The San Diego City Council wants to spend more money on homeless shelters, helping renters avoid eviction, boosting the city’s tree canopy, recruiting police officers and efforts to attract high-profile sports events.
A long list of budget priorities the council sent Mayor Todd Gloria on Monday also includes assistance for middle-income home buyers, more nighttime lifeguards and money to preserve non-subsidized low-rent housing.
The council deciding on its priorities officially kicks off the process of crafting a roughly $2 billion spending plan for the fiscal year that begins next July. This will be the first city budget in four years not to rely on federal pandemic aid.
The priorities, which the council could update and adjust in February, help the mayor put together the proposed budget he is required to unveil each April. The council and mayor then negotiate a final budget in mid-June.
The list of priorities includes all proposals supported by at least five of the council’s nine members.
Many of the proposals are connected to housing and homelessness. They include requiring landlords to notify the city about evictions in advance, transforming the old downtown library into a homeless support center and expanding shelter capacity, possibly including more safe parking lots.
Council members also want money to preserve existing low-rent housing, primarily older units that aren’t subsidized, and to help middle-income residents afford to buy homes.
This is the second consecutive year that a middle-income home-buying incentive has been among the council’s priorities. Last June, it was excluded from the budget for the ongoing fiscal year during last-minute deliberations.
“Middle-income San Diegans are struggling to find ways to buy a home, and they essentially have no assistance,” Councilmember Vivian Moreno said.
The San Diego Housing Commission has proposed a $3 million pilot program that could help 15 middle-income homebuyers.
The council is also asking Mayor Gloria to expand — or at least sustain — funding for ongoing programs, such as rental assistance for low-income residents, homeless outreach efforts and special shelters for LGBTQ people.
Council members also want to plant trees across the city to help make San Diego more resilient to climate change, especially in lower-income areas more vulnerable to extreme heat because they lack parks.
The priorities also include more lifeguard positions, especially nighttime lifeguards because of how many rescues, boat emergencies and medical incidents take place at night.
Another priority is more money for efforts to recruit and retain police officers, such as a take-home vehicle program or a local college student recruitment strategy. The city has 193 vacant officer positions.
Police officials said Monday they’ve launched a search for a marketing firm to help with recruiting. They are also revamping the city’s written exam, and some patrol cars are being wrapped with recruiting information.
Council members also want as much as $2 million to create a global sports event fund that would help the city become a more competitive destination for major sports events.
“We are starting to see some progress here in San Diego for making this an attractive place to host sporting events that will bring additional revenue and increase the profile of our city as world-class sports destination,” Council President Sean Elo-Rivera said.
Council members also expressed support for a wide range of infrastructure priorities, including more sidewalk repairs, streetlight upgrades, traffic-calming measures and timed stoplights to reduce congestion.
The priorities sent to the mayor also included a few items with support from only four council members. They include senior-only homeless shelters, efforts to accelerate firefighter hiring and more neighborhood shuttles like the Free Ride Anywhere Downtown and the Beach Bug in Pacific Beach.
It’s not clear how the city would fund the new spending, especially with the federal pandemic aid stream gone. One possible source is a $57 million surplus that city finance officials project for the ongoing fiscal year.
The city’s financial picture heading into budget season will become clearer when finance officials release an analysis called the five-year fiscal outlook Nov. 9.
