Good afternoon.

The meeting will come to order.

Welcome to the May 1st, 2024 meeting of the budget and appropriation committee.

I'm Supervisor Connie Chan, chair of the committee.

I'm joined by Supervisors Mirna Malgar and Shemont Walton, shortly by Vice Chair Rafael Mendomin and President Aaron Peskin.

Our clerk is Brent Haliba.

I would like to thank uh Jeanette Umgeloff, my apologies for broadcasting this uh meeting.

Mr.

Clark, do you have any announcement?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh just a friendly reminder, if we have anyone in attendance, uh, to please make sure the sound cell cell phones and electronic devices to prevent interruptions to our meetings.

Should any documents uh should you have any documents to be included as part of the file, they should be submitted to myself, the clerk.

Public comment will be taken on each item on this agenda.

When your item of interest comes up in public comment is called, please line up to speak on the west side of the chamber to your right, my left along those curtains.

And while not necessary to provide public comment, we do invite that you um fill out a comment card and leave them on the trade to television by your left on the doors if you wish to be accurately recorded for the minutes.

Alternatively, you may submit public comment in writing in either of the following ways.

Email them to myself, the budget and appropriations committee clerk at B-R-Ent.j A hat SFGO V dotorg.

If you submit public comment via email, it will be forwarded to the supervisors and also included as part of the official file.

You may also send your written comments via U.S.

Postal Service to our office in City Hall.

Had one Dr.

Carlton, be good the place, room 244, San Francisco, California, 94102.

And thank you, Madam Chair.

That concludes my announcements.

Thank you, Mr.

Clerk.

And with that, please call item number one.

Yes, item number one is our hearing.

On the March update to the city and county San Francisco's uh five-year financial plan.

Madam Chair.

Thank you.

And today we have uh both uh controller's office, uh Carolou here, and um, and I know that um Anna Dunyan from the Mayor's budget office is here to answer questions, and uh the floor is yours.

Great.

Thank you, budget chair Chan and Carolou and I are actually going to present together.

Um this is an update to a joint report that we publish.

Um the first iteration of this report was released in December.

This is an update to those projections that we released in December.

If you recall then, that report showed that over the next five years, the city was staring down a pretty unprecedented deficit.

And in the first two years, it was around 800 million.

That's the budget that we need to balance by June 1st.

Um, so we're gonna talk about a few really modest updates to the plan.

So this just describes what the report is and the update.

Again, these numbers represent what we call a status quo projection.

So if we do nothing differently, if we don't make any different policy choices, this is the budget gap that we would be looking at.

So this just shows a summary of the change and some of our biggest categories of both revenues and expenses from that uh December report.

The bottom line change is minimal.

We're talking about billions of dollars of our general fund budget, and we're saying all together combined, we're looking at a change of about 10 million dollars from our prior projections.

Um so why was there a change at the top?

Um, there are some modest revenue improvements, which Carol Liu from the controller's office is going to speak to.

And there are some higher cost assumptions in our expenditures.

And with that, I'll hand it over to Carol to speak through some of the revenue assumptions.

All right.

Um so in property tax, um, this was decreased throughout the forecast period due to um updates around uh reductions in value through that get resolved through the assessment appeals board.

Um, and that also decreased um the amount of excess ERAF available.

Um business tax.

Um we look at cash um coming in, and cash was higher in the current year, but that was, and so typically we would also increase um the forecast in all the out years.

Um, but that was largely offset by known claims um for refunds and litigation.

Um, so it was basically flat or no change.

Um transfer tax, um, we forecasted at the same level as our prior report.

Um, and the update didn't estimate any exemptions would be granted within the plan period for the March 24 proposition C, which was passed by voters.