Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:59:00
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Editor’s Note: The tentative 2009-10 budget was due by July 1. For an update on what supervisors approved, visit sfgov.org.
Mayor Gavin Newsom proposed a balanced budget for the 2009-10 fiscal year that focuses on solving the budget challenge by attracting new jobs and making smart infrastructure investments in order to put San Franciscans back to work. The budget preserves basic services, maintains police officers and firefighters and taps the rainy day fund to prevent teacher layoffs and balance the city’s budget. Healthy San Francisco, the city’s first-of-its kind universal health care program, will continue to grow.
“As we crafted a new balanced budget for the City and County of San Francisco – against the backdrop of our state’s troubled economy – we focused our scarce resources on core priorities – health, safety, economic recovery, transportation and improving and increasing educational opportunities from pre-Kindergarten through college,” said Newsom. “Despite the indecision in Sacramento about how to cut budgets because of the shrinking economy, San Francisco is improving the economy with the most aggressive local economic stimulus package in the nation and creating over 20,000 jobs from projects that are currently underway or that will start in the next year.”
The current economic crisis has severely impacted San Francisco, mostly through major reductions in hotel tax and sales tax revenue. As California struggles with its own budget crisis, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has also proposed cutting state money sent to cities and counties, including $175.2 million to San Francisco.
This year, Mayor Newsom crafted a balanced budget on time, without any new general tax increases, without reducing public safety services, without scaling back core priorities like Healthy San Francisco, while continuing to offer the kind of support that has protected the city’s public schools and teachers.
The proposed budget cuts an estimated 1,600 positions. The city is working to assist these employees and their families through job transition programs in partnership with City College, which provides professional assistance, guidance, counseling and training to employees who are affected by the layoffs.
In the proposed budget, the city is using a new strategy to take existing federal funds that used to fund a handful of jobs and turning them into micro loans that will help thousands of unemployed San Franciscans start new businesses and create exponentially more jobs when these new small businesses grow.
One of the new programs also created in this year’s budget, San Francisco Jobs Now, will use $23.2 million in federal stimulus money to provide temporary jobs for as many as 1,000 people who currently receive public assistance money and make less than twice the federal poverty level.
The proposed budget also makes smarter use of existing resources, such as auctioning taxi medallions, which could generate millions of dollars and through new fees such as the proposed cigarette butt fee, which could raise an estimated $5 million next year.
To view the Mayor’s proposed budget go to: http://tr.im/n58F.
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