By Steven T. Jones

With a few nips here and tucks there, the Board of Supervisors' Budget Committee – which wrapped up its arduous work in the wee hours of July 3, making recommendations the full board will consider July 20 – has managed to trim more than $10 million from city budget expenditures and thus restore some of the service cuts proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom.

The savings were spread across the board, with the most substantial cut being made in the San Francisco Police Department budget, which Newsom's budget had proposed to increase by about 5 percent. Instead, the board followed recommendations of its budget analyst, Harvey Rose, in cutting almost $1 million, then followed the lead of committee member Sup. Jake McGoldrick in whacking an additional $900,000 from the budget.

Yet in the other public safety budget activists said had gotten off easy in the mayor's budget – the San Francisco Fire Department – the committee ultimately balked at making most of the millions of dollars of cuts that had been proposed (see "Where There's Smoke, There's Fire," 6/30/04), opting to trim just a half-million dollars.

"It was just shameful," Margaret Brodkin, the children's advocate who led a working group that identified $50 million in potential cuts to the fire department, told the Bay Guardian. "The budget analyst proposed many reasonable cost-cutting proposals that were systematically rejected by the budget committee."

Rose and his staff proposed for the department to civilianize some positions, reduce the number of battalion chiefs from 10 to 8 (for an annual savings of almost $1 million), and reduce staffing on trucks from 5 to 4 in low-rise parts of the city.

That last recommendation, which would cut 22 firefighter positions from the department, would save just $278,000 in the coming fiscal year because those positions would be used to backfill vacancies created by retirements, but would save more than $2.7 million annually in subsequent years.

All the proposals were rejected by fire chief Joanne Hayes-White, but after a contentious hearing June 30 that lasted more than three hours, the tough-talking committee appeared primed to make the cuts anyway. Committee chair Sup. Gerardo Sandoval, who delayed final action until the July 2 hearing, even told the chief, "There is an inclination and maybe the votes to make some of these cuts that you don't agree with."

But ultimately, only committee member Sup. Chris Daly took a hard line with the department. Brodkin hopes the department budget will be carefully scrutinized by the full board during hearings July 20 and 27. Another opportunity will also come when the board considers the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) the Newsom administration negotiated with Firefighters Union Local 798.

That MOU trades firefighter concessions of a one-year salary reduction, a workweek lengthened by less than an hour, changes in overtime rules, and a random-drug-testing program for generous raises in 2005 and the continuation of some practices that report after report have identified as wasteful and inefficient. It is scheduled to be voted on by union members from July 6 through 8 before going to the board for final ratification sometime in the coming weeks.

The fire department budget was also padded by $3.65 million from the sales of decommissioned fire stations – part of the more than $20 million in property sales that helped close the city's $307 million budget shortfall, despite the fact that Daly's Surplus Property Ordinance calls for such properties to go toward homeless services. The issue caused Daly to vote against the budget, which was approved by the committee 2-1.

"It's not an optional program but the law of the city," Daly said during the June 30 fire hearing. "That $3.6 million should go to housing for homeless people."

Newsom budget director Ben Rosenfield responded by pleading poverty. "We've proposed a budget that asks you to make an exception in this budget," he told Daly. "This year we just couldn't make the budget work without it."

Among the other budget high points:

• Much of the funding redistributed by the supervisors will go to saving health programs that were targeted in the mayor's budget, including support services for people with HIV and the Dialysis Center and interpreter services at San Francisco General Hospital. The supes restored funding for the Team Two and Southeast Geriatric mental health programs, so that neither has to move.

• The committee identified $1.7 million to offset some cuts at the primary care clinics. While acknowledging the board's hard work, Ruben Garcia, who represents workers at the clinics for Service Employees International Union Local 790, said, "It doesn't feel as bad as it did in the beginning, but it's still a cut."

• The supes managed to find $1.5 million for Jail Health Services, which the Newsom budget had proposed for possible privatization, although the administrators also agreed to cuts. "We end up having to cut $3 million, which will impact services, but we hope not significantly," director Dr. Joe Goldenson told us. "In the end, it's staying within the city, which is critical."

• The Assessor/Recorder's Office kept the additional resources that Newsom had given it to fight the property tax assessment appeals that threaten tens of millions of dollars of city revenue, despite Rose's recommendation of reductions (see "Appeal to Reason," 6/16/04). Ironically, the city also learned during budget hearings that revenues had increased by $2 million from revised property tax income this year.

• The committee set aside initial funding for radio frequency identification, which was apparently as much a vote against the administration of outgoing City Librarian Susan Hildreth as it was a vote against technology the library hopes to use for tracking materials. Daly initially moved to cut funding for RFID altogether but agreed to place the money on reserve.

• The budget committee cut Public Utilities Commission overhead funding identified by Rose to fund solar installations, youth jobs programs, and flood mitigation. Sandoval hopes the additional funding for sewer system management will pay off for his district when the rainy season returns.

Tali Woodward, Rachel Brahinsky, and Matthew Hirsch contributed to this report.

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