Mayor Todd Gloria Releases May Revision of Fiscal Year 2025 Budget
Despite tough budget year, Mayor ensures city delivers on core services
May 14, 2024
Mayor Todd Gloria today released his updated budget for Fiscal Year 2025. The spending plan maintains core City services and protects the progress the administration has made over the past three years in addressing homelessness, building more housing, keeping the public safe and repairing key infrastructure such as roads and stormwater systems.
“The substantial deficit facing our city required tough decisions – none of which I took lightly. The final proposed budget released today is a fiscally prudent strategy that protects essential City services and provides additional funding for programming at our libraries and parks, as well as homelessness prevention programs,” said Mayor Todd Gloria. “As your Mayor, I committed to San Diegans that I would draw upon my years of experience to guide us through this difficult financial time and avoid major impacts like browned-out fire stations, reduced hours at libraries or shuttered recreation centers. This budget is balanced and on-time and protects the progress we’ve made on the issues San Diegans care about most.”
Despite a $172 million deficit, the Mayor’s proposed budget avoids major impacts such as shutdowns of public facilities like fire stations, libraries, recreation centers and pools – thanks in part to prudent actions taken at the direction of the Mayor in March, such as the suspension of non-essential spending in City departments, as well as additional internal controls to ensure the City is filling only the most critical positions before the end of the fiscal year. These mitigation actions proved effective in saving money, allowing the City to make fewer budget cuts than would otherwise have been necessary.
In adherence to the City budget process, the Mayor is required to propose a draft budget in April based on economic conditions known at the time, and the City Council then holds hearings to solicit public input on the draft budget. In May, the Mayor releases what’s known as the May Revision, based on updated information. This is the final budget proposal that the City Council will vote on in June.
“Advocacy makes a difference, and this is no better demonstrated than by the updates in the Mayor’s May Revision restoring priority programs,” said Council President pro Tem Joe LaCava. “The community spoke, the Council listened, and the Mayor responded by restoring programs that protect neighborhoods, prevent evictions, and act on our homelessness crisis. We must continue to focus limited resources where they will do the most good and make difficult cuts where they will do the least harm.”
The Mayor’s proposed budget maintains key services by trimming primarily non-personnel expenses from department budgets, sweeping the unused balances from various special funds back into the General Fund, suspending contributions to reserves, strategic use of grant funding and deploying other one-time measures.
Those measures included a request to the San Diego Housing Commission to use $15 million in its reserves to backfill the funding for existing programs. In response, Housing Commission leadership stepped up and identified $8 million in funding that can be reallocated, which will require separate Council action for approval.
The remaining $7 million will be covered by an accelerated disbursement of funding to the City from Round 5 of the State of California's Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention program (HHAP), secured by the City's Department of Government Affairs.
Mayor Gloria’s budget provides funding for the following housing and homelessness services programs administered by the San Diego Housing Commission:
Eviction Protection Program: The revised budget fully funds the program at $3 million.
Multidisciplinary Outreach Team: The revised budget contributes $350,000 to the homelessness outreach program from the general fund, with another $750,000 funded through a state grant.
Housing Instability Prevention Program: The revised budget increases funding to the rental-assistance program by $750,000 for a total of $3 million.
Neil Good Day Center: The revised budget increases funding for the daytime homelessness services program by $419,000 for a total of $919,000.
“Now, amidst these unprecedented fiscal challenges, we at the Housing Commission understand that it is imperative that we provide resources to focus on supporting those who rely on us,” said Mitch Mitchell, chair of the San Diego Housing Commission. “As part of the City team, we are happy to offer the Commission’s support to do that and look forward to ongoing collaboration with the Mayor and City Council to continue fulfilling our mission this fiscal year and well into the future.”
“Through the Eviction Prevention Program, Legal Aid Society of San Diego (LASSD) provides free legal services to low-income City of San Diego tenants. The EPP is incredibly effective and efficient at preventing homelessness, which benefits tenants, landlords, and the city as a whole. Moreover, the EPP furthers equity by ensuring that justice is not a luxury only to be afforded to the wealthy,” said Joanne Franciscus, CEO and executive director of LASSD. “On behalf of LASSD, our clients, and the many San Diego residents that we will be able to serve over the coming year, I want to express my gratitude to Mayor Gloria and the City Council for working hard to ensure that this critical program remains fully funded, so that our most vulnerable tenants don’t have to suffer the lasting trauma that eviction and homelessness cause.”
The budget also provides funding for the following programs:
Parks and Recreation: Teen center programming in Districts 4, 8 and 9 ($758,000), youth swimming ($421,000) and Come Play Outside ($78,000), an initiative launched by Mayor Gloria in 2021 that helps provide low- or no-cost programs and events in historically disadvantaged communities.
SD Access 4 All: Wi-Fi access ($500,000), library hotspot checkouts ($227,000), digital literacy programming ($57,000)
Libraries: Youth service librarian positions ($382,000), after-school programs ($250,000), library materials donation match program ($300,000)
Climate Equity Fund: Traffic-signal upgrades to improve safety in Barrio Logan and traffic-calming measures on 47th Street in Chollas View ($1.1 million)
No Shots Fired, a collaborative effort to provide outreach and resources to known gang members in specific communities and offer them an opportunity for them to exit gang life ($250,000).
San Carlos Library construction planning ($4.7 million)
San Diego Police Department: Juvenile Services Team ($1.6 million), front counter staffing ($1.6 million)
San Diego Fire-Rescue Department: San Pasqual Response Team ($897,000)
Labor relations: Accounting for new contracts currently under negotiation with the unions representing Police and Fire-Rescue personnel ($4.4 million)
“We at the San Diego Parks Foundation are thrilled that the City will continue the investments we’ve made in providing free public access to Wi-Fi in 59 of our recreation centers, and that programs like youth swimming classes and our innovative Come Play Outside initiative will continue to be funded,” said Michel Anderson, chair of the San Diego Parks Foundation. “We thank Mayor Gloria for ensuring that San Diegans can access these vital services, especially those in historically disadvantaged communities.”
The funding additions in the revised budget augment a proposed budget that maintains core City services and protects the progress the City has made over the past three years in the key priority areas of addressing homelessness, accelerating production of housing that San Diegans can afford, repairing roads and other critical infrastructure, and keeping San Diegans safe.
Highlights of the proposed budget include:
A new 1,000-bed shelter for unhoused San Diegans
A new Safe Parking site on City-owned land near the airport known as H Barracks
Initiatives that accelerate permitting for 100% affordable housing projects and projects in the transit-oriented Complete Communities program
75 miles of road repaving
Flood control and green infrastructure projects
Staffing and other operating costs for the new Torrey Pines fire station
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