Good morning.

The meeting will come to order.

Welcome to the June 11 2026 meeting of the budget and appropriation committee.

I am Supervisor Connie Chan, Chair of the Committee, and I'm joined by Vice Chair, Supervisor Matt Dorsey, and members, Supervisors, Danny Sauter, Shaman Walton, and Cheyenne Chin.

Our clerk is Brent Halipa.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Just a friendly reminder to those in attendance to please make sure to silence all cell phones and electronic devices to prevent interruptions to our proceedings.

And should you have any documents to be included as part of the file?

This should be submitted to myself, the clerk.

Public comment will be taken for today's meeting.

And when 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 required to provide public comment, we do invite you to fill out a comment card and leave them on the trade by the television to your left by those doors.

If you wish for your name 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 E N T.j.

at SFGOV.org.

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

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

Postal Service to our office in City Hall at 1 Dr.

Carlton Bigelith.

Place room 244, San Francisco, California, 94102.

And Madam Chair, that concludes my announcements.

Thank you, Mr.

Clerk.

And before we start, we will need to excuse President Rafael Mendelman for today's meeting.

I would like to make the motion to excuse him.

Second by Vice Chair Dorsey and a roll call, please.

And on that motion by Chair Chan, seconded by Vice Chair Dorsey.

Do we excuse Supervisor Mandelman from attending today's meeting?

Vice Chair Dorsey.

Dorsey, I.

Member Sauter.

Sauter.

I member Walton.

Walton.

I member Chen.

Chen.

I, Chair Chan.

I.

Chan.

I we have five eyes.

The motion passes.

And so with that, I would also like to announce that for today, public comment will be limited to one minute.

And now Mr.

Clerk, please call items one through three together.

Items one through three.

And item number three is the proposed annual salary ordinance enumerating positions in the AAO for the fiscal years ending June 30th, 2027 and June 30th, 2028.

Continuing creating or establishing these positions, enumerating and including therein all positions created by the charter or state law for which compensations are paid from the city and county funds and appropriated in the AAO.

Authorizing appointments are continuation of appointments there too, specifying and fixing the compensations and work schedules thereof and authorizing appointments to temporary positions and fixing compensations.

Madam Chair.

Thank you, and Mr.

Clerk, for that.

And then before we um start, I would like to actually go on the record for the enterprise departments of how we have reached the following conclusion.

Um for the record.

For the airport, they will be accepting budget and legislative analyst recommendations.

They will be accepting budget and legislative analyst recommendations.

One, three, five, seven, nine.

That is for the Hatch Hatchy.

For the water enterprise, they are accepting the recommendations.

One, four, five, seven, eight, um, and then for WWE, I guess I forgot what that stands for, is for one through six, and then for the public utilities is one through five, seven, nine, and ten.

There is partial acceptance for water enterprise nine and rejecting HECHE 246, 8, and then WTR water enterprise 236 and public utility six and eight.

We counter offers to balance the rejections.

My apologies, colleagues, and the to the public.

That is the technical announcement that we need to make uh for the enterprise agencies.

And so with that, we're gonna start.

And uh I do also want to announce that uh we will take about uh 30 minutes lunch break around noon.

And so that is both for the public for this body and for also the city departments are gonna come, and today we're gonna start with recreation and park department.

Good morning, Chair Chan Supervisors and Sarah Madlin, the general manager of the recreation and parks department.

Very happy to be here today to present our budget, and uh special thank you to Chair Chan for accommodating a nice schedule.

Um, as you can see, our mission here on the screen is to provide enriching recreational activities, maintain beautiful parks, and preserve the environment for the well-being of everyone in our diverse communities.

Um, and we believe our proposed budget reflects that mission while addressing the significant budget challenges facing both the department and the city.

Um quickly, our proposed operating budget this year is 284 million dollars, and next year we are targeting a 282.6 million dollar operating budget.

As you can see on the screen, and I'm sure you've heard before our uh sources are really composed of three main sources.

Uh the general fund support that we get from the city, which is held at a baseline, um, the open space property tax allocation, and our earned income supports about a third of our budget, and we are incredibly grateful to this board and the tough decisions they made last year, you all made last year to enable us to maintain that earned income, and that continues to support our our services.

Um our expenditures are almost primarily, uh, excuse me, almost all uh in the field.

95% of our staff work in the field delivering services directly uh to residents and visitors, with parks and open space making up the largest uh percentage of our budget and recreation shortly behind that.

Um we have a lien department uh as a general manager.

I have six direct reports, some uh director running operations, a director running partnerships, uh, which does all our public private partnerships as well as some events, our permits and property division, running all of our uh leases and concessions, our capital and planning division, which does all of our major renovations, uh, policy and public affairs, who I know you all work with uh daily, uh, and our director of administration and finance, Antonio Guerra, who is here with me today and who I will be handing the presentation off to at this point.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Antonio Guerrero, Rec Park.

I think the one thing I want to point out about vacancies, because there's so much conversation about them, is if you look at our budget in the annual salary ordinance, you would see that excluding off budget project positions.

We have one thousand nineteen permanent positions, but we've only filled 182 at the moment.

So why is that and what does it consist of?

We have a 10.5% attrition rate loaded into our budget, and if you look at that calculation in the budget system, that excludes 107 positions.

So already we're only funded at 912 permanent positions, and then once you also include positions in the vacant and hiring that are vacant through the hiring process, another 30.

That's why 882 are only filled at the moment.

But if you include our temporary staff, which delivers programming throughout the city, specifically in recreation, we actually have 166 FTE.

The budgeted FTE count calculates based off of uh a larger city cost, and then the head count in and of itself of the temporary staff.

We have 1,088 headcount temporary staff compared to the permanent positions.

So that's 1,900 uh 1,969 people total at Rec Park at this moment, which if you look at our manager ratios, we have in the ASO one manager for every 20 staff, and it's split within operations, the divisions there, one manager to 26 in our non-operations groups.

That's one manager to every eight members of staff.

It's about 5% of our total annual uh salary ordinance, and when you double that and look at our nearly 2,000 head count, it's about two and a half uh percent managers compared to everyone else in the department.

The exercise that everyone in the city did earlier this year in January, identifying course services, discretionary programs, and strategic programs.

Rec Park was focused on protecting our frontline park operations and recreations.

So we looked for cost reductions that minimized impacts to core services.

All of these cuts that you see here are on an ongoing basis, totaling 4.6 million.

But I think the most important and something that everyone did in the city, we deleted 12 positions, including one manager.

A big key takeaway, and one of the reasons why the department is uh has a structural deficit.

Over the next two years, two of the three main pillars of revenue that General Manager Madeline discussed, general fund support and open space, together those combined will be reduced by three and a half million dollars.

And at the same time, our work orders are going up by five million dollars, which includes a 4.2 million dollar increase from the SFPUC over the next two years, which includes their water, wastewater, and power costs.

Finally, this is something that has happened to us since the pandemic, where our citywide work orders have increased by 18 million dollars, and yet our open space and general fund has only increased by 20 million.

So, Sarah General Manager Madeline mentioned uh how thankful we are for some of the decisions made last year during the budget process.

We have trailing legislation for the Golden Gate Park Polo Fields concerts, and that earned income support is directly responsible for ensuring that we are able to keep our staff delivering programming throughout the city.

Finally, over the next fiscal year, we have uh a new opening uh at Gene Friend Recreation Center should be coming open in August as well as July 1st.

We will be uh beginning maintenance at Treasure Island.

We have added 15 FTE in the budget for this, and those positions are covered with Treasure Island community facility district funding on an ongoing basis.

We have a five-year MOU with TIDA.

With that, we're happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you, and just one quick question about the dynamic pricing for golf courses and how is that working out from last year's agreement.

Yes, thank you for the question.

Our overall revenue in golf, let me find the exact numbers for you.

It's about a million dollars higher at the moment.

And we have seen the overall revenue within golf increase by 9%.

The greens fees are higher, so it has been assisting us ensuring that we can reduce the general fund subsidy, and that general fund can go and support programming throughout the city.

Great.

And then um, when are you implementing the?

I think I know the answer to it, but I just want to make sure.

When are you implementing the meter parking in Golden Gate Park?

Paid parking in Golden Gate Park would begin in January of 2027.

Thank you.

And then if I understand correctly, your you have a baseline for capital improvement.

Correct.

When is it going to be expired?

Well, the baseline essentially, I believe our charter mandate ends in the 2040s, 2046 to be exact.

We do have 15 million dollars budgeted this year for capital expenses.

We had planned on having 15 and a half, but that was one of our budget reductions.

So we produced it.

Sorry.

And it's gonna it's actually does not expire until 2040.

Uh 2046, I believe.

Okay.

Understood.

And then that is going to be consistently of 15 million dollars baseline until 2046.

That's the current agreement we have a city leadership, yes.

Thank you.

Uh Vice Chair Dorsey.

Thank you, Chair Chan.

Thank you for the presentation.

I just wanted to ask the just um I appreciate your bringing up Gene Friend and um Treasure Island.

What is the what was the expectation for opening Gene Friend?

August of this year.

Okay.

And it's it's did I hear correctly that we're this the vacancies aren't going to affect the staffing?

Correct.

We will open fully staffed and hit the ground running.

Okay.

Great.

I'm excited to hear.

Me too.

Separate issue.

And I know that there was something that came up last year about some of the escalating costs that you're facing are from our own department with water.

Is that still can I just ask you to elaborate on that?

Is that still a challenge that we're facing?

Sure.

And I may ask Antonio to remind me of the numbers, but we are seeing growth in all of the services that we get received from the PUC from water, wastewater, stormwater, and power well above inflation.

Antonio can probably tell me the exact growth rate, but this is a significant uh driver for us because as those rates go up, as Antonio showed you, we're not getting additional dollars.

So that the peak our work order to the PUC is eating up more and more of our existing um budget.

We are working with the PUC where we manage land for them in areas like Lake Merced, Camp Mayher, uh Crocker Amazon to enter into MOUs where they are able to cover some of the costs associated with that work because it is on their land.

But this is a an ongoing and significant challenge for this department and and frankly citywide.

Antonio, did you want to add anything that I may have?

Uh the only thing I'll add is that uh we had one projection at one time.

Our budget uh in 2022 was roughly 12 million dollars for all of these utilities, and the expectation was that by 2030 to 31, it'd be well over 30 million dollars.

So it's a significant increase for us.

Okay, okay, thanks.

Thank you, and I don't see any other name on the roster.

We appreciate your presentation today.

Um thank you for your work.

And the next we will have Asian Art Museum.

Can we advance?

Good morning, Madam Chair Chen and supervisors, thank you for the opportunity to present the Asian Art Museum's uh budget of Y27 to you this morning.

I am So Young Lee, the Barbara Bass Baker, director and CEO of the beloved institution across Civic Center Plaza.

I'd like to start with the numbers: 13.1 million in our is our FY27 proposed city budget, which is approximately one-third of our total budget of 34 million.

We'll return to this at the end.

As I think you may know, I'm about a year into my role here, a happy camper, honored to be leading this institution that shapes the cultural landscape of the city of San Francisco.

Our vision is to be Bay Area's cultural anchor and Asia's global voice.

So elevating local communities and leading conversations about what defines Asian art and culture internationally, and to highlight Asian culture not as peripheral, but as core as foundational to global and American life, which is really where we are and where the future is, and to present timeless encounters.

As you know, we have a collection of approximately 20,000 works, spanning all history and all of the region of Asia, but at the same time, cutting-edge experimentation.

We are, after all, in the center in the city that is the center of innovation.

The core of our work, of course, is artistic, so exhibitions and artistic leadership.

We currently have an exhibition presenting living artist Chiharu Shiota, whose themes of war, memory, loss, humanity has really resonated.

And if you have not yet come visited everyone here, I invite you to walk across the Civic Center Plaza and come visit before it closes on June 27.

This fall, again, we're presenting both living artists who speak to topics that resonate with both San Francisco and Bay Area citizens and global citizens, as well as ancient masterpiece that is traveling and will never be seen outside of Asia again after the end of this year.

Connecting communities through programs, that is again the core of what we do and really so important to the work that we do for citizens of San Francisco.

We are our signature programs or cultural celebrations, spanning the diversity and variety of Asian communities, Asian American Pacific Islander communities here.

First Sunday of every month is our free Sunday.

General admission is free, and we do see an uptick in attendance on those Sundays, and we target especially Sundays for family programming.

And over the past year, but especially this year in the last five, six months, we have seen great enthusiasm and rising attendance.

Partnerships locally, globally, with our institutions, city institutions such as SFPL, KQED, the Opera, Center for Asian American Media, and also international partnerships.

Most recently, along with the mayor, during his first Asia trip, a stop in Seoul to sign an MOU with the National Museum of Korea, which is probably one of the leading institutions, not only in Asia, but globally, their attendance in 2025.

They ranked number three in the world.

Investing in education and youth, as with all museums, this is this is such an important part of our mission.

In particular, the Asian Art Museum is this the central partnership with SFUSD, students and teachers, and we're continuing to expand that.

We welcome 13,000 students and educators this past year, and we're creating new internship programs again to serve our local communities as well as nationally.

I'd like to remind you that we the museum, unlike many museums in this city and around the country, is open five days a week.

We're closed two days, and and rather than being open six days, and that is in large part because of budget cuts, city budget cuts that have happened over the many years, and yet we have been able to accommodate increasing student and school group tours because that is again core to our mission.

Impact, sometimes it's hard to measure, but in the our increasingly digital world, the digital impact is one of the surest ways to measure how people are engaging with us and as well as foot traffic through the doors since April 1 when we re- when we opened our current special exhibition, uh weekly attendance shot up twice double, and we have massive growth in social media, especially in engagement, which means that people are seeing our feeds opening and responding, and many of them are actually making the trip to the Asian art museum.

51% increase in school program participation and of course features in various media.

We are strategic in targeting both local media partnerships, across print, radio, TV, social media, because that is where we're reaching out to local communities, and that is how we increase foot traffic, but we're also strategic about our national and international media engagement because that is how we increase visibility not only for the museum but for the city of San Francisco.

So the numbers 13.1 million is our FY27 proposed city budget.

We thank the mayor's office for for working with us on this.

Again, a third of 34 million our total budget.

And every penny goes towards our security officers that keep our collection and people safe and staff that directly oversee our collections and programs that directly impact the city and county of San Francisco.

Thank you again for your support.

Any questions, I'm happy to answer.

Thank you.

And just um I think that we have a brief conversation about the um the renovation and the improvements of the physical space uh of the museum and understanding that uh it went well for the repair of the roof, and um so congratulations on that.

And I I think that actually the repair came rather timely.

So I'm really pleased to hear, and just kind of wanted to have a better understanding about overall your approach to the fiscal maintenance and the capital improvements of the museum in the future.

Yes, we are of course vigilant and strategic about it.

I will actually ask my uh CFO, she has been overseeing that.

But big picture with the city, we continually every year present and plan out tenure capital improvement budget, as I think you are well aware.

Uh I will say that each year the operational support that the city provides is minimal in terms of annual maintenance of uh structure and facilities.

And of course, as a reminder, which you're very familiar, the Asian Art Museum's building and collections belong to the city and county of San Francisco.

Um we're not falling apart, but we do have to be very vigilant, and that is where we keep pushing every year for extra funding if there is any, not to it actually it doesn't even go to programs, much of which is actually paid on the foundation side.

It is on physical maintenance and collection care.

And so then here's my recommendation for that approach.

I think it is um probably uh beneficial to both the city and the museum, is to kind of approach this in a way very similar to San Francisco General Hospital, where you actually have a foundation and the board, and in understanding in partnership that there's an approach that you could have public bond dollars for your repair and maintenance, but at the same time you want to actually have a matching capital campaign, also from the museum side, and it's to recognize that like I I totally understand that oftentimes funders want to fund exhibits and things are that are more visual and immediate, but I think that what I'm asking today is uh under your leadership to start to embark on a vision that is in partnership with the city to see that the main maintenance of the space um is critical for the sustain, you know, the future and the health and then sustainability of the museum, and that it will be a great partnership to have, both a public and private partnership uh in approaching that and leveraging the public dollars to for these some of the maintenance work.

So thank you so much for your work and and your leadership.

I definitely think you bring a different energy uh to the museum, and which we appreciate.

I appreciate your uh recommendation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And so with that, I don't see any other name on the roster.

Let's go to Fine Arts Museum.

All right.

Good morning, everyone.

I'm Tom Campbell, Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and it's such a pleasure to be here with you today to speak about the museum's impact over the past year and what we are looking forward to in the year ahead.

As the city's art museums, we take great pride in contributing to San Francisco's economic vitality and to the city's cultural landscape through our core services, our education, collection, and exhibition programs.

With the city's generous support, the museums experienced a truly banner year with a wide ranging exhibitions on manga, impressionism, and the ancient Etruscans, and our new Arts of Indigenous America galleries, all contributed to a visitation of 1.5 million visitors to the Deung and Legion of Honor.

125 of these visitors were Bay Area residents who visited for free of charge as part of our free Saturdays program.

Additionally, I want to highlight the 225,000 of those visitors who participated in our wide-ranging exhibition programs, including 35,000 students and youth.

Fueled by all of this dynamic programming, I'm thrilled to share that the Fine Art Museums ranked as the seventh most visited art museum in the country in 2025, up three spots from 2024.

Outranking visitation at museums in some of our country's much larger cities.

This is an extraordinary develop uh uh temperament to San Francisco's commitment to culture.

It is this contemporary contemplation to contemporary virtues, um, our collaborations with uh partners around the world.

Through this work and through the publicity that our program generates, we proudly proclaim Santa uh San Francisco as one of the United States' most dynamic art centers.

I hope to see you all at the Di Young and Legion of Honor often in the year ahead as we offer San Francisco and visitors another vibrant year of art and culture.

We're kicking off the new season in August with treasures of the pharaohs at the Deung, which will feature 130 Egyptian loans representing 3,000 years of ancient Egyptian culture.

Is the next uh opening and our popular fashion program and will open at the Legion of Honor in November, just in time for the holiday season.

We'll present a beautiful selection of paintings and watercolors by the American realist artist Andrew Wyeth, beginning in February.

And next April, made in San Francisco, we'll round out our year by exploring the pivotal role played by the Californian School of Fine Arts, renaming uh renaming the San Francisco Art, renamed the San Francisco Art Institute in 1961, in catalyzing many of the Bay Area's most significant portrait post-war uh artistic movements.

Our program remains consistent with previous years, and as uh uh finance man uh Mr.

Jason will share after some adjustments last year.

We don't anticipate further programmatic changes in the year ahead.

Uh before I turn over to Jason, I want to thank you on behalf of the museum's staff, trustees, and the San Francisco public for the city's continuous support of the fine art museums.

So now with that over to Jason.

Thank you, Tom.

Good morning, supervisor.

So we have three brief financial slides to review together today.

So in front of you, we have the overall fine arts museum's total budget at 90 million dollars.

Of that, we have general fund support of about 28%, 25 million dollars.

So it's really the two nonprofits who work together with the city in order to welcome 1.5 million visitors this year, plus our very dynamic and broad-based um overall programming.

As a as you all know, the city support is really foundational for us, supports security services, facility maintenance, uh, and capital resilience.

Next slide.

Uh in front of you is actually the detailed department budget.

Um, our total budget this year is about 26.6 uh million dollars.

That's about 8.5% higher than the prior fiscal year.

Um, most of this is really tied to additional capital uh support, which has been uh uh very beneficial for the museums overall.

You know, both of our facilities are going on 20 and 30 years old, and so there's increasingly deferred maintenance.

In addition to the funding you see in front of you, the nonprofit funds another million and a half to two million dollars annually in additional capital support to sort of round out the needs of uh the institutions.

Uh next slide.

And then finally, uh we have our organizational structure in in front of you.

We have about 102 FTEs.

