5 and district 1. they are very important. clearly, we have been doing these public budget town halls for some time now. this is the fourth of five that we're committed to. on saturday, we conclude with an additional two districts to round out. we have been taking extensive notes to make sure that these ideas and these concerns -- and we're very sensitive to all the concerns. but you also know that we still have years of deficit. but they are not as bad as previous years. we're not willing, and we cannot use the word surplus yet, but hopefully in our lifetimes and, hopefully in our future there is a strong possibility that our recovery will be ended and we will see even better times. but that takes a lot of discipline in our budgetary process.

it takes a strong encouragement that our city's road to recovery has a lot to do with investor confidence. i have been talking a lot about innovation in our city, bringing jobs back, having those jobs be touching everyone in our city, no matter if you are from bayview or ared5 or d1, chinatown, richmond, or sunset. everyone has to feel they are involved in our economic recovery, and only then will we feel we have the satisfaction of having a complete budget. but right now, it is only a partial budget. because this coming fiscal year, we're still about $170 million in the deficit. we see a way out on that, but it will be sensitive to what we can fund. and then the following year, as you recall, we now have a two- year budget, so budget for fiscal year 2013-2014 is also a

legal obligation that we must balance as well. and that year, the budget deficit is about $312 million in deficit, so these are serious in numbers, once we have not figured out yet. but if we listen to you tonight, we take that under consideration along with our legal obligations, we hope to present to the board a budget that is balanced but also sensitive to community needs, sensitive to needs of our seniors, needs of our families, needs of our youth, needs of neighborhoods, as well as making sure we fund transportation, make sure we have adequate funds to help our school systems that keep getting threatens with the state cuts, and all the other needs that you have identified. i think we are a pretty sensitive city when it comes to fulfilling these needs.

i just want to make sure your note that we ask for your involvement -- make sure you know that we ask for your involvement, and we ask that you support innovative ideas and solutions to our budget. and at the end of the day, we want to make sure that our city is investment-friendly. because the way out, ladies and gentlemen, budget deficit years is never to depend upon the state that has no good news for us. they never have good news. it is all about how they can fill the abyss of the state deficit. the federal government has signaled they have some funds, this presidential year they are not giving away anything. because they cannot have a good dialogue at the federal level with the presidential election going on. everything is politicized. knowing that, we have to depend upon our own economy and our own recovery. that says that i have to pay attention to good levels of tourism in the city, good levels

of health care industry, because they are like our number two employment in our city, and then of course, in fighting technology and biotech and life sciences to establish -- inviting technology and biotech and life sciences to our city. we want returning veterans and people in mid-career is to come as much as possible to san francisco. involvement, innovation, and investment. that is what we want to emphasize for the next two years budget whileevery commun'. with that, i will turn the microphone over to our supervisors and it sure we get everybody introduced that is here on behalf of the city. thank you for coming out and spend your precious time with us. [applause] >> as the mayor mentioned, in

addition to me, supervisor mar, the mayor, we have several department heads who are here who are here to listen to your concerns. i will introduce them at this time. i would beg to introduce a car led johnson from the mayor's office of disability. regina from small businessolson lee, mayor's office of housing. henry alvarez, housing authority. monique at the comptroller's. barbara garcia from the department of public health. cindy from the budget office.

naomi kelly, at par city administrator -- our city administrator. philip ginsburg, parks and representative. ed reiskin. maria, department of children, youth, and families. louise herera, the city librarian. mohammad nuru, dpw. phil arnold. capt. goldberg. you are from the human services agency? chief hayes white, who gone up from the fire department.

karen roy from trout support services. please stand up. the rich in capt., eric vantero. so you have a sense of who we all are. if there is time after, please engage some of us. we will be around, if you want more in-depth conversation. certainly, if you would like meetings with any of us, feel free to contact our offices. we are definitely open to that. thank you. i want to introduce the moderator henry kelly at this time. henne kelly, i'm sorry. >> she is one of the most dynamic richmond activists, a

longtime teacher, and acted with the seniors in the district. >> and i work with christine daily at senior action network. >> who knew? >> i am a richmond district resident, i have been for 35 years. this is one of the most beautiful parts of the park. i am so happy to be here. this is a very nicely planned events, and most of the time, they say there will be listening to you, but let me go over the rules. we realize not everyone will be able to speak tonight, but we will compile all the information from the board. you all have blue cards were you can write down what you want to ask, and then there will be queued to pick that up. you can hold up your card and people will come around.

