Community Forces City to Budge on the Budget
Following heated debate and vociferous public involvement, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to approve this year’s $5 billion city budget on July 19. This budget approved was a seriously modified version of the highly lacerated one (many cuts) that the mayor and his posse tried to push through. Gone from the FY 05-06 budget were most of the proposed cuts to public health and vital services for low income and homeless people that the Newsom administration supported.
While not a joyous revolutionary victory of the oppressed and exploited over the millionaires, bosses, and the ruling real estate speculator class, this year’s budget was nonetheless a win in that desperately needed and utilized services were sustained. If it were not for the community organizing and speaking out against the massive reductions the powers that be wanted to implement, many programs that serve the poor would have been eliminated and suffering would have increased. Imagine what the architects of gentrification would get away with if grassroots and other community groups were not here to challenge them.
Thank you to all the people who turned out for the Bielensen hearings to let the Supervisors know that the pillage of programs serving low-income people will not be tolerated. Thank you to all the programs and agencies that got the word out to your constituent communities and organized hundreds of members to stand up against the assault on poor and working class neighborhoods; Coleman Advocates, Walden House, Native American Friendship House, Hospitality House, Bayview Hunters Point Foundation, Senior Action Network, Coalition on Homelessness, Bay Area Legal Aid, La Raza Centro Legal, The SF Day Labor Program, Swords to Plowshares, Tenderloin Outpatient Clinic, Community Housing Partnership, ACORN, Conard House, Progress Foundation, Human Services Network, Richmond Area Multi-Services (RAMS), Westside Mental Health Center, Instituto Familiar de la Raza, SEIU 790, the People’s Budget Collaborative, and many others.
Also thanks to progressive ally supervisors and their staff who helped make this possible, with mega-super props to John Avalos at Chris Daly’s office, who pulled so much together and made it available; it seemed like in the quest for information on the budget all roads led to John. Thanks to everyone who is part of the resistance.
Disaster Narrowly Averted
Let’s look at what would have been if the Mayor Inc. had gotten what they proposed in a glossy green paperback FY 2005-2006 budget:
The dialysis unit at SF General Hospital would have closed (around 150 patients lose service); outpatient substance abuse treatment would have been reduced by 1/3 (around 3,000 people no longer would be treated); 20 residential substance abuse spaces would have been totally eliminated; the workers comp clinic would have closed (8,750 people impacted); various educational training, job placement and mental health services for (around 700) county jail inmates would have been eliminated; HIV/AIDS services would have drastically reduced (around 3,000 clients); a co-pay would have been required for low income people getting meds at SF General (86,000 people); The SRO Collaborative (3,000 clients) would have been eliminated; The Tenderloin Self Help Center (more than 6,000 clients) would have closed, The Single Standard of Mental Health Access and Care would have continued to be eliminated (impacting 1,700 clients); CalWORKs Scholars Program would have been eliminated; foster care shadows program would have been eliminated, tutoring for in-county foster children would have been slashed; Food Stamps programs serving immigrants would have been reduced; Family Resource centers would have lost funding; many general laborer jobs for street cleaning would have been eliminated and the list goes on. These are the things that the Mayors office supported in the 2005 budget (see “The People’s Budget Episode Nine” in July ‘05’s STREET SHEET for details of the budget process) but as chance would have it, they did not go through.
Not this time…
How Could this Have Happened?
With all the increase in police presence these days, how could the corporate hizzlers reckon they’d get away with it? That remains to be determined, but the reason they didn’t is because of resistance. Hundreds people turned out to city hall for the yearly Bielenensen hearing, among other things. The BH was packed with participants of community based programs whose funding was in jeopardy and they entered the marble halls to speak truth to the podium. There were other special budget hearings due to the reinstatement of a prior policy that limits public comment towards the final stages. The Supervisors held these big speak-a-thons presumably so the public couldn’t disrupt the timely voting process later on.
That said, the public presence consisting of hundreds of people was something that had an impact. In a sense the people (NOT the $28k club described below) won a few more crumbs. Actually they were able to hold on to the crumbs they had, but in today’s offensive political climate, to sustain is to win.
This happened through the good work of an ad hoc budget group that identified the viability of tax revenue options. This weakened the administration’s cry of crisis. The unexpected discovery of $50 million from the real estate transfer tax (hey, we just found it, guys) gave the people an advantage too. Initially the Team Newsom pit crew wanted to blow it on “one time expenses” but the audience ripped it up a bit and they agreed to break off some from road median greenification and keep the money in public health. It’s all about priorities really. Bushes or beds. People or potholes.
