supervisor wiener, and we will have one more budget meeting before we are done. if we have no other questions from the committee at this point in time, can we get to this item to the call of the chair? ok, thank you very much. do we have any other items before us? >> that completes the agenda. supervisor chu: thank you. we are adjourned.

>> welcome to culture wire.

the city rolls of the red carpet to host the international film festival. the actors, directors, and others in among luminaries around the globe. we will get a sneak peek of this year's exciting program. >> welcome to "culture wire." in april, the 50 forces and francisco international film festival will be taking place. joining me to talk about the programming is the director of programming for the san francisco film festival.

rachel, welcome to "culture wire." i look forward to this every year. my first question is, what will be the opening night film? >> we have a terrific film for opening night. it is called a beginners and as an american independent film that stars ewan mcgregor and christopher plumber. >> what kind of music is that? >> house music. >> it is a hard to describe story with a lot of humor and heart. >> what are the other highlights? >> there are so many great films. it is hard to pick out the favorites. we have over 200 films and the festival. we have some other wonderful

american independent films like the centerpiece premier that stars john c. reilly. including the closing nine film that really shows the crossroads of internationalism that the festival. >> it is not just about the two weeks of the festival. you guys also run really fascinating programs for the bay area. >> really don't stopped screening films. we have a series of festivals in the fall for the fall season. and we often do week-long runs at theaters around the bay area so that people who want to see the kind of films that we show at the festival can see them all year long.

and we have a wonderful filmmaker services department. we can provide fiscal sponsorship and a lot of great advice. finally, we have a really robust education department. people that want to learn about filmmaking can take some of our fantastic glasses. >> one of the things that impresses me about the film festival is sort of the impact that it has. i know you guys are the longest running film festival in the americas. >> it was always a great festival for the city of san francisco, so our constituents are the people of san francisco. we want to do what we can to reach out to as many kinds of populations as we can. one way we do that is by bringing in guests. that is one of the things that

makes a festival exciting. not only do get to see films that you might not otherwise see, but you can meet a director or an actor and hear about their prospective making the film. the one thing that i always like to tell people who have never been to a film festival before is that it can sometimes seem daunting from the outside because he will pick up the program guide and it has 100 name movies and seems a bit hard to navigate in the beginning. but it is really worth it as you know from coming. the atmosphere in december, the interaction with other guests, the films themselves make it a great couple of weeks. >> it is important to participate and take advantage of this treasure trove of films from how many countries?

>> is usually between 40 and 50 countries. >> it is an impressive range of filmmakers and the national perspectives that gets represented in the film festival. thank you for bringing this festival to san francisco every year. announcer: so, what's the biggest issue in america today? i don't think we're probably ever doing enough for our environment. the war in iraq religious yahoos freedom of speech i get angry about it, but it's like... ya' know, in my own apartment. i probably believe in all those causes, but i'm...i'm not really doin' anything.

[applause] supervisor wiener: we will bring our city family of on to the stage. everyone, thank you for being here tonight. in your district 8 supervisor. [applause] thank you. we are -- first of all, i want to thank mayor lee, who has been doing a series of the town hall meetings in different districts because it is so important, especially in this extremely difficult budget year, to make sure that as a city, we are communicating and interfacing with the community as much as possible. i appreciate mayor lee being here, and i appreciate all of you coming out tonight. i want to thank mission high school for hosting us tonight in this beautiful building in this

great location. susan from the mayor's office disability, for helping us out, as well as the mayor's office of neighborhood services. i will also want to of knowledge the mission high school wrestling team, which was here earlier, which is doing really well this year. was not able to -- the team partnered with the eureka valley recreation center and golden gate wrestling club and went from doing really poorly to be invoiced to when the city championship. so we are really proud of the wrestling team. [applause] this is going to be a really simple format tonight. i'm going to turn it over to the mayor, and he is going to speak. as well as greg wagner, the mayor's budget director, to talk about the mayor's budget to talk

