The city of San Diego is facing a budget deficit for the next fiscal year of nearly $137 million dollars.
To close the budget gap, Mayor Todd Gloria has proposed cuts to several programs meant to reduce long standing economic and racial disparities in the city.
His proposed budget would reabsorb the Community Equity Fund into the general budget, suspend contributions to the city council’s community projects, take back money in the Climate Equity Fund and suspend most of its $10 million annual contribution.
It eliminates the Cannabis Social Equity Program and funding for the Office of Immigrant Affairs.
Gloria said the proposed cuts are tough but necessary to preserve core neighborhood services.
“During the Great Recession, we did things like, you know, pairing of libraries,” he said. “Two libraries, only one would be open at a time. We did rolling brownouts of fire stations that resulted in real challenges in communities. And we're avoiding those with this budget proposal.”
They would also offset increased spending on homelessness and the housing crisis.
The mayor acknowledged the city would have to return almost a million dollars in state grant money if it ends the cannabis equity program.
But Megain McCall, an advocate for the program, said it would actually cost the city even more.
“You're actually cutting a program that could potentially fund other programs that are being cut,” she said.
The new program is supposed to issue cannabis business licenses to people who have been criminalized for it. Historically, Black people in California have been disproportionately arrested and charged with marijuana crimes, according to a UC Davis Report.
“We’re not getting our just due, and the city is not getting the tax revenue that could be paving all these streets that everyone's complaining about, fixing all these parks that everyone is complaining about,” she said.
Gloria said outside of what he sees as necessary reductions, equity is baked into the budget.
Kim Desmond, the city’s Chief of Race and Equity pointed to specifics, like the new equity factor used to allocate infrastructure money and the restructuring of park development fees.
“Systemic racism work, it is not easy,” she said. “You don’t solve it in one budget cycle.”
But McCall said she’s losing faith in the city’s talk of addressing disparities.
“It's time to put the money where the mouth is,” she said. “And nothing's happening.”
Groundwork San Diego-Chollas Creek is part of the city’s Climate Equity Working Group.
Executive Director Leslie Reynolds said the city’s “policies and programs are only as effective as the investments that follow.”
“The elimination of the Climate Equity Fund is only one example among many of the proposed budget cuts disproportionately burdening our most vulnerable communities,” she said.
The Climate Action Campaign, also in the working group, said now is not the time to be cutting climate equity funding in San Diego, after “climate change induced flooding” wreaked havoc on neighborhoods with higher concentrations of low-income Black and Latino residents.
Gloria said many of the proposed cuts are temporary, and he hopes to restore funding when the economy improves.
He pointed to the state’s projected revenue surplus as a positive sign.