That's actually down two from the prior year.

Uh, we had uh we had a couple of open positions which the city did uh take back um in terms of uh to help support the challenges in the overall city budget, and you know, we are continuing to make uh changes to scheduling to make sure that we can efficiently run the institution.

We actually are down seven FTEs from pre-pandemic, and so we're continuing to work through some of those challenges.

Our attrition rate is quite low, it's only two a year.

Um, it's really through retirements, uh, and then finally our management to non-management ratio is about five percent.

With that, I'm happy to take any questions, either I can answer or Tom.

Thank you.

Just want to thank you for and thank you, Director Campbell and and of course your leadership team for all your contribution to the city.

We're very grateful.

You truly bring a lot of excitement uh to all your exhibits.

Uh, I think a lot of people are just um excited about it.

Of course, we uh as a West Side District Supervisor, but um that we're always grateful for the D Youngster Day.

Uh it truly is an excitement for a lot of public school families and kids really uh be able to participate that.

Uh so we're very grateful for the work that you do.

Um, it does pains me if I may uh say this, and as you know, I think that uh you have so many exhibits that I always love to attend and join, and that while I lack a time, I think there um I want to contain to strong urge you for labor harmony um as sites and to allow us to make sure that someone like us wouldn't feel like we have to um cross any picket lines and any rallies to go to the exhibit.

Um so that's just I am not speaking on behalf of the committee.

It's just simply my um uh expression of wishing that we have more labor harmony uh in your up day-to-day operation, and I just want to strongly encourage you that, because I my feeling is that I may not be the only one who feels that way among San Franciscans and your visitors and your membership.

So, um and just want to make sure that I can put that on record, uh, but still very appreciative of the work that you do.

Thank you.

Thank you, we appreciate that.

So, with that, uh, we will go to um Academy of Sciences.

Good morning, Chair Chan and distinguished members of the budget and appropriations committee.

My name is Amber Mace.

I'm interim executive director of the California Academy of Sciences, and it's an honor to be with you today.

I'm here today to present the Academy's city budget, but before we dive in, I will address the significant changes occurring across our organization.

As you know, we've had a recent change in leadership, and we've implemented proposed staffing reductions to address our financial shortfall.

While these reductions did not impact our city funded operations or personnel, I want to confirm these reductions were a last resort taken deliberately to address an immediate $8 million cash operating shortfall.

Our structural deficit is driven by expenses that consistently exceed our revenues.

Salaries and benefits are the single largest portion of our operating budget, representing approximately 70%.

At the same time, our baseline revenue growth has been pressured by broader economic shifts, 29% drop in daytime ticket sales compared to pre-pandemic levels, changing audience behaviors, and federal funding cuts.

I will not sugarcoat this.

This is a hard moment for the Academy.

We are navigating a time of transition as so many other cultural institutions are.

However, I want to assure you that we took these actions to stabilize this historic institution and actively secure our path to a breakeven budget.

As interim executive director, my mandate is to steer us through this transition.

We are moving forward, ensuring every decision we make is tightly aligned with our purpose and our fiscal responsibilities.

Our path forward requires balancing the budget through disciplined expense reductions while growing revenue through our core purpose.

Since our founding in 1853, the Academy has evolved.

It is woven directly into the fabric of the city's history.

When our home completely burned down in the 1906 earthquake and fire, we rebuilt, we adapted, and we emerged stronger.

We are a fundamentally resilient institution.

And just as we did over a century ago, we will evolve and emerge stronger from our current challenges too.

And to do that, we are prioritizing our visitor experience, education, and scientific research.

To drive new recurring revenue, we are executing three strategic pillars, all focused on connecting people with nature.

We are innovating the visitor experience, unlocking the knowledge in our collections, and regenerating ecosystems.

The Academy is a nonprofit institution made up of scientific and educational experts and assets, and we receive funding through the city charter for the Steinhardt Aquarium.

This funding accounts for roughly 10% of the Academy's overall operating budget.

It serves as the bedrock of our physical infrastructure and accounts for our building engineers, utilities, aquarium expenses, and capital projects.

We deeply appreciate the city's investment in our facilities infrastructure through this vital capital funding.

Our proposed FY27 budget is 9.04 million with a slight increase in funding from the previous year as a result of capital funding.

Looking ahead to FY28, we project a modest increase based primarily on rising personnel costs.

For the sake of time, I'll just dive into FY27.

Of the proposed budget, 31% of the budget goes to salaries and benefits for our 12 stationary engineers, 38% to utilities, 13% to operating expenses for the aquarium, and 18% to capital projects.

The city's budget provides for the salaries and benefits of 13.2 engineers, including 11.2 stationary engineers, one senior stationary engineer, and one chief stationary engineer.

These are all permanent roles that have maintained these positions within this with city support for over 20 years.

And the slight budget increase is primarily attributed to increases in fringe benefit costs.

Due to the intermittent hiring freezes, the Academy has operated with one vacant senior engineer FTE since FY 2024.

Our org chart here represents that our engineers report up to our chief sales and operations officer.

And I'll close with saying that I am so proud of our partnership with the city.

And we are so committed to participating in the city's cultural and economic revitalization.

We are deeply grateful about our ability to continue to partner and build our essential mission into the fabric of the city and maintain our reputation as a beloved and historic institution.

I'm also incredibly proud of our staff who bring science to life every single day.

Many of them are here, and they're very passionate about the academy as you see.

And I know that together we will continue to steward this incredible institution.

So myself and our chief financial officer, Matthew Lau are happy to take any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisor Walton.

Thank you, Chair Chan.

Thank you, Director Maysa.

I do have a few questions.

How many total employees were laid off?

We had a identified 53 members of our team that were affected by our proposed staff reductions.

And these are actual people in actual jobs, not vacancies?

Correct.

And is there any conversation about possible restoring any of these positions or?

Yeah, we are our management team is meeting and conferring with our California Workers United represented staff, and right now they're in negotiation to bring 12 union members back by placing them into other jobs in the Academy.

And what was the criteria for layoffs?

Like how did you decide?

They were absolutely driven by our structural deficit and the fact that our employment costs are 70% of our operating budget.

Thank you.

Supervisor Sauter.

Thank you, Chair Chan.

Um, I I you're in an interim role, is that right?

That's correct.

And how long have you been with the Academy?

Uh a little over two and a half years.

I think there's probably another time and place for this uh for more detailed conversation, but can you just briefly share your vision for the Academy?

Yeah, absolutely, and I would love to continue the conversation.

Uh just building on the fact that this is a historic institution that's been created to tap into biodiversity and nature and make sure that we, as a city, as the Bay Area as California have a deep connection to nature.

We understand it, we are exploring it, we're translating that knowledge to all the people who come to visit over a million people a year.

And my vision is that we can continue to present an institution that can live into the future as a new type of visitor experience.

It's this recognition that people have a lot of demands on their attention, so how do we earn their attention?

How do we in a day when people are staying home more or doing other things, not going to museums as much as they used to, how do we encourage them to come to the academy?

And we have wonderful ideas.

I'd be happy to share those with you.

It's really exciting what we're innovating.

Thank you.

And remind me the financial shortfall, what what did that look like?

About $8 million for us a structural deficit this year.

Is it accurate that the Academy owns a mansion in Pacific Heights?

Yes.

What is the value of that mansion?

Um, the value, I don't have a I think it has to be there's Matthew.

Um I don't know the good morning, supervisors.

We actually in the process of doing an assessment of the value of that specific asset.

Is that I mean, I've read $8 million, so $8 million dollar shortfall, $8 million dollar mansion that is not being used.

Uh that's curious.

What is the future of this mansion?

How are you contemplating that?

Yeah, we'll be speaking with our board about that, and if we had a mansion every year to sell, we would be able to cover our structural deficit.

Tell me about your decision to remove yourself from the museums for all program.

We are currently still looking at our museums for all program, and we're exploring how we can make sure that we have access to all people who want to attend the academy.

We have an academy day that allows people to come and pay what you can.

We participate in library discovery and go, and we will continue to provide discounted tickets for anyone who wants to attend the academy who uh meet the the requirements of the program.

I understand, you know, given the financial challenges you're looking for savings.

Um, but I don't think you're unique in that with many of your counterparts and yet the Asian Art Museum, the De Young, Legion of Honor, well, Disney Museum, your Bible Center for the Arts, Children's Creativity Museum, so on and so forth, uh, continue to be part of that program.

And, you know, I think being part of that program fits in well with a vision you articulated.

So I hope that you're able to rejoin that program.

I think it is um short-sighted and foolish to remove yourself from something like that, which you know, you speak about accessibility and getting people out to the museums.

This is a great way to do it.

Um, I think there's other ways to find those savings rather than making it harder for families, low-income families to access your museum.

So I hope you'll take a hard look at that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

What is your total budget?

About $80 million for operating fund.

Understood.

And then so you have $80 million roughly of as total, and then you that's about uh 10% coming from the city?

Correct.

Uh and help me understand that equivalency of that 53 uh employees lay off um the equivalency of the dollar amount.

All right, you've got to say your first name and last name before you come to the mic.

Matthew Lau.

Five point nine million, including French benefits.

5.9 million.

So you have a operation of 80 million, 80 million dollars.

You're laying off 5.9 million, and you're coming to city for the additional or part of, so is the uh city's roughly 9 million dollars on top of your 80 million, or is it inclusive of your 80 million?

Inclusive.

Inclusive.

So I see.

And um, and here's uh do you have reserve?

We do not have a capital reserve.

Do you have a reserve?

Operational reserve?

We do not, other than an endowment.

Other than endowment, and how much is your endowment?

Um endowment it's roughly 200 million dollars, of which 150 million it's restricted and 50 million it's unrestricted.

So you have 50 million that's unrestricted right now.

And then 150 that is actually restricted.

Can you explain to me what is the restricted for?

Uh restricted by the gift instruments.

For instance, if someone wants to give to science that the gift and the spending, it's limited to spending on science only.

Of course, I understand.

Um, we would like to learn more about your restricted and unrestricted um spending and and if I may, hear me out why.

Um I'm kind of it's I'm kind of going along with what Supervisor Walton kind of aligned like the line of questionings about the decision that you made for the layoff.

And it's specifically it's like if you actually, for example, if you are right now, like how many total employees you have again?

We have over 500 employees.

Yeah, 500.

That's a good portion.

Like again, that's like 10% of your workforce that you actually have laid off.

Um, I cannot imagine the city doing that, you know, um, and and what that would impact in terms of level of service.

And so like I I wonder if there why weren't there any discussion about tapping into be the restricted or the unrestricted um funds that you actually would have to kind of figure out how do you bridge that to until you you sort out your financial forecast and and most importantly, a consistent vision for bringing in visitorship and increase visitorship.

Um, um and and so that's my question.

Yeah, that's a good question.

I appreciate it.

And when we have a structural deficit and at the end of the year, if we don't have the cash to cover it, there are times when we have to make an extraordinary draw from the endowment.

But as an ongoing practice, our endowment serves like a retirement account for us.

It press it generates revenue that we don't want to continually take money out of.

Sure.

So if we do that, we eat into the future proceeds to support the ongoing operations of the academy.

But as you indicated though, you say 70% of your um budget really goes to workforce, which is understandable.

Um, and so your endowments, which is by 150 million dollars, 150 million dollars are restrictive.

Say, for example, I'm just making this up, so please um just understand my lay person understanding of how you operate.

But for example, say someone is caring for the earthquake section, um, or or the rocks.

How about this geology?

It's one of my favorite things uh to visit in in actually uh the academy of science.

So I'm gonna use that.

How about this geology?

And my son loves it too because when he went there when he was younger, and he still wanted to hang out with me when we went there, is that he wants to have some, and that was always great.

You actually have a person there explaining and demonstrating all the rocks and what they are, it's wonderful, we love it.

It would not be the same for us just to walk up and staring at rocks.

Um it would it's just so much better to have someone to demonstrate allowing them to touch it and and show them and reflection, and you know, just having that human touch and how important it is.

So, my imagination is or I'm assumption is that when you have 150 million dollars of endowments specifically dedicated, for example, for geology.

I would assume that that the donors would want to see that continuum presentation by a staff for that specific.

And I'm so I'm just kind of curious.

Like, have that been that thoughts about that 150 million dollars endowments dedicated to specifically to those kind of different sources or different different um interests or a different exhibit, and and to kind of see your staffing at that level to say this is the worthwhile to maintain these staff.

Yeah, we're really grateful for everyone who's contributed to building this endowment over time, and it really does secure the future of the organization.

It provides 10% of our annual funding, and the endowment, in addition to what Matthew shared, that contains science and research funding that helps us explore the 46 million objects in our collections and to explore nature around the world.

It also funds our ROC program, which allows all the city children to come to the academy.

So we absolutely have restricted endowment dollars that support engagement with people as well.

Yeah, so it kind of leads me like questions and and today, and and I'm gonna explore this and I'm gonna lay it out for my colleagues.

I I my expectation is also the budget and legislative analysts.

Uh, we'll be going through a lot of things, and typically we don't quite go through this as in detail.

Uh, regrettably, I think that given the conditions you're in, uh given the news reporting that's indicated by uh Supervisor uh Sauter has indicated really about your asset um that 10% of the city funding it's it's your funding source.

Um it is our obligation to understand uh your financial condition.

It is our obligation to understand whether you can continue to uh operate with labor harmony uh on city property, um, and so uh you know, as a partner uh we and clearly we're gonna have further discussion about this.

But colleagues, this is a similarly regrettably that we have similar con uh situation with San Francisco Zoo and other institutions, and what we have came to like come to a conclusion is that you know we we want to see an audit um, you know, potentially with our budget and legislative analysts, and and you can ask San Francisco Zoo, they have found our audit to be very, very helpful, and what eventually comes is a that a whole list of recommendation becomes sort of this blueprint of how the zoo can get back on their feet and and be able to move forward.

It's an offer uh that that I want to make, but it's also um a request that I want to make is that we have a the budget and legislative analyst to start embark on this audit with the Academy of Science, and that we withhold and uh put the funding on reserve.

Um I think that we can decide what that actually looks like.

That does not impact uh your operation um significantly, but I think enough to put the funding from the city side, similarly as we have done with San Francisco Zoo on reserve until the audit is completed.

We're not making that decision right now.

I am articulating this.

I see a lot of worry faces.

Um, and uh and I so I'm putting that on the record as a conversation.

Uh, and I just want you to be aware of that.

And of course, we can talk more.

Um, potentially you could come back uh next week, and we can have more conversation too.

So thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Chan.

With that, we will go to Arts Commission.

Uh Madam Chair, uh, as the department is setting up, I will just uh like to say for the uh members of the public in the chamber, a pursuant to our board rule 1.3.1 handheld signs are prohibited in these chambers, but I'm willing to compromise uh in that you hold them no higher than I level as anyone in the chambers behind you are entitled to an unobstructed view of our proceedings.

And I thank you much.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Chan, supervisors.

Um, I'm Matthew Goodot, and I'm honored to be the city's first executive director of arts and culture.

Um the mayor's office and the arts commission have worked together to create, as you probably know, a unified arts and culture department, bringing together grants for the arts, the film commission, and the arts commission to better serve artists, cultural organizations, their audiences, and the people of San Francisco.

Um I'm excited by the vision reflected in this budget, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to help lead this expanded new department in some ways.

Um I also want to dedicate uh recognize the dedicated staff of these three agencies who are coming together to better serve the city.

Um their commitment and their expertise are gonna make this transition.

I'm positive a success.

Um I'm joined today by the Arts Commission CFO, Sarah Hollenbeck, who will walk through the budget details, which were developed prior to my recent appointment.

Um, but I'm happy to answer any questions about the department's future, the priorities ahead.

So thank you very much.

Uh thank you very much, and um good morning.

I'm also pleased to be uh here before you, uh, Chair Chan and members of the committee.

It is um exciting to have the opportunity to present to you this morning for the first time a budget reflecting the merger of grants for the arts, the film commission, and the arts commission.

I also would like to acknowledge um the work and collaboration of the finance staff at ADM and at OEWD, the GFTA and film teams, as well as the tireless work of our own finance manager Kevin Kwan and the partnership with MBO and the controller's office throughout this process.

Um before you on this slide are the missions of the three entities that are going to be coming together.

We anticipate in this coming year that we'll be launching a process to create a unified uh vision and mission for our collective work.

On slide four, we have uh a sort of a high-level programmatic organizational chart.

They're sharing for you.

It's very exciting indeed.

Um, as we're in a time of leadership transition, uh, along with this merger, the structure of the programs within the department and a detailed position level organization chart are not quite ready yet.

They're a work in progress.

However, I would um provide to you, and I apologize, I don't believe it's on the slide that you have, but in the monitor we've added to this information, the FTE counts for the component parts that you see here.

So film has four FTEs, GFTA has five, the finance and administration, which we've folded in some operations and communications and so forth in that is a team of 14, and 22.5 FTE come along with the SFAC historic programs.

The total is 48 and a half, of which looking at the positions that were transferred over in the budget, it equates to a management ratio of approximately 16%.

As I said, we'll be working through the particulars of the position detail as we come together and move forward.

I would like to note that the finance and accounting group is reflective of the transfer of one accountant from ADM and a conversion of one existing unfilled position in GFTA to help support what will potentially be over 600, even sometimes up to 700 contracts for this small but mighty department.

So that is a change that is in reflected in the budget.

In terms of the programs, what we have here is a listing of the programs of that historically have lived within SFAC as well as grants for the arts and film SF.

As we thought about which of these are core operational and strategic and discretionary, the majority of SFAC's programs and GFTA are legislatively mandated, whether in the charter or in voter-approved initiatives, including Prop E from 2018.

We view our galleries program as a strategic program, as it is public facing and supports our role in supporting emerging artists.

And Film SF has also strategic programs in the form of an incentive program as well as the core operations of facilitating permitting for filming in SF.

Moving on to our budgeted revenues, this slide summarizes our revenues presented by funding source.

I wanted to note that we've presented this doesn't look exactly like what you see in the AAO because for sort of for transparency and comparison purposes, we have folded in for the fiscal 26 column the prior year budgets for GFTA and film, both on our revenue and expenditure slides.

So just for ease of tracking changes over time.

As you'll see, our largest funding source by far is hotel tax, and again for the benefit of the public and the advocacy community and transparency, we broke out ART and GFTA because we want it to be clear to folks that those allocations provided to those programs, both that live within art and GFTA that are provided for in Prop E continue to be able to be tracked and budgeted separately.

So we can see the hotel tax is projected to grow by about 9% in fiscal 27, and then more or less flat, just a little bit under 1% growth in fiscal 28.

I also wanted to point out here that of the 6.6 million dollars of general fund support you see here, 4.6ish million of that goes through, passes essentially through the Arts Commission to the San Francisco Symphony pursuant to charter section 16106.

Moving on to budgeted expenditures.

Let's see.

Again, we've broken out and added to our, we've broken out film and grants for the arts and added them in in the 26 columns, so you can see the changes from year over year for all of the component parts.

The GFTA increase and the community investment increase, those are our two, the our two grant-making um programs are growing uh in accordance with hotel tax um increases, and as you can see, administration um is dropping.

That's reflective of uh attrition savings and the reduction of some staffing.

Similarly, unfortunately, one filled position in art was eliminated in the year two of last year's budget, and so that has resulted in a layoff of one of our colleagues in the recent round uh three further positions now proposed to be eliminated in fiscal 27 are vacant or will be as of July 1st in addition to these reductions our proposed salary budget for fiscal 27 reflects over three FTE of attrition savings and another 2.2 positions worth of attrition are added to our fiscal 28 budget so we'll um have to work hard on how to meet those attrition savings finally with respect to our capital budget we really want to appreciate and recognize the support that CPC and the mayor's office um reflected for the programs that the arts commission manages on behalf of our cultural centers the civic art collection and our gallery in the allocations that are reflected in the the current budget for our capital this reflects ongoing investment in our cultural centers for key one time projects as well as ongoing maintenance and replacement of doors and windows and you know all the all the just things that need addressed to be addressed over time year in and year out as well as the continued investment in conservation restoration and structural assessment of the civic art collection to enhance the public realm and ensure public safety so with that I'd be happy to take any questions you may have thank you.

