The City Council has approved the City budget for Fiscal Year 2024-2025. The total budget of $12.8 billion is 1.99 percent smaller than last year’s budget of over $13 billion. After the Mayor submitted her proposed budget, the Council’s Budget Committee conducted exhaustive hearings with input from every department of City government. The Committee and the full City Council each devoted an entire session to public comment.
Restoring Critical Vacant Positions
Faced with a potential deficit, the City considered eliminating nearly 2,000 vacant positions. The Council and the Chief Legislative Analyst identified additional savings to restore critical positions in Housing, Sanitation, Street Services, Parks, Cultural Affairs and Animal Services.
The Council’s amendments to the budget…
- Restored positions in Street Services to care for our streets and sidewalks.
- Restored positions in Sanitation for the CARE/CARE+ operations that clean up encampment sites and direct unhoused persons to services and healthier shelter options.
- Restored positions in Recreation and Parks to preserve programs for children, youth and seniors.
- Increased funding to Animal Services for the spay/neuter voucher program and the Citywide “trap, neuter and release” Cat Program.
Cutting Costs at City Hall
- The budget for the offices of the Mayor and every City Councilmember will each be reduced by ten percent.
- Although these offices represent a negligible fraction of the City’s total budget, it sends a message to every other City department that they too must make the most of the available resources.
Public Safety and Unarmed Response
At present, Police and Fire recruiting are not keeping pace with attrition due to retirements.
- The budget provides enough funding for full classes at the Police and Fire Academies.
- The budget provides for the City to hire and train as many police officers and firefighters as the departments can recruit.
- The budget maintains our investments in gang prevention and community violence intervention programs.
- $10 million is allocated to our unarmed response program. This will be especially useful for dealing with mental health crises or other situations where an armed response is inappropriate.
Emergency Services
- The budget continues the Emergency Appointment Paramedic Program to hire as many paramedics as possible to respond to urgent calls.
- The budget expands the Fire Department’s Advanced Provider Response Unit for patients with minor to moderate medical issues.
(L-R: Chief Legislative Analyst Sharon Tso, Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, Council President Krekorian and Councilmember Hernández during Council budget deliberations.)
Focused Accountable Spending to Address Homelessness
- The Inside Safe program will continue to be funded at the present rate.
- Previous years’ spending on other homelessness programs can be reduced, as Proposition HHH funding is fully allocated and more services are delivered in partnership with the County, reducing their projected costs.
- Proposition ULA funds will continue to be allocated for Emergency Rental Assistance and homelessness prevention.
- The budget also provides for stronger oversight of the Homelessness Emergency Account (HEA) and Inside Safe Reserve Account, requiring Council approval of a monthly expenditure report.
Shelter for Victims of Domestic Violence and Human Trafficking
- To offset the loss of state and federal funds, the budget provides funding for the Victim of Crimes Act Reserve Fund and Domestic Violence and Human Trafficking Shelter Operations.