This week, the highlights at City Hall all seem to have been frontloaded to Monday, as Mayor Daniel Lurie presents the city’s $16 billion budget, and supervisors’ committees mull significant public safety policy choices.
Lurie’s $16 billion spending plan aims to nip a $607 million deficit in the bud through more cuts that will be significantly more aggressive than the last budget cycle, and it will be up to the Board of Supervisors’ progressive bloc, led by Congressional hopeful Connie Chan, to preserve union jobs and funding for nonprofit service contracts.
The rhetorical battle remains how to react to federal cuts: make corresponding reductions, or drain reserves and rely on new taxes, such as Proposition D on this week’s election ballot. Indeed, it may be interesting to see how the rhetoric at the board changes as a result of the June 2 vote, should Prop. D not pass and Chan fail to make the runoff for Congress.
Lurie and the Supervisors have until Aug. 1 to reach an accord on the biannual budget. He is expected to present it to the public via livestream on Monday at around 12:30 p.m.
Also on Monday, the Supervisors’ Rules Committee considers the appointment of at least one new member of the Police Commission, something you would think would have garnered more advance media coverage. Notably, progressive commissioner Kevin Benedicto is up for reappointment, and he has competition for his seat in the form of David Albert Angel, a resident of Glen Park and 31-year veteran Santa Clara County prosecutor.
Benedicto, a civil rights lawyer who is currently vice president of the commission, has been a highly activist commissioner, spearheading changes in department policy, such as on pretexual traffic stops, that have attracted criticism for making it harder for police officers to do their jobs.
The committee is also set to reappoint incumbent commissioner and community activist Mattie Scott, as well as appoint Lawrence Low, a downtown lawyer and founding member of what is now the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, to replace outgoing commissioner Larry Yee.
All three appointment questions will likely be referred to the full Board of Supervisors for approval on Tuesday, and new commission officers will be voted on when the Police Commission meets Wednesday.
Later in the day, the Supervisors’ Land Use Committee will mull District 6 member Matt Dorsey’s bill to expand the retail hours restriction pilot program in the Tenderloin and South of Market.
If approved, the program, which restricts late-night and early-morning hours for local bodegas to suppress drug and other criminal activity, and expires this month, would be extended for another 18 months and expanded further north to Geary and Polk streets, and further south to 13th Street and South Van Ness Avenue.
Police claim the program is responsible for a 56 percent reduction in drug-related incidents inside the program’s boundaries.