Thank you.

I mean I think this is one of the um city departments that are beginning to merge so just wanted to ask and say welcome back to director Codeau and just wanted to see what is the vision of seeing that these two or more actually you have multiple units I should say or division when under the city now is coming together.

I I actually kind of think that it makes sense but just wanted to understand too how do we make sure that uniquely each are very strong in their purpose and in their approach around film or around arts and then public arts and then also in their mission of visual art just a lot of that they're very diverse very strong and independently having their approach to to the industry or to to to the um to the medium and so how do you bring them all together and still we one watch.

Yeah well I mean this has been something um maybe not so much with the film commission but grants for the arts and the arts commission has long been talked about as streamlining and merging to better serve the organizations that they work with.

I'm approaching this sort of sort of a three prong kind of idea of what uh when we would be need to be doing and then the months and years ahead number one is kind of a rebuild approach of rebuild the trust within the organization working with the staff to help them understand the purpose and kind of the mechanisms that are going to happen with this merger.

Rebuild trust with the community that maybe would like a little more transparency into what they can expect of what's ahead.

And that also probably a phase two and not is like the the unite of looking at this how do we merge these three agencies in the one you've raised a lot of questions that we hope to look at and to answer working both with the staff of the three agencies that are now coming together as one and with a very deep process with the community as part of that we will launch a strategic plan both addressing kind of what we plan to do internally but externally as part of that a citywide arts plan a creative economy plan working with our colleagues in the Office of Economic Development to also incorporate into that.

So I think that there are a lot of questions that I don't have a lot of answers to um but I think that it's important that we be asking them when we ask them publicly and with community and then the third approach that I look at is we have a lot that we're already doing and once we kind of get these basics down how do we grow and how do we provide even better services to artists, to arts organizations, to audiences and tourists?

So it's a work in progress.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

And I think I am definitely a supporter and uh for the our city's film rebate program.

And I do also see that the film industry should know that they're welcome here.

I also like to see us to be more actively be able to involve and get also the state film rebate credit that coming to this town, and that I see also overlapping of uh having homegrown artists, performing art artists uh that be able to emerge like into uh with the film industry.

Yeah, that's a radio.

Typically probably come out of town, that they can actually end up utilizing our local artist.

Um, so I do see a lot of potential.

Congratulations on that.

Um, I do wanted to have a better understanding.

Um, how do you merge all of them together as a vision?

Um, I know that's not today, um, but I think that for the upcoming budget.

I hope that that you will your budget will reflect that.

Your budget will reflect the vision.

I also wanted to articulate that Mayor Bree had a vision, and I think that I supportive that vision, but I think at some point that it wasn't a balanced approach that it was a uh how do we support street artists?

How do we support community artists?

How do we support sort of the local artist, but at the same time not turn our backs from the institutions that we have in San Francisco too?

Like how do we merge them together in a more successful manner, uh, but also equitable manner, and that is more harmonious manner.

Um, so I look forward to seeing you bringing them all together.

Uh it's a tough job, but I'm glad that uh you're here uh to bring that forward.

Thank you.

Look forward to your support.

Thank you.

I don't see any other name on the roster for those questions, so we will go to war memorial.

Is there anything I have to do to get this?

Do you need I think it's up?

Do we need to toggle to the presentation?

Do you is there a way to get this on the screen?

Oh, there we go.

There we go.

All right, great.

Hi, good morning.

Uh Kate Sofis, uh Managing Director of the War Memorial Performing Arts Center.

Um, and uh excited to be here today and to continue to update everyone on what we've been doing, and to remind everyone.

Let's go to the vision side, that we are actually the second largest performing arts center in the country.

And that's something that still it's amazing to me as I walk around community and talk to people both here and beyond that people don't yet understand what we are as the collective whole, which is far more than our buildings and our venues, which themselves are impressive from Davies Symphony Hall to the War Memorial Opera House to our super cool venues inside the Veterans Building, the Herbst Theater, the new Willsey Center, and the Green Room.

So a lot of the work we've been doing is to really try to express even more through social media, through through our conversations, through our partnerships, the values of who we are, which is very much San Francisco.

So what you have in front of you is actually a recently minted vision statement to complement our mission that really I think is stating what we are all aspiring to be, which is far more than the collection of the venues and the auditoriums we have, but we really uh want to represent San Francisco to both our local community and the world uh to represent the diversity of the art forms, to welcome visitors locally, nationally, to be more representative of the whole cross-section of artists and art forms that see themselves in our venues at home.

So a lot of our work in the last year has really been to expand and build around and go beyond our three resident companies, which are the opera, symphony, and ballet.

Next slide.

So in this last year, we've actually been steadily increasing our attendance and increasing numbers of performances across all the venues.

Uh it's been a nice upward trajectory since the pandemic.

And these are some, but not all of our key performance metrics that we now have and publish.

Some of the highlights of some of these new kinds of collaborations and presenters we've had in the last year include SF Jazz, who of course has their own home.

Next slide.

But when they're seeking to use larger venues that exceed the capacity of minor, and this is one example right here with Ladisi here at a sold out show at Davy Symphony Hall.

We work with other arts organizations like SF Jazz and Community to bring them into our campus.

Next slide.

And some real sweet spots in the last year have included all sorts of comedians and now podcasts.

And this is actually one of our most successful shows so far this year.

It was held during the NFL Super Bowl.

This is Shannon Sharp and Friends, sold out.

And again, I think it represents an emerging art form that we're starting to see in our venues, and that brings in a whole different cross-section of community, which we're really excited about.

Next slide.

And then we have for the first time we are starting to work with the opera and the ballet to find gaps in their schedule to welcome outside shows into the opera house.

And the rock orchestra by candlelight, which I'm very excited to see, is one of the first manifestations of trying to get new folks into the opera house.

Next slide.

And last but not least, in collaboration with our resident companies, we're really starting to see new forms of art and collaborations being brought to our stage.

I want to recognize the sold-out run of Monkey King, which was the San Francisco Opera in collaboration with the Shanghai Opera.

And that run not only I think exposed a lot of folks who don't see themselves as being opera people to the opera house and to the art form of opera, but we also had free open to the public night markets associated with it.

And part of that is about trying to take what's inside of what can be very intimidating buildings and really push it out into community and sort of break down those marble walls that might feel intimidating to families and youth.

So our core programs are really four main areas.

So our biggest team is public safety.

You've heard this from the museums as well, but they are the first faces that people see when they set foot on campus.

They keep us safe.

They make people feel welcome, and I'm very, very proud of that team.

The second largest is actually our engineering building and grounds, very similarly, but they are working to keep our 100-year-old buildings.

Two of them are almost 100 years old, and our almost 50-year-old Davy Symphony Hall in good working shape, both structurally but also theatrically.

Not only providing support to the resident companies, but it is also sort of the key revenue generator, and we'll talk about revenue in just a minute.

And then last and certainly not least is our small, very efficient finance contracts, compliance and IT team.

And we actually work in partnership in two of the areas with Department of Technology now to deliver our IT services and with the Department of Human Resources to deliver our HR services.

Those are relatively new partnerships, and they are very effective and have helped us keep our core team small and efficient.

Next slide.

So our overall organization, and again, this is sort of reflecting the four core areas.

We are actually going from 67 full-time folks to 64.

And these are very kind of strategically thought through places where we thought we could either consolidate operations or just do a little bit more with less.

For example, we had one retirement from our public safety team, and we are not going to fill that vacancy at this time.

So we've been very decisive in how we continue to do everything that we do with a relatively small team.

Our attrition rate is about four, very similar to I think comments we heard from I think Fine Arts.

People tend to leave because they retire or occasionally they move out of the city.

But War Memorial enjoys very committed long-term employees, and I think that really speaks to both the environment that we have and it also absolutely leads to the excellence in delivery of all of our programs and presentations.

Next slide.

So in terms of our operating expenditures, so on the earned income side of things, we get, I would say, sort of around 20, 25%, depending upon the year of our revenue coming from earned income.

And that basically is income from renting our venues.

So we get rent from the three resident companies, we get rent as well when we have outside presentations in any of our theaters.

Our general fund operating support, I'm really happy to say that we have managed in this year's budget to reduce by almost by 1.2 million.

And those reductions are largely coming from really hard work we did with the Department of Real Estate, who supports our custodial, looking at how we can optimize custodial delivery without compromising the visitor experience, and I'm really proud that we were able to look at that together.

Custodial services still remains one of our largest segments of our budget, and we very much value the professionals who keep our buildings clean and hygienic and welcoming.

Next slide.

So just another way of slicing the apple here.

We have a whole three-stream stream recycling program across all of the buildings.

But with the new contract at the city, which went into effect in January, we've seen our cost for the same service double, and so we have necessarily needed to include some extra funds to make up for that overage.

So this is exactly how much more we're anticipating on spending.

We're already working now with the Department of Environment to see what other ideas we can probably think about to come up with.

But at this time, again, we're very committed, but uh the reality is the structure of the new citywide contract uh has led to some more expense there.

I also want to highlight that, similar to uh our sister departments at museums, we do have annual capital projects.

We have a number uh that we are endeavoring to uh take care of that have been put off for a while, including such exciting things as resealing our gutters and replacing our main fire pump controller and uh there's a sewage pump replacement in our future um I also want to thank you for our big big capital support projects if you haven't looked up when you step outside of City Hall look up look up at the roof of the opera house and that is a long plan for replacement of all of the original um mansard roofing of the opera house and we deeply appreciate uh your support for that uh next slide in addition to the roof we have um an ongoing series of elevator modernization projects that again uh gets major capital project funding outside of our regular operating budget um and in the opera house which is our oldest building we are um in the process of working on two elevators as we speak and then getting to the the big ones which are our loading dock elevators in the next year all right and with that I'll take any questions thank you.

Thank you.

I don't see any name on the roster but just out of curiosity uh as as you would going through your presentation um I was just going through your website and just kind of only because um I think you have been really open up the space to a lot of um organizations um that are inclusive of like nonprofits or community organizations they've been it's been very exciting to um that's including API Heritage Month get to celebrate in some of these spaces or even like GAPA um it's just really wonderful to see and so my uh I'm just kind of curious will there be or could there be on your website a master calendar that I know that you're of course is your official like there's the opera the Davy Symphony would there be could it be possible to not just for consideration not uh oh it it's it's yes like a master calendar of like people can actually go on to and knowing that your space while it's not necessarily open to public but actually how promote some of these other community events that are that are not as official but actually still leasing the space from you.

So if I understand the question and it's actually a great it is a huge thing we've been working on the last three years.

So the department actually has two websites so we have our city website which is sort of more focused on our board minutes and and compliance issues and then we have our main to the public sfwarmemorial.org website which you're you're on so if I understand the question what we've worked on in the last year has been to make that master calendar really easy to navigate for the Herbst for the um the opera house and for Davies and and also the the Atrium theater if what I under so that's already a huge improvement however what I think you're also asking is the green room and some of these other events that might not be ticketed events but could we do something to add that into the master calendar so people can see them and that's a that's a yes absolutely I think it's a great idea I think it builds on what we're already doing and you know our goal again is to I used this word earlier this week working on a different issue around looking at at ADA accessibility I want to be the most radically inclusive performing art center in the country and I think the more we can use every tool at our disposal starting with that website I think it's a great idea and we'll follow up.

Thank you I mean I think similarly what Recon Park has done in the past is someone who lease their space um for certain events they inclusive of their use e newsletter or calendar so that they see that while it it's not that you were close for the day or not have any events it's just that it's for events that is not sponsored by you or by the city or by by operating or that it's not ticketed except if you go to the organization.

Well I appreciate you recognizing the work and that we really have been so focused on building outside of the three resident companies, and we're gonna keep at it.

Thank you.

We thank you for your work.

Thank you so much.

Much appreciate it and uh so with that, we will go to the department of early childhood.

And this colleagues may very well be the last before we go on break, even if it's a little bit before noon.

But then we'll return at 12 30 nonetheless.

Good morning, supervisors.

I'm Ingrid Mesquita, the director for the San Francisco Department of Early Childhood.

And while we set up our presentation, today's presentation to you will be brought by myself as well as Tracy Fong and Brenda Taylor, who is part of our fiscal team.

Next slide.

This budget focuses on one of the most important opportunities we have, supporting children in their earliest years.

For 20 fiscal year 26-27 and 27-28, the proposed budget is focused on ensuring young children are ready to thrive, families can actually afford care, and educators get the support to do their jobs well.

I'll start with our vision, mission, and our outcomes.

At the Department of Early Childhood, we're committed to making sure every child in San Francisco gets the best possible start.

Our mission is to bring together family, community, and system supports so children have a strong foundation for health, learning, and growth.

We don't fund programs in isolation.

We're working to build a connected early childhood system that reaches families early before gaps get wider.

And here's how we're putting that into practice.

We're starting to see results in every area that we fund, especially in children's school readiness, or it's also called school kindergarten readiness.

It's the highest it's been ever in this city.

69% of kindergartners are meeting standards, and this is our fourth straight year of growth.

More than 9,000 children have enrolled in our early learning for all program, which is our major tuition support, and almost 7,500 children have received developmental screenings, and children with disabilities are also showing record school readiness results.

Over 3,000 educators have seen their pay go up with wages for teachers nearly 50% increases in really high vulnerable settings.

These are big steps forward, and there's still so much more that we can do to begin closing our equity graphs.

Next slide.

Um for children at the age of five, and this is why we track it.

And even with these improvements, we are doing even as we're doing much more and investing more, there's we can also do better.

Equity remains our biggest challenge.

The kindergarten readiness inventory, which is done every beginning of every school year, screens every incoming kindergartner at the start of the school year on early literacy, math, social, emotional, and motor skills.

Although we've started to close the gap, there's still a gap that remains, especially with children who are Latino or African American.

But we're very proud to say that those two populations and children with special needs, that gap is beginning to close.

But we need to be able to continue to focus on the basics where research shows what makes real difference in children's lives.

Next slide.

So these are our building blocks, and as I mentioned before, these are all highly correlate with children's school readiness.

Getting children ready for kindergarten doesn't just happen.

It is not by accident, it takes a coordinated effort and support very early on.

The programs and the grant making we do are built around what research says matters most quality early learning, family support and engagement, help for children with special needs, and financial stability.

Programs like Early Learning for All, Early Connections, our Family Resource Centers, Sparkler, which is a mobile app that makes developmental screening accessible not only to parents and providers, our partnership with the public library and Imagination Library, where every child under five gets a free book mailed to them on a monthly basis.

And our newest one, Little Lyft, are all working in sync as part of one coherent system.

This budget is about making those connections even stronger and more intentional.

This budget marks a shift for DC from laying the groundwork to really strengthening the whole early childhood support system.

Since we started just a few years ago, we've built programs and the infrastructure necessary that brings us closer to our city's vision, where every child in San Francisco has the best start in life, and our city is a great place to raise a family.

Our proposed budget takes each core piece that drives our mission, which is educator pay, family affordable tuition help, quality spaces, child and family well-being, and systems that help families access resources and strengthens and connects them.

For teacher wages, we rose teacher compensation back in 2022, creating a baseline, which is living weight aligned to the living wage.

This year we're raising that base wage again as a requirement by 16% to ensure educators earn the current living wage, and all educators earning above the base wage will receive a 10% increase.

This ensures that the infrastructure that we're building across the city not only retains these high quality teachers but also attracts them to the field.

And with family affordability, this budget expands access to tuition assistance, making care much more affordable.

Any family in San Francisco with a child under five earning under 200% of area median income now qualifies, and that's approximately 312,000 for a family of four.

And as they enroll in our programs and in our network, families will get at least 50% tuition credit.

Families under 150% of area median income qualify for the full tuition credit.

And so as we're making these investments, we also know that in order to expand not only these programmatic elements of early care and education, we also must expand the support for families right from the start.

Through our Little Lyft program, pregnant people will receive financial help and support, connecting to key city resources during pregnancy and a child's earliest months.

This is part of the mayor's strong starts initiative, which brings several city departments together to reduce preterm birth and connect families early to resources that improve child and caregiver relationships and outcomes.

And as you can see, San Francisco is leading the nation in not only in our commitment that begins before birth, but also supporting pregnant individuals through our Little Lyft program, and most recently ensuring that child care affordability is centered to the work that we're doing by making sure that families all across our city are accessing programs and that qualify for free and significantly reduced tuition.

Our model invests in educators, program quality, inclusive and infant toddler spaces, and our little lift program will be made available for families expecting a new baby.

To keep this going, we need a stable and disciplined budget.

And for that, I am going to ask Brenda Taylor to provide you with the details of our budget.

Thank you.

Good morning, committee, Chair Chan.

So overall, our budget outlook is still stable, even though revenues are a bit softer.

Most of DEC's budget comes from special revenue funds plus state and federal sources.

Most those state and federal sources mostly support enrollment programs.

The proposed AAO budget is for $343.6 million for FY26 27 and $337.5 million for FY27 28.

The drop in the second year is mostly because we expect less from propsy and slightly less from PEF due to the adjustment that's related to the city's change in funding.

We don't expect these changes to cut programming.

As we spoke with the committee earlier this year, we are implementing strategic use of our fund balance in order to support the mayor's priorities and to augment our programs.

Here's how we're planning to use these resources.

So as always, our budget puts community investment first, not administrative costs.

So about 85% of our budget goes out to nonprofit grants.

We don't control them.

Excuse me, only about 6% of our budget is for administration, and about half of that services of other departments are funding programs through other departments like DPH.

Here's how our spending breaks down by major program area.

As Director Musquita discussed, our spending shows that early learning is still at the heart of what we do.

The biggest share of the budget goes to early learning, which includes access and enrollment, workforce initiatives, program quality, and our quality spaces.

Child and family well-being is our next big area, which covers our family resource centers, child health, and our cross-sector work, which is where we're really trying to support the systemization of both our CBOs or our grantees, as well as connecting the dots between the services that we provide.

The budget also funds data evaluation and policy communications, finance operations, and compliance to keep the system accountable.

This is how we're able to deliver the impact data that you see today, and also how we're able to administer the almost 100 contracts that our department puts out every year.

Next, I'll break down these allocations by program.

So this slide has a lot of small numbers on it.

So on the right, you'll see the AAO budget, which is what we've discussed thus far.

On the left, you'll see the total budget, which includes the fund balance that we are anticipating using for each program.

As you'll see, access and enrollment is the largest area at roughly 179 million in 2627 and 180 million in 27-28.

Workforce investments, including our compensation initiatives, our workforce workforce pathways, which augment education and provide support for attaining higher education to our teachers, and working conditions support is our next largest investment at 86 and 87 million.

Finally, quality spaces, the program and network quality, our family resource sensors and child health continue as core investments.

The slide also shows the difference between oh, excuse me.

Delivering the scale of work requires the right staff capacity.

So this slide shows our spending over time as well as the FTEs that we've relied on or the staff we've relied on in order to deliver those funds.

As you look down, we went from being a new department, two departments rather, to a new department, and now to a department that really is enhancing rather than building.

As we deploy our AAO budget as well as our balance that we're anticipating using this year, we are looking to ensure that we have the staff to continue our high quality programming.

Now, we're set up to do this work, consistent with our primary programming.

So our early learning division houses all of our access and enrollment, our workforce development, our program quality, and our quality spaces.

Our child and family well-being department over on the right, includes all of our family resource centers, our child health, and then our cross-sector work.

And then in the middle, we have our two divisions that are related or our backbone divisions, who are support.

You'll see in yellow where we've asked for new positions.

