SAN FRANCISCO SUPERVISOR ‘lost his nerve’ by cancelling rewrite of City budget without full Board of Supervisors approval
12 June 2007MAYORAL SPOKESPERSON: CHRIS DALY LOST HIS NERVE - MISREAD RALLY DOCUMENTS
Budget and Finance Committee Chair Chris Daly in committee meeting held earlier this month.
Photo by John Han
Sentinel Photographer
Copyright © 2007 San Francisco Sentinel
I WANT TO BE AROUND
By Pat Murphy
Sentinel Editor & Publisher
Copyright © 2007 San Francisco Sentinel
San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly Tuesday cancelled today’s scheduled Budget and Finance Committee set to rewrite the City budget without approval by the full San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Daly, who chairs the Budget and Finance Committee, told Board colleagues Daly wants instead “to ascertain whether public resources were inappropriately used for electioneering purposes and whether Newsom ‘07 is appropriately engaging the legislative process before making crucial decisions in this year’s budget process.”
In speaking during Roll Call submissions of Tuesday’s Board meeting, Daly stated his office had “acquired documents that indicate the Mayor’s Office may have exercised undue influence to secure public space in front of City Hall for a Wednesday budget rally.”
“I am very concerned about the cloud of impropriety surrounding the Mayor’s budget engagement.
“Documents show that we appropriately reserved space for our budget rally first. Fair is fair.”
Competing rallies in support of the City Budget proposed by Mayor Newsom and in support of Daly’s rewritten budget had been scheduled at the same time and in the same location on City Hall steps at high noon Wednesday.
Daly complained, both to Board colleagues and to the San Francisco Ethics Commission, that the pro-Newsom rally was given preferrential scheduling despite Daly applying for rally permit before the pro-Newsom rally permit application.
Mayoral Press Secretary Nathan Ballard responded the pro-Newsom rally application was submitted first.
“We were there first,” Ballard told the Sentinel.
DALY MISREAD DOCUMENTS
“He’s referencing documents that I actually provided to him pursuant to a Sunshine request and he’s misreading those documents,” stated Ballard.
Ballard added Daly simply lost his nerve to hold the committee hearing.
“Chris Daly lost his nerve when he realized that Mayor Newsom’s allies were going to descend upon City Hall in support of the Mayor’s Budget.
“And so he cancelled the hearing.”
The City budget likely would have been rewritten without approval by the full San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Through a procedural move, the full Board would have been be left only with a budget as revised by Supervisor Chris Daly for final Board consideration.
Daly’s rewritten budget allowed no independent scrutiny by the Budget Analyst’s Office available to commissioners in past City budget reviews.
Passage appeared probable with majority committee membership sympathetic to the Daly motion. Three votes are needed to pass the measure.
Membership consists of Supervisors Chris Daly, Tom Ammiano, Ross Mirkarimi, Bevan Dufty, and Sean Elsbernd.
Tom Ammiamo
Photo by John Han
I’M NOT A CLONE
Ammiano co-authored by motion and Green Party member Mirkarimi routinely allies himself with Daly. In recent months, Dufty often sided with Daly and Mirkarimi in high profile legislation.
Ross Mirkarimi
Photo by John Han
MY BROTHER
In response, Mayor Newsom held consecutive meetings all day Monday, each packing City Hall room 201 with affected community leaders.
And both sides planned competiting rallies Wednesday.
Opposing rallies were to commence one hour prior to cancelled committee convocation.
The pro-Newsom budget rally still will be held at 12:00 p.m., today, on the steps of Can Francisco City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place (formerly known as Polk Street), between McAllister and Grove Streets.
Mayor Newsom will speak at the rally, his office reported Tuesday night.
WITHOUT INDEPENDENT ANALYSIS OR PUBLIC INPUT TO BOARD OF SUPERVISORS
The mayor addressed members of other City committees at 5:00 p.m. Monday.
Newsom described the Daly measure as “a new strategy by the Budget chair to preemtively make cuts in the Mayor’s Budget and redirect dollars elsewhere — without the benefit of a Budget Analyst’ Report, without the benefit of the public having ample opportunity to make recommendations about their money or to opine as to the veracity of the recommended cuts and enhancements.”
