Go woke, go broke! San Francisco mayor warns crime-ridden city now faces a $728m budget deficit over next two years, as remote work caused property taxes and public transit ridership to slump

UK Daily Mail ^ | 12/17/2022 | Harriet Alexander

[Keyhopper]

Ive seen this movie.
They get rid of middle management
Cut everyone’s pay
Force out anyone close to retirement
Cut services
Close departments
Jack up taxes

[Cen-Tejas]

....a few years ago I had some major surgery.

I was gratified to read the resume of the lead surgeon. He/they literally saved my life. Since then, I’ve had 3 grandchildren born.

....analogically speaking, hiring a leftist/marxist like London Breed to fix a 728 million dollar budget deficit would be like me hiring the hospital janitor to operate on me.

Sooner or later, SFO will be bankrupt like NYC in 1975. Long term, the City would be better off filing bankruptcy now and let the attorneys and courts sort through the damage while keeping REAL basic services functioning.

[lurk]

Defund more police and raise taxes.

[Chickensoup]

That happened everywhere.

Hartford is a war zone. West Hartford Farmington and Glast are booming. Portland is devolving quickly due to leftists. South Portland westbrook and Scarborough are thriving. Some growth but a lot of just plain displacement

[Ex-Con777]

A $1 per night fee for sleeping on a city sidewalk should cover the shortfall.

EC

[Tunehead54]

"More than 19,000 of their so called employees receive $150,000 or more in their W4 each year."

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Using your numbers just give the 19K City Employees making 150K a 13% "Emergency Payroll Deduction". At a minimum they'd save $370.5 Million a year and a bit more for those clearing $200K each.

Open payrolls lists these stats:

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City and County of San Francisco, California Employee Salaries

The average employee salary for City and County of San Francisco, California in 2021 was $99,674. This is 48.6 percent higher than the national average for government employees and 48.4 percent higher than other counties. There are 97,471 employee records for City and County of San Francisco, California.

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My math says that's a $9.7 Billion annual pay roll so a 10% cut across the the board would free up $971 Million annually. Since they seem to be very well paid they'd probably survive.

Worse case they could get a second job offering street-side maid services for the homeless.

From the article its hard to tell if "$728 million budget deficit, predicted for the next two fiscal years." is $364M/year or $728M/year either way with the 10% Across the board pay cut , to be more equitable of course - problem solved.

Think I'll just send the mayor my consulting bill. See what happens. ;-)

[roadcat]

As an old guy I remember when it was called “South City.”

It still is, but the reference is lost on others outside the SF Bay Area. My wife and I grew up in SF, moved to South City in the early 1970s. For a long time it was a sleepy town full of blue collar businesses, and wasn't changing much. Then Genentech came on the scene, and other biotech companies also came. My oldest daughter worked at Genentech for a decade. The company expanded on the east side of the bay shore in SSF, growing to more than 50 buildings on many blocks. They provided a lots of benefits to the city, donating money to schools and local infrastructure. That's how my daughter got involved, via school programs. The downtown boomed and gentrified, and stores and restaurants got better. It got crazy over the last 20 years, with many high-rise towers replacing 2 and 3 story buildings. The old steel mill and slaughterhouse properties got developed into business parks with thousands of employees. My daughter moved to Iowa with her husband and kids, and was shocked when she comes to California to visit. Exclaims "Holy cow!" when she sees all the changes over a few years, including her old school demolished and completely rebuilt, and new library, police station, city center buildings and new train station. All to the detriment of San Francisco to the north, which is declining.

[roadcat]

There are 97,471 employee records for City and County of San Francisco, California.

This is a misleading number. All city departments have a number of unfilled positions. The department heads and managers play a game where they request new positions for their groups, and leave them unfilled. There are cyclic boom and bust periods in the city. The mayor (whoever it is at the time) puts out a request to department heads to cut people in order to "balance the budget", usually 5 percent of staff. Department heads cut many of these unfilled positions. Mayor can then proclaim to the press that they cut staff. Then the managers begin work on requesting new positions. Result - numbers of employees grows and grows despite the workload not growing. Almost 3 times the number of employees as there were several decades ago.

[Vendome]

Well, I can’t see what they need 19,000 employees for.

San Jose is larger by population and has 9nly 6500 employees