And those are really five of them are around program quality.

This is due to the expansion of our network and looking to ensure that we can maintain high quality services but also enhance our network through our standard assessment processes.

The next slide puts the staffing request in context.

We're asking for these changes to make sure our oversight matches the size of our public investment.

DEC manages big grant making and systems portfolio with a pretty lean team.

Budget per staff is remaining relatively consistent across the years in this budget cycle.

Our team includes leadership, managers, analysts, program staff, admin, and support roles, all needed to manage the hundreds of millions of millions of dollars responsibly.

Next, I'll talk about the reserve requesting for board-specific commitments.

So as we go into the process of spending our fund balance, of course, a big share of the fund balance is on reserve, both with this committee and also with the mayor's office.

And this reserve request is targeted, it protects the commitments already identified by the board.

DEC is requesting 31.25 million reserve tied to four items.

1.25 million is for the final year of the three-year Family Resource Center commitment.

10 million dollars is for the child care site at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.

And they have already secured a site, so that is well underway.

10 million dollars is for a child care site at Laguna Honda Hospital.

And finally, 10 million is in FY2728 for child care site at the OMI public library.

Taken together, this budget maintains our core services, expands affordability, invests in educators, and strengthens the system of San Francisco's youngest children and the families and caregivers they rely on.

And with that, I will hand it back to Director Musquita for any questions.

Thank you.

Is the uh Zuckerberg sites the Walgreens, the former Walking site?

Yes, on 24th in Patreon.

And then help me understand a little bit about the process, like where is it at right now?

Is it that we have made an offer, or is this?

Yes, so it's in the process of site control.

Um the lease is being negotiated with through the real estate department.

Um, but we've already have the drawn-up plans for the site.

It is going to be able to serve up to 60 children, mostly infinite toddler classrooms with one smaller preschool, since there's a preschool program directly across the street.

But the really the emphasis is infinite toddlers since that's where the greatest need is.

If I understand this correctly, so this 10 million dollars is coming from BBC funding for the capital and acquisition.

And I believe that though there's about 14 million dollars also coming directly from the settlement, or from actually the contract agreements from San Francisco General Hospital, or is it not or from DPH, or is it not?

Yeah, that's that's separate.

That's for operational.

So this is strictly for capital.

Great.

Congratulations, that's huge.

And you have helped settle decades long of disputes.

How about that?

I was like, what is the best word to put it?

So I and thank you so much for your commitment.

That was a commitment that you supported along with Supervisor Malgar and Mayor Bree, and just really making sure that we can help workers at that site at the hospital to be able to have a child care facility.

You know, nurses, medical staff that live and work nearby can actually have a child care site nearby of their work.

So we're very grateful.

I am going to, not at this moment, but down the row, and would love to have a further conversation and want to understand more.

Sort of this, how do we help first responder to have maybe the audacity of having a 24-hour drop-off sites, an operation, maybe not a 24, but allowing again first responder that have really odd schedules to be able to have the option this sites as an option for them to be able to have child care?

Yes.

We welcome that conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for your work.

And I wanted to uh ask too, um, because we have now really separate the um conversation.

Is the I believe you will or someone from your team will be back next week Wednesday for item uh that I think tentatively right now on the agenda for the uh early care and education.

We're taking the interest, or I shouldn't say we, I think the mayor is once again taking the interest.

Could you just quickly tell me how much that is?

The subvention, 16.9 million.

16.9 million.

Understood.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

Uh we'll have continuing discussion.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And uh next, we will have uh colleagues.

We will have the Department of Homelessness and Support of Housing now, and then we'll go on the break.

Good morning, Chair Chan, committee members.

Thank you so much for seeing us before the break.

We really appreciate that.

So today I'm here to present the department of homelessness and supportive housing's proposed budget for fiscal years 26-27 and 27-28.

In our presentation today, I'll focus on the major budget changes, how we responded to the mayor's instructions, how we identified core operational services and strategic investments, and what reductions are included in the proposal.

Before I start, I want to thank our HSH leadership team and our budget teams for their hard work, creativity, and passion for our mission.

I also want to thank the mayor's budget office and the budget and legislative analyst office for their collaboration.

HSH approached this budget by first identifying the services that are core to the homelessness response system.

Those include shelter, housing prevention, coordinated entry, and the operational infrastructure needed to keep people housed and connected to services.

We also prioritize strategic programs that are data informed, aligned with the mayor's breaking the cycle initiative and HSH's home by the base strategic plan, and especially the needs of families and young adults.

Finally, we reviewed areas where costs could be shifted.

Programs could be better aligned with other city departments, or vacancies could be reduced without cutting direct services.

So I'll start with the overall budget and then we'll walk through specifics throughout.

I'll also highlight how this proposal responds to the budget chair's questions, what we protected as core services, what we treated as strategic investments, and what reductions or reallocations were included.

The department's proposed budget is 835.3 million dollars in fiscal year 26-27, and $781.8 million dollars in fiscal year 27-28.

The year one increase is largely driven by our new by new R City, our home investments in prevention, interim housing, and supportive housing.

The year two decrease is primarily due to one-time revenues and grants dropping off.

It is not a proportional reduction in services.

In response to the mayor's instructions, the department met its general fund reduction target while maintaining course services.

We did this by shifting shelter costs to other eligible revenue sources, deleting vacant positions, and using new revenue to offset general fund costs.

Most departmental spending continues to be in grants and programs, which reflects the restructure of our department and the fact that most services are delivered through community based providers.

The increase in grants and programs in year one reflects strategic new investments, especially through our city our home.

The year two decrease reflects one-time funding ending.

Increase in professional services largely reflects grant agreements for city owned or lease programming moving to professional services contracts.

And the budget also includes a cost of doing business increase for providers.

So this slide shows the main general fund reductions.

First, the department met the mayor's $4 million ongoing general fund reduction target by reallocating some shelter costs to non-general fund sources.

This was a funding shift, not a service cut.

Second, the budget deletes eight vacant positions, which generates about 1.5 million dollars in ongoing savings.

Third, the budget transfers 11 positions and two contracts to the Department of Public Health as part of the city's outreach consolidation.

And these are the primary reductions included in the proposal.

Again, there are no proposed layoffs and no direct service reductions tied to the general fund target.

The next section focuses on new investments and initiatives largely funded through our city our home.

These are the programs we identified as strategic because they address clear system needs.

They align with the home by the base strategic plan, and they support the mayor's breaking the cycle initiative.

The proposed budget maintains current service levels while making major new investments that expand, enhance, and strengthen core components of the homelessness response system.

These include $37.3 million in prevention, $54.7 million in interim housing, and $140 million in supportive housing.

We also create in this a $98 million reserve to absorb potential federal cuts related to housing and homelessness.

This is a prudent step given uncertainty in federal funding.

Overall, this proposal uses stronger than expected our city our home revenue to make targeted investments while preserving flexibility for future risk.

So the prevention package includes $37.3 million over two years.

Prevention is a core and strategic investment because it reduces inflow into homelessness.

It stabilizes vulnerable households and is a more cost effective and less traumatic than responding after a household becomes homeless.

The package includes enhanced prevention for families and young adults, workforce strategies, move-in costs, housing navigation for family resource centers, legal services and eviction prevention, and operating subsidies for extremely low-income households.

The investment reflects a strong coordination with the mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development and helps connect housing stability, legal support, workforce support, and family services.

The interim housing package includes $37.5 million in new investments and $17.1 million to sustain multi-year investments.

Interim housing is a core operational service because it brings people inside and creates pathways to stability.

The strategic focus here is not just more beds, but the right types of beds for the needs we're seeing in our system.

The budget adds 70 new emergency hotel vouchers for families and young adults, supports a new San Francisco Unified School District Family Stayover Program, funds interim housing expansion, pilots programs supporting 24-7 access to shelter and services, and creates a stabilization fund for at-risk shelter providers.

It also continues 175 emergency hotel vouchers that would otherwise sunset.

So supportive housing is the largest area of new investment with 140 million dollars over two years.

This includes 81.7 million dollars for 800 new housing subsidies for families and young for adults' families and young adults.

These include rapid rehousing, shallow subsidies, support for families exiting single room occupancy hotels, and a new initiative, moving on 2.0.

These investments build off the successful model of our existing rapid rehousing and shallow subsidy programs.

Our Prop C funded rapid rehousing program has a 92% success rate, and 100% of the households in our current shallow subsidy program have remained housed.

The goal is to improve system flow.

When people who have stabilized can move to a more independent housing setting, permanent supportive housing can become available for people with higher needs.

The budget also invests in provider stabilization, site repositioning, landlord engagement, money management, workforce safety and development costs for permanent supportive housing.

The proposed budget includes $64.6 million in new investments for families and $9.2 million to sustain multi-year family investments.

These investments respond directly to the family addendum in the home by the base strategic plan and build on recent work like the Safer Families Plan and Philanthropic Investments in Family Prevention.

This includes a new prevention strategy to fund housing navigation at local family resource centers, a partnership with the Department of Early Childhood.

New investments include 50 emergency hotel vouchers, 350 new housing subsidies, and enhanced prevention services.

The budget also continues emergency hotel vouchers for families and households fleeing violence that would have otherwise been sunseted.

The proposed budget includes $36.3 million in new investments for young adults.

These investments largely respond to the TAI addendum in the home by the base strategic plan.

New investments include 200 new housing subsidies, transitional housing, 20 new emergency hotel vouchers, and enhanced prevention services for young adults.

And I'll now turn to staffing and department infrastructure.

This section responds directly to the committee's questions about positions, vacancies, and how budget reductions affect the department's ability to deliver services.

HSH is a department where the vast majority of the budget flows out through contracts and programs operated by community-based providers.

But the department's internal staffing is what allows these programs to function.

We procure contracts, monitor performance, support providers, manage placements, oversee budgets, track data, respond to audits, and coordinate across city departments.

So while the budget preserves core services and avoids layoffs, it's important to be clear that staffing reductions and higher attrition targets do create operational pressure.

The department will continue to prioritize the most to work prioritize the work most directly tied to shelter housing prevention, coordinated entry, fiscal oversight, and provider support.

This slide shows the proposed changes to HSH's staffing over the two-year budget.

The most important point is that there are no proposed layoffs.

The reduction in personnel is driven primarily by the deletion of vacant positions and the transfer of outreach staff to the Department of Public Health.

In fiscal year 26-27, HSH's staffing decreases by about 18.4 full-time equivalent positions.

In the second year, staffing decreases by another 10.5 positions due to the increased attrition target.

Across the two-year budget, that is a reduction of nearly 29 full-time equivalent positions.

And while the budget protects core programs and layoffs, the staff productions are not impact-free.

They will require HSH to prioritize core operations and be very judicious about how the work gets done over the next two years.

This slide shows the long-term staffing challenge for HSH.

Since the department was created, the size and complexity of the budget has grown significantly, but staffing has not grown at the same pace.

In the proposed budget, the fiscal year 26-27 increases by about 6% compared to the prior year, while staffing decreases by about 7% in this budget on top of the 4% cuts from last year, a reduction of about 26 7.6 FTE over two years or an 11% decrease.

That means the department is being asked to manage more funding, more contracts, more initiatives, and more reporting requirements with fewer staff.

We were very intentional in developing the budget and and are focused on maintaining core services, advancing our strategic investments where there's a clear need and funding available, and limiting reductions that would affect direct services.

This also means, though, that implementation will require careful sequencing.

We want to be ambitious, but we also want to be honest about administrative capacity and the time it takes to responsibly procure, launch, monitor, and evaluate programs.

So this proposed budget meets the mayor's general fund reduction target while maintaining core homelessness response services.

It avoids layoffs, protects shelter and housing capacity, and makes strategic new investments.

We appreciate the committee's partnership and we're happy happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisor Walton.

Thank you, Chair Chan, and thank you for the presentation, Director McSbad.

Just a couple of questions.

And I know we didn't ask for this, but could you aggregate how much money we're spending on the RV strategy?

And if you can't give me that now, just know that I would like to get that.

Sure, Supervisor Walton, we can get that.

We have to work with other city departments because the money isn't just coming from HSH.

So we'll work to get that for your office.

And do you think it's working?

Like is it leading to housing?

I'm sorry.

Is it working?

Is it leading to more people getting housed and out of RVs?

Yes.

And then I guess I know there's a system of identifying folks who are living in RVs and giving them opportunities to um work with providers.

What happens with the families or the folks who are not in the system and living in RVs and don't participate?

So I think we're still working on that piece of it.

We definitely made a big push to get to help people get permitted.

We have a number of people who were in RVs at the date that we did our count and and started focusing on those folks first, and we've been very successful.

I think we've housed um 150.

What's that?

180.

I think we've housed about a hundred and eighty households.

Is that correct?

120 households in housing, 37 in shelters.

Okay.

120 households and housing and 37 and shelter.

So that has been we're very proud of that work.

I'm we still have to work on the RVs that are unpermitted.

That is not something that we've been focused on.

We've really been focused on the folks that are permitted and are working with us in the housing search.

Um, and that's how we've been prioritizing this program.

Thank you.

I would love to know what is happening to those who are not permitted in what steps are going to be taken.

Okay, we can work with the other departments to come back in the mayor's office to come back with an answer on that.

Um, again, that's not solely our department.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I have questions about lifting the cap again.

Um, how much money are we talking about where and where are we spending?

I know it's next week, but I just want to quickly like get understanding of what we're looking at.

I'm I and I appreciate you sending the spending plan.

Good morning, honorable committee members.

Dylan Schneider, interim deputy director for administration and finance at the department.

Apologies, I am trying to find my notes because I didn't think we were going to be talking about this today, but we are proposing trailing legislation to lift the twelve percent cap on short-term rental subsidies for fiscal year 27-28.

This 12% cap was already lifted in the first year or 26-27, as well as prior fiscal years dating back to fiscal year 23.

And so by lifting this cap, and I don't have the breakdown right in front of me, but this would support both our ongoing short-term subsidies, which include rapid rehousing, shallow subsidies for families, as well as the proposed 800 new time-limited housing subsidies that we are adding in this budget.

No problem.

We are returning to the June eleven budget and appropriation committee hearing um for city budget, and now we're now our next city department is Department of Public Health.

Afternoon to the board.

All right.

And we'll just jump into it.

So Ragda, let's okay.

So really briefly here, I just want to keep recounting, even as we're in a challenging budget piece.

The exciting direction for the department is how to make San Francisco the healthiest place on earth for all people.

And tackle the behavioral health and homelessness crisis.

And I will acknowledge it is tough to both chart direction on this and spend time on managing the budget cuts to the least amount of harm possible.

But that is the world we live in for given the fiscal situation we're all in.

The support of the mayor, we said, okay, DPH will not have to absorb all of those federal cuts by ourselves and state cuts.

The city budget is going to help solve that, even while everyone, including the DPH will have difficult belt tightening to do.

And so, RAGA fast forward.

This page puts it, I think, in a nutshell where you'll see at the bottom row our total budget.

The DPH budget will grow from 3.3 billion to 3.7 billion overall.

The biggest piece to note as a result of what I just mentioned is that top line is how much of our budget is funded through local general fund tax revenue.

Today it is 779 million.

In the second year of this budget cycle, it will be 1.03 billion dollars.

That is a 251 million dollar increase or a 32% increase.

That is a really really um that is a huge amount of support that San Francisco is putting into the safety net and public health.

Without which we would be tanking, we would be presenting unthinkable cuts.

Um the challenge is, of course, though, that our um most of that won't be felt because that extra 251 million dollars is largely to backfill and offset the federal cuts coming and also the city's commitment for folks that will lose their Medi-Cal coverage because of their immigration status, that is a state budget change.

We are going to welcome and cover them in healthy San Francisco as had previously been, and we will make sure our neighbors there have access to health care services.

All of that is built in to this underlying budget.

So that is I I'm not aware of any other municipality or system in the country that has that level of support with these cuts going on, and it's still a tough budget year.

So let's switch to those pieces now.

Um I do want to emphasize before I get into the summary of the cuts.

We are you see our budget is over three billion dollars.

We are we run San Francisco General, primary care, behavioral health, a whole bunch of the delivery system.

Our budget also continues to make investments in things that we all you all care deeply about.

San Francisco cares about.

We'll talk about some of the HIV treatment and prevention pieces, core public health functions, maintaining our investments in maternal child adolescent health.

There are no cuts to any black infant health or any of those CBO contracts anywhere in the DPH.

And next page, Ragda, many of the culturally congruent and also very specific services and access with a range of incredible providers across the city and the DPH for our for various um marginalized populations and for transgender and other populations, we maintain many of those, we huge investments, and that's a really important thing to know for San Francisco values.

Okay, so two pieces of the budget.

One is um FTEs and headcount, and two is CBOs, our contractor provider spending.

So let me spend a minute on the FTE side.

Um the biggest direction I gave to my team was as we identified, you know, the belt tightening and the FTE reductions that we we do so with an eye on minimizing layoffs.

It meant both finding ways to run things more efficiently, but also making difficult decisions that have been extremely extremely challenging and sleep depriving across the whole team to think about and wrestle with, but have been in the context of saving jobs and maintaining folks within the DPH and being more efficient.

So if you look at the next page around that, we eliminated 130 FTE positions, budgeted FTE positions in the DPH.

That is a non-trivial portion of savings in the budget that had a lot of restructuring and elements to it.

Uh, about over a hundred, a hundred and three of the 30 or 130 FTEs, 103 of those FTEs were eliminating vacancies, which is our number one choice.

And uh these are real vacancies, meaning not vacancies that are sitting around that were never budgeted.

These are vacancies.

Many of them had a person, a staff, a colleague doing that job a number of months ago.

Someone retired, left.

There's active work happening, we were in the midst of hiring, we had to make decisions to restructure what we do to not fill those and combine teams and things of that sort.

But that helped to be more efficient while also being able to preserve staff.

The second row there, we did 23 staff reassignments, where we uh found places where, again, very difficult pieces, and I 100% acknowledge that to all of the staff that are impacted, and I don't want to diminish any of those pieces, but they were areas where, whether clinical or non-clinical, we could find places where our current staff could be utilized even more.

Instead of filling another vacancy, we would make some changes, and we'll talk about that, including on some of our clinic consolidations that many of you have heard about and have asked about.

But that's 23 positions that do not lead to layoffs of existing staff, but restructure how we do certain pieces.

And at the end of the day, we had four layoffs on 8,000 uh staff, and uh I believe two of those we've been able to find things for, and there's still ongoing discussions for the remaining two.

So that's how we've approached uh the DPH budget.

We haven't solved every perfect policy, but I have tried to do everything possible to maintain our staff's ability to stay within the DPH family if they so choose.

Um Supervisor Chan, I think you asked for this slide too, and I do but we disproportionately, and I say this with great respect to our managers were important, but and we did disproportionately find our FTE reductions in our manager classes.

So our reductions were at 8x the rate, proportionally speaking, of our managers, our O9 series versus uh non-managers, and we did delete 40 percent of our manager um vacancies, and a lot of the work has been around some of the managerial pieces.

So I do want to note that thank you for asking us to go through that.

Um staff reassignments.

The most challenging uh one of some of the most challenging have been around uh what many of you have asked me about the clinic consolidations and uh two sets I want to note in particular.

Uh we um uh two of our uh Chippy are kids clinics, uh at Larkin Street and Cole Street.

We have um planned to have those clinicians uh transition to other clinical settings in the DPH.

Those clinics, I would be the first acknowledged, serve very vulnerable transition age youth, many of whom uh do not trust other parts of the delivery system or providers to go get care.

And we made the very difficult decision in the context of this budget, given the relatively low number of clients seen per day, and my staff will say there are many reasons for that.

They are all absolutely right about those things, and our teams have been trying to work together to extend that timing and see if there are alternative ways in which we can continue to provide drop-in services for a very vulnerable population, and so that is a very important piece.

