSF, here’s a couple more suggestions:
1) Go to the salary database at the Chronicle website and look at all of the positions making over $100K (eg assistant welder, etc). Cut 25% of these positions each year for the next two years.
2) Hire Sarah Palin (unless she somehow wins today) to zero base our budget.
One of the big motivation for high salaries for government employee was that:
1 – You want to be competitive with the private sector
2 – Cost of housing is high in SF
There is no reason for the current salaries as:
1 – The private sector is either freezing hiring or trimming down
2 – Housing becomes cheaper
Reduce salaries and the budget will re-balance itself. We are in a global deflationary cycle and the faster we understand that the better we will recover from it.
The budget will be helped out once the sales taxes start rolling in from the new restaurants in North Beach….oh wait…
This is just going to get worse as fewer home sales and falling property values reduce transfer and property tax revenues for the city. This is what happens when the real estate music stops.
What are your views on the livability and attractiveness of this city in the coming years or decades? reading the comments on SFgate, the overriding message is that the city is on course to go down the toilet, etc, and going by my observations of city services in the past few years, i’m inclined to think they have a point. of course there are lot of people on SFgate who do nothing but bash the city government whether justified or not. however when reading socketsite, the opinions for SF are so positive, it makes me wonder why there’s such a contrast between the two message boards.
The city has not been attractive for parents of school-age children for many years now, and the state budget crisis will only make that worse.
Ha! Hire Sarah Palin and SF will end up with a couple billion in debt, a butt-load of lawsuits, all the offices stacked with her high school buddies and donors, and request for reimbursements for a lot of “official business” family trips to Gary Danko’s & the French Laundry. Oh, and pay for a city manager (just like Wasilla) because the woman is completely incompetent.
It attractive to me and my school age kids, and everyone at our school, FWIW.
What do we get for the money?
The most comprehensive transit system this side of NYC (I know it still sucks, but it’s more COMPREHENSIVE than anywhere but NYC – covering everything costs big bucks).
The most resilient real estate and office market in California.
hire sarah palin?
As in “I can see Russia from my toilet.” Sarah Palin?
Cut the salaries of the highest paid (and layoff 4/5th’s of Gavin’s “Mayors Office” buddies of which there are hundreds) and slash the DPH budget – at over 1 billion I believe it’s the biggest chunk of our 6 billion budget. And do not, under any circumstances, cut funding for MUNI (although I’m sure Gavin will, which always makes it even worse and more expensive in the future to fix).
“The most comprehensive transit system this side of NYC”
Ya gotta be kidding. Chicago blows SF’s transport system away. And don’t look now, but LA is rapidly catching up.
One more reason NOT to vote for Chris Daly’s set-aside of $2.5 billion for low-income housing. New, inflexible mandates for hundreds of millions of spending is just what we DON’T need as our fiscal crisis is deepening.
“One more reason NOT to vote for Chris Daly’s set-aside of $2.5 billion for low-income housing.”
I second that. I almost voted the opposite of Chris Daly one every measure.
Milkshake,
Chicago’s is much better in rich areas, sure. Try using some transit in the poor areas though – just try. Chicago does a much better job of sweeping their problems under the rug though, I’ll agree on that.
In an attempt to tie together election day fever, budget shortfalls, and our favorite sacred cow, Prop 13:
The justices left intact an October ruling by an appeals court in Sacramento that allowed registered domestic partners – same-sex couples, or unmarried heterosexual couples in which one partner is at least 62 – to accept or inherit real estate from one another without new tax assessments.
That’s a significant advantage under Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that rolled back property taxes to 1 percent of value and limited increases to 2 percent a year. Prop. 13 allowed counties to reassess property to full market value when it was sold or changed ownership, often leading to a substantial tax increase.
From Sfgate. Nothing like the “big tent” of Prop 13 to help supress inventory… not that there’s anything wrong with that…
Is the “sate” in the header a typo or a pun?
I’ve commented about the black hole of taxpayer money known as our city/county government before. Nothing surprising here. We’ve got scores of redundant or idiosyncratic bureacrats doing nothing but going to meetings and discussing ethereal ideals while our infrastructure crumbles and families flee the city.
People doubling their incomes through overtime because they took their blackberry home for the weekend and were therefore technically “on call.” Director of climate protection making $200K/year and running a full department…with no accountability, deliverables, or litmus test of performance. Approving new bonds to fund that one thing that the old bonds were supposed to fund, but that money got spent elsewhere, and we’re not sure where. Let’s form a new committee to investigate. And it goes on.
I agree with FSBO- we need drastic cuts across the board, starting with the mayor’s office. Although I will concede one point to anon at 10:16AM: without the myopic junkyard dog mentality of the NIMBYs and progressives running this city, we would have a lot more housing, and it would cost a lot less. Score one for the home team.