there is also a series of budget hearing before the budget and finance committee. in order to have an effective meeting, we want to lay out a few ground rules to help guide the conversation. as a teacher, i understand that. you have to stay on subject. all ideas and perspectives will be heard. all of us will be respectful of one another. we are going to speak when that time. we have translation equipment. what do they do? it it -- is it over there in the back? ok, i see them. first, so you know where we are, we will have a budget overview by cindy. >> good evening, everyone. thanks for having us. i will be giving just a quick

buck -- budget overview of where we are at in our budget plan for the year. these are very high tech, as you can see. we have in the city of san francisco a $6.8 billion budget. that was our adopted budget last year. to put that in context, about 52% of our budget is what we call enterprise funds. there is our funds were there is a dedicated revenue source that can use -- be used for certain expenses. for example, your water bill can only be used to pay for the expenses it takes to get water to your tap. when we are talking about the general fund, 48% of the $6.8 billion, that is our general fund. that is what we think of as our more discretionary revenues. it is like if you were to have a small business, you would not mix your household expenses with

your small business. you would keep those separate, keep your own bank account and your businesses bank account. that is how we think about the distinction between our enterprise fund and general fund. when we are talking about our deficit today, we are talking about a deficit in the general fund. the $170 million number, the $312 million number that the mayor spoke of earlier, that is the general fund deficit. $170 million out of our $3.5 billion budget, not the whole 6.8. that is important to keep in mind. what do we spend our money on, what we spend the general fund money on? we spend a lot of things and services and make sure that we need the community need. we spend a large portion of community and public health in our human services agency.

we spend general fund money on public safety so our police and fire departments can operate. we spend it on streets and infrastructure as well. dpw, street cleaning, street repair, capital investments, our rec and park. it is all funded by the general fund -- well, mostly. where do we get our money from? generally, from everybody here, from the residence. we get most of our money from our taxes, so property taxes, business taxes from the business community, payroll taxes from the business community, hotel taxes. visitors to the city help us maintain the city by contributing to hotel taxes. so the bulk of the revenue comes from tax as we all pay. we also get a lot of money from the federal government and state government. they support, in a very large

part, our health and human services agency and our department of public health, but they also support our public safety and other components. finally, we also get revenue from you all in another form, when you make a payment for a service or a payment for a class or if you go to pay a permit or planning fee because you have renovations on your home. that money also comes back to the city. those are that the components of where we get our money. the problem is -- and i think you understand this -- is that we are not getting as much money as we are spending. we have a growing revenue this year, which is great. our city economy is seeing a bit of a recovery. and that of an uptick in revenues. we're definitely not in the dire situation we have experienced in the past. the problem is we have more expenditure pressures that we do

revenue. expenditures are growing faster than revenues. i think some of you can relate to this, too. it is as if we made it out of the hard times and you got home and you got a small boost in your paycheck only to go home and find out that you got a letter from a health insurance company that they are raising rates. or you go to the gas station and you realize prices have gone up dramatically. you go to buy groceries and you realize that has gotten more expensive, too. that is the same situation that the city's experiencing. we have pressures on our costs that are rising faster than our revenues, even though they are getting better. what that means is, as the mayor said, we have $170 million of a gap between our revenues and expenditures next year. without any serious policy changes, that means we have a $312 million gap in the second year after that.

this year, for the first time, our -- we are legally required to submit a balanced two-year budget. over the two years, we need to find $480 million to balance both years of our budget. it is a little difficult but it is definitely for the long-term health of the city, it is going to hopefully provide some stability to the city, so that as we keep doing these two-year budgets we can keep getting away from what we've experienced in the past two years, these dramatic downturns and upturns, and we can have a more stable budget. what are our goals in the next few weeks and months at the mayor's office and board of supervisors negotiate and balance the budget? our goal is first of all to balance the budget. importantly, we want to balance it by investing in the priorities and values that are important to san franciscans.

we are here to listen to you today so that we can take your input and understand the value better, and values and priorities of the city. we are hoping to be innovative in the way we approach this new challenge of a two-year budget, and we want to listen to you, so thank you. [applause] >> thank you. some good news and some bad news. revenue, we're getting more revenue, but we are spending more. everybody should be understanding that only 48% of the money we have is money that is available for programs. everything else is spoken for. 50% of the pie is already spoken for. 40% of the pie everybody is

fighting for. that is the way i understand it. in our house, it is the same. so what we're going to do is have speakers from district 1. they will have 10 minutes. then we will have the district 5 speakers. so, our first speaker is going to talk to you about transit -- i know i have everything here, but i cannot find it. who is speaking for transit? sue vaughn. thank you for getting out of trouble. [applause] >> hello, my name is sue vaughn. i live in the richmond district. i was appointed to the mta citizens advisory council by supervisor mar. thank you, supervisor, for

appointment to that and for inviting me to participate in this event. when it comes to transit, municipal transportation agency is an enterprise agency, so it is -- there are budget discussions around the transit agency, but it is supposed to have its own budget, that is past due balance annually. the mta already did its budget and balanced it, but there are ways the general fund budget can impact the mta. when i come to the issue of transit, on a personal level, i look at the big picture. in our current transportation system, we do not have enough money in general every year. we are cutting corners here and there in the agency. we might be cutting service, we might be raising fees. we might be raising fares.

