FOR THE PAST two years, members of Service Employees International Union Local 790 who work for the city have given back 7.5 percent of their salaries to preserve public health, protect our Recreation and Park programs for children and youths, maintain our neighborhoods, and defend services for seniors. Despite our contributions, these critical services remain on the chopping block, and during each budget cycle, we still have to defend programs for the most vulnerable.

Sup. Gerardo Sandoval rightly put the Convention and Visitors Bureau's budget on the table as well. The contrast during public testimony was stark. Bureau advocates discussed the need for advertising for hotels as a public subsidy that's a worthwhile investment. Health care advocates fought for essential health services for homebound, chronically ill seniors and preventative health care for the working poor and indigent. Part of the problem our city is facing is that the Wal-Marts of the world aren't paying for health benefits, and taxpayers are paying the burden. We strongly support Sandoval's effort to reappropriate the money from the bureau for public health, and the rest of the supervisors should as well.

We oppose the cuts to public health, and the elimination of the senior escort program, the Recreation and Park directors, and the environmental control officers. We see those programs as a worthwhile investment in the quality of life for San Franciscans.

We would like to invite the Board of Supervisors' Budget Committee and Mayor Gavin Newsom to ride along with a public health nurse when he or she visits a homebound patient, to ride along with a senior escort officer when he or she not only transports a frail, monolingual senior to the doctor's office but also provides access to services with translation help, to watch a volleyball game for kids that's being cut, or to see the garbage that won't be taken care of now that the environmental control officers are being eliminated. Find out what you're cutting. Make an educated decision before you permanently eliminate these programs.

While we understand that the city is facing the worst fiscal crisis in our history, we believe that more can be done to find cuts that don't disproportionately impact children, the poor, and the elderly. The budget process is moving too quickly, and the supervisors and the mayor need to slow it down. The mayor announced the cuts right after the election, but the Budget Committee didn't focus on these cuts until the past two weeks. While we appreciate that the Budget Committee took our testimony on the impact of the cuts and reappropriating monies from the convention bureau for public health, we haven't enjoyed the benefits of the thorough process we had in our Budget Committee hearings last summer.

In the last budget session, Sandoval spent countless days grilling department heads to find alternative cuts the committee could make in order to maintain critical services. We need that kind of scrutiny now. The Budget Committee needs to reconvene and call in the heads of departments that weren't cut to comb through their budgets to find any additional monies.

While this scenario makes sense, it may prove unlikely. The holidays are coming, and the board will be out of session. There's no question that the Mayor's Office and the supervisors are working hard to solve this crisis, and we thank them for that, but it's not enough. The Mayor's Office has sent out layoff notices that will take effect Jan. 15, 2005. We need additional time to find alternative solutions. Let's slow down the process, have more hearings, put aside political tensions from the last election, and work together to find solutions to this economic crisis.

Maria Guillen is the vice president of SEIU Local 790, Robert Haaland is an organizer with SEIU Local 790, and Ed Kinchley is the health care industry chair for SEIU Local 790.