Bay Area Reporter - July 5, 2007
Matthew S. Bajko, m.bajko@ebar.com

The Board of Supervisor's budget committee passed the fiscal document last week, and the full board is expected to give final approval to the budget at its July 24 meeting.

It is being called the "gayest city budget ever," and having LGBT politicians with the "power of the purse" will be a boon for queer youth, LGBT homeowners, gay archivists and anti-LGBT violence groups.

"I don't anticipate problems," said District 8 Supervisor Bevan Dufty of when the full board meets to review the spending priorities that he and the board's other openly gay member, District 9 Supervisor Tom Ammiano, helped to craft as members of the budget committee. "Tom's comment to me at the hearing last week was this may be the queerest budget ever."

Dufty pushed through a measure that will use $4 million from the city's reserve funds to help plug a $9 million funding shortfall the city had faced due to cuts in its share of federal Ryan White CARE Act funding.

The remaining $5 million Mayor Gavin Newsom had already included in the budget he sent to the board. The city dollars come with the caveat that any additional federal funds allotted to San Francisco to make up for the CARE Act cut will be directed back to the reserve fund.

"We wanted to maintain pressure on the federal government," explained Dufty. "At the same time, in the event we don't get additional federal funding, there will not be any service cuts."

[State budget negotiators have designated $896,000 to be split between San Mateo and Marin counties to help offset the impacts of the CARE Act cuts in those jurisdictions. The two counties are included in San Francisco's funding allotment. Another effort to give $1.6 million to San Francisco in state funds failed.]

In the city's budget, Dufty and Ammiano pushed through numerous funding proposals that will directly benefit the LGBT community.

The GLBT Historical Society is slated to receive $250,000 for site acquisition in the Castro and another $120,000 for archival services. Dufty has long pushed to see the society relocate from its south of Market locale to the city's gay neighborhood and build a world-class museum and archival center, and Ammiano pushed for funding to assist with maintaining the collection.

Violence continues to be a concern in the Castro, and two organizations focused on making the streets safer will see funding infusions. The volunteer-led Castro Community on Patrol, a gay version of the Guardian Angels that walks the streets on weekend nights to provide additional safety, will receive $20,000.

Community United Against Violence will see its city contract increase to $255,000 due to an additional $110,000 in funding for expanding its programs and educating students in the city's schools about hate crimes and violence prevention.

The Castro Country Club, which provides a safe, drug and alcohol free space for the recovering community on 18th Street, will receive $50,000 to help pay for construction of a meeting room space. The room has long been a goal of the club's, and with the closure of the Metropolitan Community Church-San Francisco's Castro building due to structural damage, space in the area for Alcoholics Anonymous meetings has been lacking.

Larkin Street Youth Services will receive $75,000 to expand its successful queer youth transitional housing program in a single-room hotel on Market Street between Sanchez and Church streets. LYRIC, the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center on Collingwood, will receive $90,625 for a youth employment program.

Ammiano secured $40,000 for Openhouse, the local agency focused on the city's aging LGBT population.

The LGBT Community Center's economic development program will receive $75,000 from the mayor's budget to launch a first-time homebuyers program. Dufty said the goal is to help people apply for affordable housing units or determine what they need to do to qualify for a mortgage.

Dufty also secured $150,000 to transition several transgender programs now overseen by the University of California at San Francisco to the city's Department of Public Health. Health officials are expected to look for a local nonprofit to take over the programs, which faced closure after UCSF fired the researcher overseeing the projects and declined to seek federal funding to maintain them. [See story; http://www.aegis.org/news/bar/2007/BR070703.html]

The one piece of bad news out of the budget negotiations is there is no funding to pay for any of the suggestions in a report from the HIV/AIDS housing work group. The budget does include $3.8 million to maintain housing that can no longer be paid for with Ryan White funds. But no new housing initiatives for people with HIV and AIDS are slated to receive funding this year.

Dufty said he has spoken to board President Supervisor Aaron Peskin about the lack of funds for the work group's ideas.

"We are going to be looking at this," said Dufty. "I would say it is one of a couple of open issues we are going to continue to work on."
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