[Soon-to-be-ex-Editor’s Note: Unfortunately just another typo (and one of those days).]
They should sell off the rights to regulate panhandling to Google, who would place ads, not on their signs, but on the sidewalk just in front of where they are panhandling.
As people avert their eyes from the panhandler, they look down and see the ad and Google pays the city for each impression.
Problems solved.
diemos – Total budget was around $6 billion in 2006-2007.
Here is where it went:
$1 billion to public protection (SFPD, SFFD, SF Sheriff, Courts)
$2.2 billion to transportation and public utilities (three biggest items are MTA, PUC, and Airport, at roughly $600 million each)
$0.7 billion to child and human services
$1.2 billion to Dept of Public Health
$0.3 billion to parks and museums
$0.6 billion to general admin and finance (majority is general admin services, HR, IT/telecom)
In terms of revenues, ~38% came from charges for services, rents/concessions, and fines, ~34% from local taxes, and ~18% from fed/state government transfers.
With regards to the figures above, the only one that surprised me a little was the Dept of Public Health budget. As I suspected, however, half of that goes to SF General (remember that SF is both a city and county, so covers services like the county hospital and the jail). After that Laguna Honda is the biggest item, and then community mental health services.
Overall, it seems like you’re getting pretty much what you’d expect to get for public services. Not much more and not much less…certainly doesn’t seem particularly “mind boggling” to me (in terms of either extreme waste or extreme value).
How about SF’s mind-boggling army of 28,000 highly paid city workers? It is simply indefensible that a city the size SF has so many workers on its payroll. Even allowing for the fact SF is both a city and a county there’s no way to justify such an enormous workforce. City government should exist first and foremost to deliver serices, not to function as a jobs program. First step on the road to fiscal sanity is reducing the numbers of city workers.
Thanks for the budget breakdown gmh. I see nothing but “extreme waste” in these numbers. $1B for public protection – are we getting good value for that? How many excess fire stations do we pay for? How about our crime stats? I guess Newsom is well protected. We paid for some guy making over $100K to drive his car up to Montana for his wedding. Haven’t we paid for Heather Fong to attend conferences all over the world? $700M for child services – how many kids are in this city and what % get these services? What are we paying, $50K per recipient? $300M for parks and museums – remember the park ranger makes $270K. Maybe we should let Don Fisher put his name on all of the parks and museums if he pays for them. $600M for admin? This works out to $2,000 per year for every household in the city – for “admin” costs! There is so much waste and pork in this budget – it is shameful. The city has too many workers and they are paid way too much.
“The city has too many workers and they are paid way too much.”
Has everyone seen Office Space? They have Tom, whose sole duty is to carry specs from the salespeople to the engineers. Then they have Milton, who does nothing and should have been fired 3 years ago but the memo got lost. I perceive that our city government operates much the same way, but with a higher ratio of Toms and Miltons, and they all make 300% more than Initech would pay.
Unlike the private sector, though, don’t expect “the Bobs” to be brought in to maximize efficiences. Would you pull the e-brake on a gravy train?
Crazy. The airport costs as much to run as MTA? That seems absurd. What could possibly make the airport’s budget balloon to $600M?
“The airport costs as much to run as MTA? That seems absurd.”
That was my reaction. Per wikipedia 35M passengers per year. Charge em 20 bucks each and there’s 700M a year. There’s no reason the airport can’t be self supporting.
The airport should be self-supporting already – it gets rather large gate fees for every aircraft that pulls in & on/off-loads passengers. I know it’s not his fault, but I blame Chris Daly for the airport’s problems too.
The airport is “self-supporting” in the sense that it generates as much revenues as it spends. You guys don’t seem to understand that the majority of the spending is not funded by local taxes. Even for MTA’s budget, only a minority comes from the general fund.
Of course, the airport sits on what amounts to around $10 billion of land, and it doesn’t pay the city a dime of rent or property tax on that land. So realistically we are subsidizing it to the tune of $500 million to $1 billion per year. I’m all for tacking on another $20 per ticket and making air travelers pay the actual costs of their flights. Maybe I’ll just take the new high speed rail. 😉
FSBO – If you think we have an overabundance of police officers and fire fighters, by all means, put a prop on the ballot that cuts the number in half. Good luck getting it passed. And if you think that SFPD is paid more than officers in other area cities, you have no idea what you’re talking about.
I have no doubt that SFPD’s policies and effectiveness could be improved along many dimensions. But I guarantee you that you could not police SF with half the current force, nor could you attract anyone but HS dropouts or criminals if you cut wages in half.
