Battle of the Budget - San Francisco - Part 2

by Bill Carpenter (wcarpent [at] ccsf.edu)

Mon, Dec 15, 2008 4:16PM

Mayor Gavin Newsom and the progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors are in the middle of a fight to determine who in San Francisco will bear the brunt of coming budget cuts. A broad coalition of community groups, labor, and concerned citizens held a mock funeral on December 11th for those who would suffer cuts under the Mayor's plan. They then visited City Hall to present the Mayor and the Supervisors with their own plan for $61 million of cuts.

This is Part 2. Part 1 and Part 3 of the funeral and City Hall visit will be posted later this week.

The coalition included the Coalition on Homelessness, SEIU, SRO Families United, Western Regional Advocacy Project, Planning for Elders in the Central City, Network Ministries, Poor Magazine, Seniors Organizing Seniors, Mission Resource Center,Community Housing Partnership, and St. James Infirmary

Part 2 is a five-minute QuickTime movie. 64MB.

Copy the code below to embed this movie into a web page:

Download Video (63.7MB) | Embed Video

For more information: http://www.cohsf.org/streetsheet/

§SF Battle of the Budget

by Bill Carpenter

Mon, Dec 15, 2008 4:16PM

Sharing the Budget Pain

by Sarah Phelan
San Francisco Bay Guardian
December 12, 2008

It wasn't pretty at Board President Aaron Peskin's mid-year budget cuts hearing.

(For starters, there wasn't enough room for all the people who showed up at today's meeting. Apparently, months ago, long before "Financial Armageddon" was a nationwide buzz word, the California Coastal Commission booked the Board's Chambers for today. Unfortunately, as a result, only a small percentage of folks managed to squeeze physically into today's budget hearing, while a huge crowd was left lingering discontentedly outside. This led to chants of "Let us in! Let us in!" until some burly not-to-be-messed-with Sheriff's Deputies shepherded them to a nearby "spill over" room.)

MORE:
http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2008/12/sharing_the_budget_pain.html

§SF Battle of the Budget

by Bill Carpenter

Mon, Dec 15, 2008 4:16PM

Supes Aim for Driver’s Seat in Mid-Year Cuts

by Paul Hogarth
Beyond Chron
Dec. 15‚ 2008

When Mayor Gavin Newsom addressed the Supervisors on December 9th about mid-year budget cuts, he offered few details and said there would be no supplemental de-appropriation – relegating the Board to being mere bystanders. The December 12th hearing at the Board’s Government Audit Committee tried to change that, as Supervisor Aaron Peskin proposed $8.5 million in cuts to the Opera, Police, Fire and Newsom’s press office. The story here isn’t that those affected by the Mayor’s health cuts got their chance to speak at a public forum. Nor was it just a remarkable dialogue about competing budget priorities – and the need to have “sliding-scale” cuts during hard economic times (adding teeth to the Mayor’s YouTube rhetoric about helping those “most in need.”) At this hearing, we got to learn more from Health Director Mitch Katz about what the Mayor’s cuts entail – with details that weren’t available at Newsom’s press conference. Away from the Mayor’s lofty talk about “mid-year solutions,” we got to learn the cold truth – and it’s these numbers that will guide us to an equitable solution.

MORE:
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=6383

http://www.cohsf.org/streetsheet/

§Amazing Disgrace

by James Chionsini (james [at] planningforelders.org)

Tue, Dec 16, 2008 7:01PM

This is the song they are singing:

Amazing Disgrace

It’s Budget Time
and the Mayor is trying
to cut the services we need,
but we’re organized
to fight this time,
and he will not succeed.

He wants to slash
Mental health care and
Drug rehab facilities
He wants to kill Cadeuceus*
but we won’t let this be!!

* substitute any program that is being cut

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