San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors is in for a long one: They are expected to negotiate late into the evening Thursday as they make final tweaks to the mayor’s proposed budget to claw back the tiny fraction of city dollars they control.
The vote is critical for city-funded nonprofits, which for the past few weeks have intensely lobbied the supervisors to reverse some of the tens of millions in cuts proposed by Mayor Daniel Lurie. For some, it will be a death knell, they say.
While the overall city budget is up to $16.9 billion, a full $1 billion more than last year’s, the current proposal would reduce funding for a number of social services programs, including those for students and seniors.
Mayor Lurie chose to prioritize major increases to departments focused on public health, homelessness, and public safety. He also gave police officers and firefighters new contracts that will cost $100 million over the next two years.
Whatever funding the Board of Supervisors restores will be small. Although those funds are a fiscal lifeline to many organizations and the residents who rely on them, last year the “addbacks” represented just 0.1 percent of the city’s overall budget, or $41 million. The mayor, meanwhile, had direct control over some $2.5 billion for the 2026 budget.
“My approach as budget committee chair is to make sure that the Board of Supervisors is not robbing Peter to pay Paul, but to have a comprehensive view of the budget and troubleshoot the spending,” said Connie Chan, District 1 supervisor and chair of the budget committee, who is leading the process.
She and the other supervisors are negotiating with city departments one by one and going over 258 pages of budget trimming recommendations. Those were made by the Budget and Legislative Analyst, which for two weeks went through the budget line by line trying to find savings.
The office, for example, took a look at the Department of Public Works estimated costs for pickup trucks and lowered it after finding that the estimate was based on an outdated company quote. That and many other savings will give the supervisors more money to play with, which they will use to choose which programs to save.
Some are hoping they will take Free City College off the chopping block. While Lurie’s budget maintains aid for covering tuition, it cuts cash grants for low income students. A full time student receives around $500 per semester, and the cut is estimated to save the city around $2.5 million a year.
Sofia Flores Guevara, student chancellor at CCSF, receives the cash assistance. As a single mother of three, she said, “I need every penny that I get. We’re in a very expensive city.”
The Mayor’s Office of Housing and Development is also facing a $6.5 million cut to grants for the upcoming year largely focused on case management and workforce programs. Groups like the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, which works with Arab and Muslim San Franciscans, are facing cuts.
“A lot of community members end up just coming to our door as a one stop shop to be able to understand where they can get basic needs met in the city,” said Lara Kiswani, the group’s executive director.
One undocumented client who only speaks Arabic, for example, did not know he could access aid from the city, Kiswani said. AROC set him up with “food assistance,” “cash assistance,” and more, she said. “We’ve managed to find him housing. We’ve managed to also support him to be able to reunite with his family.”
Tab Buckner, a gay activist who lived through the AIDS crisis and is a member of the Harvey Milk Club’s HIV caucus, said proposed cuts to HIV prevention programs would also be devastating. That includes a partial cut to “health access points,” which provide STD testing, overdose prevention services, and other HIV prevention resources. They serve populations particularly at risk of contracting HIV, such as trans women, drug users, or people who are homeless.
“Having that snatched away puts a lot more people at risk,” Buckner said.
Senior services are facing some of the largest cuts of the budget cycle: The Human Services Agency is cutting grants by $12.7 million over two years, and about half of that is for programs within the Department of Disability and Aging Services.
NEXT Village, which helps seniors with grocery pickups and social programming, among other things, was told by the department that it would not receive a final $144,000 installment of a four-year grant, according to Jacqueline Zimmer Jones, Executive Director at NEXT Village.
“That money created opportunities for isolated seniors in District 2 and beyond to socialize out in the community, not in a senior center,” said Jones. “We’d like to think that the city would serve the seniors that are here.”
She is hoping that tomorrow the supervisors will “pick up the couch cushions and find $3 million under them.”
