Photo from Mayor Daniel Lurie’s Instagram
Update: Well, the budget is here, and some of the worst fears were realized while others were avoided. Mayor Lurie's $16.9 billion proposal closes a $642 million deficit largely by eliminating more than 400 vacant city positions and slowing future hiring, rather than carrying out the mass layoffs many city workers feared. After public backlash, the mayor backed away from proposed cuts to immigrant legal services and LGBTQ organizations, preserving funding for both.
But…there are still plenty of painful cuts to go around. The Human Services Agency is losing $10.7 million in community grants that support seniors and people with disabilities, nonprofit leaders warn that broader funding reductions could lead to layoffs across the social-service sector, and the city is proposing to eliminate Free City Cash Grants that help more than 6,000 low-income City College students stay afloat. Meanwhile, the SFPD budget would jump by roughly $33 million to nearly $883 million, largely to pay for raises and retention incentives. To be fair, the city is also socking away $100 million to protect housing and homeless services and another $34 million to prepare for expected federal cuts to Medicaid. The Board of Supervisors has until July 21 to hammer out the final budget, so if history is any guide, the fighting has only just begun.
We need to prepare you for the absolute clusterfuck coming this Monday. The Mayor of San Francisco is about to release his budget on June 1. If you don’t think it’ll affect you, you’re dead wrong.
See, San Francisco is feeling three things. First, we have the fascist federal government robbing us blind. Then, we have neoliberal governor Gavin Newsom, who is also playing around with the Golden State’s budget. And finally, we have Denim Dan, the Levi’s blue jeans heir whose mommy bought him the mayoral election in 2024.
These three governments, the federal, state, and local, have a lot of control over the quality of your life right now. And if you suddenly lose your job, have an accident, or have some other tragedy befall you, the supports you used to be able to count on might not be there anymore. Did you know that around half of millennials rely on support from their parents to make financial ends meet? And mom & dad can only afford so much… Now, as the financial crises worsen, the government is AWOL.
Financial support looks like a lot of things. It might be staying on your parents’ health insurance as long as you can, or it might mean they deposit a bit in your account to help cover rent. Maybe they are on food stamps and cover your groceries because you live together, or maybe it’s just them sneaking you a few bucks to “get yourself something nice” at Sunday dinner. Not everyone has it, but the fact that a generation of adults relies on it is telling about where our economics are at this moment.
America is not really the land of the prosperous. It’s the land of the get-by. The land of the struggle meal. The land of — dare we say, Broke-Asses? And no, that stupid “—” does NOT mean we used AI to write this. Some of us are under financial duress from student loans that hooked us on punctuation marks we can’t really afford anymore (from a reputational standpoint) but refuse to let go of.
These same millennials are struggling to find a job, our parents are at the retirement age, and the things we once counted on are failing. Social security? Medical financial assistance? Sure, we’ve all paid into them, but are they even reliable anymore? And god forbid you’re part of the DACA program, or trans, or one of the many minorities with a bullseye on your back from the Trump administration. Economically, we’re fucked.
Meanwhile the politicians are running around in circles, pointing their fingers at each other. Mayor Lurie and Governor Newsom are blaming Trump, and of course Trump is blaming blue states and cities (for just about everything). Plus, right now the technofascists are using absolutely insane amounts of money to sway your opinion in everything from mainstream or traditional media to influencers to billboards. The list goes on.
All that money, all that power, and it’s all going toward trying to convince you that things are changing… for the better? Chances are, the Mayor is going to make painful cuts to just about everything except cops. There are rumors he’ll cut some pretty important things. According to reporter Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez at the SF Standard, “Mayor Daniel Lurie is poised to cut millions of dollars in nonprofit government contracts this year, potentially curtailing services the city considers vital — helping domestic violence survivors who don’t speak English find new homes, hosting street fairs for families in the Tenderloin, or offering doulas in the Bayview, where Black families suffer high infant mortality rates.”
And the worst part? That’s YOUR money. Those are your taxpayer dollars. And they’re not going to your hungry neighbor or your cracked sidewalk or stopping that asshole who always blows through the stop sign and almost runs over your dog.
No, your money is going to cops who sit around and do nothing except protect the wealthy. And that much is going to be pretty apparent when the City’s budget drops on Monday.