Also, Southeast Mission Geriatrics, which we've been having a lot of discussions with our colleagues in labor on, but how to make sure that all that care can be transitioned within our civil service clinics and staff and patients can get to suitable places within the DPH clinic uh network.

So I'm gonna go quickly just for time.

Now, okay, so that's the FTE side.

There's a lot more we could go through on that, but those are some of the questions I've gotten that I highlighted.

On the um CBO or contracted budget side, it's the other side of the equation for the belt tightening.

We did do 20 million dollars of CBO reductions.

You'll see it here.

It is the 19.9 you see in the reductions, and I do just want to uh make sure it's clear.

The reduction is a reduction of a off a growth number.

So we our CBO budget would have grown by a hundred million dollars, it will now grow at 80 million dollars.

That's the 20 million dollar reduction.

So it's still an 80 million dollar growth number.

But our CBOs will note many practical pieces.

Inflation, all of those things.

They are absolutely right, and these are some of the tough things for how we manage that.

Next page, I'm gonna try to move quickly.

Next page beyond that.

Um, I did get a bunch of questions around HIV, and what are we doing on the HIV side, and did we make a bunch of cuts?

And I think HIV is so core to the history of the DPH and health in San Francisco, and we need to maintain that.

And I'll walk through some of the decisions we made and where we are overall.

Historically, and actually, Rogan, if you can flip forward one page, as many folks know, the federal government, Ryan White, particularly Part A funding has decreased substantially by 23 million dollars between 2020 and 2025-6-ish.

And that has been a huge portion of funding.

And the city, if you go backwards now, Ragda, has made a commitment, which we maintain, with the mayor's uh very clear direction and support, what we call the general fund backfill historically for HIV.

So if you look here, the HIV health services is services for people living with HIV.

The Ryan White and federal grants are 20 million dollars now.

They used to be, remember, over 30 some odd million dollars.

And the backfill of HIV health service, the general fund backfill is now at 28 million dollars, and it will grow actually.

We will continue investing and be at 30 million dollars.

So our total HIV health services will grow a little bit from 49.6 million dollars to 50.4.

We then have a set of prevention services, which I will talk about.

We have one uh main cut of a 6.6% $750,000 reduction for certain of our health access points, but our overall spending on prevention will be down by about $500,000, $34.5, growing to $34.

So our total HIV commitment here within the department remains still roughly at $84.

Uh, a little over $84 million.

Um, and so that is important to note, even as I fully acknowledge some of the difficult decisions we've had to make around training capacity building and such, but we are prioritizing in a difficult budget, maintaining uh roughly flat, slightly increased levels for HIV both treatment and prevention.

Okay, I'm gonna finish up here soon.

Lastly, on the set of CBO cuts just to explain, the 19.

If you look at the last column, that is the annualized amount for year two of the budget.

Um most of the 19.9 we are able to do with things that do not impact services.

So we had 7.1 million where we went really hard in renegotiating certain contracts and other pieces.

So I have to thank UCSF, our partners, for example, where we had already been working with them to find efficiencies.

There's another, if you look at two rows here, 2.75 uh 2.7 million dollars of efficiencies, and we went in and we said we expect you to find these efficiencies without impact on direct care and services, and I have to thank them for leaning in.

They are doing the same difficult work we are doing in.

So those are things that we have been having discussions around.

There's nine million dollars of what we call funding swaps, where we could put things on the general fund over to other funding sources.

I can get into some of the nuances about state requirements around the Behavioral Health Services Act and how that intersects here.

And then finally, on the last page here, on things that have a mix of service pieces, there's a harm reduction supply policy where we try to balance many different complicated policy pieces, but um you'll see a range of things here.

I can talk through around that and some other lower uh volume, lower utilized services that there are range of um smaller cuts from.

I don't discount any of those pieces, but you also are outlined here.

We can go through any of those details needed.

Okay, I think just for time, I tried to talk quickly, and I think I've probably passed five minutes now, so maybe I'll just pause and I just thank the board for their time today.

Vice Chair Dorsey.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Chair Chair.

And thank you, Director.

Sorry.

Um, I I actually really do appreciate that um we're increasing the you know, give it given what we're facing from the cuts from HR one.

I know that um, and actually I knew you've heard me say this before.

I have a lot of concerns because the early indication from HR 1 was that people who are on um in drug treatment.

I think uh studies that I have seen estimate that it was many as half of the people who are in drug treatment um are on Medi-Cal or in California or Medicaid net nationwide Medicail here in California.

Do you have a high level of confidence that we'll be able to backfill those and keep folks in treatment who are there?

So part of what the department has committed to as part of this budget is.

I think broadly speaking, yes.

I mean, there's an attack on that.

So at the federal government with a bunch of pieces, access to care will be more difficult, and also at the state level, where there's been state policy around how those individuals are covered.

They're currently covered in Medi-Cal, they used to be in healthy San Francisco.

The state budget has changed multiple things that will lead to those folks losing comprehensive health care coverage.

We want to make sure everybody in the city has access to health care, and that's part of what this budget does.

So that is something that San Francisco will be doing then.

Well, we're we're backfilling that for undocumented immigrants who need to drink.

For it's actually it's a whole range of different immigration status pieces that the state will essentially kick some of those folks off of Medi-Cal.

Our budget assumes in the city, the city of San Francisco, we will provide health care coverage to those people, and that's built into the budget.

Okay.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Um I'm sure we're gonna have more conversation um next week, Tuesday, when we have the B.

Linson hearing at the full board to be able to discuss uh some of these cuts.

Um, with it with a different presentation uh with more details focusing on the cuts.

Um I do appreciate the work.

I do understand it's a difficult time.

I also do appreciate Mayor Lurie, um, with understanding how difficult it is to then to actually um tap into both reserve and general fund to augment some of these cuts so that it's less detrimental for Department of Public Health.

So we thank you for your work.

Um I don't see any other name on the roster.

I don't have additional questions at the moment.

At the moment.

At the moment.

Um I know everybody is like, it seems like this is going through fast.

I trust that we have questions.

It's just that we will have more questions next week.

Thank you so much.

Thank you all for your time.

Take care.

Thank you.

And with that, we will have uh mayor's office of housing and community development.

Good afternoon.

Committee members.

Very happy to be here.

Appreciate your expeditious review.

Uh, I thought we'd be here much later in the afternoon, but glad to be here uh as early as we are.

Um, I'm mostly here to introduce our uh senior leaders who are in the room and available to answer questions.

Benjamin McCloskey, who is our deputy for finance and administration, who'll be walking through the uh budget uh package that uh the presentation today.

Uh but we also have uh Julia Sabori, our deputy for community development, Maria Benjamin, our deputy for home ownership and below market rate programs, and Lydia Ely, our deputy for housing, uh in the room to answer any questions.

Um as you know, it's a tough, another tough budget year.

Uh we have not um we have not uh escaped unscathed.

So we've we've had to eliminate positions and reduce our programmatic footprint.

But I do want to assert uh fully that we remain committed to our mission to support San Franciscans with affordable housing opportunities and essential services.

Even in tough budget times, we do not retreat from that goal and that mission.

And so in the presentation to follow, you'll see that we've endeavored to maintain that our core functions and our core services and continue to serve the city that we love.

With that, I will pass it over to Benjamin.

Good afternoon, Chair Chan and members of the committee, Benjamin McCloskey.

Dan just touched on our mission that we are not retreating from.

The proposed budget for the first year 2627 is approximately 218 million dollars.

And we're uh requesting authority for 115 positions and an additional four at the housing authority to support their work, and uh only one of the most CD positions is currently vacant.

We're organized into four different divisions to do this work: housing, community development, homeownership and below market rate, and finance and admin.

I'm gonna start by looking back one year to 2425, just to give you context for our budget overall.

About 45% of what we spend in a given year does not go through the AAO process and is appropriated in other ways.

The two main areas of that are general obligation bonds and certificates of participation, and then federal and state grants that come to you through an accept and expend process.

So for the rest of the slides, we're only going to be talking about the 55% that does go through the AAO.

In the current year, that budget is 177 million dollars, about $55 million of general fund grants to nonprofits, of which two and a half was one time, $49 million in the housing trust fund, 43 million dollars in the local operating subsidy program or LOSP, which is an operating subsidy for permanent supportive housing buildings.

We have about eight or nine million dollars of revenue from housing impact fees and former redevelopment agency housing assets that we deploy to housing uses.

We have $8.5 million of debt service.

There's $3.1 million of hotel tax revenue that's dedicated to cultural districts.

We pay $2.5 million to other city departments, primarily city administrator for our rent and IT needs, and then there's about $2 million of one-time revenue and spending related to market rate housing developer contributions that's turned around to affordable housing development.

Looking into the proposed budget for the first year, we're at approximately 218 million dollars, which is a pretty big increase proportionally of 41 million dollars from the year before.

So I'm gonna walk through the main components of those increases.

First, eight and a quarter million dollars for the Affordable Housing Opportunity Fund.

We're calling it AHOF in the office.

This was the November 2024 proposition G, and this revenue is dedicated to supporting extremely low income households in our existing and new affordable housing properties.

As I mentioned before, on Treasure Island, we have market rate development that is funding affordable development that is increasing in the first year of the budget by about $8 million dollars.

We're doing a one-time appropriation of loan repayments of affordable housing loans that we previously made using 2015 geo bond proceeds.

We've received some repayments, so we're requesting authority to redeploy that for similar uses.

The debt service will cover the Hope SF COPs and the Affordable Housing and Community Facilities COPs.

We have about a $5 million increase in work orders.

Primarily, this is revenue coming from HSH.

Work orders that we actually already receive in the current year, but we receive it outside of the budget process, and we're just moving them on to the budget process.

The housing trust fund is increasing about $5 million, and I want to emphasize this: we're not making any assumptions about any potential ballot measures.

This is just under the existing housing trust fund rules.

$4 million or so of increase in loss due to new buildings coming online and increased operating costs primarily due to increases in insurance.

And then $2 million of one-time investment to improve playground at Hope SF site.

So all of those increases are offset by a few decreases to get us to the $41 million net.

I mentioned already there's $2.6 million of nonprofit grants that were already budgeted as one time, so those go away.

We additionally have a net decrease of $3.7 million in community-based services grants to nonprofits.

And we're recognizing a little over a million dollars of saving on budget position savings.

That's related to deleting three vacant positions, three layoffs that have been implemented, and reducing services provided to OCI.

And I'll add that's in addition to 13 vacant positions that we deleted last budget cycle.

In the second year of the proposed budget, the decrease of 20 million dollars from the year before.

The major decreases are mainly related to one-time things that I've already addressed.

Those general obligation bond loan repayments, a change in the Treasure Island developer contributions.

There is a decrease in the second year of the budget on community-based services grants that are phasing out.

So those decreases are offset by again increase to the last program due to new buildings and units coming online.

As Dan alluded to, we are focused on continuing investment in our core safety net programs.

This includes within the community development team, significant investment in eviction prevention and housing stabilization programs, immigrant legal services, and gender-based violence prevention.

These are just three of our biggest areas, but and we have more that, but these are three that I wanted to highlight because we get questions about them frequently.

Chair Chan asked us to describe how we approached the mayor's exercise during department phase about describing what's operational backbone versus kind of everything else.

And in our department, we described operational backbone as everything we have to do, because it's something that's already in motion.

So we have to service our existing debt.

We need to maintain the Dahlia housing portal for our other existing portfolio.

We have to do a lot of state, federal, and city reporting.

We have 35,000 affordable units that we have to continue to asset manage and monitor, and we have affordable housing operating subsidies that are already in contract.

So those were our operational backbone.

And everything else that the department does, we lumped together under this strategic discretionary or legally mandated that includes all of our new housing development, our small size program, homeowner loans, and all of our grants to CBOs.

So that's how we sorted with the mayor's office during department phase.

We did, like many or most departments, need to make reductions in order to help balance the budget.

As I think you're all aware, in Mo CD, that involves preparing to stop work in three program areas.

Community-based services grant making, which is one area administered by the CD team, digital equity and community facility capital improvements.

That did result in savings mostly from reduced grant making to CBOs, but as I mentioned earlier, we also realized a little over a million dollars of on budget savings due to staffing changes.

And with that, I will turn it over to Ms.

Kittler for the mayor's administration slides.

Thank you, Benjamin.

Thank you, members of the committee, Chair Chan, Sophia Kittler for the mayor's office.

We'll be very brief.

Our budget this year is 12.2 million dollars.

This is around $300,000 higher than last year, driven entirely by salaries.

We have 47 positions.

Our chief structure, which is our policy realm, the mayor's budget office, a communications and public affairs office, and administrative and operations.

Here you can see our year over year budget.

Uh salaries are going up by around 400,000 versus last year, that is entirely the MOU changes and some minimal citywide work orders also increase by about $50,000, so that doesn't even show up on this line.

Um we are keeping our non-personnel projects and materials and supplies flat after having cut them last year.

And I am available for any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you for MOHCD.

In terms of the, I know there's some pretty significant cuts to digital equity here.

Can you speak to where those services go in the absence of funding them?

Yes, uh, thank you for the question.

Uh the Department of Technology uh has always been our partner in the digital equity programs, as you might imagine.

A lot of this uh work is focused on the fiber to housing program, which is providing internet service to affordable housing and public housing sites.

Um that work is going to continue under Department of Technology, and in fact, one of the positions that was laid off at Moe C D has been hired at Department of Technology.

So they're bringing on board uh kind of key and core understanding of this digital equity framework to continue the work.

Thank you.

Supervisor Walton.

Thank you, Chair Chan.

Um, a couple of questions.

I know that there was a lot of reductions made to community development portfolio, and just wondering what are the plans to try to restore some of the resources for community.

For instance, are you aware that if we move forward with some of the proposed reductions, like our Native American or Indigenous communities will have no services?

Uh thank you for the question.

Uh there between I do want to, before I turn it over to my colleague Julia to answer more specifically with that community, I do want to be sure everyone in the audience is aware that between department phase and mayor phase, the mayor's office did restore approximately half of our community-based services grant portfolio reductions.

Uh a chunk of that uh moved over to DEC to administer.

Some of it's currently budgeted in Moe C D, and we're we're contemplating whether or not it should be run through MOCD or work ordered to another city department.

But as far as uh services to specific populations, I'm gonna turn it over to my colleague Julia.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

Uh, thank you for your question and inquiry.

Um, in terms of the indigenous community specifically, the American Indian, we continue our support to the American Indian Cultural District.

Recently, there was a $13 million grant awarded to the Friendship House for their village project, which is coming out of the housing side, and the community development team is continuing our grant for the emergency rental assistance program directly to the Native American Health Center.

So our department as a whole still continues investments with that community.

Unfortunately, with the elimination of community-based services, it does uh eliminate the community-based services grants to the health center, friendship house and association mayab.

So we are open to working with the community and finding other ways to support those programs or be in continued dialogue.

And it was just mentioned that there were conversations happening about what to do with some resources.

When will we have like a timeline or when will that decision be made?

In terms of the community-based services mayoral restorations, or which part supervisor.

The resource, thank you for the question, supervisor.

The resources are already in MOCD's budget.

The conversations that are happening are only about which city department is most appropriate to administer those grants.

As part of this window of community-based services within Moe CD, one of the things that we realized is a lot of these grant portfolio areas are serviced by other city departments, in particular DCYF, DEC, and DPH, along with a little bit at HSH and HSA.

So we're really trying to look across that portfolio of those grants and determine which is the best city department to administer them, both for administrative efficiencies within the city, but also to make it easier for the nonprofit community so they can deal with fewer touch points, hopefully, within the city.

So I expect within the next few weeks we'll have a little bit more clarity around which city departments may be administering which grants, but it's not a question of will that money be deployed or not.

It's just which department will do it.

And I do just want to say that there are reasons why different departments fund different services to the same community.

Um I know there's a goal to become efficient.

I know there's a goal to lessen bureaucracy, but I also know that there are several different ways even city departments receive funding.

And so there are reasons why funding from one department doesn't necessarily um get work ordered to another because of how you monitor and what what the requirements are for funding.

So I just want to make sure that that is known to the public and that that is known to our CBOs, and that is known to the mayor's office because at the end of the day, some of these funding sources probably are still gonna have to remain in these city departments, even in the name of trying to become efficient.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um I don't see any name on the roster.

I think there are few items that was reduced, will require further discussion.

Um, so that's how I'm gonna leave this for now.

Um thank you so much for your work.

Thank you, supervisors.

And uh we will go to Human Rights Commission.

Right.

Um good morning, Chair Chan and members of the committee.

My name is Mawuli Tobeno, director of the agency for Human Rights.

I am joined today by Dr.

Diana Oroce, Director of the Department on the Status of Women.

Uh, we are here together to co-present.

Thank you for the opportunity to present our proposed budget for the Agency for Human Rights for fiscal years 26 through 28.

The agency includes both the Human Rights Commission and the Department on the Status of Women.

This is the first full year, first two-year budget for AHR operating under a unified structure.

We have created a new vision and purpose statement for the agency.

HRC and DOSW maintain distinct purposes and expertise, but our work is deeply interconnected.

Together, we are working toward the same goal of ensuring equitable outcomes for all San Franciscans.

AHR's work falls into four connected areas, which includes enforcing the city's anti-discrimination laws and supporting increased public safety through the Fair Chance and Sanctuary City ordinances, in addition to our grant making efforts and other special offices, such as the Office of Transgender Initiatives and Office of Racial Equity.

I'd like to turn it over now to Dr.

Roche to uh for an opportunity to speak a little bit about the women's agenda.

Thank you, Director.

Good afternoon, budget chair Chan and supervisors.

My name is Dr.

Diana Arroche, and I'm proud here to stand in front of you as the director of the Department on the Status of Women.

I just want to be mindful that across the country, civil and human rights, reproductive rights, and protections for women, girls, and nonbinary communities continue to face growing challenges, underscoring the need for strong local leadership, sustained investment in services, and legislation that protects diverse communities.

Consistent with the women's agenda, women, girls, and nonbinary communities in San Francisco continue to face disparities in health, safety, economic mobility, security, and civic leadership.

Black Native Indigenous and Pacific Islander Samoan mothers remain disproportionately impacted by maternal health inequities and adverse birth outcomes.

Women and girls also remain disproportionately impacted by gender-based violence and human trafficking, economic pressures, rising housing costs, and persistent income disparities continue to place many women-headed households at greater risk for housing stability and homelessness.

We also know that many mothers and families are impacted by immigration enforcement, and that women are often affected by the intergenerational impacts and family disruptions associated with incarceration.

These realities reinforce the importance of continued investments that advance civil human rights and the safety, health, and economic well-being of San Franciscans.

The next slide shows in front of you the core point of why we want to drive home that the demand on our work continues to grow, and the fact is that it only increases by what I just shared.

One example that is impacting our work is under the civil rights division, an area that we're increasingly seeing complimentary work and a collaboration with HRC.

If I can hand it over to the director.

Thank you, Dr.

Roche.

Yes, our civil rights cases have increased by 84%, and we project more than 900 discrimination discrimination cases by the end of fiscal year 26.

Also, of course, as you know, the LGBTQ community is facing a more hostile national environment.

And requirements for site monitoring, compliance, and technical assistance have all increased for our grant making.

For fiscal year 26-27, AHR's budget is 29.5 million dollars, of which 11.1 million dollars is going to community-based grant making.

We are also now the primary stewards of the remaining Dreamkeeper initiative funds.

Next slide.3 million dollars for DUSW, $3.9 million in a state grant that supports OFA, a $1.8 million dollar children's baseline reappropriation.

Next slide.

This slide shows the cumulative budget pressure for our department.

AHR absorbs $7.5 million reduction in fiscal year 2526.

And the proposed fiscal year 2627 budget includes an additional 5.2 million dollar reduction.

2728 includes an additional $900,000 reduction.