so, that is one issue -- an ongoing issue with the agency. we are also not using energy efficiently. we need to have enough money to run the system and we need to use our energy efficiently. i bring up energy because, in the city, all of the energy we use in san francisco, including our energy to heat our houses and cut our food and drive our cars is vastly more than what we used to run our municipal transportation system. we only use 2% of the energy we use on muni. so you know we are not efficient. we can improve that. and we need to because the cost of energy is only going to go up. we need to figure out how we are going to do this. the best way is to make muni

efficient, make it appealing, affordable, and help everybody get onto our municipal transportation system. we need to improve pedestrian safety, bicycle safety, we need to improve bicycle parking and implement bike sharing. and in the richmond district -- and i think this could also be for district 5 -- we need to make it easier to do city car share, and even to rent cars. more specifically, about two years ago, we did begin to cut service, muni service, because of a budget shortfall. at this point it is time to assess those cuts to service in the richmond district. we eliminated the ocean beach and we rerouted the 18.

it is time to assess those. the ocean beach line serves primarily elderly people who live out without any avenues. the 18 east to be a direct route from land's end to the safeway, and that is gone. it is also time to assess intersections for pedestrian safety. last night i was at the intersection of 24th avenue and clement street, and i saw three incidents. they were both right across the street from each other happening at the same time. one involved a bicyclist, won a pedestrian, a few minutes later, another incident with a pedestrian. there was almost an incident with a bicyclist. they did not happen but we need to start assessing every single intersection in the city for

pedestrian safety. i do not know what the metrics are for that, but we need to think about this. adding more meters, parking meters throughout the city. these are tools for parking management. as we do this, we need to be able to tell people where we are adding the meters, that we will improve transit in specific ways to make it better for them, or we are to put more bicycle parking in or something. we need specific things that we will say to people. yes, we are where to put parking meters and, yes, you are going to pay for parking, but we are going to start with low costs and raise them incrementally and then we will improve transit and all these other thing we want to make better. for example, geary brt, we need to find out what the holdup is.

i think it has the potential to be an engine for economic growth in the richmond district. i would like to see that implemented. thank you. [applause] >> we have a lot of seniors in the richmond district. i am one of them. so we have the executive director of the golden gate senior services who will talk to us about senior needs. >> mayor lee, supervisor olague, chiu, mar, i am the director of golden gate senior services and also a senior myself. one of the programs we operate is the richmond senior center, which is out on geary boulevard

between 26 and 27th ave. i appreciate the opportunity to speak with you tonight. golden gate senior services is a non-profit agency and was established 37 years ago to provide services to seniors at about half the cost to the city if they were to provide similar services. we can do this because our salary scale is about half of what the city would pay for similar positions. we have a scaled-back health plan for our staff, and i'm ashamed to say we have no retirement for our staff. there are over 15,000 seniors in district 1, and the richmond senior center is full every day providing a full range of activities and lunch. each year we are asked to take budget cuts. in the past, supervisors have helped to restore some of these cuts. last year, mayor lee added money

back to the department of aging. i appreciate and am grateful for this. for this upcoming budget, the human services agency and the department of a bold an aging services have submitted a budget to mayor lee with no cuts to service providers. i urge you to accept their budget. at the same time, the cost of doing business for nonprofit contractors, like golden gate senior services, has gone up year after year. over the last five years, our health care costs have risen on an average of 7.5% a year. that is about 30% over the last five years. it is now costing us on an average of $858 a month for each employee. this is just one example of the rising cost that we have just to keep our doors open. this responsibility for our staff and seniors sometimes

seems like a heavy weight on my shoulders. if at all possible, i would urge you all to give city contractors the cost of doing business increase. it would send an important message to all of us, that the city, indeed, values our work. thank you so much. [applause] >> now we will hear from somebody from district 5, gordon phillips from the diamond youth shelter, talking about homelessness and also someone from the haight street referral center. you are here? i knew that. >> good evening, supervisors, mayor lee, department heads, we appreciate their opportunity to be transparent in this process. i am representing larkin street youth services. we have been around for 25 +

years. over 25 programs serving the city's most vulnerable. we have two particular sites at district 5. our haight street referral center and we also have our diamond youth shelter which serves the cities most vulnerable you, an emergency shelter for temporary stays. i want to speak recognizing that there is lots of priority that are being made around the budget process, recognizing also that our city has as a fundamental belief and value that we will maintain services for families, seniors, and i would like to advocate and urge that you also maintained its services. currently we have the eight st. referral center that operates on limited powers due to funding restrictions, staffing capacity levels.

additionally, we have our diamond youth shelter that the upper during the day simply due to some of the neighborhood relations issues around having that site there within the panhandle districts. we want to see some of that change. reebok to see the funding maintained. as we look at making these are decisions, our needs are also being met. i'm also going to turn the mike over to steve, a case manager. so she can speak more to the specific needs of the homeless youth population in the haight district. >> good evening. thank you for listening to us. i have been working as a case manager for about two years at the referral center. i usually work with approximately 10 youth. last year we had at approximately 1700 to come through the referral center.

i just want to urge you that there is an outreach staff. we have four at the referral center. i am the only case manager there. i want to make sure you understand, recognize that youth is really important for our community, even if there from other places. a lot of those folks and coming here to make this place their home. a lot of these folks are very smart and have a lot to give to our communities. i also wanted to mention, when it comes down to how the community is interacting with the youth population, i would encourage that the police presence in the community would be more engaging and welcoming, trying to build relationships, rather than a hardened hand when speaking, like around the lake situation that has been going on there. i