San Francisco Chronicle - July 1, 2005
Rachel Gordon, Charlie Goodyear, cgoodyear@sfchronicle.com and rgordon@sfchronicle.com.

The revised budget restores money for AIDS care, substance abuse treatment, services for seniors and foster children and other health and social welfare programs.

The Budget & Finance Committee voted 3-2 to recommend to the full board amendments to Newsom's $5.3 billion budget package for the fiscal year that starts today.

The full board's first vote is set for July 19. Final adoption is expected by the end of the month. At least six votes on the 11-member board are required for passage.

"It ain't a perfect world, but I do think we were able to craft this in such a way that many needs of the disenfranchised were finally respected,'' said Supervisor Tom Ammiano, who chaired the budget proceedings. "We do have a long way to go, but let's feel good about what we did tonight.''

Voting with Ammiano to recommend the amended budget to the full board were Supervisors Sean Elsbernd and Fiona Ma. Voting against the plan were Supervisors Jake McGoldrick and Ross Mirkarimi, both of whom said the restorations fell far short of what is needed. Ammiano said he is committed to finding additional funding for services in the coming weeks. The budget committee voted to restore funding to keep the dialysis unit at San Francisco General Hospital from closing and to provide money for the Tenderloin Self- Help homeless drop-in center. Supervisors also put back funding for outpatient substance abuse programs and beefed up funding for voter education outreach and youth employment initiatives. There were 65 budget restorations in all, capping proceedings that stretched nearly 14 hours Thursday, with much of the activities taking place in closed-door negotiations.

The budget plan would avoid the significant layoffs and drastic service cuts experienced in the past few years.

But once again, people who live in, work in and visit San Francisco will pay more for everything from a bus ride -- set to go up 25 cents to $1.50 on Sept. 1 -- to a swim in a public pool, parking fines and building permits.

Newsom's budget, which was balanced by closing a projected $59 million deficit, signaled that the city's economy has yet to recover from the dot-com bust, but is improving.

He included few major new initiatives but focused on rebuilding. Among them: hiring more police officers, adding an extra crew to fill potholes, expanding the number of shelters for homeless people that are open around-the- clock, adding to the stock of permanent housing for homeless people, and completing planning studies that focus on improving the neighborhoods.

Even with the changes approved by the budget committee, Newsom said early Thursday that they appeared to do a good job addressing the city's needs, while not significantly adding to projected deficit problems in the future.

"It's a balanced budget in every respect,'' Newsom said. "It provides historic one-time (capital) investments ... and at the same time plugs the gaps in many of the social service cuts.''

The budget committee's vote came the same day that the San Francisco Firefighters Union submitted a measure for the November ballot to restore funds designed to end the department's year-old policy of "brownouts," which take as many as six engines a day out of service to save money.

Although Newsom hoped to end the brownouts a year from now, he said he couldn't end them just yet because money is still tight. That wasn't good enough for the union, which wanted assurances -- not promises.

Newsom said he was disappointed the union moved forward with the ballot measure because, if approved, it would further tie the hands of the mayor and the Board of Supervisors in setting spending priorities. Voters already have approved special budget carve-outs for police staffing, libraries, children's services and parks. In future years, Newsom said the plan put forth by firefighters would cost between $4 million and $7 million. Hanley said the cost could be between $3 million and $4 million.

Supervisors cannot increase the bottom-line amount of the mayor's budget, but they do have the authority to move money around. As they do every year, supervisors combed through the mayor's document with their budget analyst, Harvey Rose, to find cost savings that could be redirected to their favored programs. McGoldrick offered up a last-minute list of proposed cuts to the mayor's plan, but the budget committee voted to put off consideration on those until another day.

As the committee entered its last day of deliberations, City Controller Ed Harrington handed them a piece of good news: The pot of tax revenue from real estate sales is $3 million more than had been anticipated, providing them extra money to put toward services.

The budget committee was tinkering with less than 1 percent of Newsom's proposal, but the changes weren't insignificant in political terms. Poor people's advocates, including Senior Action Network, Coleman Advocates for Children and the Coalition on Homelessness, showed up at City Hall in recent weeks demanding that their pet programs be fully funded.

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