According to City Controller Ed Harrington, the measure eliminates:
– A total of $700,000 to replace peer review community courts with community justice courts staffed by State judges.
– $3 million slated for Police Cadet Academy classes.
– $2.1 million for community corridor street cleaning.
– $$375,000 for street improvements.
– $3.9 million for sidewalk improvements.
– $6.4 million for streets resurfacing.
– $2.1 million for new street tree planting.
– $1.7 million for pothole repair.
– $900,000 for Hall of Justice rebuilding plan.
– $1,1 million for increased park patrols.
– $717,000 for City website public information access.
– $400,000 for street violence cameras.
– $713,000 for one-stop 311 call center public information.
– $500,000 City retiree benefits reserve.
– $606,000 for business assistance through the City Tax Collector Office.
– $2.5 million for technical adjustments reserve.
– $5 million to rebuild HOPE VI public housing locally through
– $5 million from the City General Fund Reserve.
NEWSOM ELABORATED BUDGET COMPARISONS
PUBLIC SAFETY
• New police officers ($3 million cut): Cuts 50 new police officers or one academy class of officers. This cut comes at a time when we are trying to increase the number of police officers in the community. Academy classes that begin at the start of the fiscal year cost about $3M, because they account for salaries for the entire fiscal year.
• Shotspotter system ($400,000 cut): Zeroes-out funding for Shotspotter system to pinpoint shootings. This system allows police to instantly locate gunshots to more quickly respond to violence and protect the community. It has proven successful in 17 cities where gun violence has decreased where shotspotters are installed.
SMALL BUSINESS AND MERCHANTS
• Small Business Assistance Center ($606,000 cut): Slashes entire funding for the long-awaited Small Business Assistance Center, which would be the first-ever place in City Hall that local small businesses could use to gain assistance starting or maintaining a local business.
• Corridors program ($2.1 million cut): Funding to expand the Community Corridors Cleanup program, which has been the City’s partnership with local merchants to clean 100 blocks along merchant corridors on a daily basis and expand this program to 100 new blocks in local neighborhoods. This would wipe out funding for 100 new blocks for this program.
• Community Benefit Districts ($375,000): Cuts important funding for these proven public-private partnerships: Cuts $250,000 in grants for existing CBDs to make capital fixes, and to develop new CBDs. It also cuts $125,000 to add Hallidie Plaza (below ground in front of Powell Street BART) to existing Union Square CBD.
AFFORDABLE HOUSING
• HOPE SF ($5 million cut): All funding for “HOPE SF,” an investment to rebuild public housing developments where our community’s poorest residents live. The $5 million in funds would help us borrow $95 million in a revenue bond, which would allow us to begin to completely redevelop the eight most distressed public housing sites in San Francisco. In addition to the HOPE SF funds to rebuild housing, $4 million will be spent to address current maintenance issues in public housing.
STREETS AND NEIGHBORHOODS
• Sidewalk safety and repair ($2.88 million cut): This cut would effectively kill the sidewalk safety repair program, which improves sidewalks in front of city buildings and requires private landowners to make repairs on their sidewalks).
• Potholes ($1.68 million): This would zero-out the entire pothole budget, which would mean there is NO money to refill potholes for an entire year and would involve layoffs at DPW.
• Street resurfacing ($6.35 million): This cut represents the General Fund portion of the street repaving budget. The non General Fund portion of the street repaving budget is approximately $30 million. The $6 million that Daly proposes to cut would allow the City for the first time to fully fund this coming years portion of street repaving needs.
PARKS AND TREES
• Tree planting ($2.52M cut): Would stop all new street tree planting in city neighborhoods, even as the City works to advance a Local Climate Action Plan. This cut is the entire street tree budget. We would still be able to do the rec and park reforestation, about 2000 trees, but all in parks. This would also kill the friends of urban forest contract money. This would also zero out the City’s $162,000 budget with Friends of the Urban Forest.
• Park Rangers for Golden Gate Park ($1 million cut). Would cut 12 new park rangers for Golden Gate Park.
QUALITY OF LIFE
• 311 Center ($713,000 cut): All new funding for customer service improvements for the City’s 311 Center. This funding would have ensured that the popular new city hotline has enough staff to answer the phones without lengthy wait-times. $350,000 was going to more operators at peak call times so 80% of calls could be answered in 60 seconds, $175,000 was going to staff for accuracy and follow-up, and the rest was going to public outreach to make residents aware of the service and make small tech improvements to the center.