I know your type – you think that it should be easy to just take control of things and magically cut costs in half with no diminution in service. That’s not how the real world works. But if you can do that, why don’t you also wave your magic wand and make SF housing cost 50% less? Then we can all afford to buy something.
gmh, I “waved my magic wand” a little over a year ago, and we’re heading down toward that 50% reduction for SF housing. Wow, it worked!
In August, I waved my wand for a 50% decrees in the stock market.
Trip – Good point, even 50% doesn’t get us that far in this city. Better make it 90%.
My wand isn’t that big (couldn’t resist).
gmh, I “waved my magic wand” a little over a year ago, and we’re heading down toward that 50% reduction for SF housing. Wow, it worked
no, it isn’t
Does this budget include the cost of the schools? I have to assume it does, which would be half of the child and human services budget.
Here, they say they spend $6439/pupil, which if anything, is quite low. CA has dropped to one of the lowest spending per pupil in the nation, which is kind of embarassingly stupid.
http://www.sfschools.org/2007/06/sfusd-budget-available-on-line.html
As a comparison, LA County’s budget is $22B and the city of LA’s budget is 7B. LA is about 40% of the population of the whole county, so if you add 40% of $22B to $7B, you get $16B. Divide that by the number of residents of LA (3.8M) and you get $4210 per person, which is about half of what the local government spends in LA.
We have a much better transit system, better schools and parks and a similar crime rate. It still seems like we are spending quite a bit more, compared to what we get.
Not sure about spending per pupil in SF proper, but it’s certainly MUCH larger than $6K per student.
In CA overall, spending per pupil is approximately $12K per pupil (look at fig 5 here – http://www.lao.ca.gov/2008/spend_plan/spending_plan_08-09.aspx#chap3), some of which represents Federal transfers.
I would guess that SF spends more (being an expensive city, salaries and benefits are certainly going to be higher than average),
It woouldn’t matter if they spent $24K, the schools would still be crap in vast swaths of the state. The incentive structures, governance, goals of the system, demographics, etc. ensure it.
Anyway, it’s great that Arnie is proposing to increase sales taxes. The wealthy love this, because it’s very regressive. Just like lotteries (which should increase too in their plans), sales taxes act as a tax on the least productive.
Good thing there’s no talk of changing Prop 13! If they did, people like me wouldn’t be able to rent nice houses in GREAT school districts in Marin for less than 1/3rd the cost to buy it! It sure is nice of all those recent buyers to subsidize our kids’ educations through their $20K property tax assessments! Thanks.
I also hope that they increase income taxes. I’ve made my money (as have so many in California), and there are many ways of limiting or avoiding CA income taxes for people who don’t have a W-2 income.
Quite the conundrum California has created for itself, isn’t it?
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/education/20080413-9999-1n13pupil.html
This article has both GOP and Democratic legislators citing per pupil spending of $7-8k. I don’t understand the difference between the two figures, which is substantial.
“I don’t understand the difference between the two figures, which is substantial.”
Ask your local friendly government official. I’m sure you’ll get the straight answer 🙂
The LAO data look comprehensive. No one knows I guess the true figure – what a surprise. I would guess that true “economic” spending is actually more than $12K per pupil of course, because so many kids really don’t attend school (they are just passed through at the high school level) I’m sure, and I am also sure that there is tremendous “incentive” to misrepresent actual attendance anyway, as Federal $$ flow based on reported attendance figures (daily, from what I understand from my public school teacher relatives, the veracity of which I am sure you discount).
I know that the Tiburon public schools spend around $13K per student from the state government cheese funds, and they also derive approximately $1-1.5K cash per student from the Reed School Foundation fund raising efforts (not sure if all of that actually makes it into the classroom, if you know what I mean). And there is extensive classroom volunteering (my wife is there 3 days a week, and so are a number of other parents), the value of which is of course not reported.
Of course, public school spending is actually even more per student on a private school equivalent basis, as they do not pay rent on the facilities, and get to effectively borrow at the state’s borrowing rate, double tax free, for capital improvements. Similar arguments can be made about Catholic schools, for instance, although they manage to educate the kids for $5-7K outlay generally even in super high cost SF (and offer limited aid, so the actual collected tuition is likely even lower).
I suspect the lower numbers (the $7-8K cited in the article you mentioned) are bandied about for public consumption, just like the false (or at least highly misleading) information regarding police officers’ salaries by the union fish wraps. Perhaps out of habit, to avoid the outrage that would have been commonplace years ago. I don’t know why they bother. The public is too foolish to wonder where all the money is going, and no dollar figure really shocks anyone anyway:) Everyone thinks that we need to throw more money at every problem. Good luck, and I am glad I am not a W-2 earner in California.