Tell the SF Budget & Approps. Committee: Move money from SFPD to City services!
San Francisco Board of Supervisors Budget Hearing
WATCH ON TV: Cable Channel 26
WATCH ONLINE: www.sfgovtv.org
PUBLIC COMMENT CALL-IN: 1 (408) 418-9388 / Meeting ID: 146 131 5200 # #
Budget hearing Meeting Agenda: AGENDA
Find your SF Supervisorial district here and your Supervisor’s contact info here.
Assistant Clerk Linda Wong
Email: linda.wong@sfgov.org
Wednesday, July 8, at 12:30pm the Budget and Appropriations Committee will meet to discuss SFPD's budget. Call in to give public comment and demand that the Committee amend the budget to reallocate SFPD's budget increase to services the City needs!
We’ve seen the budget, and we have questions. While cutting millions of dollars from other important services, like the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, and the public libraries, the city is planning to give SFPD $43 million MORE than last year. This comes at a time when San Franciscans are desperate for help, not extra policing, and when crime is already down 30% from last year.
We demand that the Board of Supervisors amends the Budget to reallocate SFPD’s budget increase to services the City needs!
The meeting starts at 12:30pm, and we need you to call in with your public comment. The instructions are in the meeting agenda. If you can’t call in to public comment, please write your comment to the Clerk at linda.wong@sfgov.org.
Talking Points
We're not going to give you a script—the most effective public comment is original, well-informed, and topical. Here are some talking points for you to weave into your comment:
Why are we spending over $700 million on policing?
Why is the PD’s budget increasing by another $43 million?
Muni is looking at a 90% drop in fare revenue—nearly $168 million. We could cover that loss with less than a quarter of the $736 million this budget proposes to spend on policing.
The mayor is cutting $40 million from the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing even as she adds $43 million to SFPD. Make that make sense!
The SFPD already proposed a $23 million haircut to their budget to the Police Commission. Why isn’t that reflected in this budget? Was that cut abandoned, and if so, why? We should not only keep that cut in the budget but expand it!
The Police Commission voted down the proposed cut not because they opposed cutting the police budget, but because the Police Department presented only a scant and confusing summary. The Department should present the same cuts—or more—with enough detail for the Commission to approve it, like the Commission asked for. Don’t let the Commission’s rejection of an ill-prepared presentation be an excuse to give up on making cuts where they belong.
Crime is down 30% from a year ago. Police don’t prevent crime, they respond to it. 30% less crime means 30% less need for policing; we should free up that money for services that will actually prevent crime and keep this decline going.
Background
Back in January, the SFPD proposed a “base budget” (derived from the previous year's budget) of $738.5 million, a $46.2 million increase over the previous year. That was before the pandemic; the revision the SFPD presented on June 10 would've cut $23 million from the $46 million increase (so the budget overall would've still increased by $23 million).
The Police Commission rejected that budget proposal, partly for being grievously underspecified and partly due to hours of public comment calling for the defunding of the police. So what did the SFPD do? Nothing—the current proposal before the Board of Supervisors is almost the same amount as from the January proposal, now $736 million (only a $43.8 million increase).
The City needs to spend its money on services that prevent crime and improve people's lives.
Meanwhile, the City is cutting:
$3,433,033 (0.46% of SFPD's budget) from the Public Library (LIB)
$6,979,136 (0.94% of SFPD's budget) from Rec & Park (REC)
$9,053,926 (1.23% of SFPD's budget) from the Department on the Status of Women (WOM), which helps domestic violence and human trafficking survivors
$40,001,587(!!) (5.43% of SFPD's budget) from the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HOM)
On that last point, the $40 million figure does not include the loss of Our City Our Home—a.k.a. Prop C—funding from last year's budget. OCOH revenue is still held up in the courts—a recent Court of Appeal ruling was a step towards those funds' release, but we aren't there yet. HSH loses $74 million in the 2020–2021 budget, which is $34.8 million in OCOH revenue plus the aforementioned $40 million in the mayor's cuts. The mayor can't do anything now about OCOH being tied up in court (though she remains responsible for having opposed it in the first place), so, for now, we're focusing on the cuts that she has ordered in the budget.
Not yet reflected in the June 17 budget document is SFMTA's announcement that due to a 90% drop in fare revenue, “about 40” bus lines could be permanently ended. Muni's fare revenue was projected to be $186.4 million, so that's a $167.8 million drop (22.8% of SFPD's budget).
References
City budget proposal as of June 17 (SFPD, budget code “POL”, starts on page 177)
Budget and Policy Analysis Report from the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office
Revised SFPD budget proposal, rejected by SF Police Commission June 10 (note $23 million reduction from the budget previously proposed in January)
SFPD CompStat statistics (latest is May 2020 as of this writing)