• Community Justice Center ($700,000 cut): All funding in our budget for the Community Justice Center, which will focus on quality-of-life crimes like drug dealing, public urination and defecation—and move troubled people into services.
FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY
• Post-Employee Benefit Reserve ($500,000 cut): Begin a fund to deal with the City’s long-term pension liability from retiring employees. This liability will hit every city in California and will total billions of dollars. Beginning to address this long-term problem now is essential.
• General Fund Reserve ($5 million cut): This cut brings our General Fund Reserve down to $20 million dollars, a very small portion of the overall budget that exists to protect against economic downturns. Removing funds from the Reserve threatens our fiscal standing with companies that lend us key funds.
HOW DALY PROPOSES TO USE $37 MILLION CUTS FROM NEWSOM BUDGET
• AIDS/HIV Ryan White CARE funding ($4 million in funding): The Federal government has proposed to cut over $8.1M in Ryan White funds from last year, a $31% cut from the year before. In response, Mayor Newsom back-filled $4.1M of this cut in his proposed budget (focusing on housing subsidies for people with HIV/AIDS).
• Psych Beds at SF General ($1 million in funding): Daly proposes to reverse the Mayor’s budget proposal to fund 12 beds for mentally unstable individuals at a community-based non-profit provider rather than SF General Hospital. In a nutshell, our proposal creates a community-based alternative of care for mentally ill patients. The proposal tries to prevent hospitalization which can be destabilizing for someone who is mentally ill.
• Affordable Housing ($31.5M in funding): Daly proposes to put the lions-share of his proposed budget cuts back into affordable rental housing—although he has provided few details of how this money would be spent. Daly seeks to fully fund his supplemental spending measure that the Board passed in May, but that our office did not fund because it was a last minute supplemental in the last fiscal year that would have increased our budget deficit heading into this fiscal year.
The Mayor has included $217 million in his proposed budget for the creation of affordable housing. This includes the HOPE SF proposal above which would redevelop public housing developments in the city (and also address maintenance issues), as well as working with community housing providers to create new senior, family and supportive housing.
NEWSOM BUDGET INVESTMENTS INCLUDE
• $68.8 million to develop new affordable family, senior and homeless housing serving households at or below 60% area median income.
• $63 million for development of new, affordable homeownership units targeted to serving households below 100% and 80% of area median income.
• $7.25 million for downpayment assistance for first-time homebuyers earning below 100% of AMI.
NEWSOM BUDGET AFFORDABLE HOUSING CREATION
Approximately 3,000 units of affordable housing, while Supervisor Daly’s supplemental creates approximately 200 new units of housing.
• 450 affordable rental units,
• Allow for 400 new homeownership opportunities and over 1000 affordable and market rate units through HOPE SF.
The Budget and Finance Committee considers Daly rewritten budget at 1:00 p.m., Wednesday, June 13, 2007, in Board Chambers of San Francisco City Hall, room 150, located at 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place (formerly known as Polk Street), between McAllister and Grove Streets.
VIDEO: MAYOR NEWSOM UNVEILS 2007-2008 BUDGET
CLICK IMAGE
Photo by John Han
PAT MURPHY
Sentinel Editor & Publisher
In his youth, Pat Murphy worked as a General Assignment reporter for the Richmond Independent, the Berkeley Daily Gazette, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He served as Managing Editor of the St. Albans (Vermont) Daily Messenger at age 21. Murphy also launched ValPak couponing in San Francisco, as the company’s first San Francisco franchise owner. He walked the bricks, developing ad strategy for a broad range of restaurants and merchants. Pat knows what works and what doesn’t work. His writing skill has been employed by marketing agencies, including Don Solem & Associates. He has covered San Francisco governance for the past ten years. Pat scribes an offbeat view of the human family through Believe It or What.
JOHN HAN
Sentinel Photographer
For the last year, John Han served Sentinel readership as a freelance photographer. He has that natural eye for photography which cannot be developed or learned. He has earned a following of clients, including the World Affairs Council of Northern California.
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