about the budget situation. you will hear briefly from a number of department heads, and after that, we will have questions from members of the audience and whoever is the appropriate person to answer the question. that said, why don't we grabbed the microphone here. turn it over to mayor lee. mayor lee: thank you. good evening, everybody. i am not too prone to give long speeches, so that is probably good for you and me. anyway, i want to thank supervisor wiener for hosting this tonight. and for all the department heads that are here. i know there is probably commissioners here as well and other friends. by the way, i am a resident of district 8. supervisor wiener is my supervisor, and i always look up to him. anyway, you know, this city has

had a few years of pretty hard economic times. you know that. i have known it. there is no magic in the way we balance our budget. we have to do it with both a combination of efficiencies and cuts, and we are trying to identify as much rational revenues as we can, but ultimately, we will have to make some decisions that will affect programs that you might feel very dear about, and we are trying to approach those questions in the most open and transparent fashion as we can, so i do not mind hosting with the supervisors a number of these town hall meetings so we can get out to hear what you believe would be the core level of services that the city ought to be providing. i do not mind that. this is the fourth of 10 that i

have committed to. i think it is important that the mayor be out at every single district as possible, working as closely as we can with our supervisors to make sure that our ears are open and ultimately our hearts are open to all the things that you need to help this city to make it run as well as we can. i gave out very simple instructions to the departments and commissions. i want the city to be safe. not only in a public safety since, but also in the core level of services. i want the city to be solvent. that is, that we pay for programs that we can afford. that also means that we work really hard on making sure that we reform our pension system. right now, as we face our budget deficit of $6 million, a good third of that is the increased cost in our employee benefits. so we have to mean that in.

i do not think we would be here tonight if we had a pension system that was solvent. finally, by what our budget to be reflective of a city that is successful, that is all the things that we enjoy, that attracted all of us to buy our homes here, raised our kids here. a successful city means we can continue attracting people to be year, to have strong neighborhoods, resilient neighborhoods like district 8, make sure we are doing everything we can to make our neighborhoods successful, along with all the other attractions that we can afford to have. a safe city, a solvent city, and a successful city are the themes i have given our departments to work with. and as we go through the balancing our budget, i said at the outset, there is no magic to it. we have to make some tough decisions coming up. after we make those tough decisions, is like going to be any easier?

nope. the governor has plans to realign things that going to hurt us. i do not believe for one second that realignment means it comes with any funding to realigning burdens that will come to us. then the federal government is going to get there. we have already seen the community block grant funds that were going to be heard in many different ways, so we are bracing for that, trying to come up with ideas to make sure our cities survives and survive as well. with that, no more speeches. i am all ears to your concerns, making sure the you know we are working closely with you and your supervisor to make our process transparent and sensitive to all the ideas that you have. thank you very much. [applause] supervisor wiener: thank you. now, why don't we hear from the mayor's budget director? >> thank you very much, supervisor.

i want to quickly go through a quick summary of where we are in our budget and give you a sense of what the problem is that we are facing, which ultimately is the reason that we are here tonight and is the cause behind the challenges that we are facing. so if you could just jump in, melissa. unlike the federal government, we do not have the luxury of operating in a deficit. we have a requirement in our city charter that is ironclad that we balance our budget every year. that means that our sources, which is the money coming into our budget, half to equal the uses, which are the expenditures in our budget. right now, when we look ahead to next year, what we see -- and it is a little bit hard to see on this screen because the sources is blending into the background, but we had a little bit of good news on our revenue. these numbers are when we compare the current year to what

we're going to see next year. about $37 million of improvement in our revenues, and i will talk a little bit about why that is, but on the expenditure side, we see $344 million of increased expenditures if we just continue our current level of operation. the impact of those numbers is that we are facing a $306 million general fund deficit for the coming year. next slide. the big picture for us -- it has been a tough couple of years for the city, as you all know. it has been a tough couple of years for all of us individually in the city, struggling with the economy. we are starting to see some signs of hope and good news out there in the economy, but we are in the very early stages. the city government is, of course, depended on tax revenues, which are driven by economic activity. when we look out into the economy, we are starting to see things stabilize. we are not seeing the big losses

that we have over the past couple of years, but it is the beginning of a slow recovery, so there is some good news out there, but it looks like it is going to be a slow recovery that is going to happen over the next couple of years. also, while our local tax revenues are recovering and while our economy is recovering, we also are taking a loss from the state and federal governments, as the mayor said. they are cutting revenue to local governments as they try to balance their own budget and deal with their issues in washington and sacramento, so that is taking away some of the good news that we are seeing locally. on the expenditure side, as the mayor pointed out, one of the big issues we face in the coming year and that we will continue to face over the foreseeable future is that we have growth in our city expenditures that is outpacing our revenues, so we will see continued deficits if

we do not change things. the biggest single contributing factor is the growth in the cost of employee benefits. pension costs are chief among the spirit as the mayor said, the issue of pension reform is going to be front and center for bringing our budget back into balance over the long term so that we do not have to do this year after year where we're going back to our departments and asking them to make reductions. just to put that in perspective, a $300 million budget deficit -- what does that mean for the city? next slide. within our budget, we have a $6.5 million budget, but within that budget, there are different categories of spending. a little less than half of our budget, or about $3 billion, is in the city's general fund, and that is where we pay for a lot of the services from the departments that are here tonight. our public safety departments, our human services agency and

health departments. that is where our tax dollars go, and that is where we have the spending for those services. but within that $3 billion, we have a lot of restrictions. we have, as i said, our requirement to pay for pension costs, for other employee benefit costs. we have a voter-approved spending requirements. we have a number of restrictions, and when you add them up at the end of the day, we have $1.2 billion or $1.3 billion of truly flexible money left in our general fund budget, so our $300 million deficit, when you compare it to that 14 $3 billion, is a very significant issue for the city. is about a quarter of our discretionary general fund spending. that is a real challenge for the city, and that is why we are here tonight. as i said, the biggest departments in our general fund and, therefore, those that are facing some very serious challenges, our core public safety and social safety departments, the police

apartment, sheriff's department, and fire department. health department and human services agency are our core county functions. those five departments together are about 3/4 of our discretionary general fund city in the city. we have asked the departments to make expenditure reductions or increase revenues totaling 10% and another 10% contingency. none of us or none of the department heads here on the stage are enjoying this process, but those are the instructions that we have had to issue to meet this challenge. we are trying to do it in every way possible to minimize the impact on services to residents as we do that, but it is a big challenge, so we are really hoping to hear your thoughts and feedback on how we can do that and on the proposals that are out there tonight. just one last point, to emphasize again, even though the economy is recovering, we do

have some longer-term financial challenges for the city, and we're working very hard to try to address these as the mayor said, so that we are not back here every year, doing the same thing, going through budget deficit after budget deficit, and that will mean we will have to look at some long-term approaches to our budget. pension reform, as i said, is key among those, but also, we are starting to look under the mayor's direction at a five-year financial plan and trying to take a little bit longer of a view of our financial horizon. with that, i will just close up, and i look forward to your thoughts, and, you very much, supervisor, for the opportunity. [applause] them and thank you. now, we are going to hear from several department heads who are going to speak very briefly, just two or three minutes, to give you some information so we

can get quickly to your questions. we will start with phil ginsburg, the general manager of rec and park, and we are right next to one of our most amazing parks. >> thank you, supervisor. it is a pleasure to be here. you will hear from all of us tonight about a lot of challenges with respect to our budget. rec adn park's -- rec and park's budget has been in the news a lot lately. it is a great joy to have the pleasure to stored our system, but our budget challenges are really profound. over the last seven years, we have been asked to find solutions for over $43 million in general fund support for our department. we have had a couple of simple principles that we have worked with the community and our commission on, and one is that we prioritize revenue over cuts.