Together that is a $13.6 million dollar net general fund reduction since 24 25.

For fiscal year 26-27, the proposed budget includes five five as I just stated $5.2 million in programmatic reductions.

These reductions include impacts to OFA youth works, our community empowerment grants and Juneteenth events.

Separately this slide also notes the sunset of two grants the C DSS commercial sexual exploitation of children pilot and the DOSW guaranteed income supports grants.

This also includes bold and visible grant funding which largely but not exclusively serves LGBTQ community.

It is held at approximately one and a half million dollars annually core OFA programming will continue and we are investing in addressing maternal health disparities through midwifery training and other interventions.

This slide shows staffing capacity including permanent and off budget positions.

And services to the LGBTQ community and other core programming as well as partnering with all of you on developing impactful policies.

And just on behalf of the agency I would like to thank all of you for your support for the critical work that our department does to serve San Francisco communities and with that we're happy to answer any questions.

Thank you and Supervisor Sauter.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation I wanted to get some clarity on the impact youth workforce opportunities I believe there's a cut to youth works but then there's also some funding preserved for other components of youth internships and employment so can you clarify what that looks like going forward.

Yes and one of the very difficult decisions we have to make we um have reduced the overall funding to the OFA contract by two million dollars and that was specifically to the youth works program.

We're able to serve approximately two thousand youth annually through OFA and a little less than 400 through youth works and the original concept of youth works and OFA was youth works was place youth in city departments whereas OFA didn't but we are now placing youth in city departments through OFA so we are able to make sure youth have uh are able to get that experience in city government so in terms of the big picture you think it still retains the same kind of mission of connecting youth to employment particularly within government services it's just that you're uh you're you're winding down the one provider of it and you're consolidating it in one program.

Is that right?

Um more or less.

I think we we really um appreciate the work that uh youthWorks does.

It has been a phenomenal program for many years.

With the reduction, we are able to um make sure that youth are placed into less than a hundred spots um into the um sort of more traditional youth works program.

So it'll there will be less slots available um than there usually are.

Yeah, thank you.

Vice Chair Dorsey.

Thank you, Chair Chan.

I was um interested in getting a little more information on some of the work you're doing.

By the way, uh you're doing great work on so many fronts that I really appreciate, but especially right now, some of the issues that we're seeing around the country uh targeting the LGBTQ plus and particularly the transgender and gender nonconforming communities.

I've heard anecdotally that um we are we may be experiencing or should expect to experience an influx of people coming from all parts of the country.

I think many of us from the LGBTQ community can probably speak personally to feeling more welcomed here in San Francisco than elsewhere, and seeing the degree to which the transgender community is really under siege nationwide.

I think your statistics are 778 anti-trans bills and legislatures around the country.

Um do we have any data to or do you have any indication to suggest that um that the need is going to increase for your services in that population?

Um, thank you for the question, Supervisor.

I think we the data that we have shows that there have been um at least uh 400,000 um just trans um individuals that are leaving uh more conservative states and going to uh other states where they feel more welcomed.

Uh we don't have specific data on um the influx to San Francisco um exactly, but I think um it is almost certain that a lot of those folks are coming here.

Um so I think we are seeing a significantly increased uh increased need um by the community um given all of the the changes and impacts that uh the federal government has had and um uh our um Office of Transgender Initiatives, uh which is under HRC has been um working overtime to ensure that we can support those folks as best we can.

Okay, thanks.

Thank you.

And um just wanted to go back to a little bit about YouthWorks.

Umx, how is it different than my EP?

Well, we um HRC does not fund my EEEP, um DCYF does.

Um, so I might turn to uh my colleague at D So AF to explain the uh specific differences uh between YouthWorks and MyEP.

Um but um youth works uh they specifically uh place youth um in city government positions and uh by their own description is a higher touch program as compared to OFA.

My yep it's like citywide really directly working if I understand correctly my EP it's like directly working with DC well DCYF's program, directly working with unify school districts, placing youth um citywide for all sorts of different kind of employments, not just city hall, but youth works is specifically not quite a high school.

Well, it is sort of like a high school program for city hall fellowship.

Yes, I think it's the age difference is the primary difference, yes.

Okay.

I don't see anybody wants to dispute that.

Okay, great.

You're right, yes.

Thank you.

Umly because I am actually a benefactor for uh my EP, right long ago.

It's been a long-standing program, it's been great.

Um, but I do also appreciate the added components to YouthWorks that is more specific to city government and public service driven.

So thank you so much for those uh clarification.

I do really again appreciate your work, and just also really want to thank you for coming on uh and and really ushering us through this the entire to the both of you to to usher us through the the last two fiscal years for the for the transitions for both agencies.

Um it's critical time.

It's good to see that you are syncing uh well and to working collaboratively and making sure that we still carry very much carrying out the mission uh for costs for women, status status of women, and as well as human rights commission overall.

Uh, and also, of course, thank you.

Um, but we'll probably have more questions and follow-up.

Um, and so thank you.

Thank you so much.

With this, we're going to the Department of Children, Youth, and their families.

Oh my goodness, this little mic.

Mike doesn't want to stay.

Wow.

Well, good afternoon, Chair Chan, um, Vice Chair Dorsey, Supervisor Sauter, Walton and Chen.

Good afternoon.

My name is Sharice Thursey Smith.

I am the director of the Department of Children, Youth and Their Families, and I just want to thank you for having me here today to present on the DCYF budget for fiscal year 27-28.

I also want to acknowledge my um staff.

I have Mindy Ma here, who is our budget and contracts director, and our chief financial officer, Heidi Berbich.

All right, next slide, please.

The Department of Children, Youth and Their Families, is responsible for the development of comprehensive programs, policies, and planning strategies to enhance the services of children, youth and their families.

To strengthen our communities and ensure young people lead full lives of opportunity, and we bring together community organizations, city departments, and schools.

Together, we collectively help make San Francisco a great place to grow up.

As you all know, DCYF is a grant-making department, and we are committed to work towards San Francisco where all our young people are supported by nurturing families and oh, is it out of order?

It's technical difficulty.

Oh sorry.

It keeps going back.

Oh I'll just keep continuing to go.

Um, we are committed to work towards San Francisco where all our young people are supported by nurturing families and communities.

They are physically and emotionally healthy, they are ready to learn and succeed in school and ready for college work and productive adulthood.

Um, at the time when the city is facing another year of significant deficits, DCYF continues to recognize our CBO funding as the core services of our department as we enter into the third year of our five-year funding cycle.

It's fine.

Okay.

We're still committed to keeping our CBO funding whole, just as we promised at the beginning of this funding cycle in fiscal year 27.

The department will continue to fund 144 agencies and 258 programs.

We believe these programs provide the supports, resources, and programming necessary to move the needle and have the desired impacts that we want to see as a city.

We are proud to say that DCYF did not cut any of our CBO programs in this budget cycle.

We are a small but mighty department.

There are no discretionary programs, and all of our support function teams have been lean and core to our grant making mission.

There are some reductions that we made in this budget cycle.

The majority, which are adjustments to our response to our projected needs.

In support of our core services, the department did make some changes to our organizational chart to streamline our operations, which is highlighted in the light blue.

We merged our city and community partnership with our programs, planning and grants, and renamed the unit, the program partnership and grants unit.

So we streamlined there.

Our nutrition team, which monitors the nutrition grants will be moved under our finance team, and in preparation to support our children and our families initiative, we will expand the technical assistant technical assistance and capacity building team to include citywide work.

We've already launched several different uh programming on that front.

Overall, in fiscal year 27, the department budgeted 67 full-time permanent positions and seven full-time temporary FTE temporary positions.

The budgeted attrition rate is about 12%.

And as of May, we have 15 vacant positions, two of which will be deleted in fiscal year 27.

So they're not included in this org chart.

This slide only shows a high level summary.

So once again, please see the slides at the end of this deck in details.

I won't go through them one by one, but ask if you have any questions towards the end.

Um shows the number of management versus non-management positions at DCYF by division.

The overall ratio of management versus non-management positions is about one to five.

The numbers shown include both permanent and reoccurring temporary position.

This is also in the appendices.

A little over half of the total budget goes to DCYF's operating budget.

47% goes to SFUSD for their PIF, student success fund, and other special funding, and 2% goes to City College for free city college.

In fiscal year 27, out of the 51% DC of DCYF's operating budget, over 70% comes from children and youth fund, which is a charter set aside of 4% of the property tax for DCYF.

And general fund accounts for 24%, and the rest are from other different grants that we get.

Federal state.

In the department's target largest funding source, children and children and youth fund, almost 60% of the funding goes to CBO grants.

Another 20% funds work orders to other departments, almost 83% of which is also to fund CBO grants.

7.7 million is a charter required funding for the PEF baseline.

So you see that in there as well.

And then the remaining 20 million funds the staffing, technical assistance, our research and evaluation, data analysis, and other supporting functions of the department.

I believe DCYF has met the mayor's budget directives, and we have a budget that is and will continue to support our work.

This budget includes once again no cuts to CBOs and no cuts to our staff.

We are actually understaffed and need to fill some of our core positions.

And so I appreciate your time and attention, and this concludes our presentation.

Thank you.

And I think I think the sort of vision of having an RFP of five-year strategic RFP process request for proposal process and distributing the grant is pending out.

Like it's showing the fact that having a vision and having strategic planning while in advance and sort of tackle instead of year by year or every two, even every two years, having a vision, having that plan out and having those relationships is working for DCYF.

Yes, it is.

One is to students assess fund.

I noted that yesterday during the controller's um presentation for just a revenue letter.

There's actually a set of uh reserves specifically for students assess fund.

Could you walk us through a little bit about that reserve?

So that reserve includes funding dollars that weren't spent in our um from the very beginning for so from 2023, 24, 24, 25, because we are in 25, 26, and so those were unspent dollars from the school sites not being able to draw down because at one point um the school district did have a hiring freeze, and there were a lot of positions in the in their budgets, and so there's roughly I want to say 18 million in the reserve right now.

There has been conversations about exactly what to do with those dollars, how can one-time projects or one-time um programming that that the school district is interested in because once again, once those dollars are gone, they're gone.

But we are looking at how to be able to you know also extend them a little bit longer.

So what can happen over several years that can draw those down?

Those are conversations that we're having currently.

As you may recall, part of the student success plan uh fund, the expenditure is to hire specific coordinator at each site, and that at each site, then they will come up with specific spending plan for those sites.

How is that coming along?

So every site has a community schools coordinator.

All of our the readiness grants, so there was a portion of schools that were readiness schools, and then a portion that were implementation.

Currently, going into fiscal year 26-27, all schools will be implementation sites.

That means all schools have hired their community schools coordinator.

Congratulations.

And then does that mean that with this $18 million of reserve that will be spent based on the feedback from all these coordinators?

So once we um not necessarily the feedback from all the coordinators, that'll be a one of the um uh variables that we listen to, but also looking at the other three other buckets.

So you have innovations to schools, so that's a collaborative with core central SFUSD staff and several schools.

So we're looking at that, we're looking at what schools need independently, and then we'll be able to figure out how to spend down that 18 million.

I'm not questioning the decision-making process, um, but I think that what I would love to see is for this body to have more information and and transparency of how those decisions are made and how then eventually when you're ready to spend on that reserve and what that actually spending plan looks like.

Yes, we will do that.

Thank you.

And then my second question is really free city college, but I think it's more as a statements and comments from me because we've been together on the oversights committee.

Uh, it is my commitment.

I think that through the hearing that we have both Supervisor uh Shine Chin, who's now uh as part of the committee, and of course, Vice Chair Dorsey.

We have made the commitment that to see free city college fully funded, and in this case, we know it is not as indicated in your budget presentation at 6.7 million dollars.

Uh, we know it's uh roughly a little bit over two million dollars short um what is um would be expected to be considered as fully funded.

It is our goal, it is my goal, uh is my commitment.

Um, I think with the support of my colleagues that we fully fund free state college in the next two fiscal year.

So thank you for your work.

We appreciate you.

Um, so with that, um, we will go to our colleagues.

I think surprisingly, but um, is at 140 p.m.

today uh is our last city departments on this uh agenda um is the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, and then we will go to public comment, and then it has indicated at the early of this at the beginning of this meeting that public comments is limited to one minute, so that's half our last but not least city department, OEWD.

Good afternoon, Chair Chan, Vice Chair Dorsey and members of the committee and Topier, executive director of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

I am joined uh by OEWD's leadership who are also here to answer questions you may have on specific programs.

I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the incredible staff at OEWD who supported the budget process.

I would also like like to thank our budget and legislative analyst Christine Martin and our mayor's budget office analyst Louisa Coy.

Uh, and thank you to this committee for the opportunity to present OEWD's proposed budget.

Our vision is simple.

We are driving toward a thriving, resilient economy that benefits all San Franciscans.

Our mission is to expand opportunity and shared prosperity by growing sustainable jobs, supporting businesses of every size, strengthening neighborhoods, and helping residents achieve economic self-sufficiency.

Our department drives impact across the city, delivering real outcomes for the job seekers, businesses, and neighborhoods we serve.

Our business success initiatives provide a comprehensive strategy to both revitalize downtown and ensure that neighborhood commercial corridors across the city remain vibrant and strong.

This fiscal year, the Office of Small Business, led by Director Katie Tang, provided free counseling to more than 3,000 businesses, assisted more than 200 businesses with leasing, resulting in over 70 leases signed, including dozens of lease extensions, stabilized 55 legacy businesses through through grant incentives, long-term leases, and help more than 1,000 businesses navigate the permitting process.

As we work toward a downtown that truly feels like a neighborhood, our business development team, led by Laurel Arvin Tities, is diversifying our hospitality and retail offerings with homegrown small businesses through vacant to vibrant, which has activated 34 storefronts with a dozen of those now securing long-term leases.

Our community economic development team, led by Acting Director Chris Corgus, works alongside community partners to attract businesses and fill vacancies in neighborhoods where recovery disparities still persist, such as the Bayview, Lower Fillmore, the Tenderloin, and Chinatown.

In February, we announced a $6.3 million in small business grants and have since awarded funding to more than 200 businesses citywide.

Together, OEWD and OSB investments are driving an average of 1,066 new business registrations each month.

By partnering with nearly 600 employers hiring in San Francisco, our workforce employer services unit has connected almost 1,800 residents to jobs, successfully filling 57% of 3,000 open positions.

OEWD's work is also building for the future.

Our joint development team led by Lee Lutenski, continues to lead major initiatives to accelerate development and housing production, including implementing the downtown revitalization financing district, which provides incentives for office to residential conversions and has the potential to create 4,400 new homes.

When it comes to the vibrancy of our city, our initiatives bolster arts, culture, nightlife, and tourism.

We continue to reinvigorate Union Square in partnership with Bieterman Redevelopment, who has delivered more than 400 free programs for over 800,000 participants, reporting a 99% satisfaction rate and driving a 25% year-over-year increase in plaza usage.

Our entertainment zones are absolutely booming right now, and they are stretching way beyond downtown into neighborhoods all across the city.

Our business development team has advanced 31 different zones, bringing incredible energy to the Castro, Coal Valley, Fisherman's Wharf, with Glen Park and Fillmore coming online next.

These activations have shown real impact, with some participating businesses reporting a 1,500% bump in business during the events.

And in other good news, the recent reforms to improve special event permitting are making it easier for entertainment zones to activate.

Community economic development supports beloved community activations like the Sunset Night Market, Commercial Break in Chinatown, Carnival in the Mission, and Fillmore After Dark, events that strengthen neighborhood vitality and enliven local commercial districts.

When it comes to supporting our arts and culture economy, we hosted another successful SF Music Week in the spring, and last fall launched SF Live, a new online events calendar that aims to drive foot traffic and sales to nightlife and entertainment venues of all sizes.

This year, the team successfully enrolled 4,700 job seekers in employment assistance and training programs and expects to achieve a 60% placement rate by the end of the fiscal year.

Under Diana's leadership, the team is undertaking the largest procurement effort in more than four years, over 21 million dollars, overseeing 59 awards across 20 program areas.

These grants support community-based training, centralized job centers, and industry-focused job placement programs across the city.

Our core programs and services work together to deliver on Mayor Lurie's budget priorities to achieve better outcomes for all San Franciscans and build a thriving, inclusive city.

These priorities anchored our discussions at two community budget town halls we held held earlier this year, and we carry the input from those town halls forward as we were directed by the mayor's office to identify 10 million dollars in general fund cuts.

Our final decision maximizes efficiency and direct resource and directs resources where they matter most, strengthening outcomes for the public and supporting the city's long-term sustainability.

For economic development, we identified 3.79 million in general fund cuts.

Where the public will feel these cuts the most is in our small business technical assistance and grant programs.

Our ability to support new businesses through first year free and the implementation of entertainment zones will also be impacted due to fewer resources next year.

For the Office of Small Business, the most significant program impact is a 50% reduction to the legacy business stabilization fund.

Even with reduced funding, grants will still be available but at lower amounts, and legacy businesses will continue to receive support with no disruption in services.

We cut 3.53 million from workforce development programs by strategically consolidating our job centers and eliminating administrative redundancies.

We reduced this program budget by 1.5 million.

The new centralized job center model maintains broad geographic coverage, including the Fillmore, Mission, Tenderloin, Bayview, and Chinatown, so clients can continue to access services in their communities.

We made reductions to programs that serve emerging sectors and professional services, but we protected core services like our sector-based training programs, such as City Build that are aligned with labor market demand in construction, tech, hospitality, and health care.

Despite these reductions, OEWD is increasing its overall investment in workforce development programs by 2.6 million, thanks to higher allocations from the federal Rio A dollars and the replenishment replenishment of prior one-time reductions to grants for CBO services.

Through this process, OEWD was directed to make 22 personnel eliminations and ultimately we eliminated 19 positions.

Four of these positions were temporary and 15 were permanent.

Of the 15 permanent positions, nine positions were filled.

These layoffs were the most difficult decision I have faced in my 27 years in my 27-year career with this city.

Each person affected was a valued and respected member of our team, but the personnel cuts affected and they the personnel cut sorry affected every division within OEWD.

Business development took the highest proportional hit at 22 percent.

Workforce, our largest team, experienced the highest number of position eliminations with a six in total at 16 percent.

We have more details about these staffing changes found in the documents that we just provided.

As requested by this committee, this slide shows our current org chart.

Our proposed FTE count for the fiscal year 27 is 132 positions.

Also, per your request, we have noted that our attrition rate for fiscal year 2026 is 6.9%.

Again, these budget processes this budget process has been filled with difficult decisions.

OEWD worked tirelessly to protect core services while helping to close this budget deficit.

Thank you for the opportunity to present today, and my team and I are here to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you.

Supervisor Walton.

Thank you, Chair Chair, and thank you, Director Topier.

A couple questions.

How many total layoffs?

We eliminated 19 positions, four of which were temporary and 15 of which were permanent.

Nine of those were filled positions.

And then how much money was saved for uh I believe it was 2.2 million.

And I know you stated that City Bill was protected, but I know some of these positions that were let go were responsible, like for regarding.

There was one position in the city build uh division that was cut.

Just one?

Yes.

So only one position connected to City Bill was cut.

That's yes.

Most of the cuts in our workforce department were in our strategic our workforce strategies program.

Got it.

And then um I know the last time we were here, you were asked about demographics of layoffs.

Do we have those that information now?

Yes.

Uh and you know, what I will say is I am incredibly proud of the diversity of our department.

We are a department where 75% of our staff identifies as people of color.

Uh I can tell you that the filled positions uh that were cut, two of those uh positions identified as Asian American, uh, four including a film SF position identified as African American, and two as Hispanic and two are white.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I think traditionally has always been questioning sort of the impact of OEWD, not just because it's under your leadership.

I think traditionally, when I mean traditionally has always been the case since I was a legislative A2 supervisor Sophie Maxwell then, so that's more than 20 something years now, to sort of just be able to have a more concrete understanding about the impact of the work that is carried out by by OEWD.

