Breed’s $15.9 Billion SF Budget Plan Adds Money for Police, Other City Workers

San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s proposed $15.9 billion budget includes new funding for police and other city workers, alternative revenue sources, and cuts to close what was projected to be a $789 million two-year deficit.

The proposal released Friday comes at a precarious political time for Breed as she fends off challengers in the November election. The election gave city unions leverage to ask for better wages even as revenues continue declining. In December, Breed had asked city departments to make 10% cuts to stave off the budget shortfall.

“In this budget, we made the tough decisions to close our deficit and those are never easy, but we also made the right decision to invest in critical city services our residents expect and deserve,” Breed said in a statement.

The proposed budget spans two years: $15.9 billion for fiscal year 2024–25 and $15.5 billion for fiscal year 2025–26, pending approval by the Board of Supervisors. The board’s Budget and Appropriations Committee will hold hearings to review Breed’s proposal and to hear from community members. The budget deadline is Aug. 1.

For the San Francisco Police Department, Breed proposed an increase of 7.75% for entry-level and existing salaries, new incentive packages to entice entry-level and mid-career officers to join amid a staffing shortage, and retention increases for existing officers to stem retirements and transfers. The proposal also includes new funding for SFPD surveillance cameras and related data collection, enacted partly due to the expansion of police surveillance powers with the passage of Proposition E on the March ballot.

Breed has reached amicable outcomes with most of the city’s 30-plus unions, dodging the potential for messy strikes that would’ve become the focal point of her reelection campaign. The new labor agreements provide wage increases of at least 13% over the next three years, increasing wage funding by $100 million past what the mayor had budgeted for last year.

Paying for those increases was managed through budget maneuvers that may push off steeper cuts to later years. Supervisor Connie Chan, chair of the supervisors’ budget committee, said Breed isn’t spending tax dollars wisely.

“I am extremely concerned by the wasteful spending and inefficiencies we have seen, particularly in the past few months, in our city contract and departmental spending,” Chan wrote in a statement. “My task is clear. We must comb through the Mayor’s proposed budget and advance a budget that prioritizes all San Franciscans — not just the demands of the wealthy few.”

Nearly half of the funding gap has been closed by various funding source shifts and leveraging “significant one-time revenue sources,” including $51 million from the city’s reserve and $68 million in funds from ballot measures — like the Families First Fund, or Hotel Tax for the Arts Fund — to prevent cutting programs in some departments, according to the mayor’s budget proposal.

The mayor’s critics have already seized on her use of short-term funding sources to stave off future budget deficits, including mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie, the Levi Strauss heir and nonprofit CEO.

“Public safety and public health must be a priority every day, and not just when a conference is in town or during an election year,” Lurie said in a statement. “City hall insiders used one-time funding sources and wasted a decade of boom years. That’s what happens when budgets are designed around political allegiances rather than achieving outcomes for San Franciscans.”

San Francisco has seen its tax revenue plummet as businesses bail from the downtown core driven, in part, by a shift to remote work. The tech sector has abandoned offices quicker than other industries, prompting officials to bemoan the city’s overreliance on tech businesses for its tax base. Inflation-related cost increases and rising health insurance costs also contributed to the shortfall, according to the mayor’s budget proposal. City projections show the deficit growing to more than $1.3 billion in the next five years.

“Underlying trends of slow revenue growth were unchanged” since the deficit was first identified in 2023, the proposal reads.

For months, nonprofits across San Francisco have rallied at City Hall’s steps to demand no cuts to the services they provide to the LGBTQ community, families, young adults and children.

Joyce Lam, acting co-director of the Chinese Progressive Association, said a preliminary review of the budget shows cuts to some nonprofits providing services to monolingual communities.

“We are disappointed in how the mayor is framing outreach and education as non-essential; we believe those are actually the lifelines for many of our most vulnerable working families and non-English speaking immigrants to understand their rights and tools to defend themselves,” Lam said.

Some members of the Board of Supervisors said they hadn’t had enough time to review the mayor’s proposal to ensure that those cuts would indeed take place.

Supervisor Ahsha Safai, a candidate for mayor, said the mayor’s budget will face a rocky time at the Board of Supervisors.

“Much of the mayor’s proposed budget is just empty words and numbers—crafted without real collaboration or input from the Board or impacted communities,” he said. “It fails to fully restore crucial cuts to children and family services and harms communities still struggling the most post-COVID by slashing workforce training initiatives. Her budget is out of touch with working families, and there’s no way it will pass as is.”