Episode 3: The City's Budget

On Episode 3, Richie Greenberg discusses  current San Francisco mayor London Breed's out of. control spending, her funding of wasteful and unaccountable city departments, agencies and nonprofits. Greenberg outlines the steps he'd take as mayor to reduce the annual budget, what he would cut and how much.

Transcript

EPISODE 3 WWRGDAM – THE BUDGET

April 8 2024

Welcome to What would Richie Greenberg Do, As Mayor? A podcast by yours truly, Richie Greenberg, exploring policies, viewpoints and proposals if I ran for mayor of the city of San Francisco.

 Each episode is building on the previous, reviewing the plight of the city by the by, my personal background and experience in politics. Last episode, Episode 2, explores my stance and proposals on public safety, which is one of the two top most urgent issues today. The other top issue to me, and the topic for today is, The Budget, The absolutely insane, irresponsible and unsustainable $14.6 billion dollar operating budget, developed, proposed by and championed by mayor London Breed. It’s a doozy. It’s a great topic, its incredibly damaging to our fiscal health, the taxpayers, to the next generation of San Franciscans.  

So, let’s jump right into it, shall we?

[pause]

 One of the more important duties of a mayor is to propose a budget- in this case, in simplest terms, it’s the total amount of money the city will require to operate all the departments, agencies, commissions, government offices for the year. To pay the city government employees’ salaries and benefits, to operate our transportation system, buses, trains, our streets, repairs, sewers and storm drains. To pay for public safety, police, fire department, emergency services and ambulance. The libraries, public museums, parks department, all the government owned buildings, employees maintenance and repairs. It also includes government programs relating to health, wellness, welfare and government-assistance to low income families, drug treatment programs, government assistance for housing. It’s a long, very long list.

In 2015, 2016 when I started to really pay attention to politics here in San Francisco, the operating budget for the city was $9.6 Billion dollars. We had a population of 799,000 residents. Our city is just 49 square miles, 7 miles wide, 7 miles north-south.

Even then, the $9.6 billion dollars was considered alarming. But bureaucrats insist its reasonable because San Francisco is actually a city and a county. In one overlapping geographic area, we are both a city and a county. San Francisco’s borders do not extend outside the confines of the same water edge at the tip of the peninsula where we are located. So, as bureaucrats claim, its ok the operating budget is this high.

But as a side note, Denver is also a city and county, and their operating budget is lower, significantly much lower.  Keep this in mind.

How does the city get its funding? Who pays into the fund, into the city’s bank account, to pay for all this? There are several sources.

Revenues taxes property, sales tax, hotel tax, gasoline tax, car rental tax, business tax, payroll tax, property transfer taxes (when homes sell, and when commercial buildings are sold). There’s also bond measures which function like loans for the city to undertake certain improvements like rebuilding roads, infrastructure projects. And beyond all the taxes, revenues and payments from the local city residents, businesses and tourists, there are also moneys sent to the city from the state of California and from the federal government as well, mostly in the form of grants, for specific categories. 

The mayor is supposed to balance the budget, meaning, as it sounds, all the annual expenses to operate our city needs to be paid for by the annual revenues from taxes and grants. That’s the best case scenario.

The mayor compiles the huge list of departments and agencies and the funds they will need for the upcoming year, and considers and weighs if that department or agency should be given that amount, or reduced or increased. Negotiations between the mayors office and the agency and department heads can be intense, for the continuation of funding for the next year to happen.

And now, for 2024/2025, the San Francisco city budget has ballooned to $14.6 billion. Yes, it went up nearly 50% over 7 years. Even though the population has actually decreased since covid hit. Even though our city’s downtown financial district is nearly a ghost town, so many storefronts are boarded up out of business, even though the homeless population is essentially holding steady. Even though our police department and sheriff’s department have had funding cut. A most recent count, an official count, of tents on the city’s sidewalks, plus larger tent encampments, the number of tents is nearly the same as in 2018.

How on earth did this happen, and can this be rectified, so our residents and businesses aren’t continually saddled with increasingly higher taxes, and saddling the next generation of San Franciscans with even higher tax, unsustainable? Yes, it can and will be reined in , as mayor.

[PAUSE]

Mayor London Breed has irresponsibly doled out billions of dollars, literally billions, in taxpayers’ funds, to both city departments and to nonprofit organizations administering certain programs and outreach. And much of those billions are to departments which have little to no accountability, no measuring of success, and as we’ve learned, many are corrupt, wasteful, ineffective and in some cases, unlawfully using those funds for personal use.

Mayor Breed, as well, has grown our government, creating new commissions and agencies, and added to the overall cost of operating the city. There are now nearly 37,000 people working in the city government itself, not only paying salaries but benefits and retirement costs as well. And some of these departments and organizations are “grant-making” as well. This means they create criteria and applications for handing out funds to certain groups.

If we look back at 2017, 2018. We find the annual operating budget was just under $10 billion, about $9.6 billion, and now its $5 billion higher. Again, this is for a city which has lower population today than in 2018, and a homeless/tent population and count that’s nearly the same as back then as well. What’s increased is the funds being handed out to government agencies and to nonprofits.

This is going to stop. As mayor, this $5 billion dollar increase since 2018 is suspicious and has to be examined, scrutinized, and cut back. I will proposed a reduction over the coming years, not an increase. Mayor Breed’s budget slowly increases city spending year after year, when it needs to be reduced each year, cut by $1.5 billion the first year,  $1.5 billion in year two, and another $1.5 billion the third year.

We need to realign sending, realign ad refocus priorities. Cancel certain programs, review, evaluate and cut back or close down certain commissions, agencies and departments. I cannot in good faith continue to grow the size and budget of San Francisco city hall unrestrained, especially when so many programs and organizations are unaccounted. There is also an issue with duplicative programs and agencies, more than one office providing the same or similar service. The answer to providing services to San Franciscans under current mayor Breed has been to add more money and spending, when city hall needs instead to become more efficient, smaller, less expensive and of course, accountable. 

[PAUSE]

On the topic of accountability, lets get real for a moment. We’ve come to learn Mayor Breed has established projects, initiatives which raise eyebrows in how they operate and which San Franciscans they serve. So, as mayor, I would establish a panel, under my administration, to quickly compile a list of the city’s departments, agencies, commissions which have questionable operating budgets vs the services they provide, to cut back funding some, to eliminate others, and to investigate the egregious wasters as well. Plus, another panel would b established to review and investigate the nonprofit organizations receiving taxpayers funds, looking for performance statistics, to prove their value, their reporting, or they will also have funding reduced or eliminated altogether.

It is certain we will find significant money is being spent wastefully, unnecessarily and unaccounted. These steps will surely reduce the city’s operating budget, reverse it’s continual climb year after year, install accountability. In upcoming episodes, I will point out specific commissions, agencies, organizations and nonprofits organizations I intend to cut funding or sever relationships.  Stay tuned!

RECAP:

The city’s operating budget grew by nearly $5 billion yet accountability went down

Mayor Breed created questionable commissions and initiatives which waste taxpayers funds

Our city’s population is lower than in past years, tents and homeless held steady, yet funding grew

As mayor, I’d cut the budget for three years by $4.5 Billion total, reduce spending and eliminate programs, departments, commissions and cut ties with certain nonprofits

As mayor, I'd reduce or eliminate the ability for nonprofits to make grants 

The bottom line: Taxpayers should not be funding out of control, unaccountable spending sprees, and taxpayers shall not fund drug addicts' habits.

Thank you very much for joining.