At times it seems that not all your divisions.

I think there are programs like City Bill, workforce development are very um tangible in terms of people who are actually getting jobs and trainings and people who are served.

Um but even then I think that I have questions about exactly who are actually getting the job trainings and how are they benefits?

Are they actually equitably served and have that uh equal access to our entire city and among all communities, including immigrant community and communities of color?

And so that's that one's at one aspect of it.

And then another aspect is more towards your business development, uh, your economic development side of the work uh that is within this division.

And those are the work that be it uh a development agreement or any type of promotional programming that is promoting the city, um, which is formerly we also have this partnership with now known as SF Travel, but before that it was the city's tourism, the department of tourism and travel, you know, that that then eventually moved to SFO.

Anyways, all which is to say, then you know, it's like how do we have sort of this more um in-depth and concrete uh study about how impactful these programming truly the they're actually part of the investments from public dollars.

How do we make sure that these investments are actually yielding not only return, but we actually have a matric of measuring the rate of return.

If we're investing, for example, if we're investing certain, you know, a couple million dollars on a certain events or certain type like mark night market or um downtown closing the up block parties, where we're waiving these types of fees, and we would like to understand how beneficial it is to our local economy, um, how much sales tax are we capturing?

What is your vision under your leadership?

How we actually can articulate this to both San Franciscans to taxpayers and to this body.

Um, and I I appreciate the the question uh supervisor, and I think you know, we in this presentation I certainly identified some of the metrics that we are able to capture and we have the and that we have started to capture.

Uh I think that just the amount of new business starts coming through our Office of Small Business.

Um, and I think we are we are also looking at uh implementing programs that do that captures exactly that information that you are looking at.

We have relied on outside sources like SF travel to uh to help us capture um tax revenue or uh or business you know business uh revenue that that happens during events.

Uh we are we are looking at implementing new programs across our department to really be able to capture all of those impacts uh in a way that we can then articulate back to this board.

Great.

I think the expectation is that um not today, but for this body um and for the future budget, um I I think it it will be great to be able to have that information for the budget committee to have during your presentation.

How many understand that in one of your slides, though, I'm a little bit confused and about the discrepancy both on the slide six and then again on slide seven.

You mentioned that it's nine field positions that was eliminated here on slide six.

It's indicated 13.

I'm not too sure what is the discrepancy.

On page 11 on the slide, um, there are two executive directors.

So I'm just trying to understand sort of some of these discrepancies if you can walk us through, or maybe this is just a typo.

So on slide, so two FTEs under executive director.

Yeah.

Uh one is uh an executive assistant.

Ah, understood.

Okay.

And then how we understand the page six or slide six, where there's a indicated the elimination is 13 fill positions, but I know you you mentioned nine.

Um, sorry.

13 uh I think what we're what I was identifying was general fund positions.

Yeah.

I see.

I see.

But technically, the individuals lay off it's for nine individuals, like nine humans.

Oh, yes, that's right.

Sorry.

Um, three of those positions were not layoffs, they were reassignments.

Two of those reassignments happen within the department, and the third has been offered a position in another city department.

Sorry, thank you.

No, no, it's okay.

I just kind of wanted to understand if if I'm if I'm understanding this correctly.

Thank you.

Um, I don't see any other names on the roster.

Uh I mean, as as you probably already know, the budget and legislative analysts will come through the budget and help us um have a better understanding and really along some of these institutional knowledge and studies that we have about economic impact and some of the programming that you offer that OEWD offers, um, and and we'll we'll have more conversations.

Great, thank you.

Thank you.

Um, so with that, we will go to public comments on all three items on our agenda today.

Yes, we're now opening public comment uh on uh items one, two, and three on today's agenda.

Uh we are taking particular focus on commentary on the uh department budgets of recreation and park, Asian Arts Museum, Fine Arts Museum, Academy of Sciences, Arts Commission, Ward Memorial, Department of Early Childhood, Homelessness and Supportive Housing, Public Health, the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development, Human Rights Commission, Children Youth and their Families, and Economic and Workforce Development.

And the chair did declare that we are holding public comment to one minute today.

And uh to the speakers online, I do also encourage you to fill out a speaker card if you wish for your name to be accurately recorded for the minutes, but otherwise, first speaker, please.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Lucia Oregon.

I um represent the I'm the director of the Latino Parity and Equity Coalition.

Um as we prepare to welcome the world to San Francisco to the World Cup initiating today, we celebrate the diversity, resilience, and the spirit that make the city extraordinary.

But as we open our arms to visitors, we cannot forget the workers, families, immigrants, and communities who are still struggling to remain here.

Many of the nonprofit organizations that provide stability, opportunity, and hope are now facing layoffs, service reductions, and program closures.

Latino serving organizations alone are facing nearly one million dollars in cuts through MOHCD, making a case management inaccessible, along with 4.4 million dollars in reductions to workforce and economic development programs.

In just a year and a half, we have undone decades of research and analysis around equity investment, economic mobility, and community trust.

These programs are the lifelines for our families for our workers.

We're asking for your partnership to restore as much funding as possible and protect the service.

I am here because I am saddened to share that we are facing deep cuts around case management for our organization, Association Maya.

And these are services that are provided for the indigenous community.

Thank you.

Gracias.

Next speaker, please.

Thanks.

And thank you, Marnie Regan.

Next speaker.

Hello, my name is Jackie M.

and I have worked for the city for eleven years and currently serve as the acting director of galleries and public programs at the Arts Commission.

But I am here representing myself as an individual.

In the next fiscal year, the gallery staff will be cut in half with two positions, eliminating, leaving just two full-time staff, devastating one of the smallest programs in the Arts Commission.

Each staff member holds relationships with many artists, local vendors, city agencies, and organizations, losing one person has a disproportionate effect on the program.

As a strategic program of the Arts Commission, the gallery is the public-facing program and the only part of the agency that the public can visit without making an appointment.

The gallery is the entry point for artists and the community to gain access to what SFAC can't provide.

Without these positions, the work of the gallery will have to be reduced, which means working with fewer artists, fewer community members, and fewer organizations.

I urge the committee to restore these positions, recommitting to supporting artists in San Francisco.

Thank you.

And thank you much, Jackie M.

Next speaker.

Hello, supervisors and uh Chair Chan.

My name is Masoon Was.

I'm a longtime San Francisco resident of District 9, and I'm speaking here as an individual.

I have worked at the San Francisco Arts Commission for nearly a decade in my capacity as the manager of education and public programs with SFAC Galleries Program, a now 56-year-old program.

On July 1, my position will have been eliminated along with the vacant director of galleries and public programs position, leaving the program cut in half with only two full-time staff positions remaining.

In my position as the manager of education public programs, I'm responsible for all of the galleries' public facing programs and events.

I organize around 30 unique programs per year across three exhibition spaces, including here at City Hall.

This is comparable to double the output at peer institutions with multiple programming staff.

I work with upwards of 100 artists and participants annual and welcome thousands of city residents to these events, which are always free and open to the public.

With the elimination of my position, there will be a visible reduction in public programs and our acclaimed artist and residence program and our new program bringing art to immigrant communities will need to be cut due to loss of capacity.

I ask you to please do all you can in your positions of power to reverse these cuts.

Thank you.

And thank you much for addressing this committee.

Next speaker.

Hello, my name is Theo Lau.

I'm a lifelong Bay Area resident, and I'm representing myself in my private capacity.

I've worked in the Bay Area Arts scene since 2017.

This is a year less than the amount of time my colleague Mason Wazwas has worked in the galleries program at SFAC, working with thousands of artists.

I took my job as program associate in the galleries program because I get to work with Masoon Wazoaz and Jackie M.

They're highly respected in the Bay Area Arts community.

When we cut Masoon's position, we are not cutting fat, we are chopping literal services.

Pounds of flesh from a perpetually understaffed department that has overperformed its mean meager 0.16% of the SF City budget.

Her position costs less than a third of the overtime of one SFPD officer.

Further, the galleries program only costs 800,000.

These cuts are not proportional, and every job counts when there are three of us doing the work of five to seven people at our peer institutions.

We are tiny.

We have done more with less.

Please consider a rollback of these cuts or risk losing significant services to the community and alienating them further in the process.

Thank you for your time.

And thank you, Theo Lau.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon, Kim Artecha, Executive Director at Bravo for Women in the Arts.

Since 1970, the SFAC Gallery has shown more than 4,000 artists.

When an artist is commissioned for exhibitions, it's also pays studio assistants, fabricators, reparators, photographers, multiplying the number of individuals and families that are supported through this initiative.

With each exhibition, the social and cultural impact of each curatorial theme is amplified through public programming, multiplying the number of artist commissions through performances, workshops, and dialogues.

This is because of the work of manager of education in public programs, Mason Wazwas.

One of the mayor's budget priorities includes making the city more affordable and livable for families.

Yet the budget has proposed to eliminate her position.

If this goes through, the gallery will be staffed at a 50% capacity, which will drastically reduce the number of artists that they are able to work with.

A cut to staffing is a cut to both the cultural and economic impact that the civic institution has.

As an artist who has been directly impacted by the commitment of Mason Wazwas, I ask that you restore her eliminated position.

Thank you.

And thank you much.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon.

My name is Alisa Messer.

I am a 25-year English composition teacher at City College of San Francisco, and I uh work on the Free City Oversight Committee.

And I really appreciate here to say that I really appreciate the committee's interest and care for Free City and for what Free City College does for San Francisco.

It touches us and all San Franciscans in so very many ways.

The current budget, as it's proposed, would exclude about 6,000 students.

Many of them are lowest income students at City College of San Francisco from the Free City program, denying hope and denying that incredible opportunity, set of opportunities that lead in so many gateways and so many different choices and opportunities for San Francisco students.

Thank you.

And thank you, Elise Messer.

Next speaker.

All right, good afternoon, supervisors and chair Chan.

My name is Angelica.

I'm a lifelong resident of District 4, as well as a member of the Free City Oversight Committee.

I just want to thank you all for expressing support again for prioritizing Free City.

You know, what was at risk with the cuts that were proposed were the grants that provide some of our most vulnerable students access to funds that help them get through.

So reducing funding, you know, would mean that we would reduce access and it means fewer opportunities, and it means shutting doors on students who are doing everything they can to improve their lives and contribute back to the city that they love.

So again, I just urge all of you to continue that support for City College of San Francisco.

Thank you.

Thank you much, Angelica.

Next speaker.

Hello, um, my name is Lindsay White, and since 2005, I've been a working artist in San Francisco and was an associate professor at SFAI.

I also live in District 5.

Today I show up in support of the important work that SFAC Gallery and its staff bring to our small arts community.

In fact, SFAC Gallery is an essential part of our struggling community.

San Francisco's arts ecosystem is collapsing, and we need civic, public, local galleries like SFAC now more than ever.

This is the city's gallery, our gallery.

When you lay off gallery staff and cut budgets, you're showing local artists that you don't care about serving your arts community.

Since 1970, SFAAC Galleries has shown more than 4,400 local, national, and international artists and over 650 exhibitions.

Clearly, SFAAC Galleries is a lifeline for cultural workers and artists in San Francisco.

And in fact, over the years I've been lucky to take part and collaborate with SFAC Galleries on many exhibitions.

Now is the time, is not the time to cut staffing and budget.

Thank you.

But thank you much, Lindsay Blight.

Next speaker.

Hello, everybody.

My name is Sun Park.

I'm here as a visual artist living in the mission.

I'm an emerging artist.

I finished my MFA from San Francisco State University in 2023.

I have had the privilege of working with SFAC main gallery multiple times, including a year-long fellowship with the gallery in 2024.

It's been incredibly, incredibly important to my career as an artist and has kept me living in the city and being able to sustain my practice.

I was extremely disappointed to learn about the cuts, particularly reduction in staffing at the main gallery.

I cannot stress how important San Francisco Arts Commission is within the arts community and the kind of opportunities they provide for our local artists like myself.

I've worked in gallery spaces before.

I can tell you that they need all their staff.

They were already running a tight ship.

They are running a massive gallery space with collaborative programming that reaches not just the arts community, but also works with other local organizations and communities.

The elimination of these positions is stretching these departments thin.

I urge you to reverse these cuts as they are positions that are vital to the gallery space to the arts commission and are preserving our local arts spaces.

Thank you.

Thank you much, Sun Park.

Next speaker.

Hi, I'm Artist Shere Porohit.

I live in the tender line, but I work across all districts of San Francisco.

I've been here for about eight years.

I'm an immigrant.

I work five jobs to be able to afford to live in the city.

The city cutting the arts commission staff and galleries at the exact moment when their workload is being tripled by merging them with two other organizations without adding the people needing to run it is not an efficiency.

It's a collapse waiting to happen.

I need you to hear this, a beloved legacy artist, Michael Jang is planning to reject that arts commission grant because it creates so much burden and they cannot accept it while doing the work that they need to.

I've been applying to arts commission grants for the last five years.

This is my first year getting it.

The money is badly needed by me and all of the artists.

The ways that the city expects artists making less than 40,000 to front the money to be able to do this project is not generous and does not create the art generosity that we need to be providing.

The recent coverage in the speaker's time has expired.

Thank you.

But thank you much for addressing this committee.

Next speaker.

Should I start?

Does it just start when I start talking?

Okay, sorry.

Okay, my name is Kate Rhodes, and I'm an artist educator and cultural worker in San Francisco.

I'm here to urge you to restore funding to the San Francisco Arts Commission and reverse the elimination of positions that have left this vital department stretch dangerously thin.

I was first connected to the SFAC through the uh through the SFAC gallery in 2017 when I was a guest on a talk show about family migration histories hosted by artist Julio Salgado.

That vibrant program organized by manager of education and public programs, Mason Wazwas, whose position is being eliminated, was the beginning of my long and impactful relationship with the SFAC.

Without that initial program, I would not have known the SFAC existed.

Okay.

Um, since then I have exhibited my work in the SFAC gallery, one in commission for the Mark Street poster series, served on a selection panel for the SFAC, brought my students to the gallery on field trips, and attended many programs at the gallery, including workshops, talks, openings performance, and myriad other programs.

All thanks to Mason Was.

Please restore her position.

Thank you.

Thank you much, Katie Robson.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Katia.

I'm the COO of Latino Task Force.

As you may already know, the Latino community is 15% of the San Francisco's population, yet we are we represent 31% of the city's economic and workforce engine.

Um our economic contribution is 3.5 billion dollars in annual purchasing power and over 1 billion dollars in annual taxes in San Francisco alone.

4,000 Latino-owned businesses bring in about 250 million dollars annually to the city.

However, 34% of Latinos are experiencing homelessness in San Francisco.

And despite that, we're being essential to San Francisco's economy and investment.

Our funding has dropped 73% in just four years.

We have cuts about 600,000 from OCD, 4.5 million from OEWD.

That equals about 5.1 million.

What we're asking is for you guys to restore those cuts.

It's very unfortunate to uh have us here again year after year asking us for the funding that we deserve.

Thank you.

Thank you much for addressing this committee.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon.

My name is Katherine O'Con.

I am the job director of job placements at Mission Language Vocational School and Latino Task Force.

As a first generation Latina, I understand how life challenges changes, access to education, training, and career opportunities can be.

I work directly with employers across San Francisco, and I consistently hear that they need qualified workers.

At the same time, I meet community members and immigrants' families who are eager to work but need access to training certification and pathways into good paying careers.

Latinos make up nearly 31% of San Francisco workforce and immigrants are a vital part of our local economy when we invest in workforce development and upskilling programs.

We're investing in people who keep on our communities and business strong.

Programs in healthcare, hospitality, and culinary programs that provide presidents with industry recognized skills that lead directly to employment while helping employers fill critical workforce needs.

These programs create pathways to economic mobility for families in strength to the industries that keep our city running.

So I respectfully urge you to continue supporting and funding workforce development initiatives that expand opportunity strengthened economy.

Thank you.

All right.

Good afternoon, everybody.

My name is Jenny Robles.

I've worked for the Latino Task Force since the beginning of the pandemic.

I've seen firsthand the impact that of the services that we provide have for our San Francisco residents.

I don't just say Latino because we serve everybody.

The program providers in this room serve everybody.

This is what it's about.

San Francisco should be supporting its people.

Our workforce program has served over 300 individuals since the beginning of this fiscal year alone, with access to technical support, trainings, access to education, and just a simple safe haven to even begin to ask for this help.

Allowing these budget cuts not only directly affects the quality of life for many people, but it also shows that you truly don't care for the advancement of our people.

I urge you to consider, reconsider these proposed cuts and think about what this means to our constituents.

Thank you.

Thank you much, Jenny Robles.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon.

My name is Jeremiah Barber.

I'm an artist and I teach sculpture at the University of California, Davis.

I've also lived in the neighborhood since 2008 in District 6.

I received a grant from the Arts Commission in 2013, fresh out of graduate school.

I exhibited in the Arts Commission Gallery in 2016.

I was also commissioned to make a performance in the gallery in that same year.

I walked here today as I frequently do to go see uh programs and exhibitions in the gallery.

It's not an exaggeration to say that the opportunities provided by the Arts Commission Gallery allowed me to build a life as an artist here in the Bay Area.

And these unnecessary cuts that are disproportionately directed to the Arts Commission Gallery, cutting the staff by half, are going to make it so that young artists are not able to stay and build a life as artists here in the city.

I'm here to urge the Board of Supervisors to re to reverse the funding cuts to fund the Arts Commission directly from the general fund and to restore the staff positions of Mesoon Wazwas and Jen Atwood who are critical staff that have supported hundreds of artists in the city.

The Arts Commission does far more than put art on the walls.

It actually builds the landscape of our city.

Thank you so much.

But thank you about sharing my barber.

Next speaker.

Hello, supervisors.

I'm Tony.

I'm a senior at Washington High School, and I'm part of Chinatown Alleyway Tours, also known as CATS, which is a youth program that's part of Chinatown CDC, and I'm here to ask to not cut our funding.

As a teenager that grew up in Chinatown from an immigrant family, this program means a lot to me.

CATS has very important because it's a developmental program for teenagers and young adults for job readiness.

My experience with the program CATS has allowed me to improve on many skills, especially interviews.

As I was an interviewee for this program twice, and I was an interviewer for our next cohort.

These interviews taught me the preparedness and essential skills needed for the process.

But being on the other side shows me how prepared interviewees are and the time people put to be able to obtain this opportunity and later on see how they develop and learn from this program as I did.

Not only that, it's a program that helps youth to improve their public speaking learning skills like communication, and now I'm able to reach out to all my colleagues and mentors without hesitation to plan out our speaker.

But thank you much, Tony.

Next speaker.

Hi, my name is Maggie, and I'm a freshman at UC Santa Cruz.

I grew up in Chinatown living in SRO.

In high school, I would commute an hour each way just to attend meetings and service events for our sister program, Adopt and Alleyway.

Even after moving away to college, I made the decision to stay involved.

I travel almost for hours back to San Francisco, twice a month from Santa Cruz to come back for Chinatown Allway Tours.

That is how much this program means to me.

Growing up living in an SRO, it was easy to overlook the resilience of my community simply because it was my everyday life.

Chinatown Allied Tours didn't just teach me about the history of Chinatown, but also helped me better understand my own story and how my experiences growing up in Chinatown are connected to the history, struggles, and strength of the community that helped shape who I am today.

Now I have the opportunity to help share these stories with others, especially with younger generations, so they can feel proud of where they come from and stay connected to their roots.

I want to ask that you please fully restore all MOHCD cuts, including Chinatown Allery Tours.

Thank you.

Thank you much, Maggie.

Next speaker.

Hello, everyone.

I just graduated from Loal High School.

My name is Susanna.

The youth program funding helped me firsthand by giving me opportunities to help out the Chinatown community by hosting multiple events each month, which helped me gain leadership experience.