That Newsom Inc. agreed to give up the money is because people like Supervisor Chris Daly held press conferences and demanded they do. It is because of persistent phone calls and surprise visits to Supervisors’ offices (some have candy and free water) to remind them. It is because of actual people communicating directly to the seats of power in a sort of initial and nascent form of participatory democracy. It is because of community involvement holding them accountable.
Mayor Admits to Being a “Usurper”
The San Francisco Examiner (June 6, 2005) ran a story about a focus group Mayor Newsom held on the budget. Funded through $28,000 from Hewlett-Packard and some company named “Organic,” it was comprised of 300 people who were invited to rank issues (using hand held electronic devices) that they feel are important so that he could create his budget before it was presented to the Board of Supervisors in early June. The mayor’s office admitted that the demographics of participants were heavier on white and older long term residents than U.S. Census Bureau figures reflect, but that he felt those who have lived in San Francisco the longest are “The most invested.” He used their responses to create his budget and was calling it a “People’s Budget.”
When the mayor’s office released their budget Newsom admitted to “kind of usurping” the term that has been used by the People’s Budget Collaborative for the last nine years. As someone who helped with the published document entitled “2005 Peoples Budget” I am more than a little hurt by this liberty taken. Furthermore, why didn’t City Hall contact anyone involved in the People’s Budget for this study if they intended to use the name?
There are older, long term San Francisco residents who are a part of the real People’s Budget; many of whom would have been willing to sit in on this $28,000 Town Hall, especially if free lunch were provided and they got to use high tech electronics. Members of the real People’s Budget even met with the mayor’s budget staff in the Mayoral budget bunker at City Hall (that has hanging on its wall three large, beautiful, full color framed photos of poor people surrounding a leisurely lawn shot of the lounging Mayor) and were never even told about this ethically diverse, costly and disrespectful “usurping” of the moniker that was earned by years of hard work and years of struggle in the streets by predecessors upon whose shoulders we stand. And they didn’t even help with printing costs. Perhaps the real People’s Budget needs to copyright the name before it is appropriated again.
Maybe I am confused but I don’t really see how anyone can support (among other things, see above) a $3 million dollar reduction to substance abuse services for low income, largely African American clients who live in neighborhoods with rampant crime and drug abuse problems and claim to be presenting a “peoples budget.” What are the participants’ experiences with poverty? Who are “the people?”
Perhaps Mayor Newsom should have called it the “The Republicans-Who-Got-Me-Elected People’s Budget,” or most accurately “The People’s Budget that was the result of a $28,000 survey conducted among hand picked people who had nothing at all to do with the actual People’s Budget.” I guess it is all part of the postmodern contestation over the meaning of key terms.
Luckily for the low income and working class people of San Francisco, the Newsom so-called people’s budget got pretty much tossed in the recycling bin. I guess it depends on who your people are, and our people are definitely into recycling. On behalf of the People’s Budget Collaborative I would like to request that the Mayor cease and desist using the term “Peoples Budget” for his projects before at least providing the professional courtesy of asking first. Please is the first word of Peace.
What You Can Do
If you are short supply of psychological anguish you can try to keep up with the city budget for one “cycle,” or year. It can be informative and entertaining. Try it and check out the (real) People’s Budget.
The budget process is ongoing. Right now the strategists are sipping and scheming for next years plan. Try to follow the budget trail from start (January) to finish (July). Try to keep up with what the bloody hell they are doing. Keep the pressure on city hall before they can construct grander investment structures that are ideologically designed to gradually pressure poor people out of town. It’s a low intensity war where the tanks are banks and the generals are politicians.
You can get involved with the People’s Budget Collaborative and help create an alternative revenue conception that does not attempt to disenfranchise poor and working class people. Join with likeminded others and demand more services and opportunities for homeless people. And watch out!
Action Addendum:
The amount allocated to rehire the unfairly terminated DPW workers was $1.85 million. It was approved as part of DPW’s budget. Now, 36 displaced workers are fighting to make sure that DPW uses all the money to re-hire them. Call DPW and demand that they rehire the fired!
For more information call the Coalition on Homelessness (415)346-3740 or cheer@sf-homeless-coalition.org.
James