The Budget and Finance Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors met on June 17, 2026, at 6:15 PM UTC (11:15 AM PDT) under the chairmanship of Supervisor Connie Chan. The committee considered three items: an ordinance to raise the grant approval threshold, a resolution to formalize a pandemic-era lease amendment for a restaurant at 44 Ellis Street, and a motion to adjust the Budget and Legislative Analyst contract for cost of living. The committee took votes to amend and continue one item and to approve the others for full board consideration.
Good morning. The meeting will come to order. Welcome to the June 17, 2026 meeting of the budget and finance committee. I'm Supervisor Connie Chan, Chair of the Committee. I am joined by Vice Chair, Supervisor Matt Dorsey and Member Supervisor Danny Sauter. Our clerk, it's Brent Halipa. And I want to thank Jamie Avachery from SFGov TV for broadcasting this meeting. Mr. Clerk, do you have any announcements? Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a friendly reminder to those in attendance to please make sure all uh to silence all cell phones and electronic devices to prevent interruptions to our proceedings. Should you have any documents to be included as part of the file, they should be submitted to myself, the clerk. Public comment will be taken on each item on this agenda. When your item of interest comes up and 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 the 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.jsf G O V.org. If you submit public comment via email, it will be forwarded to the supervisors and also included as part of the official file. You may also send your written comments via U.S. Postal Service to our office in City Hall at one Dr. Carlton Beagle Place. Room 244, San Francisco, California, 94102. And finally, items acted upon today are expected to appear on the Board of Supervisors agenda of June 23rd, unless otherwise stated. Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Clerk. And before we call item number uh, we called the items on this agenda. I would like to remind the public that we have budget and legislative analyst report for items one and two on today's agenda. And for those items we will have the department presentation first, followed by the budget and legislative analysts, then we will take questions and public comment. Also, today we're joined by President Rafael Mendelman, who has requested that we take his item first. So with that, Mr. Clerk, please call item number two. Yes, item number two. Is an ordinance amending the administrative code to increase the minimum grant award amount requiring Board of Supervisors approval for acceptance and expenditure from 100,000 to the greater of 1 million for the federal single audit threshold amount set by the United States Office of Management and Budget starting October 1st, 2026. Require boards board of supervisors approval of a grant increase only if it raises the grant to the approval threshold for the first time or increases a previously approved grant to 110% or more of the previously approved amount. Authorize the controller to make rules governing the acceptance and expenditure of any grants or grant increases that do not require Board of Supervisors approval and make other non-substantive organized organizational changes to the sections of code relating to cash involving funds and acceptance and expense expenditure of grant funds. Madam Chair. Thank you. President Amendelman. Thank you, Chair Chan, for uh making time for this on today's agenda and uh committee members. Um, this legislation uh would is in the spirit of uh get uh getting out of the way of uh public servants who are uh trying to do hard things, and we are asking them to do them more quickly, and we should find ways to help them do them more quickly. So um this would raise the board of supervisors' grant accept and expend approval threshold from a hundred thousand dollars to a million dollars that would align it with the federal single audit threshold, which is the threshold where the federal government requires audits of uh of entities receiving um grants from the federal government. Grants uh represent between eighteen and twenty-three percent of our annual city rev revenues. Our departments are managing significant grant portfolios, and we want them to seek more grant funding, but the current process to get these grants approved requires substantial staff time uh for what are almost always um routine approvals. Uh San Francisco set its hundred thousand dollar threshold uh 14 years ago in 2012, and it has not been adjusted since. Um as I mentioned, the federal government has raised its own threshold for uh audits up to a million dollars. Right now, um uh departments win small routine grants, do essential work for San Franciscans, but then have to wait sometimes months uh to spend them. Um in practice, most grants under a million dollars, as I said, are approved without uh debate, um, according to the controller's office, from 2018 to 2025, more than half the grants reviewed by this board would not have required approval under this threshold. And this would this change would reduce uh the volume of board reviewed grants by approximately 54%. To me, that's a significant reduction in the administrative burden.