It also helped me build relationships with long-term friends.

This budget that may potentially be cut is affecting many of my friends and cats.

Hearing their experience in cats, they mentioned how much they gain more confidence in themselves.

They would be the person I look up to.

I'd ask them for advice for how I can be more confident in myself.

I've been part of CCDC's youth program for four years now.

And I'm an upcoming freshman in college.

As a freshman, I was too scared to talk to anyone.

I'll be a follower.

Now, as an upcoming college student, I have the self-esteem in myself, and I'm able to take that initiative to make that change.

Without the youth programs, I wouldn't have anyone to support me in my growth as a student.

These four years in the youth programs gave me so much gratitude.

The funds will be able to help other youth, other youth in their journey to help their community and give them a voice.

Thank you.

And thank you, Suzanne.

Next speaker.

Hi, my name is Grace Lee and I'm a rising senior at Lowell High School.

Before joining Adopt and Alleyway, the sister program of CATS, I would have never volunteered to speak in front of a room like this.

Today, because of the confidence and leadership skills I've developed through this program, I'm standing here today advocating for a program where I've not only made some of the most memorable connections and friendships, but have gained real world experience that helped me succeed in life beyond the classroom.

Over the years, I've witnessed the impact that these programs have on its youth, me included.

I've seen my peers go from timid individuals scared to come out of their shell to being confident leaders, active community members, and role models for others.

Without programs like these, students like me wouldn't have the opportunity to learn more about themselves and their community.

The funding being discussed is supporting future leaders, future professionals, and future community members who are going to look for place to learn, grow, and most importantly, belong.

I ask that you please restore all MOHCD cuts, including Chinatown Alleyway Tours, so that future generations can have the same opportunities that I was fortunate enough to receive.

Thank you.

And thank you, Graysley.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon.

My name is Kelva Lim, and I'm an incoming first year at Cal Poly and a tour guide intern for CCDC's Chinatown Alleyway Tours, or CATS.

CAS has helped me find my voice and grow into a more confident leader.

Before joining CATS, I will struggle with confident and didn't speak in front of people because I was afraid of being judged.

Through leading tours and sharing the stories of our community, I learned how to speak confidently in front of large groups and take on leadership roles, and even facilitating the recent unveiling of the Mosaic mural in Chinatown.

I now use these skills to lead meetings and events in other youth programs, and they will continue to help me in my college and my future career.

CAS is a place where young people are trusted to lead and where our voices actually matter.

Cutting funds will take away opportunities that lead youth like me into confident and capable adults.

So please fully restore all MOE CD cuts, including Chinatown alleyway tours, so future youth leaders can't have the same opportunities.

Thank you.

And thank you much for addressing this committee.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon, supervisors, supervisors.

My name is Jeffrey, and I'm a recent graduate of Abraham Lincoln High School.

I'm here today to ask you to please restore the funds that were cut from MOH CD's workforce development budget to the Chinatown Alleyway Tours or Cats Youth Program.

Being part of Adopt and Alleyway and Campaign Academy Sisters Program to Cats have allowed me to develop important leadership and job readiness skills, such as public speaking, teamwork, and confidence.

Having been in the program for two years, I've seen firsthand the impact it has had on participants and the community.

In these programs, I've not only gained skills and support, but also found a strong sense of community.

I've found an identity among the wonderful culture and history of Chinatown, and I cannot imagine where I'd be today without it.

By cutting cats funding, the city would reduce opportunities for future youth to have the same experiences and mentorship that helped me succeed.

I'm pleased asking you to please restore funding for cats so that other young people can have the same opportunities that I have had.

Thank you.

And thank you, Jeffrey.

And go Mustangs.

Next speaker.

Hello, supervisors.

My name is Mabella.

I'm a rising senior at Lowell, and I'm in the program Adopt an Alleyway under CCDC, which is also the sister program of Chinatown Alleyway Tours.

I never believed that I could be a capable leader.

In school, I often fell behind and always had trouble making friends.

When I joined Adopt and Alleyway last year, I was scared of being alone.

I was scared of not being welcomed.

But triple A has been and changed me for the better.

I've been welcomed with an open arms and have also met some of the closest friends through this program.

Through being in charge of meetings, events, and partnerships toward youth and elders, I've also learned what it means to be a leader and mentor.

In many job interviews today, I still mention Triple A.

I also have many friends who are in Chinatown Alleyway Tours, and they always talk about how Cats has made them into a better person and speaker.

We ask that all MOHCD cuts, including Chinatown Alleyway Tours, are restored.

This budget is vital in uplifting youth and the future generation, as the programs are the path for youth to create change.

So many youth are lost and feel isolated today.

These programs changed me for the better, and I hope you to continue to do so.

Thank you much for Bella.

Next speaker.

Hello everyone.

My name is Phoebe, and I have been part of Chinatown Alleyway Tours for seven years now.

I've seen a grown alone since the beginning.

What started off as only six members has now grown to twelve.

There has been a constant change in numbers and having to retain members.

But a huge part of this is thanks to you all for helping us keep the program running.

I feel that there aren't that many programs out there that help support transitional age youth and give these opportunities to them.

But I am thankful to have stayed here for as long as to now be able to mentor new peers.

Given its importance to our goals, I'm concerned that reducing the funding could set back our progress that has already been made.

The support you've given has made it possible for us to continue having fun learning opportunities and bonding events that make it enjoyable.

I hope that with your continued support, I'll be able to inspire future leaders to join in on the fund and have them build the community that I enjoy being part of every day.

So please I ask to fully restore all of MOHCD's cuts, including the program Chinatown Allah Tours.

Thank you.

And thank you, Phoebe.

Next speaker.

And Tricky here in a personal capacity.

In the words of the Immortal DMX, I ask that you stop the cuts to the Arts Commission general fund budget.

Drop the pretense that they are needed to balance the budget.

Shut down this uninformed and harmful process, and let Matthew Gadot hired by the mayor to oversee the merger of the arts agencies, open up shop.

These cuts are premature.

A transfer of function to merge the agencies has not been issued, and the unions have not bargained over the merger of the arts commission, grants for the art, and film SF.

Matthew was hired to do this work because of his community background and expertise in the arts.

It's clear these cuts were made with no understanding of these roles.

Stop the cuts, drop the pretense, shut down the false narrative, and let Matthew do his job.

And I will say with my last 10 seconds that the advocacy work that the staff and community are doing right now should have been done by leadership.

They have not done it, and we should not be punished for absent incompetent leaders.

Thank you much for Antrick.

Next speaker.

Hi, my name's Andy, and I'm an upcoming junior at Galeo High School.

I'm part of Charatown CTC's program at Chinatown Alley Way Tours, which is an MOHCD.

These programs had a major impact on my life, both socially and personally.

Through volunteering with seniors and youth in the Chinatown community, I've been a value of being bilateral and how important it is to bridge generations to language and culture.

These programs are essential because they ensure that tours of Chinatown include the stories of the youth in the community, not just the popular stories and facade that everyone already knows.

Katz and his training program, Fast Track have taught me the invaluable history of my community, Chinatown.

If over 100,000 is cut from our budget, that history may be lost and never passed on to the next generation.

Having this program is essential to youth like me because it teaches us that our stories, including my experience as an immigrant, are valuable and worth sharing.

These programs do more than for our services.

They preserve history, amplify youth forces and support those who need it the most.

Thank you.

And thank you, Andy.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon, Supervisor.

My name is Quinn Chung.

I'm a parent leader with parent voices.

I'm here today with my daughter.

We're here to ask you for continued investment in family, friends, and neighbor care.

Many families rely on grandparents, relative friends, and neighbors to care for their children.

These caregivers are often the backbones of our communities, providing trusted, flexible care that meets family needs.

For family for many parents like myself, FFN care is not a backup option.

It is what worked best for our family.

Investing in FFN care helped ensure that children receive quality care and early learning opportunities while remaining with people they know and trust.

I encourage you to continue supporting programs and funding that strengthened family, friends, and neighbor care so that more children and families can thrive.

Please honor the funding commitments of BBC as approved by the voters.

And please stop using it to balance the budget.

Thank you.

And thank you.

Next speaker.

Thank you, Supervisors.

We just pointed out the floor at City.

It's falling apart.

No, I'm kidding.

Um, thank you for expressing commitment to early care and education, and we also thank the mayor for earlier on expanding coverage to families as um mandated in BBC.

However, there are still many unfunded services for children zero to five.

Over a hundred children are on the waiting list under five, and over a thousand more under five children are eligible.

So, what outreach are we doing to let these families know they are qualified?

And do we have enough supply in the Alpha Network?

The Alpha Network does not meet the needs of many families, like Quinn, like Betsy.

Betsy was supposed to be here, but she's taking care of her granddaughter.

Betsy was given a list of providers who are supposed to do evening care and weekend care because her daughter was starting work that covers Wednesday to Sunday, but none of these providers actually do those kind of care.

So we need to address that need.

We want to improve quality and access, and we cannot forget the children whose parents work in the service industry.

The current system does not be that needs so.

But thank you much for the story for our addressing this committee.

Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, John Osaki, Executive Director of JCYC.

We have been for the last 29 years the lead agency for the San Francisco Youth Works Program.

And I came here to address some of the comments that were made here earlier today.

I want to make it clear that these positions and these opportunities have come about because of decades of carefully crafted opportunities and relationships that have been built.

And make no mistake about it, if this cut happens, there will be 300 youth opportunities that will be eliminated.

And I want you all to just consider whether or not uh a two million dollar reduction to a single program and a single organization seems reasonable when the entire when it's almost half of what the entire department is eliminating.

You know, the San Francisco I know prioritizes young people, and I think that the young people who want and need these opportunities to simply pursue a career in public service where they might be able to afford in San Francisco deserve it.

Thank you much, John Osaki.

Next speaker.

Hello, my name is Aaron Wojak.

I'm a homeowner and a resident and member of the San Francisco arts community.

I'm here in support of uh the SFAC galleries and to urge you all to do your best to reinstate positions that have been potentially removed.

Uh, while some people are claiming that the SF arts and culture will be the engine of our recovery.

It's uh ridiculous to expect that to happen while reducing the resources available to us.

Uh, we've seen a lot of loss in the past few years.

All of the major arts schools are gone.

And uh the SFAC gallery is a direct line to that community.

That's all I have to say.

Thank you.

Thank you much, Aaron Rojak.

Next speaker.

Afternoon, supervisors.

Um, my name is Rochelle Axel.

I'm the director of arts for a Better Bay Area.

I agree with everything that the folks advocating for the gallery said.

I'd like to speak a little bit more broadly to the Arts Commission and its budget.

This year, the Arts Commission allocated from its property 2018 Hotel Tax Arts Funds, 22% of those funds were for administration for the arts commission.

Not all went to administration to cover the grants program, which is what the voters, 75% of them wanted the money to go for.

And I understand that the mayor's office has to poach funds in order to cover staff and avoid layoffs, as they do for many departments.

It's not what the voters wanted.

And without the last five months of arts commission leadership, the department didn't really negotiate to fight for the correct spending of the funds that they were allocated or advocate for drop in the bucket grant uh general funds that would have helped the arts commission to continue and function.

So my question is where is the sustainable revenue strategies on the city's half?

It's really troubling that the mayor can handily raise 60 million dollars for one off events downtown that have no lasting impact on community.

Um, this time has expired.

Thank you.

But thank you, Richelle Axel.

Next speaker.

Hi, I'm Anya Worley Zygman with the People's Budget Coalition.

Here to say once again that we stand with every community member who is speaking here today, and we urge you to really consider what they say in the coming weeks as we consider the BLA and what they are going to recommend to cut.

Every department will come before you begging for a new position, begging for something else and something here and something there.

And we want you to keep in mind the community and working class people and every decision that you make from here on out.

These are going to be difficult decisions, but when you make the hard decisions to prioritize, community, we can stand with you, and we can stand for you for a budget that invests in all of our people and gets out of this deficit together in a way that is sustainable and in a way that doesn't gut our social safety net or gut our economic recovery for the sake of overinvestment and policing, incarceration.

We really can't protect our social safety net here in San Francisco, but it is gonna take all of us.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Chow.

I'm the Chinatown CDC staff of the Chinatown Iowa Tours program, and I'm sure you've heard a lot from my youth already.

Chinatown was, I mean, San Francisco has long pride itself in its commitment to equity, ensuring that every resident, regardless of language and background or immigration status, can access the services and opportunities the city has to offer.

But the budget cuts to MY City based funded programs directly undermine that's commitment, and they fall hardest on communities that need it the most.

In Chinatown, that means that low-income youth and residents losing access to a program that gives them something rare leadership, training, workforce skills, cultural identity, and direct connection to the economic life of their neighborhood.

All programs and ability to operate its potential or all sorry, cutting this funding doesn't just hinder the program's growth and abilities to operate, it potentially closes a door to low-income communities who are already facing barriers to opportunity.

I urge this body to protect this funding for community-based organizations in general and restore all MHCD fundings to all programs and content alleyway tours.

Thank you much, Joe.

Next speaker.

I stand with my union siblings in SEIU as they stood with us when we went on strike in Spanish February.

I have been a member of the Academy of Sciences since I moved from Connecticut to San Francisco in 2005.

I was missing my hometown in the Mystic Marine Life Aquarium, where I when I stumbled on the temporary location of the Cal Academy on Howard Street.

Even then, with the space and resources limited, I could feel the love and care the exhibits team put into their craft.

I joined as a member on the spot.

The Academy is my favorite place in San Francisco.

And I am angry that management would dare to lay off those who would make this place so special rather than entertain alternatives like taking a pay cut themselves.

Rented exhibits are not why I go to the academy.

Time and place relevance is why I go to the academy.

AI Slop cannot replace the care and craftsmanship of and San Francisco flair that the Academy workers put into their art.

Accounting is accountability is beautiful.

Hold the Academy accountable.

Thank you much for addressing us committee.

Next speaker.

Hello, my name is Celeste Chan.

I live in District 9, and I serve the Tenderloin Mission and Civic Center.

As a recent artist in residence at San Francisco Arts Commission, I benefited enormously from SFAC staff support.

Masoon Wazworth's institutional knowledge and the fact that she served hundreds of artists helped me immensely to build out my program that shared oral histories directly from the activist right here in San Francisco who created the field of ethnic studies in the 60s.

I first applied for a San Francisco Arts Commission grant in 2009.

And it's but it's specifically because of that funding that I was able to support hundreds of artists and audiences across San Francisco.

Um I am urging you to increase the general fund allocation to San Francisco Arts Commission.

I'm urging you to restore the San Francisco Arts Commission staff positions, both Mesoon, Walswas, and Jen Atwood.

With the upcoming merger.

But thank you much, Celeste Chan.

Next speaker, please.

Hi, my name is Michelle, and I work closely with the youth from Chinatown Alleyway Tours or CATS.

Before my current role, I was a high school English teacher in the public school system.

While teachers do incredible work, class sizes are too large to fully support every young person in developing the skills they need to thrive beyond school.

Through my work in the community, I have witnessed the firsthand the incredible impact of CATS.

CATS is particularly valuable because students learn the history and significance of Chinatown's legacy, which closely ties to their own immigration stories.

While many students identify as Chinese American, they may not fully understand the resilience and sacrifice that shape both their community and their families.

By exploring these shared stories, you develop a stronger sense of identity, belonging, and cultural pride, and gained emotional resilience to take ownership in their place in the larger SF community.

If we lose this source of funding, these students lose their opportunities to grow not only in confidence and public speaking, but also in organization, leadership, life skills, job readiness, and a deeper understanding of their own identities.

I urge you to preserve the funding for CATS and to recognize the tremendous value this program brings to our young people and to the larger community.

Thank you.

And thank you, Michelle.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon.

My name is Belina May, product coordinator at Chinatown Center, and I'm here speaking on behalf of Wen Yu Su, a tour guy with Chinatown Alleyway Tours known as CATS.

I'm here to ask you, please do not cut the funding for Chinatown alleyway tours under MHCD.

As Chinese immigrant, when I first joined, I was a teen unsure of one of my voice hosts and where I belong.

CAS gave me the opportunity to speak of an community that believed me before I believe in myself.

Today, descent person who once couldn't talk to strangers had has led hundreds of tours sharing these resilient stories of Chinatown in a time on Asian American story histories often overlooked, casting sure those stories are preserved and told by the youth who lived them.

We build a family that shares the same values and has each other's back.

Please continue to fund Kat so the next teenagers like me can also get the opportunity to grow.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

I'll be reading on behalf of a youth that cannot attend today.

So hello, everyone.

My name is Joyce, an upcoming freshman in college, and I'm a member of Chinatown Alley Tours, a program part of CCDC.

Chinatown Alley Tours has allowed me to see so much packed into a small neighborhood with amazing and supportive coordinators and peers.

I have gained significant leadership and public speaking skills that have helped me beyond tour guiding.

I come from a low-income family with my parents who constantly work overtime to support my sibling and I.

And I've been able to lessen the burden through working at Chinatown Alley Tours part-time by supporting my family financially.

I'm able to help buy groceries, pay for school expenses, including exam fees and school supplies, as well as say for college.

Please consider continuing funding programs like Chinatown Alley Tours.

Many of our tour guides, including myself, benefit deeply from the support that we receive.

This program doesn't just teach history but also keep our community stories alive through youth voices.

Thank you.

Thank you much, Joyce by Proxy.

Next speaker.

Hello, district supervisors.

My name is Kaii Chen, and I'm here representing CCDC's Chinatown Alleyway Tours Program, or CATS for short.

To me, CATS has provided a unique opportunity for me to express myself and become a more confident person in an academic and personal standpoint.

From working with youth and seniors to practicing my public speaking on tours and meeting people from all over the world, CATS has undoubtedly helped me grow into someone who is willing to stand up for my community and to make my voice heard.

These budget cuts will take away these amazing opportunities that not only does CATS provide, but also the hundreds of other youth programs in the city that help us inspire new leaders every day that strengthen our community.

By providing support to our communities, we are providing support to our city.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Gabriel Medina.

I'm the executive director for La Rasa Community Resource Center.

Uh Ladasa Community Source Center, we're a multi-service uh agency since 1970, and we we do legal immigration services, we do basic needs like food pantry and rental assistance uh and diapers as well as our family resource centers as parenting classes and uh support groups.

I'm here today to advocate, yes, for all most CD cuts that were made.

Uh these are the most serving the most vulnerable communities.

We've had three of our programs cut, some restored, but the service connection emergency fund uh was cut for $339,000.

Uh since 2017, it's offered flexible financial assistance to new immigrant families and folks that are at threat of homelessness, and about our case manager here, Maritza here, who's you know 25 years at United Way, nine years at La Rasa, trains case managers all over the city, and this is the these are the needs assessment and flexible financial assistance that really helps families you know meet their needs, and we really need your help uh to make sure that you continue.

Without it, uh we'll have more homeless and this we just have to expire.

Thank you so much.

And thank you.

Uh Gabriela Medina.

And Madam Chair, seeing no other speakers in line, uh, that completes our queue.

Thank you.

Seeing no more public comments, public comment is now close.

Um, colleagues and it looks looks looks like colleagues, uh looks like we're going to have uh continue these three items.

I would like to make the motion to continue these three items to tomorrow.

Um, second by vice chair Dorsey, a roll call, please.

And on the motion by Chair Chan, seconded by Vice Chair Dorsey, that we continue the hearing and both ordinances to tomorrow's June 12th meeting of this committee.

Vice Chair Dorsey.

Dorsey, I, Member Sauter, Sauter, aye.

Member Walton.

Walton absent.

Member Chen.

Chen, I.

Chair Chan.

Aye.

Chan, aye.

Uh, we have four eyes with Member Walton absent.

The motion passes.

And Mr.

Clark, do we have any other business before us today?

Uh Madam Chair, that concludes our business.

The meetings adjourned.