i'm greg sass, the chief finance officer for the health department. as far as the -- you know, the cuts we're looking at in the health department, we have made no cuts to children's services at all. i mean, that's been a priority that we've -- we've set that aside, and we're really committed to maintaining those services. i think in response to the previous speaker, too, in terms of the whole discussion around mental health services, ainge question that comes often to us why is it that each budget year many cuts seem to be in the behavioral area, mental health and substance abuse. the reason, it's largely a financial reason. most of our general fund is in our hospitals and in our physical health areas. and that general fund is used as local match to draw down federal revenue. and so what happens when you make reductions in our hospitals, or in other parts of the health department, you make a $1 cut there, but you only get different cents reduction. it's very difficult for us to focus on those areas. as it happens, and it's probably pretty well underst

captain of our police station, phil ginsburg, and another round of applause for our mayor, ed lee, greg sass is here, the cfo of our department of public health, and greg, the mayor's budget director. so, just to give you a quick rundown, we are going to start with the mayor talking about opening remarks about our budget and principles coming up this season. the budget director will spend 10 minutes giving you an overview of the budget process in city hall and telling you what we're doing in this stage of the game as we're getting prepared. then we will have an hour of questions from new. this is your chance to ask your questions to mayor li and the other members of staff who will be here tonight. you can talk to me at any point. i want to make sure we take advantage of having a dialogue with the mayor tonight and the of the department's staff went might not be able to talk with on a daily basis. with that, i will say thank you for being here and turn it over to the mayor. >> thank you, supervisor. the evening, everyone. i will be very short. i am here to listen to make sure you all have qua

. >> my name is greg sass. i am the chief financial officer for the health department. i do most of the work on the budget. to put this into context, the health department is the largest department in the city. we get the largest amount of the general fund. as a consequence, we get the largest budget reduction targets of all the other departments. some people think you should not cut public health services. there are advocates for every service we provide. the reality is the city cannot close its budget deficit unless the largest department in the city participates and meets our targets. we had a $70 million budget reduction target this year. we have managed to meet $60 million of those reductions without any service cuts whatsoever. we have worked hard to draw down more revenues in terms of federal matching funding. we have worked on a number of deficiencies to get the same work done at lower cost. we're still left with this $10 million difference we need to close. that $10 million is resulting in some service cuts. as we look at where we can make